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

Lenovo Brings Back Start Button to Windows 8

http://blog.laptopmag.com/lenovo-start-button-back-windows8

Lenovo Brings Back Start Button to Windows 8

http://blog.laptopmag.com/lenovo-start-button-back-windows8

So one hardware vendor listened to customers and installed one of the many applications that exist to do that (excuse the pun) "from the start" for new customers who buy their specific brand of product?

This is good.  Some OEM actually listening and doing what should have probably been done all along: asking their customers what they want instead of cookie cutting out the solution that makes them the quickest buck in the shortest amount of time.

Although, honestly, most people did not complain to the vendor they purchased the entire computing package from or just return their system demanding a different operating system if/when they decided they did not like Windows 8 - but instead complained to Microsoft and kept BOTH products.  If more people had just returned their products to the vendors they bought it from, then the vendor and Microsoft would have felt the pinch and Microsoft cannot sell their products in the bulk they do without these vendors, eh?  The way things went down so far: here's my money, I hate your product so much... No, no,  no - keep my money - I am just letting you know I am holding my breath until I get what I want.  Or, better yet, I'll let you know I dislike it and spend more money on one of your older products to get the new computer I paid the vendor for (and has my money without any indication I am unhappy with the full package they sold me as their customer) to a point where I not only like the hardware they sold me, but the software *they* (didn't) sold me as well.

Sure, vendors have supposedly sold less, etc. - but in the end, was it really Windows 8?  We won't know for a while and it is probably a mixture of economy already in a hole combined with current functionality vs. the ability and cost to get back to that same level of functionality - which has always been a complaint.  Windows XP (the supposed shining star in these arguments) and Windows 7 (the second brightest star in these arguments) had the same complaints about being 'so different' and 'difficult to navigate' and so on.

So some vendor (Lenovo) has finally decided to listen to the people who are/were spending their money with them and keeps them in business and do something smart.  Not surprising - but could have happened six months ago if people weren't so passive with their needs.

Ken...this response is lame! I hate Windows 8. Been trying to learn it and get comfortable with it for hours. Need a solution. It would be great on a touch screen or tablet, but that's not what I have.

WOW, the latest news about Ballmer is amazing...  but do we have to wait 12 months?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/technology/ballmer-announces-retirement-from-microsoft.html?pagewanted=all

I don't know if this is good news for Windows users or not?

There is a difference between arrogance and "staying the course", it might be subtle but "staying the course" says means that you don't loose focus on the original goal (i.e. to make Windows great) while arrogance is to stick to a half baked GUI saying "learn to use it".

I would like to see Ballmer stay and fix the mess that is Windows 8. But maybe he is still too arrogant to admit there is a problem than to be humble enough to stay fix it?  I think he needs a visionary by his side to help him.  It is obvious he does not have such support at the moment.

I really doubt that Ballmer is the person who designed Windows 8, the real problem is whoever did designed Windows 8 in the first place (unless they were forced to design it).  I really hope the team who put Windows 8 together leaves along with Ballmer, and that someone goes and rescues Microsoft's User Interface Design Team out of dungeon under Redmond that they were put in, because I am convinced they were locked-up when they first complained about the Windows 8 GUI, it is the only logical explanation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why-steve-ballmer-failed/278986/

There is a major difference between the money made from new and innovative products that create emerging markets to that gained from supporting an existing and saturated market. Just because a market is not growing, does not mean the market does not exist.

Apple made a huge fortune from a Smart phone that worked (Microsoft had tried smart phones much earlier but failed).  Now that the market is nearly saturated and competition has caught up, even Apple is having trouble to "re-innovate” the smart phone.  It is way too late for Microsoft to think they can step in and somehow do it all over again. That emerging market has emerged, unless someone can really re-innovate it.

The Tablet market is different to the Smart Phone market.  When the iPad came out, technology would not support personal computers as tablets so Apple had to create a new light weight OS based on a smart phone OS.  While a smart phone OS supports a lot of home and social media users, it does not support the corporate market. The corporate market and many other uses (like myself) want a real personal computer for their Tablet PC.  SciFi movies last century showed people using real computers as a tablet device, or even as smaller devices.  Microsoft still has a good chance in the Tablet market, if they do it right.

There is a need for real computers. And a need for real computers as Tablets. The world has yet to realise the potential for ultralight-weight, very flat (like paper) computers.

So, please Ballmer and Microsoft, don't give up on Tablet PCs (but you can throw away Metro, I won't mind). Please realise that it took years to refine the Desktop experience of Windows 7. To throw this all away for Metro was really "stupid".   If Metro was a better interface and Metro apps were more functional than their Desktop partners it would have been a winner, but they were not and still are not.

I have some great visions on what I would like to see in Windows Tablet PCs.  The Surface Pro is a great start, the problem is that the hardware from Intel does not yet really support it as much as we would like. We need the power of an i7 but the battery life greater than that of the Atom. It is just not technically possible yet.

Lack of innovation. The i7 CPU has not significantly delivered any great gains since it first was released.  There is little incentive for people to upgrade.  The Tablet PCs which were released in 2012 were using chipsets that just could not effectively support the Tablet PC concept.  Future advances such as human interaction with computers (voice recognition and body gestures) will require far great processing power than we have today.

