The problem is they aren't as stable as we'd like them to be. Computers wear out, and I don't mean just the hard drives or fans. Look up "tin whiskering" in Wikipedia. At some point the hardware that replaces the blown bits in the case will require the later software. People are often forced into upgrades they don't want for purely hardware-vendor planned obsolescence. It's a pretty big lever they use to pry money out of you. I use W7 and I'm happy with it. My customers are happy with it. We will switch to W8 or later at such time as it can be sufficiently and reliably determined that the pipes of hell have frozen shut.

Yes -- there has been rather a lot of astroturf on this one, hasn't there? I've seen it on every forum where W8 is mentioned. The mendacity is distinctly on the nose.

JDG1980, you win one Internet. That's a concise and correct summary of all that I find wrong with W8.
Nicely writ, Earthling.

Aye. How many Windows users are there now? A billion?

That's an awful lot of bad mojo to get past just to compete with a phone. Their marketing spreadsheets must be berserk.

Which, as it turns out, was a really, really bad idea. Phones are not desktop PC's, no matter how the marketing trends.

I'm inclined to agree. Steve Ballmer found another way to monetize their cash cow, saw their competitors were doing it, and tightened the screws on software installation.

Which, I find rather ironic. Microsoft got its start by deciding to let third-party hardware and software take part in their market ecosystem, which (along with the IBM association) gave them the jump over Apple early on. It was the freedom to innovate that brought the hardware innovators in.

Unfortunately, in Ballmer's attempt to catch up with Apple and Android, they oversimplified the interface for the billion or so business customers who were quite happy with a start menu, thank you very much. The reviews are right; Windows 8 barks at passing cars.

I have no trouble navigating xOS or Android on my phablets, but Windows 8 looks like it ran out of pitons on the way across, and is shortly to run out of fingernails too. The fall won't kill them, but the landing might...

3.11b, thanks!

And oh, gods ... you had to remind me of Lan Damager....

This.

Honestly, sometimes it looks like Microsoft is hiring its marketing researchers from Hollywood -- from the pool of writers trying to make new movies out of old television series'. Same same, only different.

Thinking at the top of Microsoft appears to have gone out of fashion, replaced by its poor cousin, "derive".

CSMA/CD

Car Sensing Multiple Aircraft / Collision Destruction?

"Yes, I'm completely honest."

"That doesn't sound like a weakness to me."

"I don't care what the f**k you think."

I don't see that as flamebait. The single embarrassing dichotomy in the USA is in the first question - what services do you want to buy; institutionalised global death-at-whim, or healing people who are sick without punishing them brutally by ruining them financially for the rest of their lives?

That's a legitimate question.

When did America become "The Brutal Country"?

No again. If the supreme court said it's constitutional, then it's constitutional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

Pretty much the same here in Australia. The Government won't drop you because of a pre-existing condition, and I have friends whose lives were devastated by losing a family member, but who were not turned out of their house to finance the rather extensive care over a couple of years (and the care was comprehensive, and brilliant).

Does it add to my tax burden? Yes, it does, and I don't give a flying f**k that it does, because I care more about people living better, than I do the few cents I pay in each tax dollar. Priorities.

I think Google+ would have been fine, except for Sergey's insistence upon people using their real names, instead of being able to keep their nicknames. That made it no fun any more, and that's why I closed my profile down & avoided it from then on.

Truth is, I don't want people to know I'm actually a Staffordshire Terrier. People can be so prejudiced against dogs on the internet.

What, with your bare hands?

  -- XYZZY