I've been using Windows 8 has my main development machine since the start of April (developing Metro style apps). I also found the jump between Metro and Desktop initially jarring but I've gotten used to it now and it feels less unnatural.
Given that I'm spending 80% of my time in Visual Studio I definitely spend more time in the Desktop than Metro (on the tablet it's pretty much the opposite), if you're living in Desktop and not launching any Metro apps than you can almost view the Start Screen as a launcher / dashboard. Tapping the windows key to quickly see alerts, tiles and notifications and then typing to find the app you want to launch.
I think Metro can succeed on the desktop but it'll certainly need the appropriate sort of apps to do so and building apps that work well as both a full screen mouse / keyboard app as well as a tablet app is going to be a real challenge.
Given that I'm spending 80% of my time in Visual Studio I definitely spend more time in the Desktop than Metro (on the tablet it's pretty much the opposite), if you're living in Desktop and not launching any Metro apps than you can almost view the Start Screen as a launcher / dashboard. Tapping the windows key to quickly see alerts, tiles and notifications and then typing to find the app you want to launch.
I think Metro can succeed on the desktop but it'll certainly need the appropriate sort of apps to do so and building apps that work well as both a full screen mouse / keyboard app as well as a tablet app is going to be a real challenge.