said by buckingham:said by MichelR:It's actually not that bad at all and it's easy to break out of the "Metro" nonsense (though if you happen to have a touch device, that works very well). The actual OS is pretty fast and stable. I have it in a Parallels VM, though most of my Windows software is running in a Windows 7 VM.
While I agree that there are ways to make Win8 more usable by normal humans...a large percentage of folks who buy computers are not very savvy about doctoring things and too many of them buy for price and don't end up with a touch screen for which Win8 is optimized for. That's where the struggle comes. Win7 is still more friendly for the masses right now...Win8 will have a better go when touch interfaces become more ubiquitous.
I also use Win7 under Parallels in Coherence mode. "Mac look" on my personal machine but "Win look" on my work machine because of an issue with (Windows) PowerPoint display in that mode that is yet to be fixed by Parallels.
I agree - most people don't know they can do it, let alone how. A friend of mine was looking for someone yesterday to downgrade her new Win 8 laptop to Win 7. She didn't want to fiddle with it - she can do amazing things in PhotoShop, but doesn't care much about learning the OS stuff, and that's most likely the case for the majority of users.
I also run the "Mac look" here because I have a couple of programs that kind of misbehave if I configure Parallels to use the full-blown Windows 7 look. Also Windows uses less juice in that mode, so that helps if you're running a lot of stuff on your machine like I do.
