Now, I'm not going to try and convince people that Win8 is 'the best OS evah!' but personally I've been using it since launch and the OS itself IS better than Win7 (look into some of the Kernel level improvements if you don't believe me) and at the desk top some things are nicer (I prefer the solid colours to Win7's glass; the task manager is noticeably better; the OS is noticeably snappier) and that's why I find statements like "mouse is being sabotaged" moronic as mouse input works just as before... hell, with the exception of the missing start button (which, yes, I have replaced with Start8 which grants me the net effect of pretty much never seeing the Metro UI) the desktop is just the same as before.

Don't you think the fact that you have installed software to avoid using the new UI is in itself telling?

Can you imagine someone saying almost 20 years ago "yeah, I like windows 95, but then I mostly just run a command prompt full screen anyway"?

Maybe this has changed in the last 5+ years since I last had a Linux box spun up but right now my time is limited and so in the battle of 'closed vs open' closed wins as long as it lets me get-shit-done and provides, what is in my opinion, a good user experience.

There's a GUI for most things (only the most esoteric stuff can't be done through GUI),

Unless you use LXDE or something :D

Don't you think the fact that you have installed software to avoid using the new UI is in itself telling?

Can you imagine someone saying almost 20 years ago "yeah, I like windows 95, but then I mostly just run a command prompt full screen anyway"?

I dunno. There's a lot of good performance improvements even without using that half of the UI.

It is really funny reading old 95/98 vs XP threads because they sound exactly the same as Windows 7/XP vs Windows 8 threads.

Don't you think the fact that you have installed software to avoid using the new UI is in itself telling?

Can you imagine someone saying almost 20 years ago "yeah, I like windows 95, but then I mostly just run a command prompt full screen anyway"?

Not really. People generally don't like change. It doesn't matter if the new start screen is better or worse than the classic start menu, it's different enough that people don't want to deal with it. I use Windows 8 exactly like I uses Windows 7 and even Windows Vista (and almost exactly like I use OS X). If I want to run an application that isn't pinned to the taskbar I press the Windows key and type part of the application name. This is far superior to trying to navigate through some hierarchical menu to find the application you want to run. The missing "button" is also a complete non-issue. Throw the cursor down to the bottom left of the screen and click, the menu appears. All that was removed was the visual cue. The most annoying thing for me was that it booted into the start screen by default, but that's not much of an issue considering how rarely I actually reboot.

Don't you think the fact that you have installed software to avoid using the new UI is in itself telling?

Can you imagine someone saying almost 20 years ago "yeah, I like windows 95, but then I mostly just run a command prompt full screen anyway"?

Not really. People generally don't like change. It doesn't matter if the new start screen is better or worse than the classic start menu, it's different enough that people don't want to deal with it. I use Windows 8 exactly like I uses Windows 7 and even Windows Vista (and almost exactly like I use OS X). If I want to run an application that isn't pinned to the taskbar I press the Windows key and type part of the application name.

Yeah, I mostly fall into the "don't want to deal with it" group on my main PC; in fact I mostly do the 'start+type' app launching too for unpinned things. Something about the icon and menu is "comforting" however and I prefer not to annoy my crazy brain ;)

Something I should have included in the post which mentions start8 is that I only do this on my desktop; my laptop is the 'pure' Win8 experience which is requiring some getting use to but for the amount of time I use it in a month is fine. In fact whenever I use it on my laptop I lament the lack of touchscreen input on my laptop as my hands normally rest on the keyboard and it would be so much quicker to poke a tile to launch than navigate the mouse pointer to the app/type the apps name to do so

As to my using start8 at all, I wouldn't have said it was that bigger deal; it's a minor customisation to get the machine working how I like. Given that on previous versions of windows people have replaced the whole front end shell before now I'd argue a little bit of customisation work isn't a big deal.
(Who knows, depending on how the Win8.1 changes work out I there is a chance I could stop using it completely in the long run...)

I see your point the fact is a small promotion is not the solution. A 199.99 upgrade is well overpriced given that windows is on a lot of computers around the world.

Yeah, I tend to agree more so if MS are going to push out major updates more often, and this is where the whole 'vote with your wallet' thing would hopefully kick in as MS would have sales numbers to work with; if they see all their upgrades happened in that promotion window then I dare say a bean counter somewhere will work out that running it at that point all the time might be a good idea.

Of course if they continued to do a brisk trade (for upgrades) at the full price then, well, the market apparently says 199.99 ISN'T overpriced.

I think you are seeing 'pro MS' statements where none exist; people tend to be pro-getting-shit-done which, more often than not, closed source apps do just fine. I know how Windows works, I install things and they 'just work' so I have no need nor desire to step outside of that world because I can get-shit-done.

Just a question here. Isn't it boring to be so faithful, never treading outside the "given path"? I mean, as a developer, I'm naturally curious and like exploring new things. Sure, it's necessary to Get Things Done, but isn't it also great to learn new ways of Getting It Done? At least it's tons of fun!

Just a question here. Isn't it boring to be so faithful, never treading outside the "given path"? I mean, as a developer, I'm naturally curious and like exploring new things. Sure, it's necessary to Get Things Done, but isn't it also great to learn new ways of Getting It Done? At least it's tons of fun!

The problem with your question (ignoring the slight dig in the phrase 'given path') is that you have a bias in there already; you assume that because someone sticks to one OS they are not constantly looking for new ways to do things or indeed learning those new ways. (In fact at work I'm one of the few people who TRY to push new things for solving problems instead getting shot down for 'tried and tested methods' even if they are sub-optimal.)

Speaking personally I'm constantly learning new things, be it languages, programming techniques or algorithms; none of these however require a change in my OS to use effectively - if they did then I'd change OS to use them effectively. However for the things I'm interested in and the tools I want to use Windows and the tools it provides suit me just fine.

Maybe this has changed in the last 5+ years since I last had a Linux box spun up but right now my time is limited and so in the battle of 'closed vs open' closed wins as long as it lets me get-shit-done and provides, what is in my opinion, a good user experience.

There's a GUI for most things (only the most esoteric stuff can't be done through GUI), the problem is that nobody is going to help you if you ever decide to go that route. Everybody insists on giving out complex stuff to type on the terminal (of course without explaining at all). The end result is that everybody thinks you have to use the terminal and type entire paragraphs worth of commands to do even the simplest of the tasks.

The "complex" commandline stuff is easier than the GUI when you don't know how the users system is configured, If you're using an english verison of Windows then its usually a non issue but for pretty much everyone else it can really be a pain in the ass when Windows users insist on trying to describe a GUI way of doing things instead of just giving you a command to copy&paste.

The problem with your question (ignoring the slight dig in the phrase 'given path') is that you have a bias in there already; you assume that because someone sticks to one OS they are not constantly looking for new ways to do things or indeed learning those new ways. (In fact at work I'm one of the few people who TRY to push new things for solving problems instead getting shot down for 'tried and tested methods' even if they are sub-optimal.)

Speaking personally I'm constantly learning new things, be it languages, programming techniques or algorithms; none of these however require a change in my OS to use effectively - if they did then I'd change OS to use them effectively. However for the things I'm interested in and the tools I want to use Windows and the tools it provides suit me just fine.

That's very much true; the OS often doesn't exclude testing new technology. I find it harder to adopt certain cultures though, for example: the .NET culture wouldn't show its best side if I used something other than Windows and Visual Studio. Ditto with iOS/OS X/Xcode. If I just do some Mono stuff in Linux, I wouldn't get that "cool new" feeling that a new way of doing things would bring.