I'm still unsure about the whole thing, my "apps" page is truly ugly and this is where the lack of a normal start button becomes annoying - mainly it is difficult to browse through your programs. I'm sure it works wonders if you stick to windows' app store - but who does that? this isn't a phone! e.g for vlc player it splattered a whole bunch of stuff unnecessarily.
I'm sure new "apps" with windows 8 in mind will have some way of only having the main/important icon being displayed but it's bad for legacy use and does not favour building up mountains of junk.

Also the people/mail/music/pictures apps are dreadful.

HOWEVER for the most part it is fine to just stay in desktop mode and forget about all that junk really. Searching for stuff seems quite nippy, it looks different but it's still the same - hit windows button and search.

The new Windows Explorer is fairly neat and the new task manger good, the technical stuff is pretty good in Windows 8, if they allow the taming of Metro and make it more friendly for desktop use then it could work.