JasonGW

I work professionally as a systems engineer. I design and deploy networks and PC's to my customers, thousands of them each and every year--and I frankly love Windows 8. I think that for the first time in YEARS, Microsoft is doing amazing work. The flat, clean graphic design, uncluttered by glossy visuals and thick window borders sporting "chrome" effects, is a welcome break from the Skeuomorphism of Apple's awful design. It frees system resources for USERS to get their work done, reduces complexity and makes the OS run smoother and faster than ever before. I'm already buying at least 30 upgrade licenses for Win8 for my business, and I'll be buying Windows 8 tablets for field service work. I've already planned and spoken with customers about migrating to Windows 8 this fall, including replacing older PC's with newer models sporting UEFI. Before the year is out, I'll have transitioned just over 1,000 users to Windows 8 PC's, and next year I'm aiming for 10,000. I'm actively encouraging people to upgrade their home PC's or buy new PC's and tablets with Windows 8. I've liquidated my Apple inventory except for my current late 2010 model Macbook Pro, which will be replaced by Surface Pro once that ships. I've been in this business 16 years, friend. I was trained on Windows 3 and DOS, and I was a beta tester for Windows 95 and NT back when the consensus was that those OS's, and the start menu/taskbar paradigm were new, would fail and be buried by Linux. It never materialized. In the time since, MS has made some tragic mistakes (WinMe, Vista) and had some great successes. Frankly, I believe the Windows 8 and Server 2012 product families are the best thing to come out of Microsoft since XP SP2 and Server 2003 R2. I'm behind them all the way, and just like it's been every time a major change has come from Microsoft, all you people who are throwing tantrums because "ZOMG, things are changing!" will be left behind for a few years until you realize your mistakes and join the club. Change is sometimes for the best, and Windows 8 is a great example of that. J

Vista is hideously ugly, with excessive and garish visual gloss that does nothing but eat memory, processor and GPU time. Those UI's--those stale, boring, archaic UI's--are wasteful, ugly and pointless.

The "strategy" with Windows 8's graphic design is actually really simple: flat colors without garish visual effects like glass and chrome, or the hideous skeumorphism of Apple products, use fewer system resources and make for a lighter, faster OS that's more able to "get out of the way" and let you focus on the applications you use. That's the mark of solid design, and I think it'll be a smashing success Wow, if that's their strategy, it would be remarkable for its sneakiness. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this did enter into their thinking (even if it wasn't the main reason for degrading the looks of the windows). BTW, in addition to the flatness, note another similarity between Win1 and Win8 -- the squared-off corners. --JorgeA

And just what's wrong with Windows Phone? I switched from an iPhone to Windows Phone last year, and I'm glad I did--it offers a superior user experience that's faster and more useful. I recently sold my iPad and, when Surface Pro launches, I'll also be selling my Macbook Pro to buy one. I've been a Systems Engineer for 16 years, and I'm certainly no shill. Nobody would say that Vista was the second coming of anything but catastrophe for Microsoft. It was a bloated pig of an OS, cobbled hastily together after multiple stops and starts with failed technologies, and released to a world whose hardware was barely adequate to run the OS even at the higher end of the spectrum. Vista was TERRIBLE. But for as awful as it was, Vista actually was a positive thing to happen to Microsoft. Why? Because its failure and unilateral panning made them wake up and realize that the path of bloating up each iteration of the OS is a catastrophic mistake that can't be sustained, and it forced them to change directions. The other major catastrophe that benefited Microsoft was the emergence of iPhone and Android as the new "super" phones. They showed a new path forward, one which ultimately pointed Microsoft themselves in a new direction where they have, in many ways, outperformed their competitors in developing new and innovative ideas in the time since. The first product to show their new direction was, of course, Windows 7, which corrected virtually everything wrong with Vista--except for the Apple-esque tendency toward glossy UI elements. It was smaller, faster and much less bloated than Vista, and has generally made both home and business users very happy. Windows Phone 7, though it's struggled to find an audience as a consequence of Microsoft's prior reputation (Windows Mobile phones, of which I owned several, were stagnant, hard to use and lagged YEARS behind the competition, even in 2007), but it's actually a terrific product. It's light on its feet, more efficient than any other mobile OS from Apple or Google, and finally has a deep library of apps (well over 100,000, which yes, is still behind Apple and Android, but is nevertheless more than plenty for any average user and will only grow further after the "8" OS's unify Microsoft's ecosystem). One needn't be a "shill" to appreciate what Microsoft has managed to pull off in the last few years, they only need to have *paid attention*. Those of us who've worked with Microsoft's products for the better part of 2 decades, if not longer, see the full scope of Microsoft's failures and successes, and their new direction is a very positive, very welcome change. Will users struggle with adapting to Windows 8? Probably to some degree, yes. Will they refuse to do so en masse and cause Win8 to be a massive failure? Not likely. Even Vista, which we all acknowledge as a failure, sold over 400 million copies. Windows 8 will fair even better. As people learn to see all the benefits of Live Tiles and Deep Linking, not to mention the incredible speed and stability of the OS, especially when coupled with new UEFI hardware that makes things more secure than ever before, the synergy between Windows 8, RT and Phone 8, to say nothing of Xbox 360 and Xbox-whatever-the-next-one-is, will elevate both the reputation and the sales of each. The deep backward compatibility with existing Windows infrastructures and apps will carry the system forward, too. Make no mistake: Windows 8 will sell, and it'll sell lots. In year one it will outsell every Mac system ever produced. The only question is how long it'll take to overcome Windows 7, and because corporations tend to live on long OS cycles, that's harder to predict. Either way, they've got very little to really fear . J

Actually, that's not correct in the slightest. Windows update works extremely well and has for a decade . But with that said, I don't see what the OP's problem is with sending back anonymous telemetry about the OS's functioning to Microsoft. This kind of low-level data helps developers to identify key areas where the OS can use some improvement or is prone to certain kinds of failures or shortcomings, and allows them to create fixes proactively. This is a GOOD thing. Personally, I ALWAYS opt in to sending anonymous software statistics to the developers, because I selfishly want them to make the software I've bought and paid for better J Correction : jaclaz