I guess it's just easier to bash MS than to really see that Win8 is not just Metro/Modern, at least on the desktop. I haven't used it on an ARM device yet so I cannot comment on that.
It's so much quicker and more responsive than W7, the start-search feels more accurate too and again much quicker.
Some of the UI changes take a little getting used-to, like the charms pop-ups, but it also brings some consistency to things like per-app settings.
For anyone who wants to largely keep the W7 experience there's no reason to worry, the desktop is there, the start-bar is there, the start button is there (just without a logo), and the start-screen works very much like the start-menu, you can still alt-tab between screens, and as mentioned above the shortcuts make some of the power features easily accessible without going through the start-screen.
There's always going to be people afraid of change, but I really don't see what there is in here to be so scared about. You're not forced to use the Metro apps at all.
All the time it takes for the full screen metro UI to animate into and out of view, is time I could be searching for something.
2. Start typing the name of the app you want
3. Press return
4. It opens
Same exact flow as Windows 7. Typing while on the Start Screen will perform an app search.
(1) mouse-over to the bottom left of the taskbar (same place as before) and in place of a fixed icon (start ‘orb’) a small image of your start screen will pop-up which you can click to open the start screen
(2) from there just start typing (as before) and it will automatically change the layout showing you results for apps. by default the first app in results is selected so you can just press enter to launch it or navigate to others via keyboard/mouse (same as before). that’s it.
you can, of course, still just hit the windows keyboard button and start typing as well which i find faster. there are also now additional keyboard shortcuts that let you quickly search for specific items (win + q/f/w allow you to narrow search between apps/files/settings respectively)
pro tip: if you right-click in the same space (bottom left of taskbar) a menu comes-up with more power-user specific commands (run, command prompt, admin tools, etc...)