I Don't Miss My Start Menu

Start Screen, The Start Menu's Replacement

Windows 8 is beautiful to look at, there's no doubt about that in my mind.  The way I see it is that there are two ways to use Windows 8.  One is the tiles view for when you're just doing some light web browsing, check some e-mails, or just wanna play some quick pick up and play games, look at photos or read the news.  When you've got work to do that requires multiple windows up, that's where the desktop comes into play.  The ability to snap a full screen "app" along side the desktop or another "app" is pretty convenient when you're reading and listening to music at the same time.

Traditional Desktop with Music App snapped next to it.

Cut the Rope App with Weather App snapped along side of it.

I've seen several reviews saying that the Windows App Store is rather anemic at the moment.  While I agree with this, the fact of the matter is, this is still a full blown version of Windows so if you have an .exe file, for a program you want to run, you can still do that.

Games section of App Store

Sure the .exe will run in the "Traditional Desktop" but backwards compatibility is backwards compatibility and I've been able to run all my old stuff without a hitch.  Keep in mind though, there's some really old school legacy apps out there that won't run in Windows 8 so your mileage may vary.  As for the apps that are available in the app store though, they look pretty good and are a really great way of showing off a big hi-res screen if you've got one.

Netflix App

For "Power Users" all the traditional Windows things are there such as the Computer Management, Disk
Manager, and other more under the hood type utilities.

Bottom line, if you use Windows 7 already, Windows 8 is a faster prettier version of that sans a start menu.  At first the lack of a start menu was annoying, but after a day or so of being forced not to use it, I actually don't miss it.  I went with 8 instead of 7 because 8 does away with Aero which makes my almost 4 year old laptop run like a dream.  So, do you need to buy it?  I would say if you have a newer machine that has an i3/5/7 processor and is running Windows 7 then no you don't need this.  Should you buy it?  If you have an older, dual core machine, then at $40 bucks, it's a fairly cheap way to breath some new life into an old machine.  Then again, at $40 bucks, it's also fairly cheap for someone who is just a geek who enjoys tinkering with new things.  Am I happy I bought it, yes, yes I am :-)