I don’t like the tablet look. But I do like the idea, it’s a good utilization of the 95-5 rule (95% of users use 5% of the features). Most of us spend the vast majority of our computing time using just a couple of apps, which ones they are is different for each of us of course, but really we don’t use much. If you’ve used your quicklaunch in 7 well that’s probably the vast majority of the programs you launch. And really all the tablet thing in 8 does is expand that quicklaunch to the entire screen, and some apps actually do stuff on that screen without being “launched” (e-mail apps is the big one, they check the server, and flag you when you receive stuff). Which is pretty cool. Also they expanded the already pretty awesome Windows 7 search, it’s now got 3 hotkeys, one that’s the old search everything, one that’s just search apps, and one that’s just search files. That app search is pretty much everything you need for those occasions when you want to use something other than your primary half dozen.
If it weren’t so damn ugly I’d be impressed.
Interesting—though I like not hearing from my email application when I have it closed.