I can't speak for others, but I'm not looking to substitute technology for religion. But would it be such a bad thing, to replace fantasy with reality? Looking at something with a religious mindset does not mean it's not true, that's so patently obvious I can't understand why you even mention it. Many things of ancient religions are made reality today through technology, it reflects nothing on them (from curing diseases, to flying in space) to be subject of past religious fantasies. Actually I would say, religion is mostly just wanting a better way of life but without the person having the ability to fill in the details, where as technology just fills in the details. It just so happens that nanotech + AGI will fill in all there is that is allowable by the laws of physics.
What kind of statement is "everything we know about CS suggests it's impossible" as absolutely nothing I know about CS suggests anything of the sort. I guess it's easy to say there is not even a halfway credible theory on how AI works when that has no concrete definition, as it is, Kurzweil's new book 'How to Create a Mind' offers much insight here. Further, well known AI scientist Ben Goertzel has said that we know how to make AI but nobody has focused enough on doing so. (his words, paraphrased.) Yes, but only an idiot would predict "true AI" after all how can anyone ever duplicate the lump of wet mass between your ears on an equivalent computer system. Estimates of brain power put it at about 10-20 petaflops, we just recently passed that point in supercomputers. Stringing together random insults with no data to back them up is not an argument.
Yea, I figure you are just arguing to argue. By that reasoning, I could say a plane is impossible as no living creature can burn energy that fast to reach those speeds. Nanobots don't need to eat metals and rocks for their primary energy source, they can burn Oxygen and Hydrogen in the atmosphere, or many other materials. Atoms don't get placed gingerly next to each other in nanofabrication, they are chemically bonded through mechanosynthesis, and can easily sustain their own gravity. Consider Earth, which is mostly not chemically bonded, especially not chemically bonded diamond (one of the hardest and most rigid compounds), it sustains it's own gravity fine as do larger planets. So no, if you are basing your opinion of it being impossible on these things, I would say you can not. Well logically you can not, not that people are logical most the time.
Pretty much exactly what I think. Director of Engineering is no internship, and while Kurzweil is an accomplished inventor, his inventions don't seem nearly as important as his writings on the singularity. He can only be going to google to "directly engineer" a technological singularity as far as I am concerned.
Jokes going to be on you, and probably the people who thought they were kidding by making this request, if the white house pulls out a real death star made from nanorobotics and AGI they developed in secret. While it can be argued this stuff is far off, it really can't be argued that it's impossible. Short version of nanorobotics is this: You make one nanobot (atomically precise robot the size of a blood cell with manipulator arms for moving atoms), it can then make a second, those two can make four, those four can make eight and so on. Being a million times smaller than human scale machines, they would move a million times faster, so you'd end up with trillions or more in a day, more than enough. Nanobots could make vast structures of atomic precision, controlled by massive amounts of nanocomputer based AI.
Building a death star would be as easy as ordering a happy meal. Along with things like eternal life spans (heat death, big crunch, etc. permitting), no diseases, no aging, omnipresent crime prevention, etc. I doubt anyone would actually build a death star if they could, except to say 'gee, look at this cool thing I built' but certainly not impossible.
deliberately unreliable and insecure, yet not one of thousands of employees at MS, many of whom no longer work there, have leaked memos from darth balmer stating to make it such? Also the whole argument is begging the question. Strange how my PC is never unreliable and insecure, must be some kind of voodoo magic how I can leave auto-update enabled and not download fakeav.exe crap.
That's what I was thinking. While it's nice to be able to upgrade CPUs, and I know some people are enthusiast about that, I personally just use one cpu with one motherboard, and would prefer better performance. Boost to AMD and ARM are unlikely imo, as usual with tech doom and gloom, it will be an order of magnitude more talk than action.
