Many of us are hesitant to join in discussions like this, because the narrative is dominated by people who have clearly either never used Win8 or had decided that they would hate it based on ideological grounds (ZOMG MS TURNING MAH PC INTO A TABLET) before they ever tried it. On other forums, even suggesting that you like Win8 is a sure-fire way to get accused of being an "M$ shill".

Anyways, I like it, so I'll try to explain why. First off, most of my interaction with it is identical to Windows 7. I live in my desktop, just like always. All of my most frequently-used apps are pinned to my taskbar, just like always. The window borders and decorations look a bit different, but the reaction to them is so completely over-the-top that it's hard to believe. The rumors that it's a little snappier than Win7 seem to be true, at least on my machines.

Yes, all the built-in apps have ribbon toolbars. No, this really isn't some kind of existential threat to your ability to use your computer. I hated the shit out of ribbons when they were introduced in Office. They work really well in Explorer, though. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but they manage to keep common actions more accessible than the old menu/toolbar combination did. There are also some small things that I really appreciate, like having a toggle for hidden items on the View ribbon and having both Command Prompt Here and Powershell Here accessible easily via menu and shortcut.

Next, the dreaded Start screen, target of much derision and hatred. My experience with Start menus over the years was that they turned into garbage dumps. Multiple columns of crap in a hierarchical menu where most of the entries were completely useless. MS introduced pinning in XP, and "type to search" in Vista (I think?) to solve that. If you use those, Win8's Start screen is a huge upgrade. If you prefer to hunt through your menus to find apps, you'll be disappointed. I personally don't miss the start menu at all - I have programs pinned on the start screen, sorted left to right by how often I think I'll need them. I can run anything else by typing a few letters of its name, and I honestly don't end up doing that very often.

Metro apps are a mixed bag in terms of usefulness. Part of that is that I have a tablet for the kinds of things that Metro apps are good at, and part is that they just aren't there yet in terms of polish. There are several that I really do like, though. The Netflix app, for some reason, works MUCH better on my laptop than the website. Games are generally a good experience as well - I've played a shameful amount of Jetpack Joyride. The stock Calendar app isn't bad, and it syncs with Google Calendar and pops up notifications for that, which is really cool. I use the stock News, Sports and Weather apps occasionally as well. Metro as a whole needs some more work, but I think it'll get it over the next few years.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that Win8 is probably the most keyboard-friendly OS I've used. My most frequently-used PC is a laptop, and I've always been a heavy keyboard shortcut user to avoid having to use the touchpad. There's keyboard shortcuts for almost everything in Win8. That includes things like managing/resizing Metro apps, moving around the UI on the Start screen, activating buttons on ribbons. If you press Alt in Explorer, the ribbon lights up with hotkeys. They've also added the somewhat famous Win-X shortcut, which pops up a menu with direct access to a lot of tweaking/admin tools. I miss it whenever I'm on an XP/Vista/7 box.

In short, the people who say that it's "unusable" or "crippled" are full of shit. It's a solid evolutionary step up from Win7, with a bunch of superficial changes that are being blown way out of proportion.