The only positive thing I have to say about it is that the boot time seems to have improved--about six seconds on the new 8.1 PC I built in January (but I put a pretty nice SSD in there; no idea how much of the improvement is really Win8.1's doing). Other than that, I find literally everything about the UI to be a huge step backward from 7. It's designed in such a way that it almost seems like it's trying to punish anyone without a touch interface, and I neither have nor want a touch interface on my desktop. Hell, anyone reaches out and smudges my screens, they won't be getting the hand back.

One little annoyance that seems to be a pretty good "in a nutshell" representation of my problems with 8/8.1's design: if I set my titlebar color to black, any text in it ceases to be readable--it's locked at a dark grey color. When I asked about this in the MS support forum, one of their "support engineers" responded with instructions for how to find the popup for changing the color... in Win7. It's mysteriously missing in 8/8.1. When confronted with a screenshot showing this, they ceased to respond for several weeks before eventually posting a link to instructions on how to change the color via a third party tool/registry hacks. They wouldn't admit that it's a bug; even if it was intentional, it's a terrible design decision and thus still a bug in my book. Relying on the community to clean up their mess--who do they think they are, Bethesda?

One little annoyance that seems to be a pretty good "in a nutshell" representation of my problems with 8/8.1's design: if I set my titlebar color to black, any text in it ceases to be readable--it's locked at a dark grey color. When I asked about this in the MS support forum, one of their "support engineers" responded with instructions for how to find the popup for changing the color... in Win7. It's mysteriously missing in 8/8.1. When confronted with a screenshot showing this, they ceased to respond for several weeks before eventually posting a link to instructions on how to change the color via a third party tool/registry hacks. They wouldn't admit that it's a bug; even if it was intentional, it's a terrible design decision and thus still a bug in my book. Relying on the community to clean up their mess--who do they think they are, Bethesda?

This outlines my biggest gripe of Windows 8's lack of customization features. You can change one thing but not the other, and the results aren't pretty. Some UI elements are locked in place. This makes Windows 8 UI feels incomplete. You might as well not customize anything, but that means that you will not like a lot of things.

The hardware is very responsive [...] its just the windows 8 swipe recognition is weird.

Similar here. I often find myself tapping at the close box in a Firefox tab, and nothing happens, except the half-transparent blob shows. So instinctively (but wrongly) I wonder "Huh, did this work or not..." and tap again. A second later, the tab closes, and the second finger tap goes onto the next tab's close button...

You should expect that such really basic things just work. Last time I've seen clicks going wrong was on my Atari ST. And since I'm using a latest generation Atom which, as I've been told on this thread performs well (plus, the CPU has 4 hardware threads, and that kind of thing happens when CPU load is close to zero, either way), it can hardly be that it takes the CPU over a second to realize a click/tap, can it.

The great new login gestures are the same. Not only are they insecure by design (but that's something I can live with for my tablet), but they also simply don't work well. Having had a lot of practice logging in with that system (on a no-keyboard tablet, it's still easier to do several login attempts with gestures than to type a password on the on-screen keyboard), I still get it "wrong" about once in 4 login attempts, although I am very clearly doing it correctly. Heck, you should believe that I'm capable to draw two lines and one circle around well-defined locations in a photo.

Having looked at a technical description on how MS implemented that thing, this failure is however no surprise, since they used the pretty much dumbest possible approach, using a regular grid and counting which grid cells you touch while drawing, and applying some weight. So basically, if your gesture is such that it is very close to a grid cell's border (which you can't see!) you are practically guaranteed to already start close to fail 50% of the time, even if you draw the figure perfectly. Because you can't know or control whether you maybe touch the adjacent cell.

The 'people dislike change' argument is old. Its not 'just change'. Windows 8 is harder to use than Windows 7; the lead UI designer even admitted that power users (aka anyone not just looking at pictures/playing angry birds) would find it an impediment. The irony is that its also harder for the casual/not computer savvy. The underlying kernel is quite nice, but the UI is straight broken.

