archiebawled said:
Did you use Win8 or Win8.1? Win8.1 comes with a simple option to log in and go straight to Desktop. Installing a classic start menu takes 5 minutes, including the google search for it. Not a huge effort really.
That was Win8.
Win8.1 didn't exist at the time, and I still see no reason to "upgrade". At this point, the benefits would be puny and I'd just end up wasting more time.
Are you using some esoteric hardware? In any case, drivers are the responsibility of their manufacturers. If the manufacturer of a device doesn't write a new driver for Win8, it's not fair to blame that on Microsoft.
Esoteric? Not really, no.
It's not a matter of driver creation, it's a matter of driver ACCEPTANCE.
In every other version of Windows, I could work around the architecture to get drivers to work for even all but the most ridiculously obscure hardware...EXCEPT 8, which kept rolling back drivers behind my back for seemingly no reason.
Legacy software not running on Win8 is also not a failing of Microsoft - you're running software on an OS it was never designed to work on, so why would you expect it to work? It's not reasonable to expect Microsoft to maintain backwards compatibility indefinitely.
In other words: Win8 (or 8.1) really isn't a straight upgrade of 7 at all.