I would have to agree that you are looking at this as a power user, rather than a regular user. And, from that perspective, I would agree that the changes are rather minimal and intuitive between recent versions.

However, for older folks, this view is not typically the norm.

I do computer repair and routinely listen to gripes about changes in Vista/7.

For instance, I often hear complaints about things like changing the theme/style settings, searching, modifying network interfaces/settings, or changes to how the control panel works.

These are often, aside from theme/network settings, an improvement, minimal, and intuitive changes IMHO.

But, to someone who is barely computer literate, even "little" things like that can represent a big change and can be very confusing.

And, of course, the change from Win7 et all -> Win8 is massive, even to me...