I've been beta testing this OS on an Asus Commando motherboard based system. I wont be buying this for any PC. Worse than Windows ME. MS still has not learned, even after ME and Vista that they cant decide what PC user's should have on their computers. Plus they now try to combine the tablet/phone OS's into the PC so they have all of them.
Didnt they lose a court case for that?

This is all well and good for tablet users but what's new for my desktop and regular laptop? How will windows 8 perform for those?

x86 / x64 apps won't work on ARM CPUs, therefore all Windows 7 apps will work on Intel/ AMD based CPUs, but NONE will work on ARM based ones unless ported. Therefore only Metro apps will work as these are based on C++ and HTML which can be handled by all these CPUs.
Microsoft is also porting Office 15 on ARM, on which the following apps will certainly work:  Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote (source: http://windows8beta.com/2012/02/windows-on-arm-to-support-only-office-based-desktop-apps ).

It depends, on X86 based Tablets (Intel, AMD) (nearly?) all applications should work. For ARM based, its not really clear what apps will work (other than the new Metro ones). However, Office is confirmed to work on every architecture.

I'd like to know that too. Will apps that work on Windows 7 work on Windows 8?

are you able to install and use office? The only reason I dont have a tablet is that I view it as being a waste of money if I cant actually do work on it, without being tethered to the internet.  I want to use actual office, not an app or cloud service.  Can you?