I love the obtuseness on this sentiment, which is very common. The 'standard' was changed after it was discovered that MS was going to enable DNT by default, in that sense, it's part of the standard, but that aspect of the standard is ad hoc and politically/financially motivated. Users should have privacy by default, period. If web sites want to make money, they should innovate to attract more users, offer more services, or require a pay wall if they can't innovate. There is no pro-user argument for DNT must be user selected, except the round-a-bout 'web sites need to track most users to make money'. In that light, DNT would be ignored any way if most users used it (since that's what the complaint of IE10 really is - that most users will have privacy, not that they want to be tracked), which makes this whole issue a farce. People here jump on as a reason to bash MS (excuse me, "M$"), in an epic show of short-sightedness that is common here. yea, yea, -1 incoming, whatever.
I made a security guide for hardening Windows against threats, it's at http://bulletproof-windows.blogspot.com/ - it may be useful, it's not professional by any means but I think the advice there can help a Windows security newbie.
Might sound like it without a more thorough insight, but in reality it is less clicks (more specifically effort.) I've evaluated the software for months, there is a ton of FUD about it compared to what I see in my everyday use. You'd think I'd be losing my mind trying to use it as I do every day, in fact things are pretty boring, I launch all my apps/games without really thinking about it, and utilize the information I get from metro apps throughout the day and life pretty much goes on.
I'm not sure why you think that. If you run were to run DPC Latency Checker, and try streaming as much info from a bunch of drives into RAM as fast as you could, user land or not, it's going to affect Interrupt (DPC) Latency, since user land can initiate actions that require interrupt services. Email programs, well, lots of stuff that runs in the background, just exhibits that effect to a smaller degree, but it does add up. I appreciate the positive and complimentary comments on my post, though.
Never knew about that. Anyway, still doesn't sound as good, there are more issues being discussed than simply mouse clicks I just find it convenient to refer to mouse clicks generally. There's issues with navigating, reading folder names that often don't have any relation to the program name you're looking for, etc. There's the fact you can get lots of useful information from the start screen with live tile metro apps, that are highly sandboxed, which means when I go over to my mom's house (after putting her on Windows 8, and pointing her towards the app store) I should have a lot less crap to clean up on her computer. Holding down the mouse button and trying to drag the mouse doesn't seem like it'd be a comfortable way to use the mouse to launch applications, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer just 2 regular clicks.
I did not say they were not open minded, I simply said that I was open minded. Me being open minded does not preclude them from being open minded. Or does it? Hmm, I wonder.
Quick Launching, well, the usual applies. If that's all you do, what does the start screen cost you? The start screen only costs you when you use the start menu, and then there is no tangible cost because it's less clicks, with easier navigation and identification of apps.
I don't know about the second part, I assume you mean when you run the users as standard user, and install a program in another administrator account (standard elevation), is this not something that group policy would rectify? And not working behind the firewall, well, it works behind my DSL router firewall. I guess your corporate firewall is very strict, well, I don't see how MS could make an app store work without net access. But even if the users can't use metro apps, they don't lose anything by using Windows 8, and since most everyone only upgrades when their old machine breaks, it's not like it will cost extra.
"Um, what? There's so much more running than what's being shown on the Taskbar that your reasoning is off by at an order of magnitude. As someone who's started pinning more items to the Taskbar about a year ago I can easily say that it hasn't affected how I know what's running at all."
It has nothing to do with knowing what every program running is, what I mean, is if I have a program pinned to the task bar, in a rush, I sometimes think it is running when it is not but should be, or if I have a program running (with it's icon in the task bar), I think it is just pinned and not running when it is running but should not be. Besides, the task bar is not a good place to put a lot of items, and even if you love the idea so much, then continue using it in Windows 8 as you would in Windows 7. The comparison is really between the start menu and the start screen, because everything else is the same except the start screen is a more efficient replacement for the start menu.
"Personally, I like a clean Desktop, and I can't believe that I'm going to be arguing this point. Your reasoning would be correct, if having a Desktop full of icons somehow prevented more windows being open or reduced performance in some way. But having a "messy" Desktop doesn't interfere with running any program in any way shape or form. The reason why a Desktop covered in icons isn't great is because it isn't an efficient way of launching applications. It creates a jarring experience to minimize/close all running programs to start a new program and then get "jarred" again by bringing all of the windows up again."
