1) Multi-tasking
2) App switching
3) Charms bar

I think a lot of this comes down to your preferences, and if Windows 8 on a tablet works well for you, then that's great. I think the article, which exposes 12 users to a Surface tablet in a controlled test carries a bit more weight, though.

Also, I don't know how much time you've spent with this generation of winrt devices, but if you think your iPad is 'clunky' and 'slow', you're going to be disappointed. The Asus tablet I work with here at work is slower, in response to user actions at least, than any iOS device I've ever used.

4) Microsoft's autocorrection and keyboard layouts

Yes, the winrt touch keyboard is very nice. The best typing score I've ever achieved was on an old LG phone running windows phone 7. The suggestions ribbon that winrt copied from Android is fantastic - Apple needs to license this from Google.

The scenario is like this: used to be that computers were big things that sat on desks. Used to be you kept all your files on one PC and moving them from PC to PC was difficult. Used to be that not everybody used computers. Used to be that the internet was a niche part of computer use. Used to be that no one had persistent online social networks integrated into their lives. Used to be that tablets weren't prevalent. Etc etc. Then all of these things changed - and now the world's most popular OS is changing in response to these changes. These are all technical problems (or whatever you want to call them) and W8 is an attempt to begin solving these problems.

No, it really isn't. W8 is an attempt to deal with what Microsoft believes is the existential threat of iOS and Android. I'm not going to argue the merits of Metro itself the way the article seems to because I like the Swiss design principles that seem to have guided the development of Metro and because I think Metro has generally been a technical success with windows phone 7 and would do at least as well on a tablet.

Metro on the desktop makes sense if you believe in the fairy-tale of tablet-PC convergence. I don't think that even Microsoft is foolish enough to believe this, which is why I think this is a cynical move to metastasize Windows and devour tablets the way Microsoft tried to devour PDAs with PocketPC. The Start Menu didn't belong in a PDA interface 15 years ago, and Metro doesn't belong on the desktop today. Tablet-PC device convergence would make sense if tablet-PC device use convergence made sense. Just the contradictory technical constraints on these two classes of devices - CPU/GPU power and precise UI control vs mobility and long battery life - tell us we shouldn't expect tablets and PCs to converge.

This isn't innovation - its the crude simulacrum of innovation. It doesn't make desktop PCs any better - if MS was interested in that, they'd bring proven fixes like pervasive desktop search (or at least a promoted UI element for the existing desktop search) or tiled window management to W8 - not Metro. Both of those features actually make desktop users on other platforms (and on Windows with 3rd party add-ons) more productive, right now.

Second: at the end of the day, the best marketing move Microsoft can make is to build great products that take advantage of all the possibilities of modern technology. I still argue that, after a period of relative stagnation, computer interfaces are starting to respond to the massive changes in computing technology and culture. Windows 8, whether it is particularly well-executed or not, whether it fits well with the legacy desktop or not, whether it breaks some parts of the desktop work environment PC model or not, is a step in that direction - the right direction.

It's not the right direction. At all. This is what kept tablets out of most users hands for so long - the notion that Tablet UIs should be similar to PC UIs. Remember Windows tablet PCs? Both of these classes of devices should be allowed to evolve in their own directions rather than being crudely stitched together to satisfy a wrong-headed convergence fetish. Apple probably knows this better than any other company at this point, given the backlash over tablet-esque features that were added to Lion. One would hope that Microsoft could learn from Apple's experience. Maybe like small children, this is something Microsoft has to learn for themselves through their own mistakes.