smeezekitty :
But with a keyboard/mouse/touchbad, its clunky.
Win8 desktop works perfectly fine with mouse and keyboard... practically exactly the same as XP/Vista/7 once you install Classic Shell.
The Start page is fairly usable with a mouse and you can type applications' names instead of searching for icons to spare yourself the trouble of organizing the Start page in a way that makes sense, which is good enough if all you will be using for is find the icon so you can pin it on the taskbar. I'm guessing most people who hate the Start page with a passion haven't used it long enough to discover that you can simply type program/link names to filter the list, just like using Win7 Start menu's application search box instead of hunt-and-pecking their way through the icon ocean. That upgrades the Start menu from total nonsense to tolerable.