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I’ve been using Win8 for a few months now. I initially reacted negatively to the learning curve, but I could not deny the better frame rates and benchmarks I was getting.

I went back to Win7 after a week and figured I’d skip this release, before finally breaking down and-reinstalling it. My second run with it I took the time to really learn all the little shortcuts and tricks and began to find the things that really impress me about the OS.

Now I keep my Windows 7 array alive and well on a pair of disconnected disks (in case of emergency, break glass) but have found no compelling reason to go back to it, and several to stay with 8. Fortunately, I’ve had none of the shutdown issues (I suspect that’s related to power management, and changing to high performance mode, or disabling Hibernate will work around it).

I also found the aesthetic to be nice once I figured out how to customize and organize the Start screen. It truly is a slick, if somewhat schizophrenic OS that will bridge the gap from the older NT-style interface to an active desktop future.

In my mind, there are only two items Microsoft really has to solve: The first is making Metro friendlier to multitasking and multiple windows (in Metro), and the second phasing out the old fallback desktop as a stopgap to solve item 1.

Otherwise, this really is a stellar OS with just a slightly steeper learning curve.

One of the threads regarding the shutdown issue in Win8 mentioned it possibly being caused by laptops with imbedded SD card readers. If there’s no card in the reader, it may be hanging up on that drive. Seems goofy, but my laptop does have an imbedded SD card slot. I’m going to reboot Win8 with a card in the slot and see what happens.

As for Win8 in general, I’m comfortable with it. A couple days of fooling around in Metro, changing icons, reorganizing the layout, and I’m happy. There are some issues to be sure, but nothing beyond the shutdown problem that makes it a turnoff...