You know what - I think I can live with it.
My new notebook came with windows 8.1 and the usual load of bloatware that Lenovo puts on it. Fortunately most of that crap is now in the form of Modern apps and located on the Start Screen.
I installed a program called Classic Shell which banishes the Start Screen forever and goes right to the desktop when you boot the computer. You can even put back the familiar Windows 7 Start button and Menu. Then I uninstalled all the crapware to be sure.
So now Windows 8.1 is a faster booting Windows 7 as far as I am concerned. I'm happy.