Na, he's talking outta his ass, you gotta mod it.

If you install Start8 or similar 3rd party start app, it will boot to desktop every time and you won't have to worry about metro...I wouldn't consider that modding.  You can also edit the registry without any 3rd party programs which I guess would be modding.  :P

I have multiple profiles set up on my machine, like most people, and one of them is a "Windows 7" profile for whenever I have someone over that isn't comfortable with windows 8 or whenever I have some start menu nostalgia.

At the core, Win 8 runs better than Win 7 and has more features while it loses very few, so it makes sense to upgrade, but your previous argument saying that one doesn't have to upgrade is totally legit. However I have a really hard time understanding why people here that have supposedly upgraded or used Win8 are getting worked up. You can use Win 8 99% the same way as Windows 7 after 15 minutes of setup and a few 3rd party apps.

I don't know of any government cio who is even considering upgrading to win 8/server and many are reluctant to upgrade to new versions of office after 2010, which should be alarming to Microsoft

3rd party apps is also modding :P I'm aware of what you can do, I just see no reason to go Windows 8 at all if I have to go through the hassel of doing all that shit when my computer runs Windows 7 at blazing speeds by default anyways. If the improvements are really obvious in the next installment, I might think about it then, but until that times comes, it will only go on my touch screen devices where it's actually quiet decent.

I'm just saying you chronically dislike Windows 8, not Microsoft as a whole. Sorry if that wasn't clear...

I also can't understand why anyone that understands technology and looks back at Windows Vista today would say that was a poor OS. It had some driver issues due to a fundimental change in driver security (due to crazy hacking and viruses on Windows XP) and it had a slightly higher spec requirment than the market was ready for. Anyone that likes Windows 7 has Windows Vista to thank as it did all the groundowork.

Finally if you do have Wndows 8 installed and don't like how things are, I will gladly make it work exactly like windows 7 did for you. Just give me admin remote desktop priveladges and 15 minutes... :)

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/features.asp

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

I decided to go ahead and get used to the new Start menu, but those were certainly helpful in easing the transition. I'd be really surprised if they don't implement an option for the classic Start menu and to boot straight to the desktop with Service Pack 1, however.

The general consensus (that I share as well) seems to be it's awesome for tablets and phones, where productivity takes a back seat to convenience and touch interface is more of an ease to use. It's a step backward and completely unintuitive with a mouse and keyboard, and it made no sense to omit a classic UI option built in from the get-go. So in other words, it's nice when I'm not doing anything all that important, but a pain in the ass when I actually want to get stuff done.

And the apps that ship with the OS and in the Windows Store right now are either broken, buggy, incomplete, or at best, the "Lite" versions of their full desktop/browser counterparts. I find the new Start menu and it's apps borderline useless because every time I make myself use a W8 app, all I can think is how every one of them (or an equal or better alternative) is already available in my browser, which requires less effort navigating. I can give you a dozen examples off the top of my head of a W8 app that is missing half the functionality of the same thing's browser/desktop version.

That said, I look at Windows 8 like a video game console that just launched. No one should expect it to be in top form within the first two months, just like you can't expect a console to have all of its top games out within the firs t year. I'm expecting big things from that first Service Pack though.

Windows 7 is everything people were hoping (and MS were saying) that Vista would be. Vista was a resource hog and failed to deliver the gaming performance one wanted, it was even touted as the very first "true gaming Windows". I kept XP all the way up to Windows 7 and it was fine, and I only had 2GB or RAM and an ATi X1950XTX anyway (not capable of DX10 rendering and Vista would have eaten most of my RAM).

As a standalone product, Vista is not horrible. My main point is; it failed to deliver on the somewhat lofty promises and even went directly against some of them (mostly memory consumption) and was a major letdown to a lot of users, me included. Windows 7 perfected the positives of Vista and is overall a smoother, more stable and less memory hungry experience.

I get the feeling that Win 8 was produced solely to hit the handheld/tablet/phone markets as a response to Google and Apple, the fact that it arrived so quickly only serves to further my suspicion. And that's fine for what it is, I just don't want tablet interfaces and functionality to set the norm for desktop computers and performance, its a poor match in my honest opinion (everyone in here knows that I'm not a fan of tablets and smartphones, or handheld consoles for that matter) and I don't like the direction the whole thing is taking.

Vista was a disaster because while the introduction of EVR was great, the Audio aspect worked like shit no matter what you did, it came down to the core in which they can't fix unless they rewrite the OS, which was more or less fixed in Windows 7. It was a nightmare for anybody that did a lot of media work in general and most stayed on XP but I wanted the damn EVR for 1080P hardware playback when most computers can't handle that back in the days and even Core 2's took like 50%+ CPU power to decode those in software mode. It was also extremely demanding in the memory aspect because Superfetch didn't work very well and is still disabled to this day, but a lot of consumers don't fucked with services like more tech savvy people do.

If the apps have a lesser functionality, just don't use them.  Of course you will not use them if they're missing basic functionality; that should be a given.  That said, I feel my productivity has not taken a major hit like everyone telling me it is.  I use this laptop for college l as I am taking classes in Accounting and Computer programming and I am doing just fine.  I pin any folders/programs that I use frequently to the start menu and if i need to use the search function (which has been improved by the way), I'll do just that.  If you don't like the colorful tiles? Download classic shell and there you go.  It's free and you're done.  Windows 8 is ultimately Windows 7 under the hood and everything you had in Windows 7 is still there with vastly better memory management.