Amusing how you try to come off as a power user, and then dismiss hotkeys because 'the average joe won't know them'. Many Win8 complaints come from misinformed people who can't really grasp the big picture of what Win8 is to someone who is coming from Win7. All they see is 'tablet UI' and how many steps it takes to do basic actions. I can tell you right now that there's no extra steps to do anything you had to do before. Win8 isn't just 'Here's a new Start screen, deal.", it improves Windows Explorer. A lot.
I'm a big proponent of choice, and yeah, I don't agree with Microsoft's 'one size fits all' approach here, but Microsoft has indeed given users a lot of choice. Don't like the Modern UI? Okay, just hit the Windows key. Don't like the stripped-down calender app? Fine. Use the one on your Desktop. Don't want to make a Microsoft account? Great! Make a local one. You know, the type of account you could make years ago with no complaints whatsoever.
The business argument you bring up is weak too. Many businesses still use XP. Companies don't change to something new that quickly. Just look at the slow phasing out of Blackberry phones.
So. There you have it. You exaggerated how inconvenient it is to navigate 8, you want choice, and it was there the whole time, and businesses are slow with tech. Windows 8 is good.
Whatever suits you fine, but it's not like I haven't tried the new interface. I just don't find it that intuitive compared to what I'm using right now as I spend majority of my time in Mac OS X and rarely use Windows nowadays except to run a few Windows-only applications and games. Still, I don't see why they have to move everything instead of leaving things in one location where you can access everything (access to documents, computer, control panel, etc). No matter how much you try to convince me that you should use the new hot keys, the fact remains is that this new interface is not intuitive. Let's forget the power users for one minute and see how actual people like parents use Windows 8. From the videos, they have a very hard time using it as seen here -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ujmDrcKWo8I know businesses are slow on technology as not all software, especially legacy specialized software work on the new system. With Windows XP support being phased out, most companies are focused on upgrading to Windows 7 and testing their stuff before deploying it. However, I don't see any reason why any business will adopt Windows 8 unless they want to make business applications on Metro while running legacy applications. Not only that, Windows RT is completely useless for businesses as they can't put them on an active directory domain (thus no group policy), they don't work with other VPN solutions like Cisco, no Outlook and they don't run legacy applications for obvious reasons. However, it doesn't help that more businesses are still adopting iPads as they already have Exchange support, Cisco IPSec support, and other good stuff. Not only that, Androids are being adopted as well in the enterprise and has more support given its open nature.
Even so, I have tried the new system and I hate it for the fact it's designed more for tablets and touch screens. I like change, but I don't like change for the sake of change. Sure, Windows 8 may look pretty with all those transitions and tiles, but I just don't find it very usable. Sure you can get use to it and try to spin it in positive light. The fact remains that Windows 8 adoption rates are lagging behind Windows 7 when it first launched. It may sell well as time goes on, but it's still a failure as some people will downgrade to Windows 7 or install a Start Menu program (like Start8 or Classic Shell) to make the interface usable. Besides, there is more to being a power user than knowing hotkeys, being savvy with the GUI and such, it's also knowing how to use the command line and unix commands and even text editors like Vi and eMacs.
