...and here all I thought about was the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Most game are written in C or C++ though, which is the issue. I think WP8 will support "native language" bindings that might help this situation. But at any rate, this was the only issue I could think of that might relate to the "hostile" comment... grasping at straws here.

My guess is that it's a reference to the lack of native language support, which makes porting some games and other apps over rather difficult (full rewrites instead of a simpler port). For example: "Cut The Rope" was rewritten entirely to run on both IE9 (HTML5) and on WP7, rather than simply ported from iOS.

Yeah, but that doesn't help you when you're in the app store, and want to search for a specific app... you have to stop and remember that charms bar. It's sort of "out of sight and out of mind", and it's a real change in thinking. "Printing" is over there too. When you're used to it being part of the app UI, it's a…

Seriously, almost nothing you said is entirely accurate. The desktop and desktop apps are just as open as they've ever been, for starters. And the notion that Microsoft is in any way 'worse' than Apple in these areas... it's laughable, imho.

Win8 has superior support for multiple screens than Win7 does. The "Release Preview" polishes it up a lot (making hitting the 'hot corners' in multi-monitor setups a breeze instead of annoyingly frustrating).

You realize the version your parents tried was unfinished, right? And missing a LOT of functionality and polish?

THANK YOU!!! This is a major pet-peeve of mine... never EVER shoot video in portrait mode, please!

No longer true since the "Release Preview" was released. Keep up... they added a cool new 'sticky corners' feature which makes it trivial to hit those corners in multi-monitor configurations... without impeding mouse use in any other way.

Think iPad.

Exactly. Same here. And sorta ditto on Windows Phone 8. I almost took the dive with the Lumia 900, but if they can get some really nice WP8 hardware out (with more storage dammit, I want 32GB), I'll be rocking a Win8 tablet/convertable and a WP8 phone sometime next fall or early 2013.

Bingo.

If the lack of a start button drove you bonkers, you have serious issues and clearly didn't give things even teh slightest chance.

Win8 will rise or fall based on the Metro Apps available, imho. And right now, those apps are really weak. The included mail, photo, video, and other apps are interesting previews of what is possible, but are fundamentally flawed in many ways, and missing a lot of necessary functionality. And I have yet to see…

Yes, Apple sells far more laptops than most other manufactures (combined?) in the consumer space.

Agreed.

The "every other OS pattern" is a myth that breaks down on any close examination, and usually requires "cherry-picking" versions in order to make it work. It's probably best to stop giving that nonsense life by repeating it.

Bingo.

Untrue. You have a completely normal (and enhanced) Desktop Environment with Windows Explorer. You can manage folders the way you always did before.

Keep in mind you were using an UNFINISHED product. You should give it another shot around release time.