I've had terrible problems with W8CP just randomly shutting down (actually crashing, it appears) while in the middle of doing something. Never had this problem while using the system interactively, just when it's running some other unattended process.

Was using a T400 with W8CP on it to scan a 2TB external disk to try to repair a partition issue and this happened to me at least twice now.

The last time was after it had been scanning the disk using a repair tool from DiskInternals for ~16 hours continuously, with no apparent problems. Noticed the scan had finally finished, went to go move the trackpoint to go to the next step, and the machine had completely powered itself off.

I know it's not the power profile, checked/re-checked that.

I had installed some of the Lenovo tools on there, ie the power mgmt driver/power management tool. (I get the usual battery meter near the system tray on the 'old' desktop) But something is not working quite right because the machine seems to blow hot air continuously even if it's not doing much work.

Lenovo System Update (last time I tried) won't run at all on it.

Lenovo must be providing some W8 compatible items to Microsoft because I noticed I was offered an update to the "Thinkpad Display" last time I ran Win Update.

I ran into similar partition error problems on an external USB drive, as well as a drive in the Ultra Bay on my W500 when running Windows 8 CP 64 bit. After some Microsoft Updates ran, that oddity "seemed" to stop. (I can offer no explanation for this behavior, but running chkdsk corrected the disk errors) Maybe Microsoft discovered the bug and quietly patched it with an update. But that's only my own amateur speculation. My errors showed up while copying files with RoboCopy. Anyway, I'm very much on the fence over Windows 8; a slight speed improvement vs. Windows 7 on a solid state drive, but too many other GUI shortcomings to make it compelling. Not only that, one cannot run the "classic" theme any more with Windows 8, and I truly dislike the vague pastels of the standard GUI.

Oh, you most definitely can run the conventional desktop on W8CP. Tons of things will ONLY run there. (or do you mean you want to run a plain blue background on the old desktop?)

But I still don't see any great advantage to Win8 for people who aren't using touchscreen devices - the Metro UI doesn't DO anything useful other than just change the look, really.

I'll have to look over MS marketing material and see what else they are promoting about Windows 8. After my experiences this weekend I can't think of much positive to say about it.

FWIW: the disk in question got corrupted somewhere between the last time I used it to back up a client's laptop and this weekend. I'm inclined to think either A) it got corrupted on shutdown of that laptop I was backing up (via a custom Acronis-designed linux boot disk), or B) somewhere in the bumping around in my trunk over the last couple of weeks made it angry. Though I can't imagine it was all that much bumping..