Does it seem strange to anyone that Silverlight isn't part of the Win 8 installation?
Gonna take your advise, and wait the weekend. But so far I can't stand it. So counterintuitive
I feel so lost and the entire Start/Metro layer feels pointless for my usage(PC gaming and internet)
Advice if you want to get the best of both old and new worlds: Pin the three or four programs you use daily onto your task bar. Pin the other 10-15 programs/apps you use once in a while or are experimenting with to your start menu. You can pin other stuff like folders, URLS or contacts you use often to the start screen too.
Leave everything else unpinned entirely and just search for it when you want it. If you haven't played a game in a while - just unpin it from start. You can always pin it back later. Take 20 seconds to prune the start menu every other day and it will be functional and beautiful. The travel app that comes with windows is a cool app, but it's not something I'll use very often, so I unpinned that and others like it.
If you find a live tile to be visually confusing, making you lose it sometimes because it never looks like you expect it to look, just turn it to a non-live tile for ease of visibility. While they are cool, 70% of live tiles don't generally add anything in my opinion.
Searching for apps is easy and quick once you've done it a couple of times. Just start typing from the start screen. You usually only have to type three letters of the app you're after before it's the only or top option left and you just press ENTER. Even if you're a slow typer, you'll find it faster than digging through a cluttered start menu. I just tried getting to character map - it took under three seconds where in my old start menu habits it would have taken at least three times that long.
There's also the "all apps" option in the start screen if you don't know what you have. That functionally is the same as the old start menu, although it's spread out it's arranged the same way the start menu would be.
On my desktop I spend very little time in Metro - but when I am in it I find it very useful and there are some metro only apps on there that I like. I also like that I get the same UI on a tablet and can share a lot of the same programs across both platforms. Quitting a game on my PC and then resuming where I left off on my tablet is amazingly easy and something you quickly take for granted.
tl;dr - make the start screen your bitch. Search is start screen's hot sister.