Windows 8 is going to be amazingggggggggg! :D (/fanboy rage) Loving the Metro use of it in the system. The Start screen will most likely be optional, don't worry (if you don't want it). Watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I

EDIT: The video features a "general" version of Windows 8, of course the OS will be a little different depending on the hardware platform.

Having the Windows 7 taskbar appear when you are running 'legacy' apps, but not when you are running Windows 8 apps, struck me as very awkward when I first saw it. Hopefully they can refine it so it doesn't feel like I'm running two different OS's.

Hah, yea. That may be confusing, but anyway, the starting screen is for tablets. Desktops will receive the normal desktop screen. Most likely the starting screen will be in the desktop versions too. :)

Thank God. I watched this video and was about to rage endlessly.

Hah :D. Personally, I'd love this to be the background of the desktop... It is VERY functional, I'm using a WP device, and the Live Tiles are an amazing piece of innovation!

I was never a Windows fangirl before I started to use Windows 7 on a daily basis this year. I always preferred Linux "in theory" but couldn't let go of Windows' compatibility. Windows 7 is starting to overcome my liking of Linux's low-level brilliance with a high-level ergonomic appeal that just cannot be beat. Windows 8 seems set to really amaze.

I have to agree about it being good for the background, with that menu on the side as a normal autohide taskbar and one of the screens of tiles as an icon grid (with the others, of course, as "quicklaunches" much as shown in the video). The loss of screen real estate is avoided by it being the desktop background and the large size of the tiles makes it very easy to select what you want without the (normally) necessary inconvenience of the doubleclick.

Microsoft has really turned around Windows as an operating system, made it both simple and easy to use for the at-home user, fast and efficient for the office-worker, and hasn't (at least in Windows 7, Windows 8 is of course up in the air on this front) compromised the utility of the OS to the knowledgable power-user. That's a breadth of purposes unmatched by the other two major Operating Systems.

I'll be interested to see how this works for business PCs, it seems like a big showy front end that might get in the way of finding solid simple work. Suppose there's always the option to prebuild images and probably disable a lot of stuff.

It looks pretty awesome as an end user though, its the kind of thing that would inspire me to buy a tablet pc. Hell even my mum would be able to use it

Too much added on tacked on nonsense that could be added by single users via third party apps/docks/etc. More bloat as well. How big will this OS be? 30GB? Gah.

I don't see why people get excited about operating systems. Unless you do super wacky tech guy stuff aside from just surf the web, play games, and the occasional word processing.

Yeah, I only upgrade when I have to to play alot of newer games or to maintain compatibility with major bugfixes......usually every 5 years or so.

WTF is that? That's not a desktop OS, that's an overblown smartphone OS. It's almost as bad as Ubuntu's new "Unity" interface.

The OP said that some of the features are for their tablets only...like the big icons.

We're tied actually.

Not really. The rep trolls drop my rep about 4 points per day, on average....moreso two days ago because I posted at random in a thread with a few other guys and it irked them to no end that people were having random, nonsensical fun on their forums.

Except if you actually watch the video, Jensen Harris goes on and on about how the new interface works great with tablets, smartphones and desktop PCs with a keyboard and mouse. They are trying to push a common interface across all computing platforms, which is not a bad idea in theory, but in practice, not so much. It may be optional to use this new interface right now, but this is Microsoft: today's options are tomorrow's standards. Windows 8 might let use a "classic" interface, but you can bet Windows 9 won't.