Microsoft touching up Windows 8 to address gripes

[Occulus]

54. Windows 8 really is a good OS, and functions almost exactly like Windows 7

Please take my advice and abandon XP. Compared to Windows 7, it's a dog; 7 and 8 handle literally everything better than XP did, they're more secure (yeah, Microsoft, secure, ha-ha, but it's true), 7 is way faster and handles memory better (8, even more so), has better driver support and hardware detection, handles multitasking better, has more features for multi-user environments, etc., & etc. Really, do yourself a favor and spend some time learning how to use Windows 7 at least. I didn't think I'd like 7, either, when I came from XP, but the differences were so huge and there were so many improvements that the switch became a no-brainer once I got comfortable using 7.

The single biggest complaints I hear about Windows 8 are the Metro UI (including the "lack" of a Start button) and the way Microsoft "hid" configurable options. I posted a really useful workaround, plus awesomeness, for the latter above- Windows God Mode- and while I totally understand that some users might be confused about the fact that the start button is now a whole page, the fact is that Windows 8 really is not all that different from Windows 7 from a functionality standpoint. In fact, in a lot of ways, Windows 8 is better than Windows 7, particularly from a system administration standpoint (such as the new Task Manager, which provides a good deal more input than the Win7 version.

It just takes a little learning (or, perhaps, willingness to learn may be a better term), and I think perhaps Microsoft underestimated the "comfort zone" factor users had with Windows 7. But really, if you're familiar with Windows 7, Windows 8 feels a lot more like a major system update than it does a whole new version of Windows. There's are enough differences to make it its own animal, but enough similarities I don't feel totally lost, either, even when I first started using it.