So I am guessing all the usefulness of the Add-in's and themes will no longer work, and the interface will begin to look exactly like GMail. Or worse, an Outlook clone. I know all good things come to an end, but the slow and painful death of a great browser and email client is a sad day for the user base. Automatic updates now turned off on Thunderbird as well Firefox.

What a colossal failure your email system is when you turn it off and suggest people back to AOL Mail. Has the universe, changed? Do two wrongs now make a right?

Horrible idea. Netbooks were great, but terribly underpowered, so coupled with the propensity of Windows today to degrade slowly towards the unusable, this would just sell tons of "Netbooks" that either need OS refreshes once a month or just collect dust. I cannot Imagine the Netbooks out there running the 100% disk utilization that is becoming a giant issue with systems today. To create a "good, usable" netbook, the components would need to be such that the cost would rival a regular notebook or Laptop. People want systems that can do, in the words of Microsoft, "Real Work". The small screens, slow processors and poor battery life, would make Netbooks a complete waste of money.

The Windows App Store and Windows Apps are done. There are a ton of useless apps on the Windows App Store. Even for Banking and such, I can find almost everything I could want for Android, and Apple iPhones get it all too, when it comes to Windows, gaping holes in the software "catalog"... I would assume the Microsoft mobile market is just as dismal...

In addition, 4 people are actually using the Edge Browser...

Battery life and Speed are not lipstick on a pig. Edge Browser is a pig. Period. I do use it, for one purpose, Netflix. Other than that it is useless.

The phrase "you couldn't pay me to use that" comes to mind... I have to admit, I use edge to watch Netflix, beyond that, it is possibly the worst browser experience I have had in 25 years.

Edge is a browser? LOL Worst browser I've ever tried to use. There are too many issues to even begin to list here. I believe Edge is a joke which was put in Windows 10 to gain market share for Internet Explorer (See we told you IE was good). Last week I ran into an Edge session, minimized on a client's desktop, one page open, like MSN or something. The "Browser" consumed 12GB of system RAM, slowing the entire system to a crawl. Process was killed with Process Explorer and 12GB of system ram was released and the system operation went back to normal. Customer is now completely sold on using this new "Edge" browser... NOT.

I am a SMB consultant. Most of my clients are still on Windows 7 because it is the easiest version to support for now. One of the most annoying issues with Windows 10 which I run on my own laptops and one office computer is the "Default Printer" option that vanished when 10 was installed. This was very convenient when traveling between sites. It allowed you to set your default printer based on the Wireless LAN you were connected to. The option disappeared for me (and apparently lots of others) and nothing suggested by Microsoft or anyone else, will make it come back. Microsoft on it's support forums have shown, to no ones surprise, a complete misunderstanding of the issue, and steadfastly insists the option is on the toolbar in the "Devices and printers" Control Panel App. It isn't. Explanations to the contrary to Microsoft causes the support thread to go cold and dark... Typical Microsoft support. I have also seen that in both Windows 8 and 10 a misplaced or mistaken double click in explorer will freeze explorer prompting an end task or waiting several minutes for a content menu to appear. And now conspiracy theory time: Since the giant push for Windows 10 upgrading, new and reloads of Windows 7 will no longer do Windows Updates. If you go into control panel and tell the system to search for updates it will search for hours and hours. The system needs to be left on overnight and hopefully it will update itself at 3AM.

As I recall Ethanol was touted by Government shills as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil. A claim which was insane at the time and still is. The requirement of ethanol was first and foremost a "placebo" for high gas prices. And as usual once the money was seen it became an instant Agricultural welfare program. What most of us forgot it that 10% E was supposed to reduce the cost per gallon to fill up the tanks of Americans... Yeah, that happened....

Windows 8 and 8.1 are better than Windows 7 in a magnitude of ways. I have never been one to jump early to any new Microsoft product, but Windows 8 was worth it. There is only one reason to not move to Windows 8, and that is if you truly have software or hardware that will not work with it that you cannot upgrade. Is 8 perfect, no, but is it extremely useable and has been very stable for me and my clients. It does have it's annoyances, but they are mostly trivial and easily worked around. Having to press a key to bypass the "Start" screen is a minor issue. The point here is everyone knows how to use touch devices because of their mobile devices, so the transition to touch on the desktop is a rather intuitive one, and it can be completely ignored if one chooses to. I did that for a long time on a touch laptop, but now I find myself using it more and more because it is quicker and easier to use the tools it provides. I encounter a lot of resistance from users that are quoting a lot of the drivel commented here, but once they spend a minimal amount of time using the interface, they largely forget about it and just get their work done. Is it a perfect OS? No. But neither was XP, we just got used to it's issues and became complacent with them. There are many ways that Windows 8 can frustrate, but they are not worth ignoring the product and staying with the old stuff. I actually dread walking into clients now and finding Windows XP on systems, the interface seems primitive.

Fracking is used for Natural Gas production not Oil last I looked. Iran's output has been stifled by sanctions, not market oil glut. The cost of domestic oil is what keeps the US at odds with Middle Eastern countries. If they drop prices they render domestic oil production too expensive. The truth is America is still at the mercy of the Middle eastern oil. All they need to do is produce more oil at lower prices and they will destroy the domestic market. Oil companies are going to buy from the cheapest source, that's how Exxon/Mobile makes record profits every quarter.

It is never easy changing OS versions. But if you are reluctant to the point of fear, nothing would ever change. I am using Windows 8 on my home, office and Laptop systems and there are zero issues that prevent me from doing what I used to do with XP, and everyone screaming about how Windows 7 is better than 8 is just wrong. Windows 8 is Windows 7 SP2. Windows 8 "metro" is like a shell that you do not have to interface with if you do not want to. The Windows 8 "Apps" are mainly garbage and just a way to sell advertizing space to Microsoft customers, but they and the Metro Interface are OPTIONAL. People should be much more concerned about Office 2013 and the Crippled "Click to Run" versions that Microsoft keeps as a dirty secret, as it allows them to block other companies interoperability to generate more Software as a subscription sales.

Big Brother is recruiting help in the destruction of our privacy.

That is like inventing a new car that won't run on current roads.