Yea, all I had to do with win8.1 was to disable the swipe screen, set it to load to desktop on login, and to have the start button go to Apps instead of start. Have Apps sorted by category. No 3rd party solutions required.

Pretty painless once I figured it out. Plus I think the best start menu ever is to right click the start button. That context menu has everything I really need to get to. Win10 has it too. It's normal start menu is less than useless.

So I have the best of win8.1, which is pure speed, and the best of win7, which is everything works, and I get to miss the worst of what 10 currently has, a gigantic shovelware mess, and edge.