on the win8 q, i know that's the default, idk if you can make the normal desktop the main thing, but if you launch something that hasn't been updated to win8 yet, it goes into something like legacy mode and will put up a normal desktop, only thing is i think that's gunna be sucking on resources, although i saw a boot time list and its supposed to be alot faster or a nice bit faster depending on the machine itself, so that says its been stream-lined for less resources, prob cuz its made with touch screens and teblets in mind.