Most of the desktop (thankfully!!!) remains unchanged, however there is now a new start button present on the taskbar.

I have a feeling it was added intentionally in order to thwart the installation of other start menu programs and, oh I don't know, creating a usable desktop environment? I've said it before, Metro has no place on a classic desktop computer, and like it or not those aren't just going to go away overnight. The tile interface is massively useless.
Unbelievably, Microsoft shills think this is so great, and therefore no one should complain about it. Uh, no. It's not great. It's just another needlessly complicated and useless feature no one ever needs. Fortunately, start menu application vendors adapted.

I suppose maybe it is "great" in that it puts a button in plain sight for those that actually want anything to do with the mindless "start" (stop?) page instead of requiring a gesture. Most sane people would ignore it anyways though.

It is now possible to start up Windows straight to the desktop, among other things. Like, WOW! Oh so new.

Speaking of "oh so new", another "feature" Microsoft shills are touting as being "all new" is the ability to put an image in the background of the start page. Color me impressed at this "new" feature, while I busily change desktop background on all of my sane computers over here at my own free leisure...

I guess "My Computer" wasn't descriptive enough to some people, so Microsoft renamed it to "This PC". Why?

Holy crap, a shutdown option! This should be present on the start screen, and also on the desktop without needing to use a context menu, but baby steps.

And, continuing the tradition, here is a screenshot of Windows 8.1 shutting YOU down!