I'm not sure how I came across as a know-it-all.....
Try to think of it like this. Suppose I'm a food critic and I walk into an Italian restaurant to try their new pizza. I order a pizza while saying "I probably won't like this". Then when it comes out, I take a folk, break off a piece that is the size of a pea, make a face, and declare "yup, this is crap, I'm out of here" and gives it a 1 star on my blog.
Suppose a new movie just came out called World War Z, and I'm a movie critic. 5 months before the movie came out, I write on my blog that the movie probably will suck and that it should really be called World War Zzzzzz. So, on opening night I go the movie, watch the first 5 minutes of it, get up and go home. On my blog, I write "yup, could only tolerate World War Zzzzzz for 5 minutes and had to get up and leave. Movie sucked exactly as I predicted.
Or suppose I'm a hotel critic. There's this new hotel that they've been building. Months before its grand opening, I write on my portion of the paper that from the look of it the services at the hotel will probably suck. Opening day I come to the hotel and got a room. Spend about 10 minutes in the room looking around and then leave. On the hotel review section of the newspaper, I write "yup, couldn't tolerate the place more than 10 minutes. It sucks exactly as I predicted."
I've actually seen tech reviewers of devices that have spent less than 5 minutes with the device they were going to review and then write a review article. One time, this reviewer spent 3 paragraphs ranting on how there is no charging port on the tablet portion of a hybrid device. He also ranted how there's no sdcard slot and a bunch of other things that makes it obvious he did not spend more than 5 minutes with it. And at the end, he dared to write he predicted this device would suck and sure enough it did suck when he tried it.
Well, guess what, I've written several apps and published them on the windows 8 store using nothing but the very device he wrote as completely useless.
Your 10 minutes thing makes you sound exactly like these reviewers.
Some of your other points are valid. Maybe I should invest more time into it. But to be honest I'm not using Win8 and have no plans to do so. I skipped it early on when I had problems finding drivers, and there were application compatibility issues with no solutions. Granted, I haven't tried Win8 again to see if those problems were corrected, and maybe I should. But Win7 is working fine and I really have no legitimate reason to upgrade.
Then you should have stated so before. A simple "I only spent 10 minutes, so I don't know it that well. You should try it for yourself..." or something like that instead of making a broad declaration that is practically "I could only tolerate 10 minutes of this puppy before I poured gasoline on it and burned it alive HAHAHAHAHAHA..."
I have not tried windows 8.1 yet. Intel hasn't released the appropriate drivers for my device. So, for all I know, 8.1 could really suck like a vacuum cleaner.
Another issue I have is that Win8 is not like former operating systems in that customization is limited without the use of 3rd party applications. Its ridiculous, but it is what it is. Win8.1 is the same way, which makes it totally out of the question for me. It started the moment I rebooted the first time after install when I was forced to use an email address to get logged in. Why is there no choice to go straight to a desktop (or those dreaded tiles)? I'll try it again to see if there is a work around, but I'm not holding out any hope.
Perfect demonstration of why 10 minutes is not nearly enough time to get acquainted with something new. Hint: LOCAL ACCOUNT.
Take the hybrid device that I've been using as my only computing device, for example. Ever since the burglary happened several months ago when I lost my i7 desktop, I've been using my hybrid device as my only work device. I've written and published several apps, and plan to publish another app by tomorrow using only this device. Tech reviewers have been hammering this device saying it is completely useless and you can't do anything with it at all. Obviously, they're wrong from my perspective, since I've been using visual studio to write and publish apps and Mathcad and a few other engineering desktop programs for work.
Just sayin'. I don't judge a book by its cover.