I don't quite get you. I've used Windows 8 in 2 environments - a Lumia and the laptop that I described above. In fact, I used the phone first. The experience of the 2 was totally different.
I had a Lumia 520, which I loved. OneNote alone demonstrated to me how handy that phone was - I could make shopping lists that I never forgot, or travel plans. Nokia's HERE was perfect for finding places. Above all, the typing experience on a Lumia was superior to both that of an iPhone as well as an Android. I currently have an iPhone and a Kindle - a Verizon deal that I got that included both - and while I like both of them, the typing on them ain't as smooth as the Lumia was. Also, Lumia's touch experience was fantastic - the entire phone seemed to vibrate when you touched it. Anyway, those 2, plus a few more apps - things like unit converters, currency converters and some other utilities really made that phone handy. I gave that as a gift to my neice before my job brought me back to the US.
Now, as I described above, I bought a new Dell Inspiron 17. It had a keyboard wide enough like the old classic keyboards, complete w/ a backlit numeric keypad. The trackpad is huge. As described above, I started using it out of the box. The first thing that I saw ticked me off. Unlike in Windows 7 or XP or 95, it forced me to either log into a Microsoft account (Hotmail/Live/Outlook) or create one - something I never had to do previously. Since I already had my Live account from my phone, I just used that and got in.
That was just the beginning. The Windows Start button threw up a lot of icons, and I used a few which I had used on the phone, like Contacts. Do these morons really think that everybody will use their laptops to make calls? One only has Skype sessions when needed. Otherwise, if I want to see my relatives, I use FaceTime. Even the other apps - like the news - has preselected channels, and doesn't let you exclude all and just use the websites you like. My other grudge.
I then decided to play about w/ their App Store. I downloaded their version of FreeCiv, one of my favorite games. Boy, does it suck - the native Windows 8 version! Yeah, yeah, I know, the Android version on my tablet sucked as well, which is why I deleted it, and I did the same w/ the one I got from the Windows 8 store, instead going to the FreeCiv website and downloading it. Then played w/ it a bit.
However, both when I was playing, as well as when I was working, the charms bar would sometimes appear w/o warning, sometimes threatening to totally disrupt my work. I had had enough. I painstakingly sat down one weekend, put in the PC-BSD disk and finally, deleted the Windows 8 partition from the laptop. I was done.
In short, Windows Phone 8.1 is great. Only shortcoming - a market one - is the lack of apps like the Apple or the Play Store. But aside from that, if you don't have to have the latest & greatest games, then Windows Phone 8.1 is great. However, even if you have that experience w/ the phone and go to a PC/laptop, w/ experiences of both Windows 7 in the past, and Windows Phone 8.1, you'll find that Windows 8.1 still sucks. (Granted, I had a non-touch screen, but guess what? When I pay $800 for a toy, I really don't want to smidge the screen. My kindle already looks pretty bad, despite having a screenguard.)
On a tablet, I suppose Windows 8.1 could be okay, if you are not forced to deal w/ crippled apps from the store, but manage to use original applications written for Windows 7 and installed via disk or zipped files.