[Luis Dias]

Windows 8.1 is not Microsoft charging customers from the "hell hole" that you think W8 was. W8 was not a hell hole. It was just more cumbersome.

I never bought (and stopped the office from doing so) that version, and we kept W7. Everyone had that choice. No one really had the choice of going back to W98 when Blaster charged into our pcs.

[Fury]

I wonder if some of you are misunderstanding. MS is not charging for 8.1, it is free upgrade to 8.

[karajorma]

I know, but it doesn't sound like it solves the problems with Win 8 either. i.e MS's record of not solving the problems with their OSs for free is intact cause although 8.1 is free, it doesn't solve the basic problems with Win 8. You'll have to pay for that solution most likely.

I never bought (and stopped the office from doing so) that version, and we kept W7. Everyone had that choice. No one really had the choice of going back to W98 when Blaster charged into our pcs.

People buying new PCs don't always get that choice though. Especially people buying their first PC who don't know any better.

[Grizzly]

I must be completely weird then for actually preferring 8.1 over 7.

8.1 gives much better performance in BF4 then 7.

That was reason enough for me to upgrade.

[Luis Dias]

People who buy new pcs definitely have that choice. You just don't buy it in your standard mega store.

People who "don't know any better" won't have the problems you have with W8.1. This is really a "geek's" problem, and geeks do know how to solve it.

I remain unimpressed with the "problem". But I take your word that this is at least annoying for a lot of people.

[Beskargam]

I like 8's under the hood bits. But since I got it for 20$ through my university I felt fine with shelling out for stardock's Start 8. Metro UI begone, and it was so.

[jr2]

Fun fact:  Did you know, if you had Windows '95 Upgrade (from Windows 3.x), you could actually choose to use Windows' Program Manager by default (precursor to Win 9.x/XP's Explorer.exe)?  And it was included (although you had to manually launch it) in all versions of Windows 95, 98, and Me?  Yup, good old progman.exe to the rescue for old fogies who wanted to use that terrible, terrible interface.  ... So, why don't they allow the same for 7's pretty-much-ok interface???

source (although some of us probably knew that just from poking around the windows directory years ago)

For those that missed the wonders of 3.x:

[The E]

Fun fact:  Did you know, if you had Windows '95 Upgrade (from Windows 3.x), you could actually choose to use Windows' Program Manager by default (precursor to Win 9.x/XP's Explorer.exe)?  And it was included (although you had to manually launch it) in all versions of Windows 95, 98, and Me?  Yup, good old progman.exe to the rescue for old fogies who wanted to use that terrible, terrible interface.  ... So, why don't they allow the same for 7's pretty-much-ok interface???

Because this wasn't about aesthetics or usability. It was about backwards compatibility for programs written against progman, not to give people a way to not learn new things.

Since the only changes to the shell between 7 and 8 were cosmetic (the underlying API stayed the same), there was no reason to provide a similar hack.

[Grizzly]

http://www.classicshell.net/

(As to why MS doesn't include it by default, I absolutely do not know, although they are aware of the desire and they are aware of programs like classic shell... It's probably part of some long-term strategy that, at this point, we will all say it has no use and in ten years it turns out it will have had succes anyway or something).

Also, the Belgian beverage known as "Duvel" is awesome.

[BloodEagle]

Fun fact:  Did you know, if you had Windows '95 Upgrade (from Windows 3.x), you could actually choose to use Windows' Program Manager by default (precursor to Win 9.x/XP's Explorer.exe)?  And it was included (although you had to manually launch it) in all versions of Windows 95, 98, and Me?  Yup, good old progman.exe to the rescue for old fogies who wanted to use that terrible, terrible interface.  ... So, why don't they allow the same for 7's pretty-much-ok interface???

source (although some of us probably knew that just from poking around the windows directory years ago)

For those that missed the wonders of 3.x:

[MY ****ING EYES]

http://s9.postimg.org/ypoma34q5/toobigdamnit.png

Small images should not be placed between lvlshot tags. 

[jr2]

I just wanted you to experience the full Chinese torture that was Program Manager is all. 

[BloodEagle]

I'd already experienced it way back in the day, which is why I used File Manager instead.

[jr2]

Yeah, File Manager was sorta kinda mostly ok.  But there was one irritation with it, besides the 8.3 limitation, and I forget what it was, that kept me from using it instead of Explorer. (I liked having the icons for the assigned drives, and having the actual filesystem being the view instead of then-confusing shortcuts that didn't tel me where they led (Desktop, etc).

[Nuke]

i would be happy if they kept an os's user interface constant and just upgraded the guts. then kept the whole thing compact with reguards to the amount of space the os needs to function (20+ gb for an os is insane). and stop being bundled with a bunch of software that i either dont use or use a better alternative (and thats just the **** the os comes with, **** the crap oems litter your system with). oses just try to do too damn much out of the box.

[jr2]

Well, in Win 9x, at least you had the option to go into details during the OS install and de-select what you wouldn't be using (phone dialer?! really?).  You can still remove them from newer OSes by going into the Windows components section of Add/Remove Programs (if you can't find it on 8.x, just put in appwiz.msc -- that will launch Add/Remove on all versions of Windows from 2000 up, IIRC, maybe even 9x, I forget).

Or, you can use nLite (XP) or vLite (Vista on up) to strip the fat from the install image.