I repair a lot of laptops/desktops and it would surprise you just how many 'ordinary' users don't even use the quick launch on XP/Vista, never mind pinning programs to the taskbar on 7, and still have a whole raft of shortcuts and 'My Computer' on the desktop. Sometimes I'll drag those shortcuts to the quick launch/taskbar and remove the desktop ones. Almost inevitably results in a phone call wondering where IE has gone.
Ah, the desktop. Besides the Start Menu, that's the other traditional unusable program organizer and launcher. The Windows 8 "Metro" thing is just another desktop or Start Menu. FWIW, here is my Windows 7 tasbar:
I was willing to sacrifice a small amount of vertical space to have everything I use regularly at my fingertips in fixed locations. I can still get 45 lines of text in a Visual Studio text window without going to full screen mode or hiding the taskbar, and that's good enough. To my surprise, the small loss of vertical space has been a complete non-issue for me. I'm so glad I tried it.
I've got around 50 programs pinned to the taskbar with room left for 5 transient programs. They are grouped by purpose, with all the multimedia viewing programs together, office programs together, etc. To the right of the pinned icons, there are 12 folder shortcuts. The top six contain additional shortcuts for infrequently used programs that I copied from the Start Menu using drag and drop. The bottom six are for frequently accessed file folders. To the right is the notification area, and Windows makes great use of the vertical space. Because everything stays in the same position, I'm quick to locate programs to start them, and I never have to hunt for (say) the Windows Explorer icon to locate open Explorer windows on the taskbar; I just look for the topmost leftmost pinned icon.
I rarely use the Start Menu for anything, I never use the desktop for launching programs, and the Quick Launch Bar is nowhere to be found. I pretty much live in the taskbar all day long. It's the best interface I've used in 30+ years, and it ain't close.
When I see the Windows 8 "Metro" thing, I just see another desktop or Start Menu, only worse. It's horribly modal, and the "Metro" apps exist in their own little universe, fractured from the traditional Windows environment, in particular, the taskbar, where real Windows programs can be pinned and have jumplists, show progress, etc, and you can use the taskbar while you're working with a program maximized in the space above it. The "Metro" thing is not better in any way than what I already have; it's actually much worse in every way that matters to me. As I wrote a couple of days ago, with this "Metro" thing, Microsoft has thrown out many tenets of basic desktop UI design:
1. Modes are now "good".
2. Hidden, poorly discoverable features are now "good".
3. Hotspots are now "good". (There was a reason GEM was the only graphical environment that implemented dropdown menus as opposed to pulldown menus.)
4. Tiny mouse targets are now "good". Putting them in the corners does mitigate that, except they ignored the use of multiple monitors.
Microsoft should rename "Metro" "Facepalm". Yet there are people praising it whose only complaint is the missing Start Menu, which they use as a poorly navigable program launcher, that GOES AWAY when you select something from it, meaning you have to navigate the thing every time you use it. Like I said, I rejected that thing the first time I ran an NT4 beta 16 or so years ago, and I can only conclude everyone lamenting its demise never figured out how to use Windows 7 effectively. The Windows 7 taskbar was a genuine home run for Microsoft, yet many people still don't get how to use it.
Here's what I would call an improvement. I'd like to take my six program shortcut folders described above and make them appear as tabs in a container, that would open and close from the taskbar sort of like a menu. That would be slick and useful. But I can sort of accomplish the same thing anyway, because those folders are all in the same folder "Progs", and if I open one and want to switch to another, I don't have to go back to the taskbar. I can just click in the Explorer address bar and select the sibling folder from the dropdown menu that appears. That's the sort of thing that falls out of good basic design, so I don't really need the tabs after all. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. The Windows 7 taskbar pretty much got everything right. But no one seems to use it. Like I said, it's puzzling.