All you have to do is install a little tiny program called "Classic start menu" and it makes it work like a windows 7 computer, plus gives you a lot of options to change how the pop out menus work and how the computer boots and shuts down. As far as the free trial stuff, I just go straight to the programs area in the control panel and uninstall all of them.
I am actually surprised you were able to get ubuntu to install, I wasn't able to on my Windows 8 machine.