I've never understood the "oh noes they took away the start button" complaints, when every keyboard made in almost the last two decades has a start button on it between Ctrl and Alt.Press the start button on your keyboard and start typing the name of the thing you want to run, then press enter.Anything more complicated than that? Press Win+X.Anyone moaning about the loss of an on screen button that replicates keyboard functionality just isn't able to use their computer very well.Maybe these people would like the on-screen keyboard, then they can click all the keyboard buttons to their heart's content!Personally I've not upgraded from 8 to 8.1 yet. They removed a few things I used and didn't add much.
Personally, I have 2 issues with the use of a start screen compared to a start menu.
The first issue is the simple fact that it's a full-screen feature. In windows 7, I can (and often do) launch a program while reading or watching something on one of my monitors. The appearance of a small box in one corner of the screen is much preferable to the more invasive and jarring transition to a full screen, particularly if it's for a brief moment.
The second issue is with how I use the start menu. I have my most commonly used programs pinned to the taskbar, and a group of less-commonly used programs pinned to the start menu. I don't need these programs often enough to want them taking up space on my taskbar, but I don't want to have to search for them every time I want them either. With the start menu, it takes 1 or 2 clicks and very little mouse movement to access about a dozen additional programs. With the start screen, it would take more mouse movement and more time to launch one of these programs, while again being more invasive to my workflow than the traditional start menu.
It's not that the start screen is nonfunctional, I can and do use windows 8 machines on a regular basis. I just find that my workflow is much better on Windows 7, which works more efficiently with my personal workflow.
E: @jpishgar:
I believe the issue Christopher is referring to is the elimination of line breaks when posting new comments. If you're interested, I have an image which captures the issue, which I experienced in making this post. I'm using Chrome version 33.0.1750.146 on Windows 7x64,