[xtirpation]

Personally I don't like that the new start menu takes up an entire screen. You're right that people can just type in the name of the program they're interested in, but in that case it makes even less sense to me for the start menu to take up all that space unnecessarily. It's just jarring to me that if I ever want to launch a program from the new start menu, I'll have to drop everything I'm doing when I might otherwise be looking at another window.

Really I think the new start menu is meant to be easier for people who don't just type in the name of the program they're interested in, allowing them to put all the apps and programs they use onto their start menu and arrange them however they want, not unlike an extended "favourites" menu.