In my experience, Android multitasking still doesn't work like a desktop (or even my old n900.) Certain applications (those registered as services) can continue to work in the background, but many suspend entirely.
Sometimes I want to do something else while I wait for a large web page to load over my mobile data connection. On my n900 this worked fine, but as soon as I switch to another task, Chrome on Android 4.2.2 quits loading the page.
Plus, task switching is still a heavy operation on Android - swapping back and forth between two applications is a bulky, slow operation compared to the n900, which, itself, was bulky and slow compared to a desktop window manager.