I do like it. Windows 8 is a huge improvement from Windows 7.

How so? I still haven't heard of one thing that Win8 does better than Win7 and, at least so far, I have no more interest in upgrading any of my computers than I had with Windows ME. I have one computer dedicated to music production, one that is my "general purpose" computer that runs a variety of office-related products, utilities, graphics and video editing software, and one that is a media computer connected to my HD TV. What does Win8 offer that would make me want to switch.

You mean "shiny and new" is not good enough?

For me, the big things are: faster booting, more secure (secure bios) and syncing of settings between Windows 8 machines.

Nope.

Two of three of my main computers have SSD drives (as does my laptop). They boot plenty fast. As for syncing settings, I can't see how that would be helpful. My machines do different things for me, and thus have settings individualized for the tasks they perform. For me, the downside of Win8 is its "app" focus and "pasted on" approach to traditional programs, i.e. those that actually do the work for which I have general purpose computers.

I don't have any interest in social apps and, though I surf the web (including visiting FT) regularly, that's not why I have 4-core machines with multi-terabyte RAID drives. I use my computers to write, record and edit music, not to listen to it -- I have a good stereo and an iPod for that. I use my computers as digital darkrooms, for pixel-level editing and restoration of photographs, not for looking at other people's photographs -- I can do that with any netbook. I use my computer for writing musicals, lyrics and legal documents, not for reading -- I have a tablet for reading books.

I do use my media computer for watching movies. However, the media-playing programs that I use allow fine-tuning of video and audio parameters, and I also use this machine for high-quality capture and digitization of analog video.

Win8 might appeal to those who spend most of their time on tablets. I use my tablet a lot, but my computers far more. The kinds of things I use computers for can't be done better on tablets, if at all, and a table operating system is a negative, not an upgrade, for my computers. A marginally faster boot-time makes no difference to a multi-hour working session and, though I'm certainly open to alternatives to a mouse and keyboard, a touch screen is a hindrance, not a benefit, on a vertical monitor.

No, thanks. I still think Win8 will be a memorable flop akin to WinME, Bob and Clippy.

Besides the start menu (which I understand has various utilities to 'fix' this, if i don't like it) are there any standout things that Win 8 Pro won't do that Win 7 would?

I have 2 scenarios:
- as a new virtual machine on an i7 Macbook Air, so I can take my Win only things like Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc
- as a clean install on an old Core 2 Duo laptop currently running XP
(or possibly the 1 VM image being used by both depending on which machine I'm on)

I don't have Win 7 or 8

Licensing-wise, it brings Bitlocker down to the Pro license vs. Ultimate/Enterprise only on Windows 7.

Trying it on a VM is a good way to go. The two tries I've made so far have driven me nuts.

For me: boot time, speed, stability, reduced freeze / crash behavior. For the latter, XP was Windows' high water mark. Nothing since then has worked as well. I can learn new usability conventions but I do not want bloat, and I hate having to buy more horsepower to support zero-value cosmetic enhancements (cf. Aero). Sync issues not so big a deal for me as there is very little Venn overlap in my device use profiles except for email, which I don't need W8 to sort. Still unconvinced.

Have read a lot about Windows 8 but am still unconvinced. For me, going from Windows XP to Windows 7 was phenomenal and the best thing about it has been the improved error handling. And the learning curve was substantially cut down by using Classic Shell.

That's odd; in my experience Vista/7 are vastly more reliable than XP was (once about the initial 60 days worth of Vista bugs were fixed... that OS was NOT ready for release on day 1, even by MS standards -- since 7 was really a "SP2" Vista with a UI reskin and some memory-use fixes, it was a much, much more stable initial release.)

App virtualization, a better internal security model, system restore that actually works (although it's rarely necessary), and a lot more "out of the box" drivers make a big difference.

You do realize that's trivial to turn off in Vista/7?

So I've been using W8 since it came out, and I've been pleased with the overall performance of it. The boot time is great, the stability has been good as well. W7 wasn't bad, but I ran into more "hangups" between singing in and actually being able to use it was taking a lot longer.

Office seems to behave better too. Outlook seems to be quicker when it comes to checking things as well.

I've been happy overall, I've got a netbook at home that I should probably put it on. Even with the lack of a touch screen its easier to use. Maybe because I'm used to having an Android phone and tablet, but this has been a good choice.

(Disclaimer, when MS Bob came out I liked it, maybe because I was 10 at the time, and Windows ME was an improvement for me over 98 because of the home networking)

Among my first post-journalism agency media jobs was writing the launch presentations (stage demos, video, etc.) for Microsoft Bob. This was in 1994. Even before release we wondered what users would like to have a condescending cartoon dog run their desktop for them. Turned out, nobody.

Clearly they were going after the wrong demographics, it was the 8-12 year olds that it should've been pitched to.
MS was going after the wrong audience for MS Bob, it would've been a wonderful shell for parents to have their kids use, had it been approached that way, there is a chance that schools would've been more likely to use it. But they didn't, so it failed.

Overall, I'm still enjoying W8, but there is apparently a big patch coming out for it next week.

Finally tried Windows 8 on physical, rather than virtual hardware.

Much snappier, although so far it still doesn't seem like a winner.

eta: lasted about a week; over the weekend, restored the backup of Win7 on that machine.

OK, I've had a couple of weeks with Win8 now, getting over any knee-jerk reactions, etc.

My conclusion?

A fine upgrade for a desktop machine, as long as you spend the $4.99 on Start8 and set it to automatically go to desktop mode on startup. It's just a better Win7 - same user interface, with some improved tools. I hear it's also faster, but my new machine is much, much (much) more capable than my old, so I can't compare. I suspect Start8, or similar functionality, will be in SP1.

Metro/Modern? Looks like a nice tablet interface, maybe. Useless for desktop/keyboard/mouse usage, IMHO. They seems to have followed the Apple strategy of two completely different OS's for different purposes, but smashed them into a single .exe and box for sale.

I have upgraded both my laptop and desktop to Windows 7 Ultimate with no problems and its working well(:. I had to do a clean install on my laptop due to a virus but luckily I did not loose any data as it was backed up.

Windows 7 is in my opinion the best OS Microsoft has come up with. I think Microsoft should give users the option if you have a touch screen go to Windows 8 or if not stick with Windows 7 Ultimate. What I think Microsoft should have done was create Windows 7.1 for everyone using Windows 7 and add additional features.