Originally Posted by
Braden99 
I will be upgrading from Windows 7 on my desktop, and also purchasing a tablet with Windows 8 at a later date. Most customers will get Windows 8 with a new system; more than 450 million people now have Windows 7 since launch, most as OEM versions. Customers who use Windows everyday will likely find value in upgrading to Windows 8, as I do.
There are many welcome improvements across the board, including in desktop mode, startup/boot experience, resource usage, hardware support etc. This is of course is an Apple fan site, so Im not surprised to see negative reactions to Windows, nor am I surprised to read carefully written articles that paint Microsoft plans and future in the worst light. I was once an Apple fan/user to, but personally I have seen the most innovation from Microsoft in recent years. Microsofts approach of sharing information, and getting customers involved in their products from an early stage is excellent, I enjoy reading how products are developed, not just reading predictable marketing rhetoric, labeling products magical, and insanely great.
So far I have found the Start Screen to be better suited for touch; however I'm starting to find I like it with mouse and keyboard (which is improving before beta). As with many others I was initially worried this new start screen would slow down launching tasks etc. But after using the developer preview some time, I have found it has made me faster at launching tasks, and searching than Win7. I also enjoy the new snapped metro apps in combination with full applications. The fact that all the customizations are saved into the cloud is great, when the Beta arrives groupings of applications, and semantic zoom will be enabled, giving a much richer start screen than Win7.
As someone who is power-user, I like the explorer ribbon, especially how it allows hotkeys for everything including floating tooltips which all activate dynamically, and a minimize mode, so you get the best of both worlds, a simplistic interface, with the equivalent of menu's, however more contextual, better layout, more visually rich, with hierarchy and grouping of tools - making explorer much more powerful than Finder in my opinion. There are other small thing some people would never notice, like you can now drag and drop into the breadcrumb hierarchy, the ribbon has many handy tools that used to be buried, now only requiring two clicks, or keyboard shortcuts. The task manager is also completely revamped, which any power user should be happy with. Other features like History Vault, give a more user friendly interface to backup/revert files (though personally I never found it that difficult in Win7), support for native VHD, USB3.0, ISO, zip, massive drives, improved hyper-v is also appealing to desktop users. Microsoft havent shown off the Windows Store yet or Xbox Live (something to replace games explorer), so there is still more features coming.
Personally I have been using Microsofts free Security Essential product for a couple of years, and had no issues with viruses etc. This will now be baked into Windows 8 as standard, this could have been done ages ago, but as everyone knows Microsoft was a target for anti-trust lawsuits (while ignoring companies like Apple).
Windows 8 is easily a much larger release in terms of features, for both desktop & touch features than any recent version of Mac OSX, so I dont think Apple fans should dismiss it as being a piece of junk. Because I think most objective reviewers would find the current state of Windows 8 to be ambitious, fresh, full of good ideas, but buggy and incomplete (as a developer preview should be). That said I hope for some improvements before Beta, some of which have already been implemented.
No one can predict whether Windows 8 tablet will sell very well or not. This is largely irrelevant to me, as Im only interested in a real operating system on a tablet, not a basic stripped down toyshop of apps (which is in fact great for many people, or if that is your primary need for a tablet). So far Microsofts strategy is the only one that works for me, and I suspect there will be many others with the same needs. I hope Apple decides to do a variation of iPad with Mac OSX, and then I would consider them as an option in the future.
There is no way i will downgrade from OSX Lion to a cloner Microsoft bug infested, unsecure, super expensive OS. No thanks.
Windows 7 has no bugs I have come across, with heavy usage and being a prime suspect to get a virus I have got nothing in the last 4 years (unsecure?). Yeah windows is expensive, but then my overclocked 2600K 4.6GHZ with Nvidia Geforce 580 3GB, is much faster and cheaper than any Mac, with a
nice steel case to
) or your network admins have inexplicably decided to turn Aero off.
