>>You say,"...no visible speed improvements...". Do you not perceive any "non-visible
>>speed improvements"? Like boot times - cold boot and wake from sleep. On my
>>tablet, I noticed a definite speed increase over Windows 7 with Windows 8 when
>>booting. To me, that's the best part about Windows 8.
>
>Boot times are faster in Win8. While nice, that's pretty minor because it only happens every so often. You typically boot your computer a time or two a day where you'll note the faster times. But, you use your computer all day. I haven't seen anything notably faster with Win8 where I said "Oh, that was nice" for regular use.
>
>-----
>Also, some may not know this. With a virtual machine running Windows, you generally don't have to boot it up when you use it.
>
>I have been exclusively using Windows running in virtual machines (VirtualBox) for a few years now on all personal equipment. For work I still use Win7 and have evaluated Win8. In theVM, I very rarely reboot Windows, but instead just suspend them wherever they are. When I come back to use it again, I resume from where I was and all my screens are up, all my files, all my network connections, everything. I do this all from inside Linux and the controls which run VirtualBox.
>
>VirtualBox is copyleft protected open source (GPL v2): https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
>
>A demo (from 2010) showing Ubuntu, OS X, and Win7 in VirtualBox:
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BtpNRgAERE

I don't disagree with you that booting is a once (or twice) a day thing, however, I figured that MS must have used that technology elsewhere in Windows 8 and therefore, sped up the whole experience.

7BtpNRgAERE