I must admit you are the only one I have ever heard say that Vista was "rock solid" Snow.

Law of Averages means even Vista will be rock-solid for at least one person.....

....just so happens it was Snow....

The 'Metro' way to do things is utter crap.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply deluded and blindly following MS's [mis]direction.

A decade or so of Windows evolution was logical.  Profound change just for the sake of change is commercial suicide.  MS thoroughly understands that - NOW,

First they developed the wheel....then they [with Metro] knocked the edges off it and made it square...so it wouldn't roll away.....f'wits....

I'm happy for you and anyone who is ok with those OSs...I tried W8, and really didn't like it even after after 2 weeks.

I must admit, I have never heard of anyone that thought Vista was good.  I would almost go as far as to say that my worldview has difficulty accomodating someone that says that Vista is good.

Windows 8 is a different matter entirely.

Vista had a really annoying UAC setup, which I can understand because Microsoft has always had OSs that people love to write viruses for and stuff and UAC goes a long way to preventing things like that.  Even though every OS is basically just as vulnerable to attack, Microsoft always got the most flak by way of having the most market share in the OS department.  Vista did a lot to combat that, way more than any other OS, but they went kinda too far in the other direction.

Windows 7 was basically the same thing as Vista with some small enhancements here and there and making the UAC way less annoying.

Windows 8 is kinda just like Windows 7 except that it took away the start menu and added tiles instead, a change which turns a lot of people off but is just fine for everyone else.  No real bugs or complaints other than that.  Seems to be really good in general and most problems come from 3rd party drivers and programs that aren't coded right.

Really, most problems with Windows were always 3rd party stuff not coded right, but Microsoft has just been trying to find ways to deal with that without having the problems crash the whole PC.  They have been doing really good with that, especially in Windows 8.  Now a lot of times the OS will segregate a program and if it crashes then it will only kill that little segregated part of the OS and not affect anything else.  We aren't all the way there, but MSFT has made a lot of progress.

The biggest thing that MSFT has to deal with is that they want to institute change very rapidly and users don't want to experience change that rapidly.  MSFT is underestimating how much people are attached to the old stuff they are used to using.

If it were possible to just force everybody in the world to use Windows 8 and they didn't have an option to stick with the old stuff, then everybody would have gotten over the differences pretty quickly, but instead what you have is companies like Stardock cashing in on the huge number of people who want their old stuff back.

I am not even really against that so much, but I do think everybody would be better off if the entire planet upgraded to Windows 8 and people just installed Start8 if it was really such a big deal to them.  The old OSs really have very little value atm and MSFT could do a lot of more productive things with the resources it is using to support the old OSs. 

Back in reality, dismissing an opponent's argument out of hand is such a bad debate tactic as to make sure you aren't taken seriously by anyone.

Also in reality, MSFT was making pretty large changes the whole time and had pretty good reasons for most of them.  They weren't actually changing things just so they can say it was changed.  The things they changed were (at least in their mind) improvements.

We can sit here and argue about whether Person A really wants their PC and their Tablet to have the same exact UI and we might come to different conclusions, but MSFT's stance is that they can spend more time/effort on new functionality if they have to support fewer numbers of OSs.

They could have also tried to just make Windows 8 look like the UI that comes standard on stuff like iPads and Android phones where you can gesture to move sideways to additional screens or whatever, but I am not sure I would like that more.  In fact, I wish my Andriod phone didn't have any screens I could get to by gesturing sideways from the home screen.  I either want to be on the home screen or I want to go into my app list, and those screens that show up when I gesture sideways annoy me.

Anyway, I think I would prefer the way that the Metro UI works now as compared to having my Android OS on my PC.  It would kinda be interesting to see what Android would look like on my PC, but I think I would go back to Windows 8 after trying it out and I kinda wish I had Windows 8 on my phone actually.

No, people would simply decide NOT to adopt Win 8.  The only thing driving 8 sales is OEM and a few nutters [myself included] curious/eager to check out whatever is 'new'.

Did that....and am still 99.9% of the time still on 7.

What I meant is to make everyone upgrade whether they wanted to or not.

Like if MSFT just decided it wasn't going to get XP users to pay for a new OS anyway and just gave it to them for free, DLd and installed in the background like a service pack.  One day people just wake up and they are using Windows 8 all of a sudden.

Sort of takes away the right of the consumer to run what software they wish to. 

Also what does the user do when most of the software they are running is not compatible with the new OS?  I would imagine the user base would not be very happy.

I want some of whatever you're on....tee hee....

They can still choose to run a MSFT OS or not or whatever software they want.  Pretty much every software that people still use works on Windows 7 and Windows 8.

It's just that whole thing about people always wanting what they want and not really considering how what they do affects anyone else.

