Well, there are two parts to Win8, right? The desktop experience is easy to talk about: it's like Win7, except better in every way. Then there's the replacement for the Start Menu: the Start Screen. The opinion I (and a lot of people) had was that the Start Screen was nice for touchscreens, but an unnecessary annoyance for desktops. As it turns out, Win8 likes to keep things consistent: the Start Screen is like the Start Menu, except better in every way. There are some obvious benefits. Replacing icons with live tiles allows you to get information at a glance. I know calendar appointments, recent mail, top stories in sports and politics, and what my best friends are up to... before I even open the desktop. Metro apps are also a lot nicer for content consumption (reading news, for example) since they're a lot cleaner and more clutter-free than webpages. Then there are the not-so-obvious benefits. Tiles scale by screen size; that is to say, the larger your screen, the more programs you can view in the Start Screen. With the Start Menu, you're limited to 20 programs,whether you're on an ultrabook or a gaming rig. Tiles also offer basic usability benefits. They're larger targets than the list in the Start Menu, allowing you to navigate to them more easily. The usability benefits of grouping are more interesting. Firstly, having a group of tiles allows you to access more programs with less pointer movement than in the Start Menu. Secondly, being able to arrange tiles in unique positions makes locating programs easier: rather than a program being the 10th one down, it can be the one in the corner, or the only one in a row. tl;dr the Start Screen actually makes "Start" useful for something-- even on a desktop. Getting information, consuming content, and locating programs are all much easier in the new iteration of Start. And that, in turn, makes Win8 better than Win7 across the board. tl;dr tl;dr Win7 good, Win8 better.