I have been playing with Windows 8 both with and without the addon that restores the Start button. I removed that software because I realized that I wanted to work with it the way most non tech savvy people will probably be using it. I have to say, it stinks. It is awkward and difficult to get to things that I access regularly and you are constantly flipping back and forth between the Desktop and the Metro Interface.
Some of the Metro apps, IE for one, are very inferior to the IE program. The Metro stuff is probably fine on touch devices but I do not like it on a regular computer. This is not an intuitive interface, unlike the Apple's IOS products. There seem to be many arcane ways of accessing things and they are not readily obvious. Please give me back a real Start menu and rational ways of accessing what I need.
I will keep playing with it but I really hope MS makes some serious changes for those of us who will use the OS on a PC -- changes like being able to hide the Metro stuff and use a real Start button. It doesn't even have to be a Start button, just some easy way to access all the programs without the Metro stuff or give Metro it's own link on the Desktop so that you access what you want as you desire.
-Andre
Initial impressions from just playing with Windows 8 are, for me, fairly positive. Once I figured out the keyboard shortcuts to switching between apps and such it became a little more enjoyable.
One thought I had was with the Desktop, and not the same one everyone else shares about the disconnect between it and the start screen. I wonder if it will be possible to launch multiple desktops, similar to GNU/Linux. In Windows 8, the Desktop looks like an app, so why not have two, three or more open with their own set of programs running, much the same way that you can have multiple Notepads open with their own files.
-Scott