Metro (tile) UI is optional, and the desktop interface is not much different than Win 7 once you get past the changes to start button. Your run command, cmd line and similar are still there...
However, there is a lot to be said for the "who wants/needs this?" critics - and I am one of those critics, and also a person that works in supporting MS products as a MCSE/MSCA for a living. Win 8 is snappy, runs well, but Metro brings nothing to me over Windows 7, really. I won't shell out good money for a "new" OS, just to have to revert it to a familiar GUI desktop via settings or group policy. I see no real way I could use the Metro UI in a productive manner in the ways I currently use computers, and many others - a vast majority of serious computer users in fact, likely feel the same. All the good intentions of MS and others to "appify" the desktop on traditional computers is a real, real hard sell. I fail to see value in such an interface on a serious level on the desktop if said interface is merely a way to launch programs into traditional desktop modes for productivity purposes. It comes off as a hacky skinned interface to me, for how I use a computer anyways.
I have zero intentions of ever owning a W8 tablet, but for some there *might* be some appeal in the "Apple" sense of using a more tablet-like interface on a desktop. The Metro UI might be very nice to use with an input device similar to the Apple magic trackpad and gestures, but for me W8/Metro is a complete nightmare to try and use via traditional input methods with that Metro UI.
But you also have to bear in mind that people 1 year from now will simply have this OS on the machines they buy off the store shelves, so it's forced adoption in a wide sense. A strategy that may prove to be entirely worthless if it turns out that 95% of the users of Windows 8 are simply running it with Metro entirely turned off. I suspect that will be the case for many users.
