By forced to use Metro, presumably you mean forced to use the Start Screen part? You're forced to use the Windows 7, Vista, XP, Windows Me, etc. Taskbar and Start Menu unless you install 3rd party apps too, so that's hardly a fair criticism of the OS. The Metro Start Screen
is the Start Menu in Windows 8. It's kinda like saying you're forced to use the dock because you've installed OSX.
Start Screen Search does search Control Panel, it's categorised on the right hand-side into Apps, Settings and Files. To view the results for Settings you can press the down arrow on your keyboard to change the category or click on it with your mouse.
Not being able to snap Metro apps side-by-side is a bit odd, but I can see what they were aiming for with a common applicable-to-all UI that works the same for every app you install, be it by Microsoft or Blurbcorp.
Vista really wasn't that bad considering the huge overhaul they did to all the code, the security of the whole OS was drastically improved over XP for one. No doubt the bean-counters were pushing the development team to release something they could sell rather than give them more time to improve it some more and that's kinda how I feel about Windows 8 too, development of it has been restricted by Microsoft's bottom-line.
And if Microsoft's mobile OS development's are anything to go by, where they've adopt an Apple-esq release schedule (release frequently, sometimes with fewer new features), I think we'll see a Windows 8.5 before we see a Windows 9.
EDITED: 28 Oct 2012 13:03 by MATT