The older the OS is on a computer, the more likely it's part of a botnet etc.  XP was no sort of secure and 95/98 security was basically zero, in contrast Windows 7/8 generally have reasonable firewalls built in.  All that sort of thing.  Not saying 8 is "secure", but it is more secure than anything else they have released to date.

Seriously?

First, that would negate freedom of the market, and the freedom to choose to use what one wants. The reaction to that would destroy MS.

Second, the majority of machines aren't touch screen, and their specs couldn't handle W8/8.1.

As for XP?

MS chooses not to support it for several reasons, among them profit. There is nothing "wrong" about XP. There are more modern OSs, but just as people have free choice - or not so free if they can't afford to upgrade machines and OSs, MS is free to develop other OSs and sell them, and support what they choose for their own reasons.

Also, read this: http://www.neowin.net/news/china-wants-microsoft-to-extend-windows-xp-support-past-april-8th

There are many computers in China.

What you say about the security of older OSs is true, but it is also a function of browsing habits and the configuration of the policies on that computer, as well as having appropriate security software. Face it, the cost of software/movies/games and the desire to get something for free causes people to resort to unscrupulous behaviors and the infection of their machines (their kids could also be guilty of infecting their machines).

In any case, I enjoy W7 a great deal more than W8.

It is also a fact that MS will most likely bring back the start menu in some form because people want to work in a way they are familiar with and not be forced to adopt someone else's ideas about how they should work.

In the end, the OS is meant to make computing easier and more efficient for the user. 

I'm not the only one who thinks this way: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-8-2-concept

Not true. Not even close. I would say 8 is less secure since most newbies to 8 have no idea how to install a decent AV program. I would say it goes by a case to case basis. Saying what you said is just plain arrogant.

Install of IE 10 [in Win 7] broke FSX...so I went back to 9.

Hint.... BOTH IE 10 and FSX are MS programs.

You argue W8 is less secure based off the fact that most people don't know how to install AV...I find this ironic since W8 is the first OS to come with AV out of the box...

Perhaps you meant to imply Windows Defender is crap and most people aren't smart enough to install a different AV on W8...I think installing is hardly the issue when I see computers all the time throwing warnings "Your AV is out of date"....anecdotal evidence, perhaps, though most of this thread is such...

They would have one of those by default if Symantec and other AV makers weren't threatening to sue the @*#( out of them for anti-competitive practices just like the browsers did.  The browsers lost and IE is still part of the core OS, but that doesn't mean the AV makers will lose.  The AV makers should lose and we should have built in AVs (because it is better for the end users), but it is a big enough threat that MSFT hasn't taken that step yet.  Personally, I hope they do.  It is a joke that consumers are not protected because one company is threatening to sue another one.

As for people not having any idea how to install an AV program... How is that different for past OSs?  They didn't know how to do it before and forget now that Windows 8 is out.  In fact, Windows 8 makes it easier than ever before.  Windows 8 reminds you if you don't have an Anti-Virus installed and you can just go into the MS Store and type in "anti virus" and boom there are dozens of choices clicking on them goes straight to their download with instructions page.

In prior OSs you just had to do a web search and hope you randomly picked a good one.  To some extent you have to do that now, but nothing is going to make it into the MS Store listing that actually installs viruses on your PC instead of installing anti-viruses which is a step up from the hope and pray method.  The hope and pray method is still there for those who want to use it as well, so Windows 8 is no worse than anything prior.

My PC isn't touch screen either, I don't see what that has to do with it.

Also, making computing easier and more efficient doesn't mean keeping the same UI indefinitely.

I am all for leaving something in if it is better that it is left in, I just don't accept "because that is how I have always done it" as a reason to keep something in.

As for not being forced to adopt someone elses ideas about how we should work, did phones not give us completely new UIs that we accepted without question?  For all the people that bought Apple PCs because it had an apple logo on it, did they not get a new UI because of the way Apple thought they should work?  People get hit with new UIs all the time and it is only a problem when it happens in Windows?

There will always be people doing illegal things, but that doesn't mean Windows 8 isn't more secure than prior OSs.  How many of those China PCs are running illegal copies of XP, btw?  I don't see why MSFT should support their piracy habit.  If they want to then it's cool, but I really don't think they should be focused on China's stance in regards to supporting XP.

I just happen to be against giving consumers a choice when there is a high likelihood they will make a choice that hurts other people.  If they just hurt themselves then I wouldn't care, but that isn't how it works.  I don't want to be hurt because of somebody else's bad decision making.  There is enough of that as it is.

Also, my PC with Windows 8 boots up faster than it did with Windows 7.   If I installed XP it would probably be slower than Windows 8 too. There was hideous amounts of bloat with prior OSs, but the current trend is that newer OSs are faster than the old ones.  A big problem in Windows 8 development was that computers were booting too fast and you couldn't even go into the BIOS anymore because the screen went by so fast you couldn't read the key and press it before the opportunity was gone.