said by Glen T:The topic is if there is a benefit in Win 8 over Win 7. If we all agree that the interface formerly known as Metro is the main benefit, then I have to answer, no, because touch screen computing does not make my job easier. And spending extra time working around a GUI that puts touch screen computing up front and center, does not make my job easier.
Show me touch computing where my hands are resting in an argonomically correct position, with my elbows at a 90 degree angle, while my head is held at a comfortable angle (neck not bent with head looking down) and I have precise control over the cursor at all times, and I'll see the benefit and stop being a luddite.
And one more thing about touch interface, that should be mentioned here. Along it's being imprecise (pointing to a big spot, not to one pixel), being against all ergonomic recommendations and requiring to clean the screen from greasy smudges, playing with smartphone a lot, I found it completely unreliable. You touch the screen and you never know if your touch is accepted as input or not (due to low pressure, brief time, etc). If you're lucky the button you touch will become green for a short while and it actually may help you to recognize, that input was accepted. But in many cases I touch it, I wait it for the action, there is nothing happened and I touch it again ... just to discover, that at the very same moment image of the button was replaced with a new button, that takes that input as a request for a new action (which I don't want/expect)...
There is a reason, why mouse has buttons, that click (hint - to give you feedback). It's the very same reason, why a good keyboard has a distinctive feedback too, BTW. There is no such thing with touch screens. Thus to make the UI work more reliable, it should be redesigned and many confirmation dialog boxes should be added for every critical action. That is also useful in cases when I may accidentally touch my smart phone screen without intention to do anything.
Bottom line the touch screen interface is (additionally to other problems mentioned earlier) unreliable and therefore requires a different UI, that is specifically designed with that "feature" in mind. That's one more reason why I don't want / need W8 on my desktop.