1) Compared to a normal desktop, where most of your functional navigation is crammed into a small bar (which has pop-up cascading menus filled potentially with stacks of small application shortcuts, and lots of folders) a full screen of evenly-sized tiles with prominent identifying symbols seems okay to me. Maybe even an improvement, once you factor in live-tile info display. And certainly it seems far simpler to use - it only has one level of depth - click on anything and you're in an application.

2) Metro does look a little odd with such a tall screen. It makes more sense on a widescreen laptop or tablet display. Also he chose a pretty garish background.

3) Also remember most of these icons are legacy. Will look better when more of your apps are Metro-ised.

4) And of course Metro looks best - really only makes sense - when seen and used in motion. Metro is an extremely fluid, motion-heavy OS - traditional WIMP in comparison is as heavy and immobile as a pile of rocks.

5) Purple icon is maps. Blue clouds are skydrive (cloud service.) Sun is weather (once you've used the app once, local weather conditions are displayed on the tile.)

>> Compared to a normal desktop, where most of your functional navigation is crammed into a small bar

This is a taste thing. Myself, I'll take the crammed bar over the grid any day.

Even though I'm primarily a Mac user these days, I'm a Luddite when it comes to Windows - I still prefer the look and feel of Windows 2000 over its successors.

I love that they managed to fail to fit 5-letter section titles without ellipsis, preferring to have part of the work in a giant find and to save room for vast tracts of empty space.