That would only happen if they got rid of Metro and made the OS smaller, lighter on resources, faster, and less dependent on outside third party apps.

Spot on.

No worries Kona. I wasn't pointing anything at you. Sorry if it looked that way. It honestly wasn't directed at you

a device comes with an operating system, be it a phone, laundry machine, laptop, tv or game console. usually the device manufacturer provides software updates for the hardware. the concept of selling an operating system in 2014 is anachronistic.

it seems like MS is realizing this now. after all who will use services like OneDrive that are deeply integrated in the operating system if nobody uses the os?

i wrote "it seems" because nobody here knows what their plans really are. maybe this new Windows-flavour is intended to run on low-budget devices, some kind of Bingbooks perhaps.

it appears you (or those friends that leave their computers in your house) regularly make impulse purchases of electronic waste on craigslist. imho it would be smarter to save and buy a new device.

but congratulations on at least choosing to buy a car over a computer. i just hope you wont buy it on craigslist.

You are wrong. No one made any impulse purchase on Craigslist. The car we bought came from Craigslist and runs just fine. Perhaps you should do more research.

To you maybe, and the rest of the haters who won't give it a chance, but to myself and millions of others, Windows 8 is a great OS that's fast and reliable... better than Win 7.  And if my 80 y/o mother can learn to use it, then it can't be that hard to grasp... yet I keep hear twits moaning about how it's so hard to use/get accustomed to. 

I say twits [and then I'm being polite] because my mother is only semi-PC literate and manages to use her Win 8 machine without too many issues.  That, then, suggests to me there's a lot of so-called PC literate twits out there who prefer to whine rather than use the space between their ears for thinking and problem solving....

I could say more but it's probably best I exit the thread and leave you all with the following...

People are more Ovine than sheep a lot of the time.... meaning a handful of so-called experts put the mocker on Win 8 early, and the world stays away in droves... droves of sheep.

Bye.

Win 8 was a flop because of its GUI. After that Win 8 was a huge improvement over Win 7. With 8.1 I think I might go back as they improved the GUI.

More or less agree. I'm still running Win7 Pro 64-bit and it works for everything that I need it to do at this point. Win8 GUI was a huge turn-off for me. I skipped Vista and went from XP to Win7, fully expect to skip Win8 as well as there's not really a reason for me to upgrade at this point, at least not a large enough reason anyways.

It seems to have escaped you that many like myself have tried Windows 8 and hated it, and nothing to do with following the pack.

It maybe a little faster, but that is no consolation.  Just idly surfing brings up one after another problems that people have with 8 and it's compatibility.  It is simply vista 2, and all the arguments in the world will not change this.  Even MS know that win 8 was a mistake, you can tell that by the way they are shuffling about.