You might want to look up one or both of these
programs:

Start8 and Classic Shell

The seem to be popular as a way to remove the
Metro "giant buttons" interface and make Windows
boot to the Desktop with a Start Menu. That
might make Win8 more usable. Underneath it's
mostly just Win7 with the Metro mess tacked on
top.

I'm actually still using XP most of the time, and
Win7 for testing things. I tried the Win8 beta but
haven't used it since then, so I can't tell you
much about Start8 and Classic Shell. If you don't
feel comfortable doing the research and installing
one of those programs then you might ask around.
If you know people using Win8 then probably at
least one of them has blocked Metro and can help
you to do it.