There are multiple reasons, personally I would find that having a bunch of short cuts on the start screen and trying to copy-n-paste, delete, and manipulate the temp files I put there would be irksome. What you put forth, is just another reason it's not the best idea.
Either way, the Windows 8 start screen is either better or no worse. If she could open every program she uses on a daily basis with the start menu pinned item list, that's 2 clicks, or just pinning them all to the Windows 8 start screen is 2 clicks for all of them...
You can do that in Windows 8 as well. I mean, if you can do something just the same in both, it makes more sense to compare where it's different, don't you think?
It's two clicks for 5-10 apps in Windows 7, 3 or 4 for the rest, or a click and typing, and using just the mouse is easier, and still less effort. Windows 8 is 2 clicks for up to 60 apps (rough guestimate, I never put that many in the start screen.)
The irony is strong with you. Bullshit, and then you just seriously said 80% of users don't have 10 apps. Please give me your omniscient source, because I'd love to see it. My mother, who can barely turn on a computer, has more than 10.
"Yes, that's right. Pinning completely solves this problem. When I launch an app it rarely takes me more than two clicks, and if it does, I generally use the keyboard, and press the win key, then type a couple letters and find what I need in the list. Probably 99/100 times I launch an app it takes me no more than two clicks, and at least 1/10 times it takes only one click. So, this is total nonsense."
How is using a mouse, then typing letters on a keyboard, easier than two clicks? And as I told the other one, the pinned items in the start menu only holds 5 or so items, the start screen holds 40-60. Must be a new definition of nonsense I've never seen.
"Says who? I want to be able to create shortcuts anywhere. Many people keep stuff on their actual desk, like a phone, or a rolodex. There's valid reasons to have launchers on the desktop."
"Says who?" Just my ideas on UIs, I mean I didn't cite anyone did I? And Windows 8 allows you to pin items to the desktop, I just don't like it personally. There's a valid reason to have things on the desktop, unless there's a better alternative, which I think the start screen is. I gave reasons, unzipping files, or creating work files, and trying to work around short cuts, well, I can imagine a lot of newb-ish users would be better not doing so. But nothing stops you from doing that in Windows 8.
"Windows 8 has a lot of performance increases in it"
"Yes, that is the only good reason to run it. If they can fix the UI, maybe it will make sense"
Is the debate on the UI over then? Doesn't look like it to me.
You can have 5 or so programs pinned in the start menu in Windows 7, you can have 40-60 in Windows 8, with room for more if you scroll sideways, which is still better than the start menu imo. Basically, all of your apps get the benefit of the pinned start menu. Your conclusion seems less than well founded, in that and other light.
I love Windows 8. Let me tell you why. The start menu is supposed to be an efficient program launcher. Ok, so to launch programs with the start menu, you have to click the start button, click "all programs", click your app folder, then click the application to start it. That's 4 clicks. To start a program in Windows 8, I click the start screen area, then click the application, that's two clicks. That's a quantifiable efficiency gain. People have argued against this by referring to pinning apps to the task bar and desk top and the start menu pinned item lists.
First, Windows 8 has the task bar and desk top, so it doesn't make sense to argue with those, if they're so good, use them in Windows 8 instead of the start screen. Two, I like the desktop and task bar clear of every thing, I never liked pinning items to the task bar because it makes it less efficient to determine what's running, I like to glance at the task bar and know everything there is running, where as in the past I have at times, in a rush, mistakenly thought something pinned was running and something running was pinned, which caused problems. The Desktop is a workspace that ideally should be clear of short cuts, as a user will do things like unzip folders there, and create many temp work files there, that need to be moved or deleted, which short cuts will get in the way of, and accidently removed. The start menu's pinned item list can only contain a few items (5 or so), so while they can be launched in two clicks you are severely limited in numbers vs. the start screen which can launch 40-60 apps in two clicks. What I like to do is unpin everything except my main apps/games, and a few metro apps I use, then group them and name the groups (minus button in the lower right.) A small action that makes things much better than the default.
