What does gnome-shell give us?

[Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com>]

Hey folks,

Taking a step back from the excitement over shiny new things, I was
just wondering if somebody could give a few bullet points that explain
what gnome-shell gives us over our current desktop experience.  I feel
like there's a lot of stuff that's different or missing but I'm not
sure I'm understanding where it's "better".  But then again, I haven't
been able to try it out for months because I'm stuck on GNOME 2.24
right now and I can't build gnome-shell there or run it in a VM, so
all I have to go on lately are fairly superficial articles on the web.
 ;-)

So really, this is not meant to start a flamewar, or to criticize
shell at all.  I just want to see a list of what we hope to gain from
it, so that I can understand why the move makes sense to so many
people in the community.

Thanks,
Sandy