The kernel changes sound good, similar to how Vista introduced a lot of good kernel changes. However none seem like it will significantly increase my productivity. And without installing 3rd party apps, the whole clusterfuck that is forced Metro significantly reduces my productivity. I know. I tried.

So, again, there's not really a whole lot of reasons to upgrade a desktop computer if you're a power user. This is in stark contrast to Windows 7 which I found to significantly increase my productivity compared to Windows XP.

For me the bottom line is this: what does Windows 8 do that Windows 7 can't do, or can't do well? Besides playing some hypothetical DirectX 11.1+ only games.

Windows 7 was a major step forward compared to Windows XP and Vista. Windows 2000/XP was a major step forward compared to Windows 9x.

So in which positive ways are Windows 8 a step forward? Ok so they've increased performance a bit, but I got a beefy PC with SSD, so I doubt Windows 8 is considerably faster. And that's about it.

And yes I did use Windows 8. And I don't dislike it just because it's cool. I dislike it because it's forcing me to work in a way which just isn't productive for me. If there was an option to disable the metro stuff and having the Win7 start menu, I would probably find it quite nice. Instead they decided not to give me any choice...

Which is nice if you use a handful of applications. However some of us regularly use a lot more than that. Off the top of my head I can count 35 different applications I launch on a daily basis, most of them many times a day. I'm excluding all games and such.

Pinning 35 apps to the taskbar would take so much space there's hardly any left for the windows that are active, and so the windows would quickly become grouped, reducing efficiency significantly.

I just cannot phantom why Microsoft didn't give us the option. Metro might be nice on the desktop for some people, and perhaps on a tablet. But why force us? I would have upgraded if I could have kept my start menu, so a lost sale here. Great move MS.

Not sure what rig you had, but my when I ran my i7 860 + AMD 4870 full tilt (prime95 in background and playing Battlefield Bad Company 2) it drew about 360-370w, measured with a kill-a-watt-like meter at the socket.

True, however if you're planning on using the FX in a rendering farm or similar, then the Intel CPU is definitely more bang for the buck. Not just the CPU itself but you'll be able to use less machines in the farm to get the same performance, which would be a huge saving. Using the LuxRender data, 10 i7 2600k boxes would give you the same rendering power as 17 FX-8150 boxes! I've assumed FPU performance scales similar to the PassMark score there, which I think is reasonable.

So that's 7 more motherboards, RAM sticks and PSUs compared to using Intel. And then there's the power drain...

So yeah, for anything FPU intensive the FX series could end up being an expensive investment. Which is sad, I'd really like to buy AMD gear.

He's probably referring to the Buldozers which do have terrible FP performance, primarily because two "cores" share a single FPU.

For example, while the FX-8120 gets about 77% of the score the i7 2600k gets in PassMark, in a very floating-point heavy, multi-threaded rendering application the 8120 gets about 51% of the 2600k.

While I'd love to buy more AMD, I've had quite a few bad experiences with the motherboards for AMD, while I haven't had any issues with the Intel based motherboards I've bought over the last 5 years or so. As such I'm keeping to Intel for now.

Generally kept to Asus, and not the cheapest models. Is this just my bad luck or?

Guess it depends on your measurement. Blender uses (hosts) Python 3 for scripting.

I've seen this stated many times, however I find that on both my old and new laptop the CPU fan consistently runs at a higher RPM compared to when if I force the scheduler to be conservative. I guess I should measure battery time some day to see if it's just an illusion or not.

It's not about size. It's used to denote a large discontinuous transition as opposed to a continuous transition. Like the transition, "jump", of an electron from one energy level to the next.

FWIW I was thinking the same as you until I was explained this, and as with all sayings it's not always used appropriately.

Reading comprehension fail. I read "Doom 3", missing the little "on" there. Doom didn't exactly fly on a 386, but yeah ;)

Which is understandable, given than the min specs is a 1.5GHz CPU :)

While I agree that there are a lot of very nice concepts in KDE, the "build quality" is miles below Windows 7, at least since the switch to KDE 4.x. For example, I really like the concept of activities, but I've yet to have it work reliably for more than 30 minutes. Speedy desktop searching is nowhere to be found, even with a SSD (strigi just doesn't work). Essential programs crash far more on Linux for me than in Windows.

The Linux fragmentation doesn't help either. Want to open a PDF you downloaded in Firefox? Then you have to fiddle a bit. In Windows it automatically finds the default PDF handler.

So while I try to enjoy KDE on my laptop, I quickly find myself longing back to my Windows 7 desktop.

Do your personal stuff on your personal Android, iPad or whatever.

They already said it will be exposed as an option, so that's already covered.