The lack of screen space forces application developers to think very carefully about what they need to display and how their software should interact with users.The discipline that such constraints enforce can lead to much better software design. In this instance "less" can be "more" as indeed it should be.

Is there any reason you can't install the app on a PC?

Most people that I know that use smartphones just seem to email and add inane comments to Faceache.

I know the world is changing but I find it so rude to stand in a pub chatting or wherever and then the phone user replies to a text or email.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Most people that I know that use smartphones just seem to email and add inane comments to Faceache.

Twatter too.

There are certainly some Linux distributions taking a similar direction.

e.g.
Ubuntu's next release (11.10) is dropping the venerable vanilla Gnome desktop and putting in the Unity desktop (which is actually a compiz plugin). Very much more suited to touch-screen usage, with a large left-hand launcher bar and disposes with the Application menu in favour of "lenses" - more reasonably described as search windows to find apps. It was available as an option in 10.10 and 11.04 alongside Gnome 2.

And I believe Fedora and OpenSUSE are heading in the direction of Gnome Shell running on Gnome 3 which will give a similar kind of interface to Unity.

As always in the Linux world there will still be plenty of other distributions available that stick to more traditional desktop environments. Just looking at official Ubuntu distributions for example: Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE). And that's just one tiny corner of the Linux distro world. There's always choice

It's been there since 11.04. For anyone interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH1WHCEJ9Q8

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

even the Desire which have a larger screen is too small, I just find all mobile phone screens too small.

Screen size is one of the reasons I got the Desire HD, not only works fine for web, its invaluable for carrying a stack of pdf'd travel books around with me. Wouldn't want to read a novel on it, but that's not why I bought it.

If anyone successfully installs this, can you please post results.

I've installed it on VMware 8 Workstation. Seems to work okay - can't say I am a huge fan of the interface, but there you go..

The thing that annoys me the most: how does one close an Metro app??? It's not obvious (admittedly I haven't spent a huge amount of time with it) and I've taken to firing up the Task Manager to stop them..

I won't be trying. Using a three year old laptop at present. Eye candy doesn't agree with the cooling system.