One Platform
It's not a question of whether you like Windows 8 or not. Some will, some won't.
The problem is very simply stated. It's obvious that Windows 8 is aimed at the tablet, touch phone market, at the expense of the serious desk top user.
Microsoft are economizing by having one operating system for all platforms: Desk top, laptop, tablet, note book and touch phone. Which pretty much makes all discussions in this forum of operating system format academic.
And all versions of Windows 8 prior to retail are simply promoting their primary push into the tablet, and more importantly, touch phone market.
M$ have simply become a corporate profit making company
so the $$$$ logically come first; as opposed to the pioneering spirit of Bill Gates who cut his teeth building back yard experimental computer stuff, and was a true geek at heart.
Yesterday I spent over $1,000 buying parts to build a new computer as a birthday present for my elder son. And I bought him Windows 7 Ultimate. That's the first Win8 sale that didn't happen, because I had budgetted that money to build a new rig for the Win8 when the retail released. Since that wasn't gonna happen, and I had to build something, my son became the benificary of my geekish compulsiveness!
In fact a free upgrade to Win8 retail when released was offered as part of the deal. Now that's desperation! My son took it, but only for his tablet.
I am very impressed with the improvements they've made to Windows 8 in terms of performance, resource usage, and boot times. This thing flies, and is damn near anorexic compared to Vista and 7.
As regards speed of Win7 versu Win8, with SSD SATA3 HD, and 12GB RAM and top end CPU & Mobo, my Win7 absolutely burns rubber it's so fast. Any faster and I'd probably go cross eyed trying to keep up with it.
The start menu looses its efficiency when you have A LOT of programs installed. I for one, had my start menu maxed out so it took a third of the Desktop.
But may I ask (I've asked this a few times before), why do you not personally like the metro Start Screen? Is it solely because it doesn't go to the Desktop first?
I find it hard to understand the logic of a maxed out alpha numeric start menu being harder than a maxed out Metro Start Menu. How long does it take to find a program in alphabetical order with sub-menus hidden? You just go to the letter in the alphabet which names the program you want. I've got 3 columns in my start menu and it takes about 2 seconds to find what I want. None of the system builders or techos in computer shops that I know personally, use tiles or icons. They all use alpha-numeric with cascading sub-menus.
On the other hand, with Metro, if your start menu is maxed out you must have 30 or 40 pages of tiles. And scrolling through that would be a nightmare, surely?
Answering your question re my preferences:
No it's not just the fact it doesn't go to desktop first. It's the fact that metro is totally useless for serious desktop users who multi-function, for reasons stated in many other places on this forum.
The second most important aggrevation is the fact that it is forced on you, when you don't want to use it. And unless you have a hacked legacy start menu, or umpteem desktop icons, and your taskbar pinning maxed out, you will either have to go off the desktop to Metro and back every time you open a new program. Blaaaahhh!
The most unacceptable aspect is the bloody minded attitude of Microsoft in refusing to consider offering any options to their army of legacy windows desk top users.
