Effort reduction is a fair point. However, most of the shortcuts presented are for tasks I do so rarely that having a quick shortcut to them adds relatively little value.
The few that I do use frequently from that list already have their own key bindings, or I can find them with 2-3 keystrokes after pulling up the windows start menu (something you can't do with Windows 8 if they aren't regular applications; you have to type and then select a different application category to search in).
Ctrl-Shift-Escape == Task manager
Win-D == Desktop
Win-R == Run
Alt-F4 (from Desktop) == Shutdown
The net result is that this is not enough of a value add to elevate Windows 8 above Windows 7.