Much as I hate to come to its defense,
those tiles can be dragged and dropped. You can drag the ones you use most often over to the left so they're visible without scrolling. And it's not like the Start menu doesn't require a bit of customization to get the most frequently used programs where you want them.
I agree that it looks a lot like Windows 3.x, but there isn't as much customization possible. There are huge margins around the screen where you can't put anything, margins almost the width of two tiles. There also doesn't appear to be a way to arrange tiles other than in vertical columns; attempts to arrange them horizontally get forced back into the vertical format. There's no way to select multiple tiles for mass removal; they have to be removed individually.