The old UI is still there
Most of this thread has been about the Modern UI (ne Metro), which is loved by some and hated by more, many of whom have never actually used Windows 8. I have intelligent but not computer-savvy clients who found Android more trouble to learn than it was worth and switched to Windows Phone, which they had no trouble with. Modern UI is a defensible platform for full screen apps. If it fails it will be due to developers of iOS and Android apps not expecting enough customers to justify supporting Windows, not because it's a bad platform.
What seems to be lost in the screaming about Windows 8 is Modern UI is an addition to Windows that takes nothing away. What's now called Desktop looks a lot like Windows 7 and runs almost all applications that run on 7 and Vista and many that run on XP and 2000. Desktop is not being deprecated, programs that run on it are being updated, and new programs are being created for it.
