This is right - Win8 for power users is, "Hit Start button on keyboard, type what you want a-la QuickSilver"
...while the new Start-thingy takes over your entire screen. That, more than anything, is the deal-breaker for me.
Are you actively using other windows while in the process of launching a new one? It's not like the start screen stays there forever, or the window you were looking at goes away. There are a lot of nit-picking curmudgeons in this thread.
Often, yes. I might be watching a video and using muscle memory to go Start -> "gv" -> Enter to start up gvim for another window, for example.
It's not nit-picking when the decision is a bad one.
I'd tend to agree, though I think it's far more painful if you're in a VM with bad video perf versus a native machine with a good video card.
Yes. I'm reading the filename of a document in Gmail and typing it into search to quickly call it up.