[Schraubstock]

but you need a special desk for it

Are you serious ? MS puts out a new OS and to make it work I have to change my office design ?
Never heard anything as preposterous as this.

As Docrwm pointed out correctly touch screens can work and they do work. But they only work well in in public places where they are set up to do a predefined job, as in ticket vending machines, (railway stations) supermarkets, libraries, museums, information desks and so on and so forth.

They are also ideally suited for portable devices but for MS to assume they should latch onto the portable device touch screen swipe craze suggest to me that they got utterly and completely carried away with the swipe and stab popularity.

Greetings

[kenafein]

As I said, you can have it both ways and they are backpedaling with 8.1. I am a believer in touch, but I was doubtful at first. It took using a device, properly positioned, but it works for me. I won't buy another laptop without a touch screen. All that said, my desktop is still windows 7 because I can't afford to transition to touch, at the moment. It is still the future.

[boriscleto]

Yeah, mac IPS screens are a pain to calibrate though, but for any photography i'd use an external. I not only work in corporate, but it's academia as well, so I see lots of personal student machines, macs, PCs. Everything is a PITA on a mac, give instructions on how to install wireless network printing on a PC easy, do it on a mac...they gotta access UNIX stuff like Cups Web Interface, and if that's disabled they need to go into terminal to enable it.

Then for what it seems like every .1 change in Mac OS X new instructions have to be written because it's always different. Then macs for whatever reason just don't seem to work randomly, and it tends to be a mac isolated issue that needs to be figured out and worked around, or lost files off USB sticks because of Mac OS needing USB drives to be ejected (although to be fair it's from UNIX), or incompatibilities with external hard drives...just small things that make them a PITA to work with, and for what? Inferior hardware that costs more?

Sounds like PEBKAC.

[Daemos]

Sounds like PEBKAC.

Yep...the average user...but it's just easier for the average user to use a windows computer than a mac

[DGP]

Facing choice between Windows 8 and Linux, I moved to Linux.

For not professional use that doesn't require using Windows-based software, Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop is a closest substitute to Windows 7: start menu, control panel, status bar, clock on the right, Quick Launch menu on the left. Only absence of proper drivers for a printer is a problem.

Mint with Mate desktop is my second choice, slightly different, better for old computers. Mind life time of Mint versions: the long term release in 13, but Mint 15 is more pleasant to work with.

There was no learning curve at all, for casual user who do not intend to enter commands directly through terminal. It can be used just like Windows, with some differences:

- update is done for all programs, not system only
- software installation is done through Software Manager, think of it as Add/Remove Program. Select program from what is available, and it will be installed automatically. Watch for what be removed during un-installation, core files may be involved. This information is visible.
- do not forget activate firewall and install antivirus (for long term version Comodo and Avast are available)
- find substitutes for the programs you usually use
- read thread here "Anyone else uses Linux?" for photo processing software for Linux.

Windows was more convenient than Linux, but no more. Maybe with version 9 something changes for a better...