>... My laptop recently breathed it's last (suspected killer: Allie) so I will be in the market for a new one and suspect it will come preloaded with Win8. (I thought were supposed to be able to choose? Wasn't that the outcome of the antitrust case?) My first step will be to drop Metro into the deepest part of the ocean.

I would urge you to reconsider. On W8 I am in the camp shaking the head at MS forcing tiles on mouse users as well.
OTOH I am perhaps as hopeful as Craig for MS to get their ass in gear to give more input options to traditional WIntel -
Some tablet between 6' and 9' usable for finger input reflected on screen. Possibly a Touch-Laptop might work as well -
I am debating if I shoud try out one of the WIntel pads, even if I currently don't need another laptop. But even if there is no WIntel touch device, in some time you want to remote commect via pad. A VM or host machine running W8 with tiles will be much easier to handle via iPad. So bite the bullet and move up - you still have the perf benefit of W8. Coming from somebody usually not arguing for the newest, esp. in OS.

Currenty flipping on alternate phone to replace xPeria Ray, which I got because it still is tiny enough as to pretend to be a former mobile phone;-) My usual still is Nokia E51 [or MotoF3 if camera is banned] and I sometimes carry my 7' tablet if I anticipate some time. Nokia's 620 is a nice piece of HW not overengineered or unpocketable. Spent some time with WP8, and what I saw was nice - but am more leaning to another Android device to allow me to concentrate on having the same apps on pad and phone. But the trend is currently against WP8 - at least for the 2-3 years I expect the smartphone to be "current enough". But tiles are needed for MS to keep in the game - there is no guarantee that a family server will always run MS home server - a linux server with 2 to 5 MS VM might be enough and give a nice backup place for pad data.

regards

thomas