What do you need the Start button for?

A number of users of the Consumer Preview keep complaining about the absence of the Start button (which is no more than a bunch of shortcuts). In my experience I have noticed time and again that not everybody knows about the Windows Key —or WinKey, or Win-key— a magic key that among other things serves as a substitute for a mouse click on the Start button. However, there is, indeed, another cool way of accessing applications while you are in the Metro UI mode. You simply start typing and the "Apps" menu will pop up on the right hand side of the screen (as shown here). Here, for the Calculator you just type "c" and all the applications that start with that letter will show up on the left side of the screen; then, just click on the desired application which, in turn, will open up in (traditional) Desktop mode (and if you want to go back to Metro UI, press WinKey again). This is more or less tantamount to using the Start button and then start typing and, as you can see, you have three types of searches: Apps, Settings and Files. There, the functionality of the Star button still there, and then some. Read also the Windows 8 Keyboard Shortcut keys combinations  and this excellent article about Windows 7, to learn about these cool keyboard shortcuts which play well for both operating systems.