Honestly, I've found once you get used to it, the native Win8 home screen/"start menu" is actually more flexible and intuitive than the previous one. You can tweak it to add your most used programs to the main screen, which I love, personally. BUT FOR TIPS:
- Add/remove from the home screen! Seriously, I cannot advocate for this enough. I haaaaaated the native start screen before I figured out how to do that.
- Learn and love your keyboard shortcuts. They give a list of them here.
- Anything you use a whole lot from the desktop, pin it to the windows bar for easier access still.