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Sorry Tony, but this is the biggest pile of [unmentionable] I’ve read in quite a while. It’s fine with me if you happen to like touch interfaces, however to excuse what’s arguably the clunkiest OS our pals in Redmond have ever regurgitated, by dint of your having learned to finger swipe is nonsense. Microsoft began screwing up and dumbing down their UIs with Win 7 and Office 2007. They’ve stayed that course in spades ever since. Face facts, touch interfaces are nothing more than an accommodation for a generation that’s benumbed their brains with ‘smart phones’.

Perhaps some day you’ll have an inquisitive child with filthy fingers who’ll not only smear your touch screen but also leverage it as the perfect vector for colds, flu and stomach viruses, gifts to the entire household. Sometimes innovation is a huge step backwards. Innovation for its own sake certainly is. Also, don’t overlook the fact that Win 8x is widely disliked. I’m including countless users who use Win 8 only because Microsoft inflicted it on the manufacturers of their systems. I don’t think a proven, widely-adopted paradigm (the mouse) should undergo enforced obsolescence, just because some suits at Microsoft decided to fire another dud.

It sounds like a disaster in the making. Why would anyone want to smear a screen with fingerprints just to have an iPhone-like experience, and why would anyone embrace the code bloat that will inevitably result from creating an OS that tries to be all things to all people. The only bit of light in the darkness is that this beast can emulate Windows 7. That’s of small comfort to me and the many others who’ve spent an unconscionable amount of time trying to undo all the supposed enhancements in Win 7’s cumbersome interface. I have a 6 year old Pentium 4 XP system that is every bit the performance equal of a Win 7 desktop I bought recently, which runs the 64 bit OS version with a top of the line Athlon 6 core processor and 8 GB of memory. This is what I have observed through many hours of admittedly unofficial benchmarks. Ergonomically, I have yet to notice a single common task that can be done with less keypresses or mouse clicks than was the case with XP. If Win 8 is anything remotely like Woody predicts, then I’ll turn to Linux, and the cost of replacing all my software and learning a new OS will be far less painful than experiencing a Windows 7 replacement that has been dumbed down even more.

I can’t believe a purportedly responsible, Windows oriented publication would print Becky Waring’s sycophantic paean to Apple TV. Like everything else from Apple, this device locks its users into iTunes, and iTunes is an unruly beast on Windows. It doesn’t matter how well Apple TV performs those few things it does ‘extremely well’. Its purpose, like that of everything else Apple sells, is to oblige the purchaser to do things Apple’s way until they’ve been painted into a corner. One of Windows’ greatest benefits is not having to work within the confines of one company’s vision (and monomaniacal greed).

I wouldn’t deny that Apple makes s ome decent products, but if one doesn’t wish to partake in their dreams of hegemony, then nothing Apple is the most sensible choice.

I think it would benefit Ms. Waring to spend a little time searching the web for the countless stories of those who wish they’d never bought an iPod nor let iTunes take residence on their Windows systems. Some have written because it crashed their systems, others have written because it slowed their systems considerably, others recognize it for the bloatware it is, and others object to Apple spying on them with its Bonjour service. In my case it was all of the above, and I had to spend a few extra hours removing traces of iTunes from my system after uninstallation. (Hint: if you insist on running iTunes, kill Bonjour by blocking port 5353.)

Finally, can iTunes even be mentioned in the same breath as Netflix. It surely can’t by anyone who has compared the cost of both options.