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"I have only seen Win8 once, and was unable to help the owner of the laptop it was on in do anything at all."
So you're not a tech person then, can't use google? My Dad is computer illiterate and upgrade to W8 from W7 without any help. How do people survive on Max OSX without a start menu? I think people like to complain about nothing.
Maybe, like I said, I never used it. Mac OSX doesn't have it and I of course don't use it there. My kids seems to do fine on both Win 8 and Mac OSX so I'm not sure what the problem is.
I do development on Android, iOS, and WP/RT. I do the same on Mac OSX, either use the launcher at the bottom or apple key + space bar and start typing. I'm a shill for both operating systems.
So you didn't slide your mouse around to close windows in Win7? Ever use Alt-F4? Win8 has better keyboard shortcuts than the previous OS's but you'd have to spend 2 mins learning something I guess.
But I never used it or the start menu. I always though the start menu was for people that liked to be inefficient. I pin stuff I use a lot to the task bar and for other stuff, Win key, type a few chars. And now I pin those to the start screen but its still faster to Win key, type a few chars. Win 8 is fine, better than Win 7, and miles better than XP. It's the "in thing" to complain about MS so it doesn't matter if the OS is good or not.