I feel old when I say this, but: most Microsoft changes make me angry. I don't understand why my desktop path needs to be changed 3 times between ME -> XP -> 7 (for example).
With that being said, I found W7 to be pretty intuitive. I don't use the start menu for much other than quick access to programs that I don't want to clutter. The start menu is on the corner, and easy to click. It's easy to de-click if I need to, and I don't need to minimize anything to access it. This will be a sad day.
I hear you: the UI is shuffled each time, but it still seems to run slow and complicated, and programming windows is ... more work than I care to take on, if there is an alternative. (this from somebody who had been using DOS / Novell / Windows / Borland dev stuff for about 10 years before ever picking up Linux -- MS totally lost me just before the underwhelming release of '95)
With that being said, I found W7 to be pretty intuitive. I don't use the start menu for much other than quick access to programs that I don't want to clutter. The start menu is on the corner, and easy to click. It's easy to de-click if I need to, and I don't need to minimize anything to access it. This will be a sad day.