1. Windows now boots to the "start menu"? It's a click or key press back to your precious desktop.
2. It's still there, just not wasting as much screen space any more.
3. It's one click to change this (my second monitor has no task bar).

Windows 8 has some nice improvements over Win7, granted some people can't deal with the new way of using it. I guess you don't remember Windows 95 coming out as that made a much bigger jump than the 7-8 changes. At least 99% of Windows 7 software runs on 8 with no problems, getting DOS programs to work on 95 was a PITA most of the time.

Yes, this. When I purchased my iPhone 4 it was brilliant, and at the time Android really did suck balls. But the iPhone 4s/5 isn't that different really than the 4 so why upgrade? I did upgrade in the end to a Galaxy S3 and it stands out now like the iP4 when it came out.

Apple haven't just dropped the ball, they have lost it down a drain as well.

We use it heaps! I am a full time CS Student, my Wife is a part time student and the kids use it occasionally. I have given Libre Office/Open Office the benefit of the doubt and tried it for a month or so last year, it just didn't work for us. The beauty of the $100pa licence is its almost per user not per PC, so you can move it to new PCs when you get them. At the moment to get this privilege you have to pay extortionate retail licence fees.

That's brilliant value for my house. To quote Ars "For $99.99/year, there's Office 365 Home Premium, giving Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access, plus an extra 20 GB of SkyDrive storage (in addition to the 7 GB that you get for free), plus 60 minutes of Skype calls per month. This is licensed on a per-household basis, and one account can be shared by up to 5 users across any mixture of five PCs and Macs." 5 licenses of OEM Office Pro (a subset of the above) @ $290 each that die with the PC or $100pa for 5 users with upgrades to hardware and Office. It's a no brainer!

Yup. I had a tablet that I tried reading on, but it's a nightmare. It's a 10" so it's too big, too bright at night and too heavy (mainly when I fall asleep and drop it on the Wife's noggin!). I love it for PDF's and comics though.

On the other hand my Kindle (non touch) is awesome for books. Whisper sync is great as well for when I wake up in middle of the night, I just continue reading on my iPhone.

And that is why MS took this path with the start menu. Their "telemetry" has show that most people pin their most used programs, and rarely use the start menu. I know we all do in this house. That's also why DVD playback/MCE is now an addon, MS where paying for codec licenses that were not getting used. I have been using Win8 all this year on my laptop, which get's connected to a 23" when I am at my desk and love it. Granted some of the ModernUI apps look a bit silly on the 23" but most of them are quite OK on the 15" laptop screen with the touchpad/mouse. My kids (6-12yo) currently have the RP on their computers and love it. They have had no dramas finding anything and have had a great time customising everything. The whole idea of the app store is great, my 6yo can download free (and for the moment, malware vetted) apps and I don't have to worry as much what they are doing to his computer. Yes I do keep an eye what he is downloading :-) All in all once the FUD distributors get shot down I think Windows 8 will be a winner. I know I am looking forward to getting a Win8 tablet and phone to go with my laptop for a nice unified environment.

It's brilliant. I was surprised to see that nearly all the packaging from my Kindle went in the recycle bin. All tech companies need to take note of this.

And the difference is? The phone is still acquiring new content in the background while playing existing content in the foreground. It's just using different apps/methods. I would hate to think what torrents would do to your battery with the amount of CPU/networking effort required vs iTunes which is simple HTTP.

To counter that, my Lappy with built in a 6770m runs Minecraft better under Linux than Windows. Go figure :-/

Just like Nokia and Palm. "we have a great product people are buying so let's keep doing the same thing". And alone came Apple with the iPod touch/iPhone and Android. They took to long to realise that they had been overtaken and needed to actually innovate for the first time in 10 years.

I can say Australia Post is becoming more of a courier company than postal service. They are now pushing an "Digital mail box" service to "Receive - Your own digital mailbox to securely receive important mail. Pay - Easy payment of your bills. Store - Private and secure storage for your important documents"

I don't think anyone has told them this is called email/electronic banking and has been around for years!

best pick it up before Christmas, I don't see them being around much after that. I would say the same for Nokia but I think the release of the Desktop Windows 8 will save their bacon, but they will be a owned by MS in the next few years I think.

What you said! All my discs have been in the player on average of once, to be ripped, then shelved in the cupboard.

Me too, but being able to read the article would help :-/

Let's have this debate again when people have been able to run the same app on their phone/tablet/pc for a while. I think long term MS/Nokia are on a winner .