Microsoft is trying to make things more efficient, but it's harder for us ingrained into the old way of doing things. Look at the Office Ribbon. For those who knew how to do things the long way, it took them years to get used to it. If you're new to office or all of the things Excel in particular can do, the Ribbon makes everything more efficient. If driving a Ford with a joystick saved 20 MPG, you might be willing to relearn.

Do we really need to have a Start menu, or even a file system, when you can search for whatever you want? I don't even use the Start Menu on Win7 or OSX, I search for everything. It's about making your workflow more smooth.

But, alas, every time MS tries to push something forward, they have to drag it back. 8.1 is getting a traditional Start Menu. I expect they'll start shipping Xbox One's without Kinects before too long.