...and 8.1 is a porta potty that doesn't smell quite so bad. And 8.1 update 1 is a porta potty with the toilet paper dispenser added back in.

There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough.

Going from XP to 8 is like trading in your American Standard for a porta potty. Because, you know, porta potties are portable.

> But now Windows 8 needs users to click and right click on various places often not obvious, in order to do things. It's so bad that it's almost as if they are purposely trolling/torturing users and laughing at them - like a bully trying to show his power by forcing the bullied to do stupid things.

I get that feeling also -- like it's Microsoft management showing the users who's boss. Obviously they're yearning for the days when we'd take whatever crap they hand to us because "everyone uses Windows".

Turn off Aero. I have my Win7 box set to "Windows Classic" and other than a very few things renamed or in different places, it's still pretty much XP.

Bonus, "Windows Classic" uses fewer computer resources.

I think what you're supposed to do is just bear with it until you can buy Windows 9. And then just bear with that until you can buy Windows 10. See, the problem with XP was that it actually worked. Microsoft has since solved that problem.

> But why? What's so great about an operating system that was invented before the age of Dropbox and Facebook, an OS that's almost as old as the original Google search engine?

Because it works. Because we're up on the flat end of the curve as far as operating systems go, and as users we're not desperate for the next version in the (vain) hope that it'll stay out of our way and let us get our work done. Microsoft's first big mistake with XP is that as a program loader and resource manager, it was good enough, meaning there really was no motivation to switch.

It seems like with Win8 Microsoft is trying to harken back to those days of yesteryear where users were desperate for the next release hoping against hope that the serious bugs in the previous version are finally fixed. (And the crushing disappointment when you realize they're not -- it's a fake start button, instead of layered windows you get two apps side by side, etc etc.) Their prime business model has two main factors -- (a) users MUST use Windows (for whatever reason), and (b) the current version sucks but maybe the next version will be a little better. They lost that paradigm with XP and are now trying to regain it. Hardware that only boots Windows, deliberately screwy design decisions, tiny incremental improvements. But will it work this time? Non-Microsoft choices have never been more attractive.

Microsoft's second big mistake is to base a business on the idea that people would crowd into stores for the next incremental set of OS improvements that the company deigns to crap out. OS upgrades are no longer a thing. Apps are. And that's the way it should be.

> 'XP was designed for a different era.'

If you wish. But if you stipulate that, so were PCs. They keyboard/video/mouse interface is still the input method of the majority of PCs (not phones or tablets but real PCs) in use today, and you screw with that at your peril.

Ok, let me enumerate the ways in which Unity is superior to Windows 8.

(1) Unity can be easily replaced with a competing desktop.

(2) ... never mind, (1) was sufficient.

It's the only way to be sure.

> Tell me, what is burning man? Whatever you say will be wrong, because Burning Man is, and always was, what you make it.

That doesn't scan. It should read "Whatever you say will be correct, because Burning Man is, and always was, what you make it. If to you Burning Man is a negative experience, you should look inward for the reason." I'd add, "and stop trying to be an annoying hipster" but that would be snarky.

Good point.

And government is different how?

...it could be done privately, perhaps?

Exactly. Microsoft can be depended upon to create periodic opportunities for Linux. :-)

Ok, this is good news, but -- no offense -- I'll believe it when I actually push the start button with a mouse on a commercial release and see a usable start menu. We've been told before that "the start button is back" and it was a horrible joke.

I also want to see automatic boot into desktop on machines without a touchscreen, and a way to LOCK it into desktop, with none of that random switching-to-metro carp. These are not negotiable.