“Shutting off Windows used to be a simple matter of clicking the Start button and choosing the ‘Shut down’ option,” Lance Whitney reports for CNET. “But the Windows 8 beta has no Start button. So how do you shut it down?”

“Microsoft has concocted a series of manuevers and keyboard shortcuts to shut down the new OS,” Whitney reports. “Though slower and clumsier than going through the Start button, the new steps at least let you fully turn Windows 8 off.”

Whitney reports, “The most basic way to shut down Windows 8 is through the Charms bar.”

Read about all of the various machinations required to turn off an OS comprises of tiles meant to hide a severe case of AppLack™ here.

MacDailyNews Take: Charms bar? Who thought that up, a Care Bear?

“Start” to stop was so Microsoftian, so emblematic of the non-intuitiveness of that bloated piece of Mac wannabe dreck, we almost can’t believe it’s gone. Well, as Whitney explains, “none of them [ways to shut down Windows 8] are quick or convenient,” so Windows 8 obviously remains Microsoft through and through.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "The_Wzrd" for the heads up.]