I use it and love it. Only ever go into the metro interface for Mail and music as I like the apps. I have it so the hot corners on the left are disabled and only pressing windows key on the keyboard goes to metro.
I have the same setup as yours.
You know I realized in all the time I used windows 8 (upgraded day one) I used the start button maybe five times. Best thing about start 8 was the ability to disable hot corners on the desktop, but I believe you can do that from windows options now.
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Also to anyone upgrading to win 8.1 from 7. There is no reason to buy start8 anymore there are a million free alternatives, google for classic shell.