Now you do know there is no way to control how anyone replies, and just saying the above is inviting folks to do exactly what you didn't want. 

Myself, I'm way to good of a person to stoop to that level (well maybe I just don't want to be the first one).   

Precisely.

And to be honest? They could have done the same for W7 with a patch/update, but they didn't.

You stole my words.

I hate you.

I have a lot of faith and confidence in the wonderful folks at Stardock. They are quite honestly geniuses. If it is at all possible to make Win8 more user friendly and comfortable for us, I predict that a sunami of new business will hit Stardock and sales and subscriptions will go through the roof. For those of us who love Stardock, that should bring a broad smile to our faces and possibly more installations of Win8 to our machines.      -- Ace --

More about this please? (I've never even seen it run...)

What I like about Windows 8....

* That it boots much faster than previous editions

* That its file handling is much improved

* That it handles ISO files natively

* That my AMD FX8170 is better supported/quicker in Win 8 than 7.

Hopefully, Stardock makes it a more functional/usable OS than it is currently.

There's probably more benefits that I've not mentioned or discovered yet, but I must give Win 8 the thumbs up for its speed/performance increases over Win 7... and yes, over Vista as well.  The one thing that bugged me about Vista in the early day was file copy and move being quite slow/tardy, but that is not a concern for me in Win 8... file transfers literally fly along.

I really need to spend a bit more time in Win 8 and set it up to do a lot more that I have it doing at present... you know, really put it through its paces and see how more of my most used proggies perform in the new OS.  I've not spent a lot of time in Win 8 recently because I don't have a lot installed in there as yet and need to keep booting back into Win 7 to get stuff done, but I shall remedy that over the next day or so.

As for Stardock doing the right and proper thing by us and fixing the obvious issues, Metro, etc, I just hope it can happen and we can truly use 8 as a true desktop OS without the unnecessary bloat MS is trying to foist upon us... cos frankly, it would be a damned travesty if MS ignored what we want and insists that users WILL work with that abominable "don't call it Metro any more" UI.

Well I said why I like it.... the bit after that just says that it needs fixing some... ie, would be better without Metro.

I'm actually excited to start using a non-preview version and see what they settled on with everything.

Yes, I already do that, it's what makes Win 8 usable.

Sadly, yes, that is the ways it's going, but I really do not want to have to deal with it.  I do not find it smart, intuitive or time saving in any way.  In fact, the hidden hotspots make tasks more time consuming because they do not always appear as required and can be quite unresponsive.  More to the point, I have no need of anything Metro does, so I don't want it to be foisted upon me because others may? find it useful.  For people like me Metro should be made optional at installation, but Microsoft isn't going to allow that, is it?

Sorry, NO!!!!   Metro does not belong on the desktop and that's what Stardock does.... create apps for Windows desktops.  Okay, Stardock apps also serve to pretty up laptops as well, but there's little or no difference in appearance or how they handle, so no beef there. 

No, Metro... er, "Don't call it Metro anymore" belongs on portable devices like pads and so-called smart phones, and Stardock does not cater to those, though it may want to consider doing so, given that seems to be the way things are going with OSes and communications devices.  Still, I don't see desktop PC's going away any time soon. 

I recently saw a chart forecasting sales for desktop PC's will be up by several million in 2013, and then there are companies like Nvidia, Intel and AMD/ATI investing huge resources and billions to develop bigger, better and faster components for desktop units, so they are going to be around for quite some time to come, despite what the manufacturers and advocates of the pad may say.

[f**king Apple has a lot to answer for]

Thing is, if anyone wants a Metro-like app/appearance on their desktop [can't see why anyone would], Stardock does have 'Tiles', which performs a similar function.

Anyhow, BOT.... another thing I like about Win 8 is the UAC not being such a pain in the arse.  While it is still there, it doesn't seem so intrusive and isn't constantly asking for permissions to things you've opened/done before.  Well that's the way I found it... like UAC operates more in the background in Win 8.  I had a few instance where UAC would ask if this or that was okay, but it's definitely less annoying than in Vista/Win 7 before I used Stardock's TweakVista or Tweak7 to make it behave.

the new taskmanger is one big thing the overall speed of the OS...new interface prior called metro for checking apps mails news 

the new explorer - multi monitor support-
 

As I have just gotten a new laptop with win8 on it for Christmas, I am still undecided as per my full opinion. But I will say that in the short time I have had it I have become increasingly enjoying the stability of win8 over Vista, as well as it seems to run stuff a lot quicker than my vista machine * tho doubling the ram as compared to my old machine is prolly a contributing factor.

I will most likely stick with win8 rather than upgrade to 8.1 as I like being able to uninstall Sky drive and all its stuff, I dont need or want the cloud.. with win 8 I still have the choice..

* The start page sucked and with Start 8' ,DeskScapes and Windowblinds help I have gotten my regular desktop back..*