I think what rubbed me the wrong way is that it just didn't feel like a natural progression in the desktop experience. I agree with you that you can take some time and get it to a point where it works really nicely, Start8 and modern mix are great band aids, but MS just royally screwed up here by even making that necessary.
I thought
this was a really neat mockup of what a good Windows 8 desktop would look like.
I like that it introduces the live tiles to the user in the traditional start menu. I think the small, unobtrusive start menu is a nice thing to have, and it seems that that would be a great way to ease the desktop user into their mobile devices.
Just curious, are you on a desktop or a laptop? From what I understand a lot of the under the hood improvements to the OS have been wonderful, they just really flopped on the user experience.