[h=1]Details of Microsoft’s next major Windows release are rumoured to be unveiled at the firm’s annual Build conference in April this year.
According to Microsoft blogger, Paul Thurrot, Windows 9 (codenamed ‘Threshold’) will see a full return of the Start menu and is planned for release in April 2015.
The new operating system will also allow users to run Metro apps in desktop mode.
"Maturing and fixing the "Metro" design language used by Windows will be a major focus area of Threshold," said Thurrott.
In other Microsoft news, the firm had two of its Twitter accounts and an official blog compromised over the weekend.
Hijackers claiming to belong to pro-Assad group the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) posted various messages on @MSFTnews and @XboxSupport.
One read: “Don’t use Microsoft emails (Hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments.”
The Official Microsoft Blog at blogs.technet.com redirected to the SEA site for a short while, but it now back to normal.
Microsoft said it is aware of the cyberattacks. The accounts were quickly reset and the firm has confirmed that no customer information was compromised.