I was at MS's Dallas offices yesterday for a workshop on W8.
My takeaway from the meeting was that MS is going to just end up handing a large chunk of users over to Apple.
Essentially they are just writing off the desktop user. W8 is very tablet oriented, but on the desktop you are stuck with 1 thing on the screen at a time or if you want to run 2 things you can, but one of them is only 720p wide. If you have a laptop you have to have a minimum of 1366 wide pixels if you want to see your side app.
If you do not want the single app mode you get thrown into what remains of the current "desktop". All eye candy is removed. It looks like an old movie where all the color has faded away. It reminds me of the old windows 3.1 interface. If you use remote desktop, you can simulate it with the lowest bandwidth settings. And of course the start button is missing. You have to search or put a link on your desktop. I always have liked a clean desktop, now you have to have everything on it. Of course there are some things you want the start button for but since they took it out they hide menus now in the "corners" you have to know where to move your mouse for the hidden menu to pop up.
I am just thinking of all the retraining that is going to be required by these changes. It will be seen as an opportunity to switch to Apple or Android for a lot of things now since people will have to be retrained anyways.
It will be interesting to see if MS can pull it off, but I have my doubts. I see them sinking in market share as the iPad keeps on marching.