Early Surface Pro hands-on review: RT was mistake, Pro "superior"

Like many others, I wonder about Microsoft's logic in giving the RT a desktop, and this article made gave me a thought.

I haven't used an RT, haven't even seen one, but if the only thing the desktop is useful for is navigating the filesystem so you can put photos, video and other files on it, why not have a Windows8 File Manager app.

Is there anything else you can do with the desktop? This might go some way to reducing the confusion between this Pro 'real computer' vs. the RT, which nobody seems to get.