Discuss.
It’s not you. MS announced a month or so ago that the exec in charge of w8 was moving on, and that a rethink is in store for w9. The “We’re Microsoft! We can force our install base to learn a new interface whether they want to or not!” philosophy turned out to have one or two minor flaws.
It’s not necessarily an either/or proposition. 
Hi Nanohedran
Go to the IObit Start Menu 8 page and download the free program.
It will give you back the Win 7 start menu and boot you directly into the old style desktop at startup.
And no, Windows 8 does not suck
David
I suppose that’s true if you’re prepared for it. There’s a lot that used to be accessible to shlubs like me that’s no longer apparent. Shutdown/restart functions are not apparent. I’d call that bad design, pure and simple. Character map isn’t apparent. All the things I relied on? Gone from the eye. It’s all occult now. No, now you must be initiated into the Mysteries, or too bad for you.
I’ll give it a shot yet, but if in the end I find I still can’t abide Win8, I’ll try going back to Win7. 
Er…when’s Win9 supposed to be out, again?
Windows 95/98 – good
Windows ME – bad
Windows XP – good
Windows Vista – VERY BAD
Windows 7 – good
Windows 8 – pretty darn bad
There’s a pattern. I think in the future, I will wait for every other major revision.
Windows 8 presages a lot of disruption in the future, I fear. Ubuntu Linux also tried to combine desktop and tablet interfaces. Apple has opened an app store for its desktop OS which parallels its iPad/iPhone OS. It’s going to get harder for old users with the intention of making things easier for new users. sigh.
I think it safe to say that even Microsoft recognizes that Windows 8 was a mistake. Windows 8.1 is, in many ways, an apology release.
I have used Windows professionally for decades now and the biggest failing is that nothing in the 8.0 interface is intuitive. I might be willing to put up with that if it made you more productive, but almost every task takes longer too.
No it doesn’t ‘suck’ - it’s stable, fast, works on just about any bit of hardware from the past 5+ years, and (especially since the free 8.1 update) you can use it natively on a desktop machine and hardly see Metro.
Forcing Metro onto desktop users was a huge tactical error that Microsoft are rolling back from as fast as they can. As a touch interface I’ve not used it enough to comment.
I got a new notebook with Windows 8 for an early Christmas present and it’s the only gift that has caused hours of frustration. One of the worst problems was the blue screen of death caused by Windows Update. It would max out memory and cause the computer to go into a constant reboot cycle. I ended up disabling update and auto reboot. This was after hours on the phone with support and being told to keep on trying something until it works. Oh wait, there was the time that I fired up the computer and couldn’t sign on because neither the keyboard or touchpad worked.
Made the switch to Ubuntu a few weeks ago and haven’t looked back.
“Occult”. Perfect description.
Two different people gave me their new w8 laptops to help set them up. I had to use google to figure out how to power them down. Twice. There are far too many basic functions for which there is no obvious course of action.
I think it would probably make sense on a touch screen, and it can probably be OK on a desktop, but it’s really bad on a non-touch laptop. Performing gestures on a track pad isn’t intuitive. And don’t even try explaining it to someone over the phone.
Is Win8.1 notably more user-friendly on a nontouch laptop?
No, not a lot IMO. It does give you a weak “start button” function in the lower left corner where you can do some things in a similar manner as you did with earlier versions of windows. It helps get you in and out of the desktop in a more familiar manner. Most of the folks here at my house do prefer 8.1 to what 8.0 gives you. It helps soften the UI transition from older versions of Windows a bit. But it is still somewhat like swallowing on an elephant. I could not believe the language that was coming from the mouths of my wife and daughter when they got new laptops with Windows 8.0. So yes, do the 8.1 update… and pray for Win9 to be a winner.
Feadoggie
http://www.winbeta.org/news/people-think-every-version-windows-sucks-inevitable
The above link points to an article on WinBeta showing that searches for %current version of Windows% + ‘sucks’ are a perennial feature of the landscape. Look at the outcry every time Facebook or Twitter redesign their interface, or indeed the perennial screaming from the linux community whenever their favourite distro moves from gnome to kde or whatever, or when ubuntu brought in the Unity desktop. People don’t like change.
Change is great if it’s in the right direction, and works.
Every time Facebook changes something it usually involves months of glitches. Then when almost everything is working like it should, they change it again. Not a good way for FB, or anyone to go about it IMO. Granted, most people don’t like change, but Windows shouldn’t make matters worse by releasing a new OS loaded with security holes and problems within it. If I bought a brand new vehicle it would be fair to expect it to run properly. If the same problem persisted I’d be protected by the lemon law. It seems to me that buying a computer and having it actually work would be a reasonable expectation as a consumer.
I like Windows 7 and Linux Mint on my machines. Very little experience with Window 8, but I was able to force it to do what I needed done, after a fashion. My worry is what to do with my netbook once XP is no longer supported after the April update. That is what I take when I travel.
Except for security updates, is there any reason your XP netbook shouldn’t keep humming along? I ran an NT4 machine loooong past its expiration date. In fact, it’s idling beside me right now. Just keep your OS archive and a netbook image handy, practice safe computing, and you’ll be fine for a while. Until the day when some new app or update you simply must have no longer works …
The Microsoft Gestapo are on their way right now to forcibly update it.
I am already using a license of Goldmine 5.7 contact manager (on XP) where it insists “Please note that your computer’s system date is erroneously set to 2/26/2014”, do I wish to correct it? Let’s see what happens if I try to install it on Win 8.1 Pro 64-bit. I suspect my license of Quickbooks 2003 isn’t going to be too pleased, either. I think that Adobe has provided a method of my continuing to use my Creative Suite (CS2) license on Win8, though.
hi kkrell
If you have the 2003 pro edition, the windows compatibilty center says it is compatible.
David
If you /only/ use it when you travel and it doesn’t /ever/ interface with your other computers you could keep using it because it won’t matter when the next serious XP vulnerability is discovered, turning it to a zombie and spreading binary filth across the electronic universe.
But you can upgrade it to 7. You can buy OEM 7 from Amazon for $150. I’ve just installed it on an older Dell laptop and a 10 year old desktop (long story there). Just run the compatibility checker and it will tell you if there are any driver issues. With our desktop the chipset wasn’t supported so the on board video wouldn’t run any 16:9 monitor resolution.