Spot on.  This is really not about buying into MS latest GUI or widgets....many are trying to run a business and Windows is just the foundation on which the business POS, accounting, auditing, editorials, etc. are conducted on and every new version of Office or Windows continues to be a business disruption.  20 years of the start menu cannot disappear overnight.  Many, if not the majority, of company employees are not tech savvy and don't care about the latest oh-ah features of windows.....they want to finish their work and get home to General Hospital, go muddin or whatever that does not involve technology.  There is too much assumption by software providers that people actually give two shakes about their OS or office productivity products.

I read with amusement how many of posts here mock users who just want their desktop back.  With a BILLION user worldwide, major changes to the GUI are going to be met with resistance.  In many ways, Windows 8 reminds me of the recent elections.....the message, "we know what's good for you"  That message was soundly rejected as was Windows 8.  Both camps will argue until they are blue in the face, but until there is acceptance that the user base has the la$t say in the matter, products will continue to falter.  XP was the last time where MS offered a choice between old and new.  IT had an option for those who did not want to be impacted by a learning curve, it was the "Classic" mode.  How hard is it to respect your users by allowing a certain degree of transition by reining back on the new interface?  Apparently not much of 3rd party developers are able to deploy in no time a Classic interface Shell to Windows 8 while MS says it can't be done...then trots out 8.1.....total disrespect.  And that also goes same to each one you that call them whiners. 

It is mentioned in this article that 10 will support inplace upgrades. In my experience it's always best to wipe a HD when upgrading it, no matter what they say about it being supported. Does anyone do inplace upgrades routinely?

I hope Windows 10 is as good as it seems. Granted all these things should have been in Windows 8 but it looks like MS has listened to all the criticism and fixed things in 10.