Visual recognition of large distinct icons is a much nicer way to launch programs, rather than reading folder names where often a folder name is not related to the name of the app you are trying to launch, if you have many apps it can be difficult to remember which app is in which folder causing quite a bit of digging.
With the start screen, in addition to saving clicks versus the start menu, and being easier to find the program, you can have live tiles that give you a lot of useful information. I have an email counter, several news sites, calendar, upcoming events, and other things one click away. So why not stick with gadgets and other widgets and system tray notifications you are probably asking at this point? Well, several. Security, stability, and Power. Metro apps are run in a strict sandbox, they install and uninstall in isolated, clean fashion, so no installation or uninstallation of a metro app can corrupt the system, user data, or other metro apps, and they have strict requirements such that they can not use any CPU when not being used by the user, and very minimum system resource usage for notifications. Contrast this with some desktop apps I was running before to accomplish these tasks, my email program was using about.5% cpu at all times, randomly accessed the disk, and increased DPC Latency, and it was a relatively well behaved email tray notifier as I tried a few others. A small amount, but it adds up for many such items. And programs like that that you (or the average user) gets from the web, have free reign over your user account, even if you don't run as admin (and you almost always have to give them admin at least once to install), they can still steal any user account data and credentials from your browser. Metro apps, being tightly sandboxed, can't read or touch any other data in the user account. I find this to be pretty important, and imagine a huge boon to productivity if users get a lot of their system/productivity utilities from metro apps instead of downloading random programs on the web, where the security risk is much higher.
Windows 8 has a lot of performance increases in it, like for real time audio
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I can't speak for others, but I'm not looking to substitute technology for religion. But would it be such a bad thing, to replace fantasy with reality? Looking at something with a religious mindset does not mean it's not true, that's so patently obvious I can't understand why you even mention it. Many things of ancient religions are made reality today through technology, it reflects nothing on them (from curing diseases, to flying in space) to be subject of past religious fantasies. Actually I would say, religion is mostly just wanting a better way of life but without the person having the ability to fill in the details, where as technology just fills in the details. It just so happens that nanotech + AGI will fill in all there is that is allowable by the laws of physics. What kind of statement is "everything we know about CS suggests it's impossible" as absolutely nothing I know about CS suggests anything of the sort. I guess it's easy to say there is not even a halfway credible theory on how AI works when that has no concrete definition, as it is, Kurzweil's new book 'How to Create a Mind' offers much insight here. Further, well known AI scientist Ben Goertzel has said that we know how to make AI but nobody has focused enough on doing so. (his words, paraphrased.) Yes, but only an idiot would predict "true AI" after all how can anyone ever duplicate the lump of wet mass between your ears on an equivalent computer system. Estimates of brain power put it at about 10-20 petaflops, we just recently passed that point in supercomputers. Stringing together random insults with no data to back them up is not an argument.
Yea, I figure you are just arguing to argue. By that reasoning, I could say a plane is impossible as no living creature can burn energy that fast to reach those speeds. Nanobots don't need to eat metals and rocks for their primary energy source, they can burn Oxygen and Hydrogen in the atmosphere, or many other materials. Atoms don't get placed gingerly next to each other in nanofabrication, they are chemically bonded through mechanosynthesis, and can easily sustain their own gravity. Consider Earth, which is mostly not chemically bonded, especially not chemically bonded diamond (one of the hardest and most rigid compounds), it sustains it's own gravity fine as do larger planets. So no, if you are basing your opinion of it being impossible on these things, I would say you can not. Well logically you can not, not that people are logical most the time.
Pretty much exactly what I think. Director of Engineering is no internship, and while Kurzweil is an accomplished inventor, his inventions don't seem nearly as important as his writings on the singularity. He can only be going to google to "directly engineer" a technological singularity as far as I am concerned.
