What, like a boat?

Visual Studio 2010 was awesome. Visual Studio 2012 is a sea of all caps menus, grey and such a minute dash of colour that makes partially sighted people like me wonder if they hallucinated it or got up too fast...

Seriously MS, fix it, along with the Coal Bunker/Snow Blindness colour schemes. I am not on a beach in Malibu, or the cockpit of a B2 on a bombing mission FFS!

Ok, I stand corrected, I'm wrong there. I can only assume I never met the 32-bit version of 2008. I've been running 64-bit Server since 2003 with Pentium Ds, which was a bit of a black sheep to be honest... that said, with Server 2008 based on Vista core, the 32-bit version must suck.

Because 2008 and 2008 R2 are only available in 64-bit flavours, they do not need to support Physical Address Extension (PAE), which by definition is a way of allowing a 32-bit OS to address more than 4GB RAM.

Company bases new product on previous product, increments version number by one...

It's just 'one better' isn't it?

...all the rage it was. I could do maths and stuff on it and everything. Fitted in my wallet and was credit card sized and 1mm thick...

So why the big fanfare about sticking electronics in a card again, 30 years later?

They don't understand that in businesses, you don't run users as admins, which is what the Adobe Updater appears to require for autoupdates.

What they need to do is bring out a decent admin tool like WSUS for their products which enables centralized administration. Ditto Apple, Firefox, Java and a truckload of other software that would probably have a bigger market share if they just understood that where business is concerned with patching and security; Microsoft 'just gets it'. That's one of the key reasons why IE is the business browser of choice, because patching it is easy and quick, not convoluted and frustrating.

That said, it is possible to centrally manage Macs, to a degree...

Windows 8 is the best desktop OS. More secure, faster, more stable and has more software and hardware than Windows 7...

...IF, you can handle the FrankenOS of Metro/Win32...

Because of the past. When IE6 had a huge market share (>90%, but lets be honest, at the time it was the best browser out there), the EU stepped in.

Now the EU don't like monopolies and accused MS - rightly - of some underhandedness in getting their browser in front of punters by including it in the OS and not allowing it to be removed (even though you could just 'not use it', weird). Cue the Ballot Screen (which sucks).

Personally, I think the playing field since around 2010 can be considered levelled and any harping and whining now is pointless. I agree with what you're saying about OSX etc. though, but you also need to wonder why email clients, media players and anything else that's bolted on to the OS hasn't fallen foul...

Plethora of cheap and free online and offline competent Office suites doesn't really work for most business people I'm afraid...

Sure, some suites might do most or some of what people want, but when it comes down to it, most people just want stuff to work. And if the RT version of Office means that stuff "just works" then people will buy it, regardless of position on whether it's free, cheap or whatever...

You can embed fonts in PPT file. It's not a problem.

Ok, so it's a slightly less featured version that the full x86 Office 2013, but if it means I don't have to fart around with reformatting at teh last minute in Keynote, Page and Numbers on an iPad, or any of the other feeble attempts at Office compatibility to do a presentation, then that's just fine by me. Sure I could take a laptop, but I get some good results by simply passing the tablet around.

10 years ago, people were paying £450 for a full Office software suite, so the idea of spending an equivalent amount for Office on a tablet isn't that much of a dealbreaker when you consider it.

That's for Metro apps. Skyrim is a Win32 app. Sure, the Metro bit is a walled garden, but the Win32 bit is still as open as ever on x86, you simply just avoid ARM based Win RT devices... job done.

Seriously, whether the desktop was available or not on Win RT ARM tablets, the experience would always be inferior. Saying that ARM users are getting a second rate experience is stupid. Have them install something that runs badly on their hardware, that's a second rate experience.

What the Metro and MS store is allow developers to write across both architectures with ease. While a Metro app may appear that taxes an ARM tablet, that same app isn't going to break a sweat on a multicore x86 box.

You may as well say iPhone users get a second rate experience because the iPad screen is bigger...

That said though, MS wording as to what Windows 8 certification actually is seems confused. It should really be Certified for Metro, and they should do more to differentiate between cosmetically identical, but technically different products in Windows 8 and Windows RT devices.

Megabits, not megabytes? A minor point, but when it comes to network speeds, it makes all the difference...