[_delirium]

Have you tried Windows recently? I haven't taken the plunge to move my relatives to Linux yet, but my experiences supporting relatives trying to use some mixture of Vista, Win7, and Win8 are extremely bad. I feel there was a period when many "normal" people did figure out Windows 95/98/XP and it could be taken as a default graphical computer interface. But the experience they gained has bitrotted as Microsoft has changed things around, and the current situation is a mess.

[pistle]

All my relatives use Win7 or Win8 and the Win8 ones are the happiest, love OneDrive, etc. etc. My sister then switched their phones over to Lumia 1020s because of Win8 and bought a Yoga 2 Pro. Her comment: "Wait. So what's all the fuss about? I love how this stuff all just works together and it's pretty much exactly like Win7."

I guess I should just be proud of the genius that is my sister who figured it all out on her own. I think I've answered 2-3 questions about Win Phone and one, my favorite, about their old printer.

Her: "What do we have to do to get it to work?" Me: "Have you plugged it in yet?" Her: "Daaaamn. It just worked."

[sanderjd]

Interesting. My anecdotes are different. Windows 7 and Win Phone made sense, while Windows 8 was a nightmare. I guess YMMV.

[m_mueller]

It's not even just users I support, I have difficulties with win8 myself. As an example every time I open up a metro windows, there is a big dialog at the right side saying 'swipe left to start (begin swiping from outside the screen) - I can't get rid of it with my touchpad or keyboard or anything. Could be because the VM doesn't send in these gestures, but heck, how could they just assume that everyone is able to do these kinds of gestures? - even for accessibility reasons this is terrible, an area where MS has been pretty good in the past.