Jokes going to be on you, and probably the people who thought they were kidding by making this request, if the white house pulls out a real death star made from nanorobotics and AGI they developed in secret. While it can be argued this stuff is far off, it really can't be argued that it's impossible. Short version of nanorobotics is this: You make one nanobot (atomically precise robot the size of a blood cell with manipulator arms for moving atoms), it can then make a second, those two can make four, those four can make eight and so on. Being a million times smaller than human scale machines, they would move a million times faster, so you'd end up with trillions or more in a day, more than enough. Nanobots could make vast structures of atomic precision, controlled by massive amounts of nanocomputer based AI. Building a death star would be as easy as ordering a happy meal. Along with things like eternal life spans (heat death, big crunch, etc. permitting), no diseases, no aging, omnipresent crime prevention, etc. I doubt anyone would actually build a death star if they could, except to say 'gee, look at this cool thing I built' but certainly not impossible.
Who'd a thunk that all the grievance industries are interrelated.
deliberately unreliable and insecure, yet not one of thousands of employees at MS, many of whom no longer work there, have leaked memos from darth balmer stating to make it such? Also the whole argument is begging the question. Strange how my PC is never unreliable and insecure, must be some kind of voodoo magic how I can leave auto-update enabled and not download fakeav.exe crap.
Just like that time I caught a cold from being around people, then I moved to Antarctica and stopped being around people. No more colds! Hah!
That's what I was thinking. While it's nice to be able to upgrade CPUs, and I know some people are enthusiast about that, I personally just use one cpu with one motherboard, and would prefer better performance. Boost to AMD and ARM are unlikely imo, as usual with tech doom and gloom, it will be an order of magnitude more talk than action.
I love the obtuseness on this sentiment, which is very common. The 'standard' was changed after it was discovered that MS was going to enable DNT by default, in that sense, it's part of the standard, but that aspect of the standard is ad hoc and politically/financially motivated. Users should have privacy by default, period. If web sites want to make money, they should innovate to attract more users, offer more services, or require a pay wall if they can't innovate. There is no pro-user argument for DNT must be user selected, except the round-a-bout 'web sites need to track most users to make money'. In that light, DNT would be ignored any way if most users used it (since that's what the complaint of IE10 really is - that most users will have privacy, not that they want to be tracked), which makes this whole issue a farce. People here jump on as a reason to bash MS (excuse me, "M$"), in an epic show of short-sightedness that is common here. yea, yea, -1 incoming, whatever.
What is it about Linux users' jokes that remind me of the Iraqi Information Minister? ;)
I made a security guide for hardening Windows against threats, it's at http://bulletproof-windows.blogspot.com/ - it may be useful, it's not professional by any means but I think the advice there can help a Windows security newbie.
Might sound like it without a more thorough insight, but in reality it is less clicks (more specifically effort.) I've evaluated the software for months, there is a ton of FUD about it compared to what I see in my everyday use. You'd think I'd be losing my mind trying to use it as I do every day, in fact things are pretty boring, I launch all my apps/games without really thinking about it, and utilize the information I get from metro apps throughout the day and life pretty much goes on.
I'm not sure why you think that. If you run were to run DPC Latency Checker, and try streaming as much info from a bunch of drives into RAM as fast as you could, user land or not, it's going to affect Interrupt (DPC) Latency, since user land can initiate actions that require interrupt services. Email programs, well, lots of stuff that runs in the background, just exhibits that effect to a smaller degree, but it does add up. I appreciate the positive and complimentary comments on my post, though.
Never knew about that. Anyway, still doesn't sound as good, there are more issues being discussed than simply mouse clicks I just find it convenient to refer to mouse clicks generally. There's issues with navigating, reading folder names that often don't have any relation to the program name you're looking for, etc. There's the fact you can get lots of useful information from the start screen with live tile metro apps, that are highly sandboxed, which means when I go over to my mom's house (after putting her on Windows 8, and pointing her towards the app store) I should have a lot less crap to clean up on her computer. Holding down the mouse button and trying to drag the mouse doesn't seem like it'd be a comfortable way to use the mouse to launch applications, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer just 2 regular clicks.
