Curious how many of the people that are excited about these things, how many have actually used Windows 8, either on a traditional machine or on a x86 tablet? You can download the RC now and try it, absolutely free, right? Takes a few minutes to setup, and works just fine on any VM out there. The release version won't be much different than the current version.
It's an unmitigated disaster, a complete hybrid bastard child of an OS that has you flopping between desktop and tile mode, doing neither particularly well in the combination it's presented to the user in. In the current incarnation it's a complete hybrid, you cannot even really force it to solely run in traditional desktop GUI form. Yes, they actually removed the registry hacks and other ways that people had found to force it into Desktop mode in the public beta version, in the latest release.
There are some very valid improvements to the Win 8 *desktop* portion of the OS, but it's essentially (the desktop portion) Windows 7 and even MS will tell you that. The Metro UI is the thing they are really trying to hype people up for on this one, and it's simply awful to use for a desktop system. Does it work ok on a tablet? Sure, it does - but it's (Win 8 x86) not being marketed as solely a tablet OS. It stinks on desktops, just like iOS would stink on a Mac desktop, but you have the added insult of knowing W8 does have a full Desktop experience in there somewhere, but it's one you can't either pick or choose to run wholly, it's just offered to you in hybrid ways. I hope they clue in and make the Metro stuff entirely optional, but indications at the moment are that they won't. I find that staggering, and I also believe Win 8 will go down in history as the worst/least popular MS OS since Windows ME, lol.
This is not a matter of people not accepting that computers are progressing to more and more simple interfaces, similar to tablet OS's. They are going more and more to tablet UI types all the time, and I don't deny that. But MS thinking people are going to be productive on a traditional desktop mouse and keyboard system with this Metro UI is just absolutely laughable if you even spend a brief amount of time using Win 8.
I hope they improve it before release, but as it sits now it comes off as a complete bodge job, completely unwieldy to use as a desktop OS. The tablet, or Metro side of the OS is usable - but we're also in a world of the iPad and decent ICS Android tablets. I've used a modern x86 tablet with Windows 8 recently, and found no compelling reason why ANYONE would want one, even if it was half the price (Samsung Slate, 64GB, with W8 RC on it - a $1300 tablet). Who is going to spend that kind of money on a tablet that offers a third of the battery life that a competing product does? Heck, even the best of the current Windows tablets (IMHO), the Asus Eee Slate gets under *TWO* hours battery life under load, when an iPad gets near *NINE* hours under the same circumstances. It's a portable device, battery life is a major factor here. When a laptop can offer more battery life than these things, why on earth would you even consider a tablet?
I'm sure some people will gobble up the Windows 8 tablets. For some, assuming they get the battery life better on them, they might be an ideal solution, at least in the x86 models, but it'll all come down to cost, IMHO.
Win 8 RT is simply too gimped for any serious, professional enterprise use.
Unless they are significantly cheaper than a low end Ultrabook, I simply don't see them flying off the shelves, and I found the experience of using one to be completely useless and frustrating. But hey, they are offering an add on touch pen for it, just like your Palm Pilot had! :laugh1: