Windows 8 users confused over desktop / start menu

In the past few weeks I have helped users with new Windows 8 laptop. In every case they had used used Windows before and were very confused where the start menu had ‘gone to’. In one case they were accused of ‘doing something’ to the laptop when they showed it to a relative as the relative thought they had broken Windows. The more I see Windows 8 the decision to remove the traditional start menu is just wrong on non touch devices. The uncomfortable jump between the desktop and the new touch oriented start menu does not feel correct. Why the old start menu was removed for Windows 8 RTM is still a mystery for me. The whole thing could be fixed so easily with a few lines of code that presumably and deliberately was never written by MS.
If touch screen then go to new start menu
Otherwise
Go to desktop and add Windows 7 Start Menu
Then allow more experienced users to select either of the above as default behaviour. The default behaviour may need to change if the user uses lots of Windows 8 Apps instead of traditional Apps.
The final icing on the cake was I asked a Windows user of 10 years+ to turn the laptop off, and they couldn't work out how to do it. I showed them that the charms bar, ALT F4 and CTRL-ALT-DEL could be used, but they were still amazed at the lack of usability. So here is a vote to do something about it. On my own laptop I have settled on the Classic Start Menu, whilst on my development Server running Server 2012 I have left the original behaviour to always remind myself how it works out of the box. It is not all bad as pressing the start key and typing the program you want to run still works the same, although I don’t see any advantage over Windows 7 Start Menu. If you use the Surface Touch Screen the new system works well, except non touch devices will be in the majority for some time to come. So here is a vote to change the behaviour of Windows 8 start menu on non touch devices. In a couple of years it will be less of a problem as touch screen devices will be ubiquitous. MS no doubt has already decided against this plan, although if business take up of Windows 8 is low they may be forced to rethink...