I did not say they were not open minded, I simply said that I was open minded. Me being open minded does not preclude them from being open minded. Or does it? Hmm, I wonder.
Quick Launching, well, the usual applies. If that's all you do, what does the start screen cost you? The start screen only costs you when you use the start menu, and then there is no tangible cost because it's less clicks, with easier navigation and identification of apps. I don't know about the second part, I assume you mean when you run the users as standard user, and install a program in another administrator account (standard elevation), is this not something that group policy would rectify? And not working behind the firewall, well, it works behind my DSL router firewall. I guess your corporate firewall is very strict, well, I don't see how MS could make an app store work without net access. But even if the users can't use metro apps, they don't lose anything by using Windows 8, and since most everyone only upgrades when their old machine breaks, it's not like it will cost extra.
"Um, what? There's so much more running than what's being shown on the Taskbar that your reasoning is off by at an order of magnitude. As someone who's started pinning more items to the Taskbar about a year ago I can easily say that it hasn't affected how I know what's running at all." It has nothing to do with knowing what every program running is, what I mean, is if I have a program pinned to the task bar, in a rush, I sometimes think it is running when it is not but should be, or if I have a program running (with it's icon in the task bar), I think it is just pinned and not running when it is running but should not be. Besides, the task bar is not a good place to put a lot of items, and even if you love the idea so much, then continue using it in Windows 8 as you would in Windows 7. The comparison is really between the start menu and the start screen, because everything else is the same except the start screen is a more efficient replacement for the start menu. "Personally, I like a clean Desktop, and I can't believe that I'm going to be arguing this point. Your reasoning would be correct, if having a Desktop full of icons somehow prevented more windows being open or reduced performance in some way. But having a "messy" Desktop doesn't interfere with running any program in any way shape or form. The reason why a Desktop covered in icons isn't great is because it isn't an efficient way of launching applications. It creates a jarring experience to minimize/close all running programs to start a new program and then get "jarred" again by bringing all of the windows up again." There are multiple reasons, personally I would find that having a bunch of short cuts on the start screen and trying to copy-n-paste, delete, and manipulate the temp files I put there would be irksome. What you put forth, is just another reason it's not the best idea.
Either way, the Windows 8 start screen is either better or no worse. If she could open every program she uses on a daily basis with the start menu pinned item list, that's 2 clicks, or just pinning them all to the Windows 8 start screen is 2 clicks for all of them...
You can do that in Windows 8 as well. I mean, if you can do something just the same in both, it makes more sense to compare where it's different, don't you think?
It's two clicks for 5-10 apps in Windows 7, 3 or 4 for the rest, or a click and typing, and using just the mouse is easier, and still less effort. Windows 8 is 2 clicks for up to 60 apps (rough guestimate, I never put that many in the start screen.)
The irony is strong with you. Bullshit, and then you just seriously said 80% of users don't have 10 apps. Please give me your omniscient source, because I'd love to see it. My mother, who can barely turn on a computer, has more than 10.
"Yes, that's right. Pinning completely solves this problem. When I launch an app it rarely takes me more than two clicks, and if it does, I generally use the keyboard, and press the win key, then type a couple letters and find what I need in the list. Probably 99/100 times I launch an app it takes me no more than two clicks, and at least 1/10 times it takes only one click. So, this is total nonsense."
How is using a mouse, then typing letters on a keyboard, easier than two clicks? And as I told the other one, the pinned items in the start menu only holds 5 or so items, the start screen holds 40-60. Must be a new definition of nonsense I've never seen.
"Says who? I want to be able to create shortcuts anywhere. Many people keep stuff on their actual desk, like a phone, or a rolodex. There's valid reasons to have launchers on the desktop."