I get frustrated by so much of the commentary on Windows 8 in the Media.  They make candid comments without looking at the wider scene.  The PC is not dead (yet), it is just not an emerging market, it is a saturated market.  Bill Gates is correct, Microsoft needs to get into the cloud, but the way to do this is not to kill Windows and the desktop, the way it to open a new niche market and let people migrate when they are ready.  Apple did not kill OSX when they launched iOS, they simply have both, allowing people (the market) to decide which they preferred.  In fact most people I have seen have chosen both, to have a MAC desktop/laptop and several iPads and phones of differing form factors.

I want people reading this to comment on, “How would you fix Windows 8 ?”, “How would you redesign Windows for both Tablets and Desktops ?”  Or is this just asking too much.

My quick answer is to have two modes in Windows 8, one a Desktop mode and secondly a Tablet mode.  Like  StarDock’s Start8 and ModernMix, desktop users could have a “desktop mode” to view all applications in a multiple overlayed windowed desktop (with Aero, please). While Tablet uses could have a full screened Tiled Start Menu with full screen apps.  Then most of us could be happy. 

While I hate working full screen, I do see a lot of Windows users who do work 90% of the time with their applications full screen.

But the big point would have to be “choice”.  The major lack of choice in altering how Tiles look, the lack of choice to choose between a Full Screen menu and the Windows 7 style menu was not appreciated.

The second major failing of Windows 8, was that all its apps and features were only half completed.  To me Metro apps lacked the sophistication, functionality and usability of their Desktop counterparts.  To gain acceptance, they have to offer more functionality and be more usable, not less.

What I would be happy with is to take all the performance and device improvements of Windows 8 and update it into Windows 7, releasing Windows 7.5.  Then with a touch pen, I could happily use a Tablet PC with a Desktop GUI.

On another related topic, I have a concern that the coming Bay Trail chipset may not be powerful enough to run Adobe Photo Shop at any useable speed.  I have been pinning my hopes on the Bay Trail providing an 800g Tablet with both battery life (12 hours continuous work) and enough processing power so that our graphic designers could work both in and outside the office.

Summary:  By November, I want to be able to buy a “Windows” Tablet PC (i.e. not Metro) that can run Adobe Photo Shop for 12 hours without recharge, weigh less than 1kg, has Pen input, has keyboard, and supports Mobile Broadband. Can anyone please deliver this?  Maybe a Bay Trail Yoga ?

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Die Metro, DIE DIE DIE!   (sorry, my frustrations got the better of me).

Ken...this response is lame! I hate Windows 8. Been trying to learn it and get comfortable with it for hours. Need a solution. It would be great on a touch screen or tablet, but that's not what I have.

 

Your choices as I see it with Windows 8/8.1:

Learn to use it the way it was designed.  No - it is not like Windows 7.  Yes - some parts of it would be easier on a touchscreen.  Yes - it can be used without a touchscreen, but with a few days to a few weeks learning curve, dependent on the individual.  It's not likely to go away in the next 12-18 months nor will it probably even have any drastic look/feel changes for that amount of time after 8.1's release to the public (beyond any changes 8.1 makes - which really are not going back to the XP/Vista/7 interface at all.)

Make it look/act as much like Windows 7 as possible with one of many third party applications (some free, some cost...)

http://www.eightforums.com/customization/12971-list-start-menu-replacements-windows-8-a.html

You can get the Start menu back and disable some of the gestures and boot straight to the desktop with some of those.  Truthfully - for most people this is more than enough.  Sure, there are the people who say, "why should I have to run a third party application to make my OS more usable" but then again - they do it already most likely.  They may use an alternative web browser, some office suite, some video editing application, some image editing application, some audio player or editor, various antivirus and antimalware applications, etc.  All those are changing the way they interact with the OS.  Maybe not at the look/feel level - but the Linux crowd has been doing it for years and the Windows crowd has always had a subset of people who modify their desktop layout to extremes.  *shrug*

Install a different operating system on the computer you have *given* the manufacturer of said computer or the manufacturers of the individual components in said computer have drivers for the different operating system.  If you have Windows 8 Pro and you happen to have a legitimate license for Windows 7 Professional - it can be a no-cost (other than time and effort) venture.  If you have a full unused license [never used if OEM, not used currently if retail] of any other version of Windows (likely Windows 7 would be the best choice for the age of the hardware and staying not so far behind the curve) - you can use it to do your install with the caveat already mentioned about hardware support.  You can use one of many flavors of linux, same caveat about the hardware drivers apply but add the functionality being probably almost as foreign to most as Windows 8 is - ikely more considering a lot of things you are used to just won't exist in the way you have gotten used to them, if at all.

Return the product, make sure it is well known and documented to those you return it to as well as the manufacturer of the product as a whole WHY you returned it.  Who knows - they might even offer to downgrade to Windows 7 for you (unlikely, but not unheard of.)  If that doesn't happen (more likely) you can look around and get a new or recently refurbished/off-lease Windows 7 system probably for less money than you spent on the Windows 8 system (if it was a whole system and not just a software upgrade.)

If all you did was purchase the Windows 8 upgrade and installed it on your current system with an older Windows OS - return Windows 8 for a full refund and restore your system to prior OS.  There's not PUSH to move to Windows 8/8.1 - certainly very few (if any) software vendors require it for the major "non-Windows Store" applications they make and I have not found many peripherals (none actually) that require Windows 8 to work.  However, you have to do this one quick.  As you stated your attempt has only been "for hours", you may still be okay.  It's like 30 days or something?