Time for me to make a confession. I love Windows 8. To many of you that is a shocking admission but I really do like it. I see it as building on the things that made Windows 7 so great and a vast improvement over the slow buggy Vista.
Whenever something popular changes, people's first reaction is to hate it. Facebook is a great example. One minor change and your wall seems to fill up with shouty messages from friends saying how much they dislike the new changes.
Change it seems, is something with which many of us cannot cope.
Where Microsoft is concerned, we were right to hate change. Windows XP was stable and fast and when Vista came in, though there were many improvements (not everyone agrees with me here) it was bloated, slow and buggy. Then when Windows 7 came out, it seems Microsoft were listening and even the most cynical techno-geeks were heaping praise on it.
This is an acronym used by IT support staff to identify a reported problem as "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair". In other words, the user is the problem. This happens to me a lot. Many of my friends and family ask me to sort out their computer problems for them and quite a few have complained about Windows 8. It turns out that in many cases, the reason they do not like it is that they have downloaded dodgy software which has riddled their system with Adware, Spyware and malicious programs (often known by another underservedly polite acronym - PUP - Potentially Unwanted Program) and it is this that gives them a frustrating experience.
The main fault with Windows 8 is that it is not sure whether it is an operating system for desktops or tablets. This makes it confusing for both types of user. Using Apps on a PC is not ideal (especially their new and terrible email client) and so those all important first impressions are very poor.
Once you change your perception of Windows 8 as I have, it suddenly becomes this faster version of Windows 7. When I used to boot my old Vista PC I had to wait 3 or 4 minutes before I could do anything. Now, I am checking my emails within 30 seconds of starting Windows 8. For this reason alone, I love Windows 8.
The only perception I changed was to view the start screen as just a larger version of the pop-up menu you got with all previous versions of Windows. All of a sudden, it does not seem very different at all.
There are a few little niggles like the awful email program and it isn't obvious how you install Skype for desktop but for speed alone, I think Windows 8 is great.