"Says who?" Just my ideas on UIs, I mean I didn't cite anyone did I? And Windows 8 allows you to pin items to the desktop, I just don't like it personally. There's a valid reason to have things on the desktop, unless there's a better alternative, which I think the start screen is. I gave reasons, unzipping files, or creating work files, and trying to work around short cuts, well, I can imagine a lot of newb-ish users would be better not doing so. But nothing stops you from doing that in Windows 8.
"Windows 8 has a lot of performance increases in it"
"Yes, that is the only good reason to run it. If they can fix the UI, maybe it will make sense"
Is the debate on the UI over then? Doesn't look like it to me.
You can have 5 or so programs pinned in the start menu in Windows 7, you can have 40-60 in Windows 8, with room for more if you scroll sideways, which is still better than the start menu imo. Basically, all of your apps get the benefit of the pinned start menu. Your conclusion seems less than well founded, in that and other light.
Most of you will hate this, so fair warning.
I love Windows 8. Let me tell you why. The start menu is supposed to be an efficient program launcher. Ok, so to launch programs with the start menu, you have to click the start button, click "all programs", click your app folder, then click the application to start it. That's 4 clicks. To start a program in Windows 8, I click the start screen area, then click the application, that's two clicks. That's a quantifiable efficiency gain. People have argued against this by referring to pinning apps to the task bar and desk top and the start menu pinned item lists.
First, Windows 8 has the task bar and desk top, so it doesn't make sense to argue with those, if they're so good, use them in Windows 8 instead of the start screen. Two, I like the desktop and task bar clear of every thing, I never liked pinning items to the task bar because it makes it less efficient to determine what's running, I like to glance at the task bar and know everything there is running, where as in the past I have at times, in a rush, mistakenly thought something pinned was running and something running was pinned, which caused problems. The Desktop is a workspace that ideally should be clear of short cuts, as a user will do things like unzip folders there, and create many temp work files there, that need to be moved or deleted, which short cuts will get in the way of, and accidently removed. The start menu's pinned item list can only contain a few items (5 or so), so while they can be launched in two clicks you are severely limited in numbers vs. the start screen which can launch 40-60 apps in two clicks. What I like to do is unpin everything except my main apps/games, and a few metro apps I use, then group them and name the groups (minus button in the lower right.) A small action that makes things much better than the default.
Visual recognition of large distinct icons is a much nicer way to launch programs, rather than reading folder names where often a folder name is not related to the name of the app you are trying to launch, if you have many apps it can be difficult to remember which app is in which folder causing quite a bit of digging.
With the start screen, in addition to saving clicks versus the start menu, and being easier to find the program, you can have live tiles that give you a lot of useful information. I have an email counter, several news sites, calendar, upcoming events, and other things one click away. So why not stick with gadgets and other widgets and system tray notifications you are probably asking at this point? Well, several. Security, stability, and Power. Metro apps are run in a strict sandbox, they install and uninstall in isolated, clean fashion, so no installation or uninstallation of a metro app can corrupt the system, user data, or other metro apps, and they have strict requirements such that they can not use any CPU when not being used by the user, and very minimum system resource usage for notifications. .5% cpu at all times, randomly accessed the disk, and increased DPC Latency, and it was a relatively well behaved email tray notifier as I tried a few others. A small amount, but it adds up for many such items. And programs like that that you (or the average user) gets from the web, have free reign over your user account, even if you don't run as admin (and you almost always have to give them admin at least once to install), they can still steal any user account data and credentials from your browser. Metro apps, being tightly sandboxed, can't read or touch any other data in the user account. I find this to be pretty important, and imagine a huge boon to productivity if users get a lot of their system/productivity utilities from metro apps instead of downloading random programs on the web, where the security risk is much higher.
Contrast this with some desktop apps I was running before to accomplish these tasks, my email program was using about
Windows 8 has a lot of performance increases in it, like for real time audio
Depends on what is being helped/unhelped. They are certainly helpful enough not to spam off topic flame bait in this particular thread.