I HATE Windows 8. This is the worst OS ever invented.

You don't think that I know that? I have been advocating the use of a third party start menu since I first loaded the developer preview and Classic Shell appeared.

Windows 8 is not a hateful piece of garbage. It is a very good OS that lacks an important feature as it appears out of the box. 

I tell anybody having problems with the 'Modern UI' to install a third party menu because it makes a huge difference and saves a lot of work putting Windows 7 back.

It was a mistake by the Windows 8 team to lose the Start Menu, but they made the decision and that was that, but it is so easily fixed and Windows 8 takes on a new and better life.

If it appears to not work correctly, then no other aspect of it matters enough to keep it, if the problem cannot be solved. That includes looks. Especially.

Not work correctly for you or not work correctly for anyone?  Not look right to you or not look right for anyone?

What's the difference? You want me to speak for others now?

Anyone who views it as I do, and I'm sure many do. Those of us who value function above form.

The parallels drawn above regarding cars are specific to PLAY scenarios, not to WORK scenarios.

Ask a UPS driver who's preparing to head off on his route whether he'd rather drive a truck with new paint, shiny and new, that ran poorly, or an older truck with faded paint that runs dependably. He'll say, "load up the old truck."

When there's work to do, hard workers know that appearances take a back seat to equipment that gets the job done.

Use Firefox and you get underlines.  Well, maybe that is a combination of things - not sure, but I get the underlines.

Not all PhD's run experiments.  I work at a college and interface daily with more PhD's than I care to count.  ;-)

Where did you run the experiment?  How many people did you run this experiment on?  Is testosterone levels the only measure you made?  How does your experiment proof or disprove anything that has been said in the complete response of mine you are referring to?

And I did not deny in any way that the way things appear was important to many people - but even the way things appear changes depending on where the subject of said information gathering is done and what the exposure of said appearance is.  In fact, if nothing else, I pointed out (with my car modification example) that appearance is important to many people.  All I said is that not everyone dislikes the appearance of Windows 8 - no more than everyone liking or disliking the appearance of a Hyundai or Bentley (or their performance.)

(You have a typo here too.. lol) 

I tell you how they connect--and by the way, all PhDs are supposed to run experiments of some sort--but not necessarily on people like I do.. even a philosopher will run experiments of some sort... 

My note on testosterone (a published paper available if you are in academia, done in Canada and not by me but friend) prooves that "appearance" matters more than we think. I have another one for ya--and then I have to get back to work.. lol:

People (enough to warrant the experiment to make it to extremely prestigeous papers/magazines in academia, like Nature or Science) were taken for experiments with wine. Some of the bottles were $2 cheap wines and others very expensive and famous wines. The prices were removed in one experiment, switched in another, and left the original in the 3rd.

The case where the prices remained unchanged, I believe 100% of the subjects tested chose the flavor of the most expensive wine. In the one where they swwitched the prices, something like 80% or more of the participants suddenly changed their taste buds and picked the one that was labeled to be the most expensive but in fact was the $2 wine... and in the experiment where the prices were completely removed, something like 60% of the people chose the $2 wine as better over the expensive ones.

The same study also ran experiments in the fMRI (and since you are in a univerisyt you know what that is). The taste test of the $2 versus the expensive wine shows that our brains also belong to the prices... when you think you are sipping the expensive wine but you are actually sipping the $2 one, your brain tells you to like it more... etc.

Hence... when I look at the Win 8 interface and I am thinking of a 2-year old kid enjoying this more than I do, I am convinced that Microsoft is goign to run into trouble if they feel that this will pass the $2 chuck test.. it won't. I hope this makes sense to you better now.

This is not a point of argument.. these are proven facts by many experiments and this is not an academic arena to discuss that.. Nonetheless... Microsoft should know that it doesn't take too long a time before an attorney will get smart enough to get a class action lawsuit going for the inability to make a simple choice: do I want this interface or not! Do I have to log in by creating a hotmail account or not!

And Microsoft has already had this battle lost once.. here it has a chance to correct things before this will become the second time... because it is only a matter of time before an attorney who is not a techie buys one and will not know what to do... just a matter of time...

Again - not all PhDs run experiments.  They may have RAN experiements to get their PhD, but after they earn the degree - there is no requirement to run experiments.

Not sure why this appearance thing is the discussion. Unless you can tell me everyone other than myself dislikes the appearance of Windows 8 - you have proven nothing with the line of discussion other than many people place importance on appearance - but what that appearance and importance level is differs per person, per location, per situation.

Many people did not want the Windows XP interface.  Many people did not want the Windows Vista/7 interface.  Many people prefer the Android interface to the iPhone.  OS X interface to Windows anything.  There are some hardcore people you can find in these very forums that prefer Windows 98 over everything else ever released and are - in fact - still using it at home, daily.

Some people will sue over anything they think they can make money on.  There have been so many lawsuits over technology in the last century, it's ridiculous.  SOme of them did bankrupt the company in question, some did not.  Some made the comapny the 'fool' and others the ones who brought the lawsuit (no matter the winner.)

Your opinion is important - maybe even to Microsoft.  It is *not* the only opinion, however. 

So, are you saying that since people can get Windows 8 Pro for 39.99 USD (right now) as opposed to the same upgrade having cost over 150 USD for the previous (Windows 7) OS - they will like it less because of that too?  ;-)

Use Firefox and you get underlines.  Well, maybe that is a combination of things - not sure, but I get the underlines.

Not all PhD's run experiments.  I work at a college and interface daily with more PhD's than I care to count.  ;-)

Where did you run the experiment?  How many people did you run this experiment on?  Is testosterone levels the only measure you made?  How does your experiment proof or disprove anything that has been said in the complete response of mine you are referring to?

