You can access with right click of bottom left corner. Not all these features were as immediately accessible even then.
Unfortunatelly, when put the shortcut in AutoIt script (AU3) as: Code: #NoTrayIcon Send("#x") or Code: #NoTrayIcon Send("{LWINdown}x{LWINup}") ...it doesn't work for the unknown reason (in W7 it works - after some action is mapped to that shortcut (for example via HotKeyBind v1-2)
Yes it is a good hot key to use. I did not know about the right click option to bring up that menu though. I think that once people learn all the new functions in the Win8 UI they will like it.