Basically, Windows 8 is Windows 7 with a few tweaks for tablet users. Yeah, unless you’re playing the games from the store, there’s not much reason to use the tablet interface on the desktop. The only part you are somewhat forced to use is the Start Screen. But, if you pin your most frequently used programs to the taskbar and put the rest on your desktop, probably all you’ll ever use that for is if you want to search. Like the Start menu, if you start typing on the Start Screen, it switches to search mode. (You will be forced to see it when you log in/turn on the computer, but you click the Desktop tile and it’s gone.)
The gestures also don’t really play a part unless you are running apps (as distinguished from the desktop). The only gesture you even remotely need in desktop mode is clicking the corners of the screen. The bottom left switches back and forth from the start screen, and the top-left corner allows you to switch between the Desktop and apps, kinda like alt-tab. Though alt-tab is actually better, as it is the one place in the UI where apps and programs are both shown.
When using apps, there are a few more useful gestures, all of which focus on the very edges of the screen. To see all running apps, you put the mouse at either the top or bottom left, and move along the edge towards the other corner. To open the charms bar, which is mostly used to change settings, you do the same thing on the right side of the screen. To close an app, you move the cursor to the top edge of the screen, where it will turn into a hand, and then drag down towards the bottom. When the shrunken screen shows on the bottom of the screen, you can let go. You can also close any app other than the current one by showing the running apps and middle clicking on the one you want to close.
Finally, there’s one odd gesture that starts the same way as the close current app one, but instead you move the mouse to the left or right. If you have more than one app running, this will you will be able to dock your app to one side of the screen or the other, taking up a narrow 1/3 of the screen, while allowing any other app to appear on the others side. The bigger app will look exactly the same, but the smaller app will change modes, many of which are completely useless as they just are an icon and the text of the mode. It is kinda fun to use on the Desktop, though–all your apps will be in tiles in miniature, still running. I’ve used that to watch YouTube videos while playing an app.
I guess that’s all I can tell you. The dichotomy sucks, since they could have easily added a few features and made the start screen a replacement desktop, without losing any real functionality. Then the apps would seem more integrated with the desktop, without giving up anything that makes the tablet mode useful. Instead, it feels like two different operating systems, with the Desktop running as an emulator on the Modern UI.
But, hey, it does load faster, and the $40 upgrade does move you to the professional branch, rather than being stuck with the limitations of Home Premium. (For example, sound works on virtual desktop, and you have a group policy editor). If you have Windows XP on your machine, and have enough RAM and something more powerful than a single-core Atom or Pentium 4, it’s a pretty cheap upgrade. Otherwise, you can live without it. Though playing Fruit Ninja on desktop is fun. It is really awesome that all Android apps can be easily re-released for Windows 8.
