I love how instead of helping someone figure out a totally new OS, a debate unravels....
OK, Jayoneseven, I can tell you're having difficulties figuring out the Start Screen. One phrase: Think outside the box. Windows 8 isn't your parents' Windows, it's not like any other Windows version before. You have a Windows Phone. WINDOWS. PHONE. You have Windows 8 on your PC. WINDOWS ON YOUR PC. Microsoft didn't set out to mimic a phone OS 100 percent onto the PC. It's not like the iphone to ipad. Those two run the same OS, just that one is a phone and one is a giant ipod that some fools consider to be a PC. The difference between Windows and Windows Phone is just like ios and mac os. They are two different things that work differently, but look similar.
Now, you mention about tiles and being able to pin things like Desktop items. To do this, right click on a hard drive, folder, Library or a Control Panel item and hit Pin to Start. When you get into the advanced parts of it, you can sometimes copy a shortcut link of an app and copy it over to the Start Screen through File Explorer, like a back door method of sorts.
Having a Windows Phone, you should know if you need a certain pinned item that isn't an app from the Marketplace, like a bank site or whatever, you do that with IE and hit Pin to Start from Windows Phone. The same thing happens with Windows 8 and IE. On the Desktop, you can add the site to Start. In the immersive IE, you right click and hit Pin to Start. Theoretically, some websites might have a little notification on the pinned IE tile for new updates, like on Windows Phone's facebook app, a notification will have a little red circle with a number. The same can happen with an IE tile.
Speaking of IE, there are two versions in Windows 8. Desktop or Immersive or metro IE. The Desktop version works like any other browser, but the immersive one works differently. This one is meant to be full screen, and works efficiently with battery life and hardware. You can choose to have the default action of the IE tile to go the Desktop version ALL the time. You can still pin sites to the Start Screen from the Desktop just as well. To do this, you need to hit the Settings cog on the Desktop version, and hit Add site to Start. Then, go the Internet Options, hit the Programs tab, and check Open Internet Explorer tiles on the desktop and do the same above it on the drop down menu of options. I personally use the immersive version as it looks cleaner, and it's full screen so more content is shown. I also don't have any sites I go to that has Flash players issues, if I do, I just go to the Desktop version for the time being. It wouldn't make sense to have a video play if you're not watching it, that's why the immersive version does that. You can snap it to the side of the Desktop if you want to and it'll continue to play.
Personalization options in 8 are pretty decent. You couldn't customize the start menu like the Start Screen before. You can choose different colors or patterns, and I think with a third party app, you can add custom images to the Start Screen for the pattern. But to change personalization options, this is done hugely and efficiently with the Charms bar, or the system commands bar. Hit the Start key+C or move your mouse pointer to the left hand corners and move to the middle. Hit the Settings charm, and hit Change PC Settings. This is lite version of the Control Panel that has the most commonly needed and changed settings of Windows. Changing things here is pretty self-explanatory. On the Desktop, doing the same, you have an entry from the Settings charm of Personalization. This can let you change the Desktop settings like with 7. This reasoning here is interesting and more touch based. PC Settings is there because you don't have to peruse the Control Panel so much as there are a lot of things to go through to change something simple. It's more easier. And, something was needed to change settings for the Start Screen and the app behaviors in a similar styled environment for touch users. It kind of segregates the two UIs in Windows, but in the long run, it'll make sense.
And I don't know what you're talking about with ads. There aren't any in Windows 8. There are in the Bing apps and some free apps, but it's just like if you went to google and browsed google news or finance or checked the weather, you'll see google's ad algorithms personalizing add for you based on what you browse. The apps are just extensions of Bing's site in a Windows 8 metro style. There are never any ads on live tiles or anything.
A word of advice, don't do upgrade installs. Do a custom install. It'll make a Windows.old folder in the C drive so you can cut and paste things back into the new locations. Upgrade installs aren't foolproof and some gunk from the old will carry over to the new. Don't be thinking of Windows 8 like Windows Phone, they don't work the same or act the same as they're two different devices on two different form factors. You will need to learn to use the Charms bar and do some right clicking within the apps themselves. The Charms bar is how you do searches, sharing, moving content to devices or importing from devices, and changing app settings from it. That's the new UI. With time, you might learn what's fastest on how to access things from the Charms bar. I've been using Windows 8 for over a year, my experience has been WHOA and progressed positively from it. Everything is fast and fluid and I wouldn't go back to using 7 even if that was the only option to use.
