Over at The Verge, Tom Warren has an interesting post about Pokki, a Windows Start menu replacement for Windows XP, 7 and 8.

Apparently, the Windows 8 version of Pokki has been downloaded over 1.5 million times since its introduction in October 2012. That would seem to imply that there is a strong demand for a Start menu in Windows 8, which Microsoft consistently denies. Similar surges in downloads of Windows 8 Start menu software like Stardock’s Start8 and Classic Shell reinforce the notion that a significant portion of Windows 8 users are not happy with the lack of a Start menu.