Good job.
Yes you'll need to take some time and investigate it properly. There is some minor customizing you can do with the start menu, resizing tiles, unpinning them, dragging items from the all apps menu on to the start tile portion.
And of course the new Task View button which allows you to add virtual desktops. The fact that modern apps all run in windows now and that when you click the "X" they actually close..... all the way closed which is a nice change from dragging them to the bottom of the screen and waiting for them to flip.
Other than that and perhaps a few more minor items, you're pretty close to 100% correct in your assessment it's Windows 8, but.... what it should have been to begin with, without the past couple years of suffering.