There's not enough room on the homescreen to get all notifications. You get a maximum of 6 specifically chosen ones you want which is ridiculous considering there's often corporate and personal email accounts (separated icons), calls, skype, facebook, twitter, linkedin, text messages, whatsapp.. .the list goes on and to not to able to see all the notifications instantly is a fail. Sure there's the live tiles but unless you place them near the top where you can read them, they can easily get lost as well. Secondly, if you don't have a live tile, you would never know about the notification (if it wasn't placed on the lock screen). The home screen shouldn't be set as 6 specific chosen icons..it should just have any notification that come in. At the end of the day it still works, but like i mentioned before, wp8 does not put communication first. I frequently miss messages for hours.
But i will say, the email panes with "unread, tagged, urgent" is an incredible feature that i commend wp8 for implementing. Their integration with Skydrive backing up photos and videos is amazing. I also am impressed with One Note integration like the poster above. I constantly make lists and notes on my computer (as well as the One Note web app in skydrive) and it perfectly syncs with One Note on the phone. Great feature! I've ditched DropBox as a result.