There's something I don't understand about Windows 8.0. Microsoft has vast resources. Presumably they let a large number of testers try out the alpha. How come no project manager drew any conclusions from the testers' blank stares and frustrated cries of "WTF is this sh!t"?

Some kind of group think, perhaps?

More likely some manager had this "brilliant" idea and ignored the testers' complaints. Or perhaps they simply focused too hard on the tablet and neglected the desktop.

I upgraded Windows 8 to 8.1 two days ago, hoping it would get better. First, it needed some KB installed for the update to be available at all.Then it downloaded and installed a while, no surprise there. Computer needs to reboot, again, no surprise. Except now it hangs for 2 hours showing that stupid bouncing balls animation, and doing nothing. So after 2 hours of "nothing happens" entertainment (with having dinner in between), I flipped the big switch off and on again. Much to my surprise, this didn't render the computer unbootable (I half expected that!).

So setup starts up and shows messages like "gathering info", "installing drivers", "doing whatever stuff", "bringing up devices", blah blah. Takes about 40 minutes. Last thing it does is collecting configuration info (or something the like, I'm using a German version, not sure what the exact English terms are). So at least it doesn't overwrite all settings, nice.

Then it shows (no joke!) "We're almost done", on a screen that is color animated, and two minutes later "OK, it's still taking a bit, but we're almost there". Another two minutes later, it's done.

You're right there. When I updated to 8.1 to update took entirely too long. I loved it when it said "We're are almost done...." Then like literally I bet it took 5 minutes of saying that to bring up another screen to say that they were NOW almost done. Oh I also had to wait what seemed like 5 minutes after that.

and you're right when it seemed like it was going to let me keep my settings, I looked they decided randomly to change MY settings back to the ones they used, no matter what selection I did. That is one reason I said "ok it's time to switch to another OS for the time being" and installed a Linux Distribution. Need to update? No problem I'll continuing working on what I have up while it updates and I have only one time had it ask for a restart. While Windows ALWAYS needs a restart then after saying no for a little bit Windows gets mad at you and starts popping that message up randomly saying "Windows is going to restart automatically in <insert time here>"

I went back to using a Windows 7 computer not to long ago for a little bit and I realized how much I actually missed Windows 7 and hated Windows 8. So I hereby want to change my post earlier in this thread to basically say "I hate Windows 8 with a passion!"

EDIT: I actually just had a friend update to 8.1 today and the first thing he texted me was "Holy crap this stupid update takes forever!" Then he texted me "What the crap? It changed my settings?"

I must be the only one who didn't have settings changed? Might be because I'm using a Live account so all of my settings are sync'd between my tablet and laptop VMs. I honestly don't know how long it took me to update since it's not on my main computer so I wasn't waiting for it. My OS X Mavericks update definitely took a long time (40+ minutes) which was noticeable since I was waiting for it to finish.

I must be the only one who didn't have settings changed? Might be because I'm using a Live account so all of my settings are sync'd between my tablet and laptop VMs. I honestly don't know how long it took me to update since it's not on my main computer so I wasn't waiting for it. My OS X Mavericks update definitely took a long time (40+ minutes) which was noticeable since I was waiting for it to finish.

I was using a live account also and was "supposed" to have my settings synced. Seems Windows didn't care at all and just decided to use its own settings for the most part.

Also I'd say 8.1 easily took more than 40 minutes for me.

What's best... remember I said that I couldn't change control sizes because "my device doesn't support that". Today, after doing a reboot due to running an update, this works just fine... it doesn't complain, and lets me change any and all control sizes as if nothing bad ever happened.

Of course Bing Weather (the one app that's truly useful) is still broken. No forecast, no live tile. And Windows 8 just tricked me into switching to that fucking Live account again. This is what I hate, you just cannot trust them. The guys who made your operating system are your worst enemies. Is that how it should be?

They're always trying to cheat you. Enter your username and password, so the app works properly blah blah. You don't read the small print which says "change to Live account", and after a 30 second delay during which you can't abort, you have your stuff stored in that stupid cloud again!

I don't want cloud, how many times need I say it? I want my stuff locally, that's why I buy computers with a harddisk. And no thank you, I do not want to have my documents stored on a removable disk either. I will tell you when I wish to do that.

Now I have another 10 or so minutes or work undoing all those changes again...

If I stilled had my Windows 8 tablet, then yes I would be. But, since I don't have it, my answer is no.

?I personally think it is great. The metro part won't be great if your on a desktop computer, though. I like the interface. And it does have an amazing boot/shutdown time.

I do have Windows 7, but I don't want to take the chances of messing up my computer, or I would upgrade.

I'm still on 7. Haven't seen a reason to change.

And it does have an amazing boot/shutdown time.

Again with the boot times.

Sorry, but I just completely fail to understand this. OK, let's say that you've a boot time of 1 minute. You come in to work in the morning, boot your PC, spend 8 hours working, then go home. Boot time is ~0.2% of your day.

This can be seen as analogous to an optimization problem. Do you spend time optimizing a function that takes ~0.2% of your run time? Of course you don't, you focus on those that take 10%, 25%, 50%, whatever else instead.

Boot times are seriously so unimportant; you just spend so much of your time using your PC for other things that boot times are down in the noise. Optimizing performance of those other things should be where the effort and attention goes.