And I did not deny in any way that the way things appear was important to many people - but even the way things appear changes depending on where the subject of said information gathering is done and what the exposure of said appearance is.  In fact, if nothing else, I pointed out (with my car modification example) that appearance is important to many people.  All I said is that not everyone dislikes the appearance of Windows 8 - no more than everyone liking or disliking the appearance of a Hyundai or Bentley (or their performance.)

(You have a typo here too.. lol) 

I tell you how they connect--and by the way, all PhDs are supposed to run experiments of some sort--but not necessarily on people like I do.. even a philosopher will run experiments of some sort... 

My note on testosterone (a published paper available if you are in academia, done in Canada and not by me but friend) prooves that "appearance" matters more than we think. I have another one for ya--and then I have to get back to work.. lol:

People (enough to warrant the experiment to make it to extremely prestigeous papers/magazines in academia, like Nature or Science) were taken for experiments with wine. Some of the bottles were $2 cheap wines and others very expensive and famous wines. The prices were removed in one experiment, switched in another, and left the original in the 3rd.

The case where the prices remained unchanged, I believe 100% of the subjects tested chose the flavor of the most expensive wine. In the one where they swwitched the prices, something like 80% or more of the participants suddenly changed their taste buds and picked the one that was labeled to be the most expensive but in fact was the $2 wine... and in the experiment where the prices were completely removed, something like 60% of the people chose the $2 wine as better over the expensive ones.

The same study also ran experiments in the fMRI (and since you are in a univerisyt you know what that is). The taste test of the $2 versus the expensive wine shows that our brains also belong to the prices... when you think you are sipping the expensive wine but you are actually sipping the $2 one, your brain tells you to like it more... etc.

Hence... when I look at the Win 8 interface and I am thinking of a 2-year old kid enjoying this more than I do, I am convinced that Microsoft is goign to run into trouble if they feel that this will pass the $2 chuck test.. it won't. I hope this makes sense to you better now.

This is not a point of argument.. these are proven facts by many experiments and this is not an academic arena to discuss that.. Nonetheless... Microsoft should know that it doesn't take too long a time before an attorney will get smart enough to get a class action lawsuit going for the inability to make a simple choice: do I want this interface or not! Do I have to log in by creating a hotmail account or not!

And Microsoft has already had this battle lost once.. here it has a chance to correct things before this will become the second time... because it is only a matter of time before an attorney who is not a techie buys one and will not know what to do... just a matter of time...

I am a "techie" and it is my career to do that - I try out things at stores or wait until a friend or neighbor have them for me to play with or someone at the place I work gets curious enough where work will drop the money on it so I can learn it and try it without cost to me.  Patience rarely causes issues with such things.  I read all the internet reviews, blogs.  I get opinions from people of all walks of life and after all that - if I want to - I purchase a product to use.

It's great that your comments are here to help.  I don't say you cannot have your opinion, but you state your opinion like it was right and everyone else is wrong.  Just because something is not to your liking or 1000 people's liking or 100,000 people's liking or 1 billion people's liking - the other 6 billion might be perfectly content.  Since this 'issue' is around the look and feel of an operating system - nothing extremely dangerous to life or liberty - the opinions *will* and do vary.

You said, "I can buy any other version.. but Win 8 is what I wanted for its speed."... I didn't know that Windows 8 is any faster than Windows 7 for everything.  Where was that stated?

You stated, "I did not realize that you cannot turn off these gadgets and log on and that I would have to end up starting my new experience by buying a software to remove the visible features of what makes Win 8 into Win 8."; yet here we are and obviously you were not the first to state a dislike with the menu system in Windows 8 in the year+ the pre-releases have been available to the general public or there would not be such utilities out already to modify it before your epiphany - so your ignorance of that would have to be caused by your hurry to get something without understanding it or doing much more than falling for marketing garbage.

Opinions are numerous.  A lot of people will only have opinions about the way things look and that is their only concern.  A lot of people will only have opinion about the way things function and that is their only concern.  A lot of people will want the best combination of look and function.  I cannot tell where you lie - although from this post - you seem to have cared about the combination more than anything else.  You wanted the speed of Windows 8 (although where you got the impression it was faster than other OSes, that is still to be determined) and the look of some other OS (I would call that an assumption - but given you state you didn't know you couldn't turn off all the gadgets - it's obvious you had some plan to make Windows 8 not look like Windows 8.)

Truthfully - I think if Microsoft is getting anything out of these forums - it's less phone calls for assistance.  If they are squeezing ideas out of the mess these forums become on any given day - their algorithms are fantastic *and* the results would be skewed towards the negative on everything they have ever put out (who comes to a help forum to say they need no help because everything they have works great and they just wanted to point out all the positive things in the interface?)

All of this is true Shenan but you are forgetting one huge thing: Microsoft has already lost a lawsuit when it installed IE such that some non-techies could not switch to use Chrome or whatever... I am waiting to see when the first lawyer buys Win 8 without a Windows Live ID and a hotmail account... just wait until that happens and all the dust will kick up into millions of dollars costing Microsoft.... 

Whether you are a techie or not... this is a business and for those who wait to see what others say... well... those are not the ones Microosoft will listen to. Those who jump in head first and try them AND tell their wisdom to others and to Microsoft are the ones that matter (or should matter) to Microsoft!

Who said I forgot that?  That's an aside and not even part of this conversation about looks that you started inside this already overgrown conversation.

As far as who Microsoft does/does not listen to - it should be their customers.  Those include more of the people who get their opinions from others before jumping in than those who jumped in first and gave said opinions.  Also - there are many ways to jump in first - as I already pointed out.  So the opinions of the many - not just the few - matter to Microsoft.

You cannot use these forums as a place to get the slew of opinions.  You don't go into a hospital to count how many people aren't sick or injured.  ;-)