[wvenable]

You aren't that weird. My daughter had a touch screen laptop and she also preferred Windows 8 to Windows 10 and missed the charms and the swipe in. I, however, could barely use her computer because of all the fingerprints!

Windows 8 on the "desktop" was a carrot for all the computer manufacturers who decided, that year, to put touch screens on everything.

A better strategy for Microsoft would have been to call it Surface OS and release it just for tablets (and phones) and focus on Metro and have the desktop as a cool add-on for their tablet OS. For the desktop, they should have done a Windows 8 that was more like 7 yet still have Metro but more as an add-on. This wouldn't have helped you as much but it would have been better for them overall.

[baldfat]

> A better strategy for Microsoft would have been to call it Surface OS and release it just for tablets

I say open up the ability to run optional desktop environments like we have in Linux. I can have my tiled window manager (I am sure 2% of users would LOVE it and 98% would HATE it) and then others could use one of the official desktop environments. No need for a whole OS version. Its bad enough we have Pro and non-Pro Windows 10.

[wvenable]

Seems like a recipe for confusion and fragmentation. It certainly hasn't helped Linux.

Although my suggestion sounds like two different operating systems, it's really just about how it's marketed. Fundamentally the technology doesn't have to be any different.

Of course, if your OS is flexible enough things like tiling can be done as add on: http://www.nurgo-software.com/products/aquasnap