Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have used the release version of Windows 8. It is unquestionably one of the worst ideas Microsoft has had since the dreaded Vista. (You may recall that OS ... the one MS would like to pretend never existed.) It is impossible to determine what the supposed geniuses behind this release were thinking. Clearly, it was not about function. I have never been able to understand why software designers arbitrarily change an interface which has been fine for years. Yet, we have seen this before in some of the Office releases. I can only conclude that Microsoft's software engineers have never learned the maxim "leave well enough alone." As far as I can tell MS wanted an operating system which would work both on desktops, laptops and tablet computers, but it has succeeded only in creating a hopeless hodgepodge which is a disaster on the desktop. I don't know of anyone who has a desktop with a touch screen. My monitor sits about two feet from my eyes and unless I opt for some really radical surgery I am never going to have arms long enough to reach it. And why would I want to anyway? The interface of Windows 7 was carried over from Vista and XP and is quite familiar to millions of users. However, some clever software engineer (who is now hopefully looking for some other job) decided that it all had to be changed, and change it they did. The familiar Start Menu is missing. Windows 8 boots up to something we have never seen before and then you can access a Start Menu which is still different than the old one. Other familiar things like the control panel are there but don't think for one moment you are going to find it where it used to be ... oh no that would have been easy. Functionality? Not a whit better than Windows 7 in my opinion, though some claim it is marginally faster. However, when you factor in the annoyance of having to learn a completely new interface (which is more than a bit annoying at best) and the other things MS has done to hobble this OS, you might conclude that this OS was designed by an Apple engineer who was infiltrated into MS for the purpose of ruining the company. My prediction is that this OS will be about as popular as Vista (can you say "I would rather have herpes"?) and that SP1 will make major changes in it and within two years it will be gone baby gone and MS will be working on Windows 9. Save yourself whatever the cost of the upgrade will be for you and spend in on a nice dinner or a new teapot perhaps. Windows 8 is horrible.