One thing I'd like to see explained is the location of "Programs" at the top of the Start menu, rather than right at the bottom where it would be closer and less mouse movement. I do think the Start menu is a much better location for the program list than their earlier idea, a Programs folder on the "Desktop," and better still than the Windows 3.0 Program Manager. But I wonder what the thinking behind making the user mouse up past Run, Find, and Settings to get to Programs, when their research indicates that "opening a program" was the primary objective of a user. I know it's an old joke that "you have to click Start to Shut Down," but it does seem far from the way the Apple menu worked at the time for effectively the same thing.

http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/kd...

"Launching Programs: Start Menu. Although we abandoned the idea of a separate shell for beginners, we salvaged its most useful features: single-click access, high visibility, and menu-based interaction. We mocked up a number of representations in Visual Basic and tested them with users of all experience levels, not just beginners, because we knew that the design solution would need to work well for users of varying experience levels. Figure 5 shows the final Start Menu, with the Programs sub-menu open. The final Start Menu integrated functions other than starting programs, to give users a single-button home base in the UI."