[hxf148]

I think the hate is a bit reactionary and the popular argument to take because well it's the Internet and seemingly hates change.

The Metro layer is the most useful Start Menu yet and the Explorer / Desktop ui is there as usual, faster than ever. It certainly is a presentation change when you first load it up but I predict that most people will get the hang of it pretty quickly. I did. I don't feel much of a disconnect honestly. It's just a bit different but not in a bad way overall.

It's a OS ready for new / touch devices yet to come and will probably run apps from 1990 if you really need it. Windows 7 was the perfection of Windows 95 and this feels like the progress that comes after that.

[commandar]

I disagree. If there's a reactionary element here, it's the Windows 8 design. It's Microsoft trying to shoehorn mobile elements into their desktop OS because they're not competitive in the mobile market.

Having used W8 for a few months now, the problem is that the end product is half-baked, inconsistent, and confusing.

I suppose you can call that reactionary hate of new UIs, but I'm a guy that used OS X when it was still running on PowerPC, was an early proponent of the UI changes in Vista, always thought the nerd hate for GNOME2 when it first came out was silly and thinks that the current hate for Unity is equally so, still thinks that WebOS was the most usable mobile OS to be released, etc.

I've spent the past decade going out of my way to expose myself to as many new interfaces as I can get my hands on, and I'm generally quite receptive to change. Outside of the improved Explorer, I haven't been able to find very much at all to like about Windows 8.