You will be able to toggle between two different screens/views, one screen will be for the apps and the other screen is for the traditional desktop view.

Hewlett Packard has a good introduction video on the operating system. It will take a little bit of getting used to and accessing your settings is completely different.

My dad recently bought a laptop with Windows 8 and I got to play with it a little when I was visiting. Windows 8 has some neat features, but I found it frustrating. He didn't like it and ended up returning it. I think one of the reasons is he thought it had touch screen capability, but it didn't.

It'll just take you some time to learn the system and get used to it.