Let me take you back to June 2014. While Windows 7 had been a hit after the troubled Vista release, Windows 8 has a less warm reception. Full screen application, no start button, and a start screen instead of the start menu really put people off Microsoft’s OS despite it bringing store apps, new settings and a first touch screen UI.

With Windows 8.1 (coded named Blue) Microsoft addressed some of the issues with an improved start screen, snap news and a start button and you also had the option of bypassing the start screen, but you still had the issue of full screen metro apps v traditional apps and no proper start menu.

So back to 2014 Microsoft were going to fix some of these issues. This is build 9870 of Windows 8.1, it’s actually a development coded named Dark Blue and includes a new start menu that look like the windows 10 one but isn’t. It was rumoured that it may have been branded as Windows 8.2 or even Windows 9 but in the end, Microsoft scrapped this menu and moved to develop Windows 10 as way of making it a bigger upgrade from 8.1.

This menu did turn up as part of Windows RT 8.1 Update 3 which rollout to Windows RT in September 2015.

So here is my video looking at build 9780 of Windows and how it bridges Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

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