Now that Windows 8 has gone gold, Microsoft can move on to other things. With Windows 8, the most important of these is probably to make sure people know how to actually use it. Metro is filled to the brim with hard-to-discover features, but Microsoft has a plan. Will it be enough?

As a PC user who installed the release preview on my computer with plain old mouse and keyboard, I took about 5 minutes to figure out how to use and to mostly understand that damn sidebar. Why? Because I was looking at it from the standpoint of a PC user, with mouse and keyboard: click buttons, it does things. No gestures usually, except the few I can use in certain web browsers. Gestures just don't normally work well at all... unless you're actually using your fingers. That's a good enough reason right there that they're not often used in traditional desktop systems.

If I was running it on some tablet computer with touchscreen, most likely I would have figured it out much faster. Bottom line, Metro SUCKS for a mouse and keyboard setup, and I just could not get used to the clunkiness of using mouse gestures that require moving the pointer all the way to the right corner of a 20" 1680x1050 monitor and sliding up or down just to bring up a very poorly labeled menu of some sort.

In its defense, though, on a small touchscreen-based device, it makes perfect sense, and I could see touching one of the corners with my finger and sliding toward the center. It would work there--I just know it, although I haven't actually tried Windows 8 on such a device. It would work, because it is obvious that that is the kind of device the Metro interface was designed for.

Still though, the way I see it Metro is not Windows (not in the traditional sense with full, complete backwards compatibility--that's why the traditional desktop is still in there for a while longer), so by that point, I'd be better off just using another OS.

I'd have to disagree, the Windows Runtime is just a new flavor of API presented in a better way. Its all COM underneath. All of the subsystems that make up Windows are there.

There are just now two traversable paths for development. Traditional Win32(For legacy app maintenance mostly) and the new Windows Runtime for modern apps.

I think a lot of the grumbling around Windows 8 is because we've been getting half of the story. This fall the hardware will rise to match the software.

All in ones will be touch enabled, mice will be touch sensitive and laptop track pads will be optimized for Windows 8.

I will concede that using current hardware, things are slightly more frustrating, though not terribly, its always something that either Microsoft or the App developer can engineer around.

The grand story here I think is the fact that Windows will finally have a centralized software repository and an OS managed installation experience. It should mean a lot less rot and issues with corrupted states due to faulty uninstallers, and a lot less malware.

I think Microsoft if you look at their SDKs and general direction, is more Androidesque in developer freedom (look at huge strides in WP8 leaked SDK which shows a lot more dev freedom) and I hope they'll keep those ideals over time.

I think the Linux Desktop is in an abysmal state right now. KDE is frankly a mess and Gnome is floundering. Maybe someone will do something disruptive soon to change all that, but I don't think most other OSes are better off wrt the future.

I think a lot of the grumbling around Windows 8 is because we've been getting half of the story. This fall the hardware will rise to match the software.

All in ones will be touch enabled, mice will be touch sensitive and laptop track pads will be optimized for Windows 8.

This is THE DUMBEST BUSINESS PLAN I HAVE SEEN IN YEARS.

Microsoft makes billions from selling upgrades to an established product and they have designed a UI around hardware that 99% of their install base doesn't own. Even worse is that they are pissing off their install base by artificially forcing a UI that the majority doesn't want.

I'm gonna go start a vegan restaurant in a part of Texas that is 99% meat eating. If anyone grumbles it's only because they want to eat meat. You want to buy stock in this company?

I think the Linux Desktop is in an abysmal state right now. KDE is frankly a mess and Gnome is floundering. Maybe someone will do something disruptive soon to change all that, but I don't think most other OSes are better off wrt the future.

Why is the Linux Desktop in an abysmal state ?
Why is KDE a mess ?

Backup your comments with some facts please, because I am sorry but maybe you wish the above was true, but that really isn't the case, in fact its the exact opposite the news about Valve porting Steam to Linux and them putting so much support into the Linux Desktop is huge news for the Linux Desktop and its acceptance into the main stream. If Linux runs the latest AAA games, what possible benefit does windows provide ?

KDE is great now and only getting better, the Linux Desktop is great and is only getting better. Gnome is going through a hard patch that much I do concede, but Gnome3 has the ground work to be a solid Desktop environment. E17 is finally getting stable releases. Wayland is progressing nicely, same with BTRFS, a proper next gen filesystem.

You forget this centralised software installation method you are so happy Microsoft is getting has been an intrinsic part of Linux for decades and we don't have a shitty registry system that gets bloated

As for your final comment about other Os'es Apples OSX Mountain Lion seems to have been met with universal praise, I cant see how they aren't doing "any better" if any thing they are doing much better with a market capital twice that of Microsoft, in fact larger than Microsoft and Google combined.

Also Google, no idea what direction they will take with android and chrome os, but that just adds more competition with Windows 8 on the desktop. Nexus 7 has received major praise and is selling out where ever it has been released, Android on the tablet market is now a success story. In fact android 4.1 is truly outstanding and the nexus 7 is excellent value.

I'd have to disagree, the Windows Runtime is just a new flavor of API presented in a better way. Its all COM underneath. All of the subsystems that make up Windows are there.

Moreover, WinRT provides access to these various subsystems across all language types -- C/C++, JavaScript Windows Web Applications (WWA), XAML, VB.NET, etc -- so you get the full power of Windows no matter what you code in. That's a big deal.

I think a lot of the grumbling around Windows 8 is because we've been getting half of the story. This fall the hardware will rise to match the software.

And this hardware is being held to a far more stringent standard than in the past.

All in ones will be touch enabled, mice will be touch sensitive and laptop track pads will be optimized for Windows 8.

It's going to be difficult to find machines that don't support touch beyond the next 3 years. People don't realize this yet.

I will concede that using current hardware, things are slightly more frustrating, though not terribly, its always something that either Microsoft or the App developer can engineer around.

This needs tuning. But they'll get plenty of feedback, and they clearly do listen; which is why we no longer have Active Desktop and other UI patterns which people didn't like.

The grand story here I think is the fact that Windows will finally have a centralized software repository and an OS managed installation experience. It should mean a lot less rot and issues with corrupted states due to faulty uninstallers, and a lot less malware.

Yes! That is the single biggest feature of this OS release. A store. Assuming that people only obtain software from the store, and Microsoft diligently monitors the store for malware, the overall user experience for users will be drastically better than today.

I think Microsoft if you look at their SDKs and general direction, is more Androidesque in developer freedom (look at huge strides in WP8 leaked SDK which shows a lot more dev freedom) and I hope they'll keep those ideals over time.

Well, I think it's a balance between developer freedom and user freedom. Windows 8 puts the user first. The developer doesn't get to play a lot of the tricks that they used to pull -- like stealing focus, sticking pop-ups in your face, jockeying for highest Z-order, using any device they want to use regardless of whether they were authorized to do so. Developers may not like that change because it diminishes their capabilities but, so what, computing is supposed to be about users, not developers. We're simply the guys who connect users with data. ;-)

I think the Linux Desktop is in an abysmal state right now. KDE is frankly a mess and Gnome is floundering. Maybe someone will do something disruptive soon to change all that, but I don't think most other OSes are better off wrt the future.

There are a certain number of people that will continue to use Linux no matter what the big players do. I salute their tenacity because Linux represents a different kind of openness; however, the end-to-end experience is often the thing that gets users excited. Unless the Linux desktop can nail that, it will remain fairly marginal as a desktop platform. Server? Different story.