Interesting, I just tried that and while the favorite does work in the Start menu it does not work after dragging it to the desktop. It opens Edge's homepage, not the URL of the bookmark/shortcut. ...

Ah, sorry about that. Only other way I'm aware of at the moment is to copy/paste them out of the folder that stores Edge's favorites. Not ideal.
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It's progress over 8/8.1. Buggy but it has potential. Still, there's too much of Windows 8 is in it, don't see a need to upgrade my work desktop (7 Pro) or home desktop (Ubuntu 14.04). I have a...

Right-click on the Desktop and select New > Shortcut. At the next screen type in the URL you want to create a bookmark/shortcut for, click Next then give your bookmark a name, then click Finish.

I haven't been able to successfully use either Mail or Calendar, I've tested with an Office 365 account and a Gmail account. In both instances each app sits there for hours after I add the account,...