Someone JUST posted something about doing just that... I didn't subscribe to it though so it's lost in the sea of the 8 forums. Can try a few searches to locate it.
It worked with some caviates. Since MS removed a lot of functionality from being usable by the explorer shell, there are several apps you need to create your own shortcuts to instead of using the built in ones.
THAT I think is going a little too far. It so screws with the system as a whole, might as well stay on the sane and stable 7. Adding a third party start orb makes complete sense though and is usually a lot less traumatic to the system.
[Edit]Looked a bit and couldn't find it, it was a link to an off site web page though, maybe google for it instead?[/edit]