My new laptop also came with Win8. I bought one of the Dummies for Win8 and that helped me figure out several things about Win8.
I now have it configured to look and act pretty much like the Classic View (pretty much the same as Win XP). I had Win7 configured the same way.
There are a few things in Win 8 that I like so I wouldn't go back to Win 7 now.
I understand that Win 8.1 which is due out in a few months will address many of the issues that annoy folks (including booting to the Metro (Tile?) page) and allow booting to the Desktop. I think the power off switch and start menu will be on the desktop too.