Microsoft has announced at its Build Conference 2014 that Windows 8.1 will have upgrades soon. It noted a future update to Windows 8 will be the return of Start menu.

The tech company is bringing back to Windows its old friend desktop Start Menu. Also, it will have the ability to run in the user's own Windows the Windows Store apps. The updates will be effective not in Windows 9 but in a future update to Windows 8.1.

Joe, Belfiore, Microsoft's vice president of operating systems, presented a desktop screen running Windows Store apps and the traditional Start Menu on the desktop which contains tiles for Windows Store apps.

Microsoft's decision to bring back Start menu with the free Windows 8.1 update is good news to many. The lost of Start Menu has been among the biggest complaints of users of desktop PCs on Windows 8. Its return means that Microsoft listens to its customers instead of Windows 8 cultists who called those who missed Start Menu "whiner" or "stupid."

The company realized that if many users do not like the new changes, it might make some amendments and actions.

Redmond did not mention any timeline with regards to the future Windows 8.1 update and the promised system builders free version. Bringing back Start menu and to run Windows Store apps on desktop are already welcome changes to the users since the launch of Windows 8 in 2012.

If you have not replaced the Start menu on your own and love the old friend Start menu, then this is good news for you. The returning Start menu will look the same, but it will tack on its side a small tiled interface.

Microsoft will also have the tiled contemporary apps run in a window on screens of desktops, which you can actually do now with ModernMix.

If you are not doing this yet with apps like ModernMix and Start8, it will be supposedly a nice upgrade. You must try these features now from third-party utilities ModernMix of Stardock and Start8 although they work better when operating system-built.