Perhaps the reviewer wasn't trying hard enough to get used to it. Mind you I tried the release candidate for several weeks and came to many of the same conclusions that the reviewer did. Had I owned a touch screen I might have come to different conclusions but I still felt as if I wasn't being allowed much control of my own computer.

WhiteTruckMan Nothing wrong with Vista when I was using it and in fact I found that Windows Explorer was more useful in Vista than it is in Win7. I found Win8 to be another step further than Win7 in the 'you must do it the Microsoft way', or not at all.

I think that a lot hangs on the Surface Pro.

If the Business Community takes to it, then the laptop is dead as a Mass Market Device. OK Laptop users, I know that you'll fight to the death to protect your baby but I'm afraid that it'll be sidelined by progressively swifter Surface Pro (type)Tablets. If you're on the Road, you don't need huge Hard Drives or Disk Drives, after all, most of it's available from the Cloud now.

W8 RT is a totally different operating system, designed for a different chip and although it bares an exact resemblance to the PC version it is not, as far as I know, compatible in any way.

I'm still waiting for my Windows 8 license, so unfortunately I can't give a view based on personal experience at the moment. What I can do is remind everyone about previous Windows launches, when we saw lots of derogatory comment within a day of the release.

The time to start making judgements about a new operating system is probably after a few weeks of use, rather than 6 hours.

Windows 8 is obviously primarily aimed at touch screen users, and anyone who didn't realise that before taking the plunge cannot have read any of the millions of words written about the software over the past twelve months or so. If you want to run it with a mouse you'll need to spend a little bit of time on the learning curve. Once you've done that you'll realise that beneath the unfamiliar tiled interface is a pretty nifty version of Windows, albeit one with some differences.

At least, that's what our reviewer thought He awarded it 4.5 stars out of 5.0

If microsoft bundled/included a nice 'cloudless' [BLUE SKY] jukebox touchscreen music/video player with 'The Surface' along with 'fingerprint' security when 'pawing' the screen ... then that would encourage me to buy one... w8 could be a winner!

What I can do is remind everyone about previous Windows launches, when we saw lots of derogatory comment within a day of the release.

ME, Vista?

Microsoft goes in cycles, in my opinion

95 good for it's day

98 not much better

98se very good

ME a disaster

XP excellent

Vista pretty poor upgrade

windows 7 very good and stable

windows 8 Is it due not to be not popular?