A thoroughly themed Windows might confuse the support technician on the other end of the phone line. But on the other hand, icons without text do the same thing.

So I'll document it: "When I press the Windows key or click the Start button, I want the Start screen to open snapped, not full screen."

It might be because Microsoft all but lifted the Start Menu from Apple. Since System 7.0 (June 1991), classic Mac OS allowed users to put "aliases" (shortcuts) to their favorite applications in the Apple Menu Items folder. System 7.5 (September 1994) added the ability to organize these shortcuts into folders, producing roughly the same effect as the Start Menu that Microsoft would add to Windows a year later.

Do the tiles appear on top of the windows that are on the desktop, or do they still hide all the windows that are on the desktop? The presence of the windows that are on the desktop acts as an anchor to keep the user's train of thought on its proverbial tracks. If the tiles showed up on top of the windows, possibly with a dimming or blurring effect like the UAC prompt and the area behind window title bars in Windows 7 Aero, that might be enough to avoid doorway amnesia.

So how do you keep the jarring full-screen transition from derailing your train of thought? Please see my other comment.

So how do I bring up the Run dialog box on a machine to which I am connected through Remote Desktop? Unless I'm running Remote Desktop in the full screen, pressing Win+R brings up the local machine's Run dialog.

When you start a full-screen application, such as a Windows Store app or the Windows 8 Start Screen, you lose the visual context of having the application semi-visible in the background, and you tend to forget what you were working on. The effect has been called doorway amnesia; see also my previous comments. Classic Shell makes it about as tolerable as Windows 7.

I don't know what country you live in, but in the United States, the FCC would have shut down that practice. See this story from nine years ago.

Not if getting banned from one multiplayer game on your account gets you banned even from single-player games on the same account.

And be arrested for sleeping on the street.

You claim that web site operators ought to take a third option. Other than advertisements and paywalls, what third, fourth, and fifth options for the revenue needed to sustain a web site did you have in mind?

What's the best practice for a site to demonstrate to users that it is trustworthy?

What's the best practice to pan and zoom a view of an unbounded plane without script? Something like Google Maps would need that.

What format of native apps runs on Windows 7, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows RT, and the major video game consoles?

How would you recommend implementing something like Google Maps to be compatible with Lynx?