That, too, is sooooo true. Dislike change, well yes, who doesn't. But change can also be good, and most users do realize that (when it is really good).

My first thought when trying NT, Win2k, and XP (two of them at work, one at home) after having used MacOS 7-9 and Win98/SE previously was "bleh", but XP very quickly changed my mind into "Hum... actually that's pretty cool". NT is something I still remember with a shiver, mostly for its driver and stability issues (which is ironical, since the "home user" version of XP which was bundled as OEM and set up and maintained by a then-hobby-computerguy was much better and more stable than the super expensive "enterprise class" version set up and maintained by a dedicated IT professional running on a computer which was... really... unreasonably... expensive).

Eventually, when the need to have a 64-bit OS became more and more urgent, I very reluctantly switched to WIndows 7, which kinda-lookslike-Vista (and I had seen what a nuisance VIsta every time I was called to fix a friend's computer). And guess what, despite the initial "oh my, how childish" impression, it was overall not only an "acceptable" experience, but an experience of the kind "Oh fuck, why didn't I switch 3 years earlier! This is so much better".

Windows 8 on the other hand just makes me want to vomit every time I am trying to do something more complicated than start a web browser or clicking on Bing Weather.

The funny thing is, I spent 3 months using Windows 8 last year. This year I had to help out the missus with her Windows 8 laptop... and drew a total blank in many areas. Which corner/edge to hover over to get which menu to come up, how you snap applications, etc. Even when I chose the right place to mouse over, being slightly incorrectly positioned made it not work. I think the huge problem is the lack of visual cues. If there are invisible hotspots (which I don't like to begin with) at least give some useful feedback when you're near one.

I think it's a decent OS if you already know how to use it. Not as flexible as Windows 7 out of the box. And the desktop/Metro mismatch still bugs me. I enjoyed using Windows Phone 8 10x more than Windows 8 on a desktop.

I think it's a decent OS if you already know how to use it. Not as flexible as Windows 7 out of the box. And the desktop/Metro mismatch still bugs me. I enjoyed using Windows Phone 8 10x more than Windows 8 on a desktop.

This is a good point. Windows Phone 8 is good because it's consistent and integrated. Features are discoverable and the UI correctly matches the input device.

Well, i just tried it 2 days ago, and i have to say i hate it with passion. The constant switching from desktop to metro menu thingy is annoying as hell, the colors are boring, the side menu sometime appear, sometime not, and their is nothing to say that it's there in the first place, really, for me it's just a big mess. What's wrong with a menu with everything you use in it??? I never departed from the classic start menu because it's simply and everything is there, everything, you dont have to type a thing, you can customize it to your own style, ms is just changin things like that because they can't think of anything else to do. I really hope they get their s*** togeter in windows 9.

Fun fact: i tried installing karspersky 2013 on windows 8.1, and even if it's clearly written on the box, compatible with windows 8, it's not for windows 8.1, instead, i got an error message saying the computer was infected, and asked me to install their free apps to scan it, only to crash (bsod) when trying it... Turn out by reading various web sites that it's not compatible with 8.1... What a pile of crap.

I've only used 8.1, but I'm loving it. I've used it both with touch (tablet/laptop hybrid) and on desktop.

I'll have to admit some things were a bit strange/confusing at first. For example, it took me a while to find the All Programs page when not using touch (little arrow in the bottom left corner after a few seconds or when you hover it). I was also annoyed by the sidebars that popped up all the time, but it turned out to be Asus fault, not Windows.

The start menu has always been a suboptimal construct and I've always used it only to launch "rare" applications. Common applications should be in your quickbar or since Win7 pinned to your taskbar. Windows 8 also comes with some default applications which may be horrible, such as the PDF reader, but most people don't realize that it's the first time you actually get a PDF reader included. Previously you _had_ to install a third party application to open those, and you can still install that very same application and get the very same experience with Windows 8, it's just that you no longer have to. I'll agree on the picture viewer though, the included desktop viewer beats the "modern" viewer every time.

The good thing about the "modern" UI is it's syncing across computers if you use the Microsoft account thingy.

