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You Can't Bypass the UI Formerly Known As Metro On Windows 8
colinneagle writes with this excerpt from Network World: "The final build of Windows 8 has already leaked to torrent sites, which is giving the propellerheads a chance to dig through the code. One revelation will probably not sit well with enterprise customers: you can't bypass the don't-call-it-Metro UI. Normally, you have to boot Windows 8 and when the tiled desktop UI (formerly known as Metro) came up, you had to click on one of the boxes to launch Explorer. Prior builds of Windows 8 allowed the user to create a shortcut so you bypass Metro and go straight to the Explorer desktop. Rafael Rivera, co-author of the forthcoming Windows 8 Secrets, confirmed to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet that Microsoft does indeed block the boot bypass routine from prior builds. He also believes that Microsoft has blocked the ability for administrators to use Group Policy to allow users to bypass the tiled startup screen. There had been hope that Microsoft would at least relent and let corporate users have a bypass, if only for compatibility's sake."
Corporations also have IT departments, who will demand Microsoft support provide them a bypass, OR it will be a condition that has to be met, before they will purchase Windows 8.
Mark my words.... Microsoft will provide Enterprises a bypass of some kind, if not at release, then via a patch, special tool, registry hack, or script that can be deployed for domain-joined computers via group policy.
as Windows XP still holds half of the market.
I think you confuse "market" with "install base". The two are not the same - it's not like everyone with an XP machine will get a new XP machine when they upgrade, for example.
And even if looking at install base, it's likely not true. This chart shows W7 surging ahead of XP in October last year, and while granted, not all computers browse the net, or in a way that triggers statcounter, there's little doubt that W7 has overtaken XP. If nothing else because companies can't buy machines with XP anymore, so as they switch out their old machines in a typical 3-5 year cycle, the new ones will be W7.
But I doubt they will be W8, which seems to be a productivity killer, not meant for busy workers who multitask.
Where I work, the migration to W7 is almost complete - most of the remaining XP installations that can't easily be upgraded have been virtualized, like other legacy x86 operating systems.
Windows 8, I doubt will happen at all, except perhaps for marketing.