As I am using mouse and keyboard now with it I can let you know a bit of info.

I am uusing a standard 2 button mouse with scroll ball.

Pressing right trigger on mouse brings up controls of apps like IE for example. You dont have to take the mouse to the top or bottom of the screen.

You do however have to take the cursor to te right of th screen for Start and other options. You will be surprised how this doesnt affect you, as it effectiely is nstead of you going to the bottom left for the old start menu.

On the left moving the mouse their actually shows you the programs open. allowing you to snap whichever you want into view or close them or left click cycle.

The scroll wheel scrols through the Metro UI left and right. Helping alot in term of mouse usage.

Touch is obviously the pinnacle here, but mouse and keyboard is no sloach with Win 8. It works realy well.

1. So if I right click the tabs drop down from the top (and presumably whatever controls are on the bottom will pop up too) that sounds good as long as it doesn't interfere with anything I may want to right click on on screen (such as a link)

2. The pop-up feature in MacOSX annoys me, I like what I am about to click on to be there before I move the mouse (tbh I would rather it be there for a touch screen as well)

3. All the programs open? (like a vertical task bar) it only showed him being able to cycle in the vid (I guess that was only for tablets) if so then yeah that sounds good, though if there were a permanent task bar they could be there for me anyway.

4. Yes I saw that, but to what end... I only have 7 items on my current desktop and it's rare I even use any of them. (Recycle bin I always use from desktop, iPlayer nearly always, but neither of them get used much... and Firefox sometimes gets opened using the desktop shortcut) if I wanted live updates of weather/messages etc I wouldn't have disabled the 'gadgets'.

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The advantages of Windows 8 over 7 for none touch devices is any performance increase (which is always welcome, but in terms of programs open it's rare I have more than 2-3 at once, and W7 has no issues opening many more on my bog standard 4 year old Dell) plus a slightly improved window snapping feature.

Can you use a laptop's  touchpad to simulate a touchscreen? Then navigate the menus, like swipe left, right, up, down, pinch, stretch, blah?

Microsoft (Bill Gates) didn't steal anything from Apple. Both stole the desktop GUI and mouse ideas from Xerox. You can argue that over time, Bill Gates stole things from Unix, but apple? Not really.

I ran in to a few opinions similar to yours which is fair. You don;t like metro and that's fine... However I find it somewhat puzzling that you are giving microsoft crap for trying something new in the same statement while accusing them of stealing ideas from other companies and not being original.

Huh, I didn't know about that Xerox thing. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

Well, I'm not trying to shit on MS for being innovative, I mean, windows phone is fine and all, but I don't like the idea of throwing Metro at my face on a desktop computer. That's just plain mean to say at least. Metro for desktops just doesn't make much sense in my eyes.  At least not yet, who knows, maybe in coming years they will apply some fixes here and there and it will be alright. For now, I'll just stick with good old desktop interface. However, I imagine them inventing something else for big, non-touchscreen displays eventually.

I dont think so for now. I'll ask Microsoft and see if they answer me. :)

That doesn't sound feasible because it would also have to perform as a mouse.

I think he means like MAcbook.

Why what's that like? if it's a multi-touch surface then normal touchpads won't be able to replicate it, and if he means gestures (kind of like Opera browser mouse gestures) then you would need to either hold a button to perform them, which kinda defeats the point when you can just press page up and down and use tab and arrows to navigate... or they would have to be much more specific gestures than swiping left and right otherwise they would not be distinguishable from normal mouse use.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/features.html#trackpad

My laptop with Windows 7 already does the pinch to zoom and rotate gestures with the touchpad. What I was wondering is if it would flip to different apps by swiping from left to right on the touchpad from the left edge of the pad towards the right and then you can pinch to zoom the apps. Touchpad will still have the cursor for the mouse, but when you have 2 fingers it would turn to gestures. All normal mouse functions will remain in the center square. From what I have read there will be an outer rim of pixels on touchscreens that will be reserverd for menu pulls. Simulating this on a touchpad wouldn't be any different. It might interfere with the scroll left and right functions of the touchpad, but that can be disabled through software. It's already redundant since you can scroll on Windows 7 by swiping two fingers up/down  and left/right.