I have to admit, even as a Windows 8 supporter, I found this post out of the blue fishy for a number of reasons.
1) He claims he installed it an hour earlier, but claims to have done testing with all kinds of things, including Classic Shell and what not.. simply not enough time to have done that. Ok, maybe he was just say "an hour ago" meaning "a bit ago" or something..
2) He immediately jumps to a web forum, which he has never participated in before, and gushes about it. Seems odd. Maybe we were just lucky he found us. Maybe he used sevenforums and knew about the board. If so, why didn't he do some research here?
3) Talked to lots of people that were down on it, but went ahead anyways? Some people do.. but if he talked to so many people, why hadn't had he not posted on the board before? Particularly when this is the first place he went to to gush?
4) Seemed to hit all the common points people complain about and miraculously found no issues. He must be a genius because even I didn't get used to it that quickly.
Now, I think it's complete paranoia to claim that Microsoft is paying people to do this. That's ridiculous. This claim is always made in forums, and frankly doesn't hold up to Occam's Razor. It's probably just someone that likes Windows 8. But then again, it is possible everything they said is true, more or less...
Regardless, whoever it is does like Windows 8. So let's just take it for what it is.
I'm not sure why you found it fishy. I gave a rundown of how my initial W8 experience went, and I tried to be as detailed and give as much information as possible.
1) I had installed it about an hour prior to posting that. I never claimed to do "all kinds of things" with it, just a few things.
The first thing I done was figure out how to shut the computer down, which took maybe a minute. I then put my icons back on my desktop, which takes merely a few seconds. I tested a few of the apps(Weather, IE, and Photos) just to see how they work, and installed a total of 3 programs. I installed Classic Shell (Which downloaded and installed in about 1 minute), and Adobe Photoshop and IMGBurn, both installed quickly and appear to be working correctly.
To be honest, I could have got a lot more done within that hour if I had tried. It probably took 30 minuets at most to do all of that, and that is including time I spent messing around with apps and such. I have yet to do a time test to see how efficient W8 multitasking is.
2) A quick Google search for Windows 8 forums pulled up this website as the top result. It appears much more active than the others, so I joined up. Not sure whats odd about it. I was looking for W8 discussion, just like I'm registered on various sports forums because I want to discuss sports.
I wasn't on sevenforums, but I am a registered member at Windows7Forums.com, though I haven't used it in forever.
3) I talked to lots of people, which are mainly my friends. Between talking to them, YouTube Videos, and other forums complaining about W8, it didn't sound like it was worth trying. Being an independent person, I had to try it for myself, as I always do, and form my own opinion. Others opinions are why I delayed doing so, though.
Also, this is the third place I went to "gush". The first place was over the phone, the second was Facebook, and the third was here.
The main reason for my OP was to tell others if they are considering it but put off by the negativity surrounding it, give it a shot and form their own opinion. I found it far different than the opinions I was given about it.
4) I think I responded to 2 of the complaints I had heard about, which was the shut down issue and no desktop icons. The shutdown issue was obvious IMO, because growing up my family always had multiple user accounts, so it was obvious to look there once it wasn't located on the desktop app or start screen. Esp. when MS informs you during installation about using multiple accounts.
I'm not a genius, in fact, far from it. It didn't take long at all to get used to it. Most of it worked the same and what didn't was easy to figure out using a common sense approach to solve it. The desktop app and start screen gave no option to shut down, so where was the next logical place to look? At the user account.
I apologize if I come off as a dick with this post. I probably couldn't be further from that IRL. That said, you hit the nail on the head with the claim that Microsoft is paying people to give a positive review of W8. That was the last thing I expected to see here, as the thought if it didn't enter my mind as i was typing my initial post.
W8 just hasn't been that difficult for me. Again, a lot of the stuff works exactly the same as it did in W7. Using a smart phone, tablets, and a home PC, I welcome the one OS fits all philosophy from Microsoft.