I actually prefer the 8 UI to 7's. You click the start menu, and your intention is clearly to interact only with the menu, so why not make it take up the whole screen? The application icons on the bottom are also much more space efficient.
I think a majority of the complaints come from "this is different!" not "this is worse!".
No, the intention is to quickly start something without distracting from the main screen. There is no sane reason to go fullscreen here, if i have Writer open and want to start a calculator or MSN or whatever other app.
I needed a few trials until i found where to shut down that stupid OS (and eventually installed the classic menu).
Interestingly i have a touchscreen laptop but on my main OS (Linux) i went the complete opposite direction lately, with a much more keyboard-driven setup, no fancy animations.
Basically a distraction-free work machine, and not the colorful, animation-loaded distraction "beast" Windows has become.
I think the function of the windows key, where a menu pops up in the right and you can type out the application name, is what you want for that purpose. Ubuntu does the same thing. I'm pretty keyboard-centric myself, and this works really well for me. The fullscreen start menu is nice when you forget the exact name of the application, IMO.
And Ubuntu has similarly turned into an example of what not to do. This fad of cramming a touch UI down the throat of mouse users and acting like it's all perfectly natural is obscene.
I'm talking specifically about a feature that enables fast keyboard access to applications. I don't see how that has anything to do with mouse or touch UI.
Ubuntu's UI has its own issues, but that's not the point.
Ah, I wasn't on my windows computer when I checked it. I guess the standard windows key does go to fullscreen. The fast, small one is Win+S. It would be nice to be able to switch them.
I think a majority of the complaints come from "this is different!" not "this is worse!".