They only have themselves to blame.

I actually loved Windows 8 on... My convertible tablet. It's fast, simple and I can play games even 20 years old *with* touch, you know, those old Windows 95 games with giant icons which perfectly fit your finger like Dune 2, Master of Orion 2 etc'?

I also gained more battery life over Windows 7 (As the tablet originally came with Windows 7.) and HD video plays with less stutter due to how much less resource intensive the OS is on my Intel Atom single core + Broadcom Crystal HD chip.

However, on my Desktop it was a nightmare, I'm running in Eyefinity, 3 screens for a total of 5760x1080 resolution, on the Desktop or Windows 7 it works great I can have windows everywhere. But, Metro? I was always fighting to be able to multi-task more, my system isn't exactly low-end and I sometimes have several dozen programs open at once, you just CANNOT do that in Metro.
For your average grandma who only uses facebook, then sure I can see the use. - But it's going to take allot of time and re-teaching for them to learn how to use their PC again.

From a performance perspective on my Desktop, I noticed zero performance difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8, mind you with a 6 core processor with 12 threads, 32gb of ram, Raid 0 SSD's, everything is lightening fast anyway.

Well I am still using windows 7 so that's 1 less sale than they want

I have windows 8 running in a VM, it was 60 bucks... (i noticed the price jumped on all win7 products) the UI is a set back in terms of use and integration from win7, its unfortunate that we cannot force the horrid new start menu away for good.... because a lot of the rest of the system has very helpful tweaks that make it more user friendly and easier to deploy .... its a real shame they are putting a unified touch OS goal above productivity, we all have seen this coming though with the changes made to the xbox OS over the years where easy to use was obfuscated for slick looks and ad space.... look for windows 8 to have ads in the start menu with the wonderful free apps, even MS hosted ads later on oh a joy it will be.

i feel like the major two have deviated from where i wanted the future to go, and i believe in touch...

its about enterprise adoption and stemming the tied of apple into corporate networks ... and this effort is not good enough... really using this UI on a server back end like they have for 2012 what were they thinking .... thankfully you can deploy it in cmd line only though you loose some of the new features in management they are touting if you ditch the UI.... on the plus side the licensing terms are much better now 

also for home use whats with holding some of the best features back to only the enterprise version of 8?

windows to go, i have 5 systems at home and build and test others it would be great to have for testing deploys and trouble shooting

direct access another killer feature for SOHO that should be in win8 pro.

remoteFX ..... the could have tied this in with rt/surface, and helped you link home to your own cloud ... why not leverage it  

oh yes and the ability to buy a full non OEM,  version…

 hell vie been looking for non oem copies of windows server 2012 essentials which MS has a price listed for and cannot find it anywhere … though with what the OEM version is going for may as well just pick up a full copy of server 

Windows 1 and 2 did not do well.  Windows 3, 3.1, and 3.11 all did well.  Windows 95 and 98 did extremely well.  Windows ME did poorly.  Windows XP did exceptionally well.  Windows Vista did not do well.  And Windows 7 has done well. 

The versions are Windows 1 = v1.  Windows 2 = v2.  Windows 3-3.11 = v3.  Windows 95 - Windows ME = v4.  Windows 2000 & XP = v5.  Windows Vista, 7, and 8 = v6.

There is no tradition.

Windows ME was a bad product.  It was the merging of NT technology and Windows 9x.  It didn't work particularly well, especially if you upgraded over a previous version.  Windows Vista was no where near as bad as it was made out to be.  While there were some minor improvements in performance and memory usage with Windows 7, Windows Vista functionally was an extremely competitant OS.  In another world, Windows 7 likely would have been a service pack to Windows Vista, but Microsoft had to separate itself from the bad press.

I agree with both the criticisms and the response to those criticisms regarding Windows 8.  Windows 8 has a few user challenges, but in time they are things people can overcome.  The problem is that Microsoft could have done a better job of using consumer feedback. 

Windows 8, like Windows Vista is a serviceable operating system.  The difference is that Windows 8 requires a significant amount of relearning to use. 

I disagree kowen, quite heavily. Pull your head out of the sand. Instead of being negative about Microsoft 99% of the time, go spend your time in a Vita thread for a change of scenery or something.

Windows 7 is the reason I stay away from win8. MS hasn't sold on why I should upgrade.

I work enterprise support for  fortune 500/government contracts at this time and in the last 5 years apples has seeped into all of them some more then others... as little as iPhones and as big as moving away from MS for desktops (i was surprised when the customer did this and still dont belive they will follow through)   

most of it for now is just mobile, but thats where it starts… ill agree major inroads on the OS side have been very minimal for now, and honestly apple is no better than MS in terms of an open future, but from the mobile side apple (to a lesser extent android has stepped in too) has replaced RIM, and thats a spot MS wanted so its no myth just not what you may have been thinking of since this was primarily a discussion on windows the reason i brought it up was MS unified UI is a response to this

as for the cloud … how many outages have you had to mitigate … most enterprises will not tolerate the kinds of outages MS/amazon have had on their hosting in the last year. and loss of access to office because a SaaS is down would not be tolerated the savings look nice but of the companies we have worked with that have dabbled in it all have pulled back as it was unable to meet SLAs for up time ….. correction i do know of one major client who went all in on SaaS… strangely enough they are also the group that went all mac

the infrastructure resiliency is not quite here yet, and no one wants to pay the cost to make it so … i understand the cloud is the future but i still believe in a local copy synced to the cloud so i dont lose access every time a network goes down or a server host VMs dies (I love it when they have the primary and the DR unit on the the same physical server and fail to see why that is a bad idea .. until )

sharepoint however is a here to stay despite how much i hate it.. i cant think of anyone who does not use it 

as for cost … it depends if you use that copy of office 03 for 10 years or so it would be cheaper than SaaS, and there really was not much of a reason to advance but to keep up with the jones… and i guess security that everyone talks about but no company takes seriously 

I would say no outages is atypical, and outsourcing hardware to other contractors is expected they can pool resources together to unitize hardware more efficiently, and i think your over stating saving a bit unless you have some very low end SLAs (I hope your not working with ACS as your provider ) 

exchange and payroll ect will still be hosed on some kind of system some where and MS will want it to be their product over linux / sap / lotus / google moving it off your site does not stop that and i maintain that 2012 is a step in the wrong direction. as for office as an SaaS it will happen for some groups, and others will role away from it. eventually it will replace traditional office as much as i may hate and the fact it will become a reoccurring cost and not a one and done.. but that time is still far off for most companies as accessibility to the web especially for traveling customers is not guaranteed, and as i have noted above outages 

outsourcing IT can be done right and wrong.. I would not have a job if it was not for outsourcing, but if your low balling it you'll get into service issue where, yes i know what the issue is an could fix it in 4 -6 min, but contractually i cant touch it and have to send it out where it will be looked at next week maybe  or worse to a group that does not know how to fix it and they will contract out more time or just image the system… that always makes me feel sick for the customer im trying to help .. much better to pay a bit more so trained persons allowed the scope to fix your issue… and that you actually get trained persons ... 

it sounds like youve negotiated some of these deals before so i assume you know how asinine things can get when you have outsourced to multiple companies and each one sits on a bridge blaming the other it would be funny to listen to if it wasn't stopping production or in some ceases hurting end users directly. 

damn even sometimes getting them to honor contracts is a pain in the ass  if they have decided court costs are cheaper then honoring the deal they made

(I would say outside of pay the other issue hitting job satisfaction in the IT support industry is stopping people from being able to fix problems)