See, this is funny to me. I'm running Windows 8 as we speak, and since day 1 I've found it to be superior in EVERY way. There is, literally, NOTHING I can't do in Windows 8 that I could in 7, and do it faster.
I'm sure this is true for lots of people, but for the specific case of someone that is running Windows on a non-touch device that multitasks, Windows 8 is only faster for people who somehow work slower when in the presence of odd numbers.
Also, anyone who loads more than a few programs quickly finds themselves in chicklet-hell.
Objectively, and I'm not the only person who has performed this analysis, Windows 7's interface is far more transparent. From a human interface design perspective, Windows 8 forces users to figure out and learn a lot more than Windows 7 does. Sure, you can argue that "once you learn" all its nuances it might be as fast or faster, but that's not the correct way to judge the useability of a UI. The way to judge a UI is to see how difficult it is for someone to figure out how to make it work, and on that score I've seen and taught people both interfaces: Windows 8 loses and loses big.
Even Microsoft is figuring this out: the success of Windows 9 hinges explicitly on the degree to which it fixes the mistakes Windows 8 makes, not the degree to which it improves on the new features of Windows 8 that didn't exist prior.
Under the hood, in the kernel and core operating system, yes Windows 8 does have many enhancements. I find the friction associated with using Windows 8 to make me not really care. Windows 8 doesn't solve a problem. Windows 7 solved the problem of making Vista's security enhancements significantly less rage-inducing and providing a 64-bit platform that wasn't a complete joke (XP-64). The only problem Windows 8 solved was saving people money by not having to upgrade to it.
Even the best defense of Metro I've ever read starts by admitting that for power users Metro is
complete crap. I'm not sure I buy all of that writer's assertions, but when you start your defense of Windows 8 with "its interface does suck (for power users) but..." that suggests even within Microsoft people know they did not deal themselves a strong hand with Win8.
In any event, while there are those that say Windows 8 lets them do what they did in Windows 7 better, for me the problem is that what I currently do in Windows 7 I cannot do at all, in any way, in Windows 8. That makes it non-functional for me, because I don't change the way I work to fit my OS, I run the OS that does what I need it to do. What I do is multitask, and Win8's interface - and even Win8.1's interface to an extent - just plain sucks at it.