Today I had experience #2 with Win8. Thanks for all who have shared their knowledge, I could find things easier now. Even the Shutdown button which intuitively has been put under Settings, which naturally pops up by mousing in the right corners. Think about people having had lots of laughs when Windows was shut down by clicking "Start".
This, too, was a PackardBell with a dedicated shutdown button in the TaskBar. Unfortunately this time the icon was in the lower left corner, easily causing error clickings with the Tiles popup link in the same location. I tried to arrange an empty slot there, but couldn't.
Well, it seems people will learn to use them. In the meantime I should be glad I won't be unemployed for a long time: As you know, average people have no idea where their folders are physically, and with a missing Start menu with direct links to their profile folder and its subfolders I guess I'll have a fulltime job in making appropriate icons on their Desktops