> I gave up trying to navigate the Start Menu to launch programs around Win7 in disgust of Windows' continued "helpful" reorganisation of it.

Same, and I was annoyed about it briefly. Then I realized that hitting the Windows key and then typing the beginning of what I wanted (which gives you some combination of the Run command + searching the start menu) was way faster than navigating a menu. If I need a new text file, I can type "[Windows key] n o t e [enter]" in under a second.