joden
Thanks for the clarification Scott...imo the thread title could have been a little less "dramatic"...for eg..Possible changes for W8?  Rather than the statement of "fact" that it implied  
 

Yeah, I just went by what the article said... Sorry for any confusion...
 
Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

It's all good m8 - guys like the author of this article would never have made the reporter/journalist grade as little as ten years ago, these days though all we seem to get is opinion,  with few actual facts. And the internet allows pretty much anyone with an "axe to grind" to pontificate with rubbish reporting like this (original article). And then...well it's "chinese whispers" after that
 

garrigus
http://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/turmoil-at-microsoft-implications-for-windows-users/
 

The author lost me with the title of the first section and the first paragraph.
 
I've logged a lot of hours using Windows 8 and 8.1.
I've got a boatload of audio/video/graphic applications and plugins installed... and they're all running well.
Do I like everything about Win8?  Absolutely not...
Is it a complete disaster?  Hardly!
You know what they say about opinions...   
 

joden
And the internet allows pretty much anyone with an "axe to grind" to pontificate with rubbish reporting like this (original article). And then...well it's "chinese whispers" after that

Retirement plan:
Maybe I could start a Blog and contemplate my navel.

mmorgan

bapu
I'll wait until Windows 11. It will be one better than 10 I'm sure.

Louder too. 
 
Regards

No, I think by that time silence is the new loud. I know, because I am an experienced louder guy. And I have spoken with other people which also happen to be loud.
 
Regarding the Win8 OS - for me it has been stable as a rock, both on my day to day laptop (old Lenovo T410s, I've had Win8 on this since it was beta) 
And just upgraded to Win8 on my DAW - working perfectly. 
 
I use Win7 on my company PC. I actually do miss some of the new Win8 features sometimes. 

I too disagree with the article.  Has Windows 8 had it's problems?  Yeah, certainly.  I think that 8.1 addressed a vast majority of those issues.
 
The article is misleading at best.  With Windows 8, Microsoft went on a planed year by year updating of the OS.  gone are the days of "Service Packs".  It's been replaced by a dot release.  This coming October they will release Windows 8.2 which will be a free upgrade as 8.1 was.  As someone already said Windows 9 is a couple years down the road at best.
 
Computers have changed drastically in form factors.  Windows 8 has had a huge impact.  Traditional desktops are a niche market, and touch screens are almost everywhere.  I think touch is a huge thing for the DAW world and Sonar took advantage of it in X2a.
 
The fact is that Microsoft has been working with several OEM vendors on touch screen capability for years, even way before the iPhone/iPad.  They were working on this stuff back in the early 2000's.  There were two problems, 1.) it was too expensive, 2.) XP was a horrible touch screen experience.
 
Windows 7 I think was the first OS to have built in support for touch devices.  For XP and Vista, I think it was a special distribution.  However Windows 7 only handled 2 point touch, and touch was not a great experience on Windows 7.  Windows 8 completed the experience with 10 point touch, and a tweaking of the user interfact to take advantage of that.
 
Windows 8 was the most radical change to Windows since '95.  And yeah it didn't go over too well.  I think it was a mistake to have it launch you to the metro start screen on bootup.  I think the change was too jarring.  I think 8.1 fixed a lot of things, and I work 90% of the time out of the classic desktop.  With the new start button added back in, the metro start screen works mostly like Launchpad does for Mac, so I don't see it as a big deal.
 
As far as stability, speed and mostly security, I wouldn't use anything but Windows 8 at this point.  I still use Windows 7 at work and it's still a great OS.  But I wouldn't go back to 7 on my DAW machine.  One of the best features of Windows 8, is built in multi monitor support for the task bar.  No more purchasing  3rd party apps to extend your task bar!

It's no surprise this guy can write a 1000 pages on a x.1 update. Wow!

Stoopid charms bar aside, I have no problem with W8 and prefer it in many ways. The author clearly has his own agenda and seems to like the sound of his own voice to me.

I still haven't cleared the first impression of Win8 being an effort to unify code between computers/tablets/phones. This approach has merit with web design (Adobe's sales pitch), but I would have the same reaction if web pages came up looking like a "giant phone app" too.
 
The features removed from Win7, and the fact that Win8 could not be backed out of stopped me dead in my tracks. That is a colossal "risk" with the amount of effort put into this machine.