You said you want a desktop UI that fits a desktop computer's strengths, right?
Well, one of the strengths of a desktop computer is its (very efficient) keyboard. So why would you want an UI that pretends the only input device that matters is the mouse?
I actually like Unity. The flashy effects are tasteful. When doing an Alt-Tab window switch, you can finally select the window you want with your mouse (something that was missing and was annoying me). You can also easily switch between windows created by the same application, which is really useful when you get used to it (works by either keyboard shortcut or a mouse click on the app's icon in the Launcher). The app menu is always displayed at the top, mixed with the notifications bar. When maximizing a window, the window's title bar goes away, which is useful on these 16:9 format screens (vertical space is more precious than horizontal space). All the apps I care about are displayed in the Launcher. For everything else, I can open the Dash and do a search. The Launcher is on the left, which is OK-ish for me, as again, on a 16:9 screen vertical space is more precious than horizontal space. Speaking of mouse interactions, there's a lot more you can do with it - like maximizing windows by dragging the title-bar at the top of the screen, or left/right aligning/resizing windows on half of the screen, again by dragging the title-bar of that window to the left or the right. I noticed my non-technical wife using this UI and she had no problems with it.
Things are not perfect. There are 2 issues that bother me about Ubuntu:
1)The Launcher is not customizable at all. I would rather have it on the right, but I can't do that, which is retarded.
2) Every freaking version breaks something. Ubuntu 12.10 broke the app "Startup Disk Creator", an app which I was often using for creating bootable USB drives and it's still not fixed. Ubuntu 13.04 broke Skype (though it can be argued the fault is shared by Skype as their Linux port is a piece of shit). Ubuntu 13.10 broke my Bluetooth, I couldn't get a L2TP VPN connection to work no matter how hard I tried and it also broke the multiple-screens support (I don't like working with multiple screens, so when I'm plugging in my external monitor, I turn the laptop's monitor off, but Ubuntu 13.10 can't detect when I unplug the external monitor and the laptop's own monitor stays off). Ubuntu 13.10 is the most buggy Ubuntu version I've ever used.
So right now I'm back on 12.04 LTS, which is fine and stable and I hope the next LTS (14.04) will fix my Bluetooth and the multiple displays settings. Basically, Ubuntu's short release cycle doesn't really work and if you don't stay on LTS versions, then you're in for a world of hurt.