It's been possible to get multiple desktops under Windows like *nix has for a long time. I was doing it in Win98. You just need to use third party software. My current solution is an open source offering called WindowsPager from Jochen Baier. It offers four desktops, which show as thumbnails on the right side of the task bar.
See
http://windowspager.sourceforge.net/
There's a 64 bit version that works fine here in Win7, and should work in Win8 as well.
Those pining for a Start Menu on Win Vista/7/8 can look at the open source Classic Shell:
http://www.classicshell.net/
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Dennis