If you're using the mouse and interacting with windows 8 features you probably aren't having a good time. However, you have no reason to. As of 8.1 you can boot

If you're using the mouse and interacting with windows 8 features you probably aren't having a good time. However, you have no reason to. As of 8.1 you can boot straight into the desktop, if you're a power user (or aren't on a touch device) you aren't using metro apps anyway so their interface doesn't mean much to you, and all other functionality (shutdown, search, settings, etc) is accessible with simple keyboard shortcuts (far faster than using the mouse regardless of what OS you use). The only reason a user without a touch interface should see the start menu in Win8 is for brief moments when they are using the search functionality to quickly open programs. The poster you were responding to is completely correct: they hype against win8 is completely overblown. In my opinion, slight visual changes are worth the back-end changes to things like boot time, multi-core performance, and security.