There's another example of "Windows 8 simply doesn't work" that I have at hand, as a recent first-hand experience. Or rather, it does work, it only isn't being honest about what it's doing (which, for me, is the equivalent to "doesn't work").

I've been pondering about a week whether it's worth the time (both for me writing and you reading), but hey, why not. Nobody is forcing you to read it, in any case.

I'll try to make it a bit less boring by turning it into a dialogue.

The situation:

I had downloaded a PDF (some scientific paper) on the base of an interesting-sounding title, had scanned over it, and dismissed it as not really interesting (to me anyway). Of course, like everybody else, I wanted to delete that PDF afterwards.

Here is what I expected:

Me: Computer, close Windows Reader.
Computer: OK.
Me: Now delete that PDF.
Computer: OK.

Here is what I get under Windows 7:

Me: Close Adobe Reader (which is called Windows Reader for some reason under Windows 8)
Windows 7: OK
Me: Now delete that PDF.

Windows 7: OK.

Sometimes, very rarely, with some selected not-so-brilliant software, I may get this after step 1:
Windows 7: Uh, you know, I'm getting no response, looks like this shit is hung. Do you want to keep waiting, or shall I just kill it for good? This is dangerous, you know...
Me: (dang it, this #@!†!!? software) Yes, go ahead.
Windows 7: Gone.

Now here is what I get under Windows 8:

Me: Close Windows Reader.
Windows 8: What, fuck you. Don't tell me what to do. (hides window) Yeah, it's gone. Idiot. Do this, do that... who do you think you are.
Me: Now delete that PDF.
Windows 8: Fucker! It's opened in a program called Windows Reader. I bet you didn't see that one coming, hahaha.

Windows 8: So, since I can't delete it, do you want to retry? This is like shooting fish in a barrel. I should call some friends.
Me: (to self) Darn, did I do this finger-swipe thingie wrong? (pulling in last active app from the left)
Me: (to self) Bummer, the program is really still running. Must be my fault... so...
Me: Close... it... (being very careful to do the dance 100% correctly).
Windows 8: Yeah, it's gone, alright. Dumbass, you'll never learn, will you, hahaha.
Me: So, delete that PDF.
Windows 8: Fucker, you KNOW that it's open in a program called Windows Reader. Do you want to try again? Hahaha... that's great, I could do this all day. What a dork.
Me: Sigh... to what avail... but OK, please do try again.
Windows 8: Are you stupid or what? I told you it's open in a program called Windows Reader. Do you want to try again? Let's see how often I can pull that one before he gives up.
Me: (opens Task Manager) So the Windows Reader process isn't just loaded in RAM and holding a file lock, it's being executed and processing messages, too (which you can tell from CPU having a little 1% spike every 2-3 seconds). Great.
Me: Kill that process.
Windows 8: Fuck, what now, I can't weasel out of that, can I? Well, you know that this is very dangerous? I'm telling you that so I shall not be responsible for all the evil things that will happen now.
Me: Sigh... yeah, just do it. And now delte that file.
Windows 8: Delete that file, delete that file, blah blah, idiot. As if I didn't have more important stuff to do. Here, look at this colorful chart while I'm doing nothing for half a second.

My point here is obviously not so much about the trivial task of deleting that file, but that Windows 8 is not being honest towards its owner. It will simply lie to you about what it's doing.

Honestly, I don't know wtf you are doing because I just did this;

- copy existing pdf
- open in reader
- close reader via drag motion
- delete pdf
- remove from recycle bin

Not a single error, issue or other problem.

(Amusingly if I just reopen the reader app then the pdf I deleted is still there, but not shown on disk, so it apparently does some state/memory caching and it isn't until you close it in reader and try to open it that it goes 'oh, that file is gone').

The only positive thing I have to say about it is that the boot time seems to have improved--about six seconds on the new 8.1 PC I built in January (but I put a pretty nice SSD in there; no idea how much of the improvement is really Win8.1's doing).

The majority of that is the SSD. I get similar on a fresh Windows 7 build (maybe 10 seconds but in the same order of magnitude).