Windows 8 is much better than I thought it would be

So I kept hearing about the changes in Windows 8 and how different it was going to be, and it was all a bit unsettling to me. From what I kept hearing it seemed as though Microsoft had joined Apple in the "Post-PC Era" mode of thinking, and only focused on tablets and simplified touch interfaces for the new features. It sounded as if they had taken Windows 7 and sprayed on a bunch of touchscreen cheese, then finished it off with a dollop of cloud fluff, and called it a day. That made me a bit concerned, and I was really curious to find out just what the PC world was about to get into, so I downloaded the beta and did a dual boot setup with 7 and 8 on the same machine.

After using 8 for a week I must say that I really like it. It does take some getting used to, but now that I've adjusted I like it better than 7. I didn't think it would be much of an improvement as far as the traditional Windows experience, but it is. What I like the most about it is the "ribbon" menus from Office are now in Windows itself, and that makes it a lot easier to find things. There are highly visible images next to a lot of commands, and just like in Office, there are colored "contextual tabs" that sometimes appear above the menu items depending on what you click on, and I've noticed those speed things up a lot. A lot of things that you had to hunt for before are now easy to get to, and that's really nice to see.

Another nice benefit to all this is, since I'm in a different OS I was able to download the PPro CS6 trial for another 30 days. I've had a few hard crashes with it, but I haven't gotten it configured the way it should be with the scratch disks just yet, and since I'm in a beta OS I'm willing to let it slide... for now.

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"THAT'S our fail-safe point. Up until here, we still have enough track to stop the locomotive before it plunges into the ravine... But after this windmill it's the future or bust."