Mary Beth Raven is on stage right now talking about the UI improvements in 8.5..

• The login box now appears faster, before the main window is constructed.
• Calendar improvements - overlay calendars from other people and other systems - such as Google.
• Contact database - you can now bulk import contacts, better internatonalisation, and vCard support.
• Workspace has been redone in 8.5.. Hurrah! But not quite finished yet in the Beta... It crashes out the beta.. Expect to be able to drop ANY kind of link on your workspace.
• framework search - cross application searching has been greatly improved. Think 'google'.
• Roaming: Stop asking the user for stuff. They just screw it up. New 'File Server' roaming mode coming for Eclipse support. That is - you can store the roaming files and databases on a file server.