Basically, everything people are saying about WIndows 8 is similar to what they said about Windows XP in 2001.
Companies didn't want to touch it. It looked like a toy. Everyone absolutely hated the activation - Windows 2000 didn't need activation unless you were one of the privileged countries like Australia where Microsoft was testing activation in Windows 2000. A year after introduction, Windows XP had sold just 17 million copies.
What are the Windows 8 sales after 6 months? My guess is 100 million? Not sure.
Windows XP was rubbish until Service Pack 1 and it only really became a great operating system after Service Pack 3. This is in spite of the fact that the changes from Windows 2000 to XP were far less radical ten the changes from Windows 7 to Windows 8. As an indication of the extent of Microsoft's changes to XP, the original XP ran fine in 256MBytes. By Sp3, you needed 1GByte of RAM. XP Sp3 was basically a different operating system to the original XP.
At the moment, I haven't seen any great hardware for Windows 8, and like Windows XP, it will probably take another year at least for Microsoft to make the changes it needs to get it working correctly, but just like XP, we will all be using it, or Windows 9, in a few years.
Windows 8 is taking the blame for PC sales slide, but the truth is that who needs to upgrade? My current main computer is a Dell XPS laptop 2.53GHz Intel Core Duo. It is fast enough. I have used it for programs like Maya (the leading 3D animation package) and it is fine. Why on earth would I need to upgrade? Basically, as long as a 5 year old PC is working well, it is more then adequate for speed and memory capacity for probably 99% of users.
The Windows 8 PC I am waiting for is a tablet with at least a 15 inch screen, nVidia or Radeon graphics chip, dual touch screen/Wacom pen, at minimum 1600 pixels wide resolution but much higher would be better. I don't care if it weighs 3 kilograms. I don't care if the battery life is only two hours. I want real functionality for content creation - not a content consuming PC which is all the reviewers think we need.
The last decent tablet PC for power and screen resolution go back to machines like the Toshiba M4 convertible 10 years ago, and since then all tablet PCs, including all the current Windows 8 tablets, have been garbage. They are small-screen toys for bored people. And they wonder why they haven't been popular.
When the right hardware becomes available, there will be a reason for people to buy Windows 8.
Have Microsoft got it right? I would prefer different choices, but I am equally opposed to many of Apple's decisions as well. My no1 belief is that Activation for operating systems and programs is a disaster and my biggest wish is that somehow it can disappear. If I buy a license, I want to be able to run the software in 10 years when the company who sold software is long gone. If I create content using a software package today, I want to be able to return to the content in 10 years.
Who cares about the Start button? Since when was a Start button used for stopping the computer a good design idea anyway?
Richard