TerraSin
Yes, all the people who never used Windows 8 or used it for approximately 5 minutes and whined/****ed about it constantly without giving it a chance are the ones who brought the start menu back.

Well, my bet is that it was primarily business users who motivated MS to restore the start menu.  Retraining vast armies of MS Office users is not an expense to be treated lightly.  Even with W10 and the reconstituted Start menu, I don't see anything especially compelling that will make corporations want to move away from W7 for a very long time.

Glyn Barnes
No issues with Windows 8 & 8.1 here. OK the Metro Interface is ugly as sin, but if you organise it properly you have options that go beyond the start menu.

That said I will admit to being a dinosaur and use classic shell, not because the Metro screen is not function but because it looks so aweful.

Exactly the same here. And I have a hard time with it going full screen all the time with that bizarre style. I don't think it was intended for desktops/laptops, but I have a feeling that folks at Microsoft would not understand the difference if we mentioned it!
 
Other than that, W8.1 has only fried one motherboard, a V79 thing that was my biggie computer, and did not like the motherboard and video card combination, and it finally refused to post. Just replaced it with an Asus motherboard and all's fine ... but I guess I better not turn off the computer every night like I used to. Other than that the other 2 computers have no issues with it at all.