"The desktop" is still there.. what you should be comparing is the flexibility of the Start menu to the Start screen.

As for that comparison, the search experience is at worst identical between the two, allthough i personally prefer the win8 way to search apps and not list a bunch of emails from outlook that i'm extremely unlikely to be interested in. i do kinda wish it would display results from settings if there are no results from apps, but oh well, there is a shortcut for searching settings only. You dont get that in the start menu either.

As for general flexibility and customization, even you cant argue that the start menu is more customizable than the start screen...

The start screen is the polar opposite of bob.. The startscreen is about user content and the OS ui getting out of the way of that. Bob was about wrapping everything in a cartoony dumbed down layer of "multi media" 

Thanks for playing though.

will it be 2000 bucks like last year?

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-phone-8/windows-phone-8-unveiled-143477

Not to mention most people dont go watching microsoft press events seriously, this is no diffrent than the couple of months between an apple announcement and the actual release..

for the avare joe who dont drop hundreds of bucks on launch day for every new phone, this means nothing.. probably carriers and phone vendors will drop prices on current WP devices [again, just as they do when the next gen of any device is announced] and with 7.8, normal people will consider their wp phones to be pretty much on par with wp8.. not to mention nokia are uppdating their wp7   apps as well.

As other have said already, i think microsoft is beeing honest with the 7.8 update. they could just as well have called that update "windows 8" and just claimed the new hardware enables some more features..

hm not so sure about that.. i think a great deal will actually be the same, they've mentioned running the full clr so there is unlikely to be any silverlight left..

Given how much windows 8 is likely going to be in wp8, it seems the winRT core libraries are going to be very likely.. and after all, the xaml implementation in win8 is actually native code..

But so then why didnt they mention winRT? who knows.. microsoft is known for their poor marketing strategies and event that create more confusion that awnsers. they might have considered this event to have a non technical audience, or the actual details are not really locked down..

it seems they did everything to indicate winRT except actually saying it..

not sure how that works with touch though

-edit-

oh wait,no it isn't still cant get into twitter though..

we'll see i guess. ballmer did say that phone7 apps will continue to work on future phone versions as well

nothing is dead. but i do believe winRT is the future for winphone

"A: Hover the mouse where the Start menu used to be. Click settings. Way over on the other side of the screen, click Power. Click Shutdown."  

aah now i get it, hovering didn't work for me, but by touching the very edge of the screen right in the lower left corner the 'start' menu appears and there you can click settings and do power down. this also works in desktop mode. [however clicking the start button in desktop will bring up the start screen]

quoting is seriously broken in ie10 btw

-edit-

also i'd like to have running metro apps appear in the taskbar on the desktop

hmm i don't get how to do that.. ive been looging out, them powering down (a pain) thats pre beta software for ya

also missing the windows + arrow keys for snapping metro apps, they still work on the desktop though

also missing the ability to drag the start screen around using the mouse [by dragging out side any tile], that scrollbar is not so cool

biggest one for me though is understanding how to sign into c9 and other live services with another live id than the one tied to my login