Do you say that as someone who's never used it before? Because the desktop is still right there, just as good as it was in Windows 7.
It really isn't.
Sure the desktop is there, but things that were trivial to do in Win 7 (and earlier) are now infuriatingly annoying. Settings being app-based now, in context, on whatever that sidebar thing is, is very annoying. Then they expand to full screen when you want to change them! Flipping between that and the web page you're following was needlessly annoying.
I couldn't set up the in built mail application since it seemed determined to force me to set up a "Microsoft Account" without really telling me what that is, but worrying me enough not to want to connect it with my email.
The Metro UI is silly - bring back the Start Menu and it's quick and easy access to everything.
Telling apart apps that are going to run "metro style" and those that will run "old" style is not easy, and you can also have ones that do both, like IE (which you then can't share between modes easily, so getting a webpage down into the desktop version of the browser is non-trivial so you can have more than just full screen web browsing going on.
I know there's going to be a lot of "it's all just new" issues slowing people down since it's different to Win 7, but a lot of it is genuinely ridiculous when Win 7 actually had things working pretty damn well. I say this as someone who uses Windows only on lab machines etc, and occasional dual booting to run some of the win only NMR stuff, but Windows 8 is... not good.
Windows 7 is pretty great. 7 is what Vista should have been, and 8 is just... not where they should have gone with it.