DracoNihil wrote:not being able to disable DWM needs to be fixed in Windows 9, seriously. That's my #1 major gripe hands down.
^That.
To be honest, at first I didn't hate Windows 8.1 when I installed it on my netbook. The only thing that spoiled my first impression was that I had to log in with my live account or otherwise I wouldn't be able to install any metro app from the store and use several other features. That's politics making life difficult for a normal user, right there.
Also, when you log in for the first time, the system starts synchronizing. That means if you have two Windows 8 machines but you want to use different settings for one of those, you're screwed. There is an option to choose what you want to synchronize but you can only access it after you've logged in which means you have to quickly go to the control panel and disable what you don't want before the system manages to download the data. You'd better be quick.
Other than that, though, I liked it. The thing looked nice and clean, the metro interface was awkward to use at first but when I got used to it, it actually wasn't that bad. Also, I saw benchmark results indicating that Windows 8.1 is slower than 7. Let me tell you, it's really not. The interface itself runs very smoothly even on my netbook, which definitely cannot be said of Windows 7, especially with Aero on. Windows apps ran as well as on 7, as far as I could see, and the metro apps ran very smoothly indeed. They were designed for the rather limited power of smartphones and tablets, after all.
And then I install Re-Volt, my favorite racing game, and suddenly reality strikes: Windows 8.1 is utterly useless because of dwm.exe incompatibility causing certain games, especially older ones, to run at really low fps.
So, if Windows 9 can look good while performing nicely and if they fix the bloody dwm.exe problems, and if there's decent support for legacy software, then I think I will gladly say goodbye to Windows 7. I'm actually optimistic about this one.