I dare say, no one that has ever used
any version of Windows,
has had an effortless experience.
It was always necessary, in all versions,
to spend lots of time,
doing maintenance, making repairs,
upgrading, configuring, and customizing.
I have spent hundreds of hours writing batch files,
cleaning up systems, creating shortcuts,
installing addons, editing the registry,
resizing partitions, adding printers,
configuring networks, and
editing the start menu for every version
of Windows because they always became clogged with
dozens if not hundreds of useless links.
There has never been a hands off version of windows.
______
There are some blistering enraged
comments in this report that agree with
those who are annoyed by 8.
Evolving the Start menu - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs