Windows 8 is a one way street for consumer PC users

Well, HP is already on the blink - I guess they will blink a bit more. Next year's PC sales will teach them.

If you are a tiny bit technical ----Build your own PC.
I doubt that the motherboard or BIOS vendors will succumb to MS pressure. Let's hope that Intel and AMD are sensible.
Then run what you want on it and the components can be of a higher quality and lower cost.

mjf said:

I think a tutorial for intelligent troglodytes on how to retrofit Windows 8 to a Windows 7 functionality would have wide readership. It's probably a case of describing the various tools already out there???

I'm quite serious about this actually. We could all go our separate ways and repeat the same exercise or pool resources.

+1 for the tutorial idea. I'm likely going to use it a lot in the next years.

gregrocker said:

I'll pull it together if no one else does since I was able to get a perfect replica Win7 start menu, make the Button Wall with all crApps disappear, have replica gadgets, etc., all perfectly stable, before deciding I might as well use Win7.

I definately think this tutorial has your name on it Greg - go for it.

gregrocker said:

I'll pull it together if no one else does since I was able to get a perfect replica Win7 start menu, make the Button Wall with all crApps disappear, have replica gadgets, etc., all perfectly stable, before deciding I might as well use Win7.

Let us lazy sods hold him to it.
Seriously it would be of assistance to many.

I wonder why MS didn't design a Win 7 theme option for serious desktop users and provide the Win 8 interface for particular multimedia users (2 in one).

They had to know this if they were even looking at the telemetry from the millions of preview users adding back the Start Menu. They had other priorities based on over-reaction to Ipad, wanting a low-priced locked-down touchscreen OS that sold lots of apps from the MS Store.

Failure to listen to previewers about how this ruins a productive desktop experience like Win7's is a disastrous miscalculation which will hopefully be corrected soon by the market - by at least giving upgrade rights to Win7 on new PC's which are now all being sold with Win8.

Then we should get Win7 SP2 with some Win8 explorer improvements. They did this when Vista was a disastrous resource hog initially. Win7 developments were rushed into SP1 to save Vista and to this day most don't even remember how bad it was.