I feel compelled to reproduce here what a friend of mine in the UK just posted on another forum in response to similar posts to what has been written in this thread, thanks Terry:
The big difference is that all those things (Modern UI, no Start or proper mail client etc. etc. the list goes on) you mention are the playthings of youth compared to Windows which exists on 2 billion PCs, the vast majority of which are business, point-of-sale, end-of phone, day to day, real-world applications, vital to keeping the wheels of industry and commerce turning.
When the Telecom engineer comes to my house and takes out the tools of his trade, alongside the cutters, strippers and screwdrivers is the modern sine-qua-non, the laptop. When he flips it open, it's not Chrome or Ubuntu that pops up, it's W7, and he wants it for one purpose, to run his diagnostics, not to look like his phone, which incidentally he uses to make calls, not play music or watch movies.
Windows is an essential business tool, not just a youth social-networking interface. Sadly MS seems to have blinkered themselves to the latter and hence lost sight of the former.
The business user wants his tools to be designed for purpose. That's why a direct boot to the desired environment is not just the whinging demand of grumpy old men.
Imagine how annoyed you'd get if every time you got in your car and turned the key, Ford or GM decided in their wisdom that the way of the future was to ask you first if you'd like to select your entertainment choices for the journey before offering you a hidden option to start the engine.
MS can unify their interfaces to their heart's content. I don't care. (I don't own a phone or a tablet, so it's of no relevance or interest to me)
All I ask is that the one interface I do use, behaves in a way that fits the hardware and environment in which I use it.
All of the deleted W7 features can easily be made non-default options in W8 so that it maintains the corporate unity which MS is determined on. The keyword being options. There's absolutely no good reason except arrogance to deny them to the serious user.
So well said.
Thank you for sharing this quote from another forum. It makes sense, to a certain point.
From my experience, people who use the PC for singular purpose are also terrible at upgrading. All the computers in our test lab still run on xp. Last I checked with the IT guys that take care of that, they said there's absolutely no plan whatsoever to upgrade those machines, hardware or software. Each one of them has a single purpose, and they do just fine with that purpose.
Yes, I admit that MS seems to be gearing windows 8 toward the braindead users and their social media crap. I don't even have a facebook account, so up until late last year I had no idea it was such a big thing nowadays. My life long friends started questioning me why I didn't have a facebook account so they could send me daily messages and stuff and I was like "huh?" So, I went ahead and created a facebook account and quickly got 13 friends. Then my elderly mom made a friend request. This freaked me out so I deleted the facebook account. Too weird.
Anyway, I suspect MS is pushing this bit about for various reasons.
(1) They already know they got a permanent footing in the corporate world. I can't think of any viable alternative. A number of years ago, some of us toyed with the idea of switching to Linux. I was a big Linux fan. So, I decided to put Linux on my machine and just used that for everything. I came to the conclusion that Linux IS NOT a viable option. Not user friendly at all. Anything that's serious you have to sudo your way through (for those who knows what I'm talking about). Meaning there's no interface for installation and tweaking that's friendly enough for the regular user. But worst of all, I went onto a Linux forum to ask some questions and instead of getting a straight forward answer I got a couple one-liners that assumed the question asker was a Linux 1337 and half a dozen "you're stupid, go away" answers. I tells ya, Linux users are the worst bunch of self-important 1337s I've ever seen.
(2) MS is trying to take a slice of the pie from apple and google. Look at how many devices already sold to the so-called brain-dead social media users? Studies have continued to show that most ipad buyers have no idea why they want to buy the ipad or what they want to use it for, just that they want to buy the ipad. Every time there's a new ipad out, people would wait in line for a week (literally) just to get their hands on one of the firsts. You just don't see this kind of following at MS stores.
And again, look at the attached picture. This is my sister's place. There are 5 asus transformer infinities and 2 galaxy tab 2's, all high end android devices. My sister and her husband got those devices early last year. They weren't cheap then. They ain't cheap now. When was the last time you heard of an MS computing device for each member of the family? I bet MS would love it if those were windows 8 hybrids instead of android ones.
(3) There is a general misconception about windows 8 that it's only meant to be used in metro. There are millions of desktop apps out there that will run just fine on the desktop of windows 8. If anything, MS marketing has done a crappy job at explaining to people that despite the new metro interface this is still a full windows operating system. All diagnostic tools, all in-house softwares, and everything else will still run on this thing.
It looks like a toy, but it is most certainly not.
Keeping those points in mind, can you really blame MS for trying to get a slice of the pie?