I remember when people were switching from Windows Vista to Windows 7. Want to know what they missed the most? The sidebar widgets. There were all sorts of guides on how to get sidebar.exe running in W7.
The basic premise of W8, if you ignore all the window-management stuff, is that they put your sidebar widgets inside your start menu, and made that your desktop (thus also obviating desktop shortcuts.) They may have implemented it horribly, but if the W8 start screen was the desktop--if your taskbar and windows displayed on top of it--I think it'd be the perfect UX for a desktop.
The basic premise of W8, if you ignore all the window-management stuff, is that they put your sidebar widgets inside your start menu, and made that your desktop (thus also obviating desktop shortcuts.) They may have implemented it horribly, but if the W8 start screen was the desktop--if your taskbar and windows displayed on top of it--I think it'd be the perfect UX for a desktop.