People who own one will always try to make out its the next big thing....

What I wanted to say is that for many older users it is a relief not having to work on desktop computers anymore. Even though they might work with desktop Windows at work.
The younger generation that grows up with the current situation does not know any better. They use Android or iOS ever since and will have problems adopting to the use of a desktop or even using command line interfaces like we used to in the old DOS for example. As long as there are alternative systems available, some will still come to use it at some point or figure out ways how to hack Android, iOS or the like. They will be the geeks, programmers or hackers of tomorrow. The majority though will stay in their walled garden without asking what is going on behind the scenes and they won't miss the desktop.
As an engineer, at work I can not imagine a effective way to use a system without desktop. Just to name my common screen layout, how would it be productive to use Excel, Powerpoint, a professional 3D design program, a layout program, Outlook and the Internet browser at the same time if I can not use multi-window, multi-monitor systems effectively? Full-screen is just not appropriate for this kind of work and switching between those individual programs all the time would kill me.

I have a Windows 7 (now updated to Windows 8.1) tablet in use at home. As a reader, a TV-extension and media access device for the living room. It works pretty nice for all I throw at it. The versatility of this device is unmatched by any Android or iOS device, not even speaking about the compatibility and periphery hardware possibilities. The downside is that you need to administrate it like any other Windows. The possibilities for customisation are infinite, like for any other PC device, but there is no easy Plug&Play so to say because there are always minor things that need to be dealt with until it works flawlessly. Sooner or later you will at least want to plug in a keyboard or mouse, even though only to use the CLI or click through the device manager.
I have switched to Windows 8.1 at home for all devices and it works very well. Windows 8 is so much better in many things than Windows 7, I would not want to miss it. On the tablet it is the improved touch capability that is nice and on the desktop it is the overall appeal that I like. For me, the new Startmenu is really an improvement over what was established since Vista. The new Windows Explorer and Taskmanager are nice too. I also hate the Windows 7 search for example. The best thing is though that it is a seamless experience from tablet to desktop, well to all my Windows 8 devices. I greatly enjoyed the cloud synchronisation of all properties and design layouts of the devices using an MS account.

I love this. These two points. You (and me and possibly most others) cannot imagine work without a flexible desktop environment. Over the last few years we got to the point where almost everyone got pretty tech-savvy because the personal and professional environments were so similar, almost anyone could suddenly do serious office work, learn how to use some really professional tools etc.. Now, what effect will it have when everyone will grow up with dumbed down operating systems designed purely for entertainment and extremely limited other personal use? Oh yeah, I can see it clearly, those tablet kids will be staring at office computers like a monkey at a book and require ridiculous amounts of education to get into the job.

Visually I've come to prefer the (optional!) Metro screen to the desktop look, at least when customized with OblyTiles (which luckily is a desktop tool, not a fullscreen app). It's actually close to what I always wanted. But sadly that's about the only good thing I've found in Win8 after using it for three months, and it's far from perfect. Almost everything I might have liked in Win8 seems half-baked, and I strongly dislike everything connected to the Microsoft account and mobile devices.

In short, to me an OS for a desktop computer doesn't have to look like the old Windows desktop did, but it has to maintain all of its functionality, stay free and customizable. They should rather focus on making specialised OS catering to different uses and users, not one for all, because it doesn't seem to work very well.

But the problem with TIFKAM is that it isn't as functional as the Desktop metaphor.....

Know what the funniest thing is to me about Windows 8? The "snap" feature that lets you display TWO APPLICATIONS on-screen at the SAME TIME!

I felt like screaming.

Yes, like I said, half-baked. And also because there was no effort and no intention on Microsoft's part to make it functional in the same way as the desktop. Mind you, I'm not advocating TIFKAM to replace the desktop for all users, I'm just saying that I personally like the (customized) look of it better. Despite that, I still use the desktop most of the time because TIFKAM is only good on the surface, as a tool to manage my desktop shortcuts in a more attractive and less cluttering way (I put all of my games on TIFKAM and it looks nice; they wouldn't have fit on the desktop, or in any case it would have looked horrible).

I guess what I mean to say is that I would have liked something like XP, Vista or 7 with an optional metro screen. I'm not so fond of a mobile OS tied to an online account with an optional desktop. ;) (Well, to be fair, it's more like a wild mixture of these two concepts which is what makes it seem half-baked.)

Personally I feel it would be dreadful if Windows and Linux on the desktop died off as I can't imagine the hassle and cost of having to move all the machines where I work to OS X. If nothing else I think corporate users alone will keep Windows going because they will demand being able to keep using their programs without having to pay 3-4 times as much per machine to run OS X.

I have talked with reps for our parent company and Linux support is something they have at least talked about internally, so maybe its something they will keep in mind if Microsoft really does something stupid, but that would be a long long way off.

I don't feel tablets will kill off the desktop either. They are fine for messing around online or playing games, but for actual productivity a mouse and keyboard are still superior.

Yeah, there are the people jailbreaking iPhones, rooting Android devices (and creating/installing replacement Android releases for the rooted devices; I've), modding consoles and making the original XBoxes more versatile multimedia centers or changing PS2s so that they can install and run games completely from the hard drive...

...but this is still different from PC because these people are basically doing things that the device manufacturers are trying to prevent, and at least here e.g. offering console modding services is nowadays illegal (maybe it is still legal to mod a console yourself if you know how, but Sony and MS will try their best to prevent that too). I recall also Apple trying to make it harder to jailbreak iPhones in subsequent versions of it?

Also, I'm pretty sure the people doing those things for their mobile devices and consoles are working on it from PCs.

I feel that is still a far cry from people making C=64 and Amiga demos, or creating mods for the PC games, or whatever the "open" platform allows them to do, besides consuming the creations of others. They don't have to really be hackers to be content creators on PC. After all, aren't the console games nowadays usually made on PC-based development systems?

I might go mac, then.

With the exception of Android, yes, they generally try to stop people from modifying the software on their devices. (Android is released as open-source, specifically allowing you to reshape it as you wish and make your own distribution.)

The desktop itself is dying. Ten to twenty years from now seeing one in a home will be akin to seeing a rotary phone. A quaint piece of abandoned technology. People will deny it, but the writing is all over the walls.

I have two rotary phones (though not a phoneline subscription), and I'll most likely still use a multi-screen tower/desktop setup in twenty years :-)

But then, I'm me.

But it is the rooting of the device itself, which allows you to replace the Android version on it, that needs hacking. So the Android device vendors don't necessarily want me to do it, nor the operators (in case it is an operator lock-in phone).

I did that to one ZTE Blade phone (CyanogenMod), but in the end I was unable to get the connectivity working (it was apparently missing some operator-specific data that I didn't have handy), so I had to bring the original Android version back to it to revive it. Wifi worked with it though.

I would have tried it on our Huawei phone as well, but at least back then CyanogenMod didn't support it. And Huawei didn't seem to release newer versions of Android for that model. I think the phone vendors want me to buy newer Android phones, instead of me trying to update my older devices.