Windows 8.xxx: Like a snowball in Hades.
Windows 8.1 with Start Button, but no Start Menu? Sounds to me like: "The all new Edsel, now with a pinstripe!"
This nonsense of a "refined blend" sounds like it was lifted from a 1970's TV ad for instant coffee crystals or a "premium" motor oil. The "refined blend" of Windows 8.1 is akin to Coke "refining" New Coke by "blending" half original Coke and half New Coke and putting it in new cans and telling their customers that they were "listening" to them!
Microsoft's users can tell the difference between a kick in the teeth and actually being listened to. This "refined blend" is NOT being listened to and it is NOT going to go well at all for Microsoft.
Touch on a PC is about as useful as teats on a boar hog. Actually, less useful. Does Microsoft really expect 100 million CAD/CAM designers, accountants, and other industrial content makers to hold their arms up horizontally all day inaccurately poking smudges on their 42" monitors with their fat fingers, working at 1/100th the speed as before Windows 8 with 1000 times the physical effort, in the mean time destroying their neck and shoulder girdle for life?
Touch is an extremely low bandwidth input method with horrendous inaccuracy and extremely harmful ergonomics when compared to a keyboard and mouse. Touch might be ok for looking up the latest cat video, or tweeting, texting, or talking, but that's about it.
Bottom line? Windows 8.xxx doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hades of being adopted by the enterprise and SMB on the PC.