[james-skemp]

Meh. I can.

Windows 8 works quite well on both of my touch capable laptops, my gaming rig, and old 4-5 year development machine.

With 8.1 the Start button is back, but pressing the Windows key on the keyboard and selecting one of the pinned applications, or typing for search, works perfectly.

It took a while for me to put aside my feeling that things had to stay how they were, but once I did (touch capable device helped) I liked it. A lot.

I hope 10 refines things further. With the cost of touch capable Windows machines so low, the installed OS needs to work.

Edit: and if they can improve startup times even further with 10? Wow. Windows 8 was already faster than 7 on the same machines, even older machines and on non-SSD drives.

[aceperry]

I can't wait. I can't use Win8 because the interface sucks so much on a real laptop. What was MS thinking? And I also hope they speed up the startup time, because it's definitely not faster than win7. In fact, all it does is show the "desktop" quicker, but you can't do anything until the little circle stops spinning, and that takes just as long as win7.