I think that a lot of people who love the Metro interface must have upgraded from XP to Windows 8, and so attribute improvements in previous versions of Windows to the Win8.

That is not a Metro feature. It has been in all Windows since Vista (with the exception of the part where it takes up your entire screen). The difference was that Win8 split the results into files, apps and settings which then required more keystrokes (our mouse clicks) to get to the entry that you wanted. The 8.1 restored this functionality.

Whereas from Vista onwards, your 5-6 applications that you use frequently would be automatically shown on your start menu without having to pin them (although you do have that option too).

Once again, this is a Vista feature. Like Metro, you have to go into a different section to see the full start menu that we knew from the days of XP and earlier. But installing a new app will normally just add a single main icon to your start menu, and you click on "All Programs" to see the full group of icons. The difference with Windows 8 is that it is not obvious how to get to the full list of programs in Metro, although the 8.1 upgrade did give a small down arrow button to get to it.

When I wanted to first test Windows 8 without ruining any useful computer, I tried it on an 2006 Celeron-based desktop. It was a little slow to boot due to the old hard drive (which I later swapped with a SSD) but it worked surprisingly well. I hated the operating system, but I could not fault it for its ability to work with ancient hardware.

Given that this was a low-end computer in its day, I could easily see the latest Windows working on any mid-range computer from a year or two before that.

If the switch from PPC to Intel was the "one and only real issue" then why doesn't the latest OS work on all Intel-based Macs? The system requirements that you posted stops its supported platforms long after the switch to Intel. And even when you can upgrade your computer (for example, change the CPU to a 64bit version) then you still need to hack the platformsupport.plist file before the OS can be installed. This means that the supported models are baked into the installer rather than just letting it look for the features that it needs. At least the latest Windows can run slowly on old systems - it doesn't just refuse to work merely because of the age of the hardware.

I still don't believe that the majority of people are doing video editing that requires more than 4GB RAM. It is a small proportion that upload videos to the Internet anyway, and of those that do I have seen way too many examples that desperately need editing but obviously haven't. It seems that most people just don't care to do these memory intensive edit jobs. They will dump the video to disk, maybe trim it a bit and then upload.

Even among the people who do need more memory - gamers - just over half have 4GB or less according to the Steam survey.

Except Bill denies ever saying that. And I didn't say that nobody needed more than 4GB, but that the XP operating system didn't need more than 4GB.

Like what jobs? The majority of tasks performed on computers by the majority of people are things like the basic word processing, spreadsheets, databases, email, web etc. Most of the time, these activities do not need more than 4GB when using older (non-bloated) software. If you do actually need more than 4GB, then you would have already upgraded to 64bit Windows. But just because some people have found a use for more memory, it doesn't mean that the majority of people need it.

You could turn that around by saying that XP just didn't need more than 4GB of RAM and 2TB hard disk space. And as for DX9, according to Steam's Hardware & Software Survey, XP use is at 6.35% so it appears that gamers have already figured out that they need to upgrade.

Obviously the people using XP now are still satisfied with the OS. It is a vicious circle that you need to upgrade to use more hardware (RAM/HD), when it is only because that you have upgraded your software that you need to access more hardware.

You are right. For an article on the user experience, it really doesn't do much to help the user. Using terminology like UX was a bit silly, but even more so was the massive wall of text that actually told us nothing. For example, on the entire screenful of text about the Philips Hue Light Bulb, the only relevant text about the user interface (sorry, UX) was:

I came away from that article without much insight as to why these things are good or bad "user experiences". They say that a picture tells a thousand words, but in this case the graphic at the top of the article summarizing the product names was just as informative as the 5,000 words that followed.

That is a pretty unsupportable statement considering that the scientists are well aware of how much certainty their models have, and so give a large error range such that it was nearly impossible to get it wrong. Your claim that they all have been falsified by observations is a complete lie.

That is exactly how the models work; when new facts are found they plug that into their models and calibrate it against past data. They also compare the predictions against new measurements, and if there is a discrepancy then they try to figure out why - as was the case here. This is why the models are getting more accurate as the years go by.

Except Man doesn't think that he has everything figured out. This is even mentioned in the summary:

Researchers knew that the models did not match what was happening and didn't know why. In fact, you can tell that they don't think that they know it all by seeing how they state their margins of error (which takes into account that there might be things that they don't know). Hell, even when they try to sound certain they can't quite bring themselves to stating things in terms of absolutes (hence the IPCC report saying that it was 95% certain that climate change was man made).

And think about it, if scientists came out and said that they had discovered everything that there was to know then they would be putting themselves out of a job.

...or typesetters & typists, accountants, video editors, music composers, engineers & architects, etc. In fact, anyone who produces, rather than consumes will tend to use computers as their main system. SSDs work nicely for all of them, if only to store the OS and program files.

That you only know gamers and developers says more about the company you keep rather than what technology is used out there. It is true that tablets and smart phone sales are on the rise and PC sales are declining, but that doesn't mean that people have stopped using their old computers.

Me too!

You obviously haven't been in a museum in the last couple of decades. They have had interactive displays, personal spoken tours using portable audio devices (using an MP3 player, Discman or Minidisc player), and the better museums had tour guides. That is the new technology where a person takes a group of people around and tells them about the art. It's amazing what they can do these days!

But maybe if you are the kind of person who cannot read a small sign, then perhaps even a museum couldn't be much help for you. I wonder how you go with some of those lengthy dissertations on Twitter.

I had a look at the link that you gave, but couldn't see any mention about "Putting this in for the Office team" that was apparently one of the big discussions. I did manage to find this, but it doesn't really show a smoking gun for widespread collusion between the Windows and Office development teams, especially because they also mention of specific code for Borland, IBM, and Symantec in that article.

I think that the use of a few vague comments in the Windows source code leak as proof of secret API calls in Office is about as undamning as the focussing on a few instances of terminology in the CRU email leaks when trying to prove climate change is all one big conspiracy. If all the allegations were true, I would have expected to see more specific evidence.

I think you are dramatically underestimating how many Steam games there are. I just started counting my Steam keys, and by the time I counted my fifth bundle (four Android bundles and the Deep Silver bundle) I had already counted 31 unique games. I am not going to bother counting the other twenty-odd bundles, because I have no doubt that they will easily get past the 100 mark.

Here is what I found so far:

1. Fieldrunners
2. BIT.TRIP BEAT
3. SpaceChem
4. Uplink
5. Crayon Physics Deluxe
6. Eufloria
7. Splice
8. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
9. Waking Mars
10. Cogs
11. Zen Bound 2
12. Avadon: The Black Fortress
13. Dynamite Jack
14. Beat Hazard Ultra
15. Nightsky
16. Solar 2
17. Aquaria
18. Fractal
19. Stealth Bastard Deluxe
20. Organ Trail: Director's Cut
21. Frozen Synapse
22. Broken Sword: Director's Cut
23. McPixel
24. Risen 2
25. Sacred 2 Gold
26. Saints Row 2
27. Saints Row: The Third
28. Dead Island GOTY
29. Metro 2033
30. Risen
31. Sacred Citadel

Just to confirm it, I just click two other bundles at random and got 20 unique Steam games to make over 50 in just seven bundles. And that is not even going near the "Humble Weekly Sale" section where virtually everything was delivered by Steam.

I just had a look, and of the nine games listed on the front page, five of them had a DRM-free sign. Just because they have Steam keys available doesn't preclude a direct download version too. Not all of the games were on GOG either, and those that are there are currently at full price (though GOG has had some pretty aggressive sales lately so it may be worth waiting).