I have been using Win8 Pro since it was released.
Win8 has gone in the wrong direction for business. Win8 Pro (and Enterprise) is closer to Windows Home Advance and Windows 8 (just Windows 8, no home, pro or other) is closer to Windows Home Basic. Windows RT is just Windows Phone 8 and can't even run Windows apps for Windows 7 and earlier.
The nice "find anything" search on a start menu is gone. Then, their new Find only searches by specific category. Worse, their new Find does not integrate with Office 2010 or earlier. The new Find only integrates with WinRT apps -- of which there are still very few.
The jump-lists are missing from the "start menu" which is now a full-screen start page. You have to pin the shortcut to a task bar in order to get jump-lists.
The context menu for the start page is now a bar all the way at the bottom. Fine for touch, but annoying for mouse.
If your app isn't pinned to the start page, you have a messy long list of all your apps to scroll through or have to search for it every time. For those who use a lot of different apps consistently (like researchers and engineers), this is a pain.
There are two task switchers now: one for "x86" apps (which is their current term for both 32-bit and 64-bit apps) and one for WinRT apps (which is their "Interface-Formerly-Known-As-Metro" stuff). Trying to use the mouse for the WinRT switcher is annoying. An XBox controller would work better.
Win8's RSAT doesn't work with anything before Windows 2012. 2008r2 and Win7 are only one version back and you can't manage them from a Win8 workstation (or 2012 server).
Thank goodness that tsclient still exists because the WinRT Remote Desktop doesn't do half of what made Remote Desktop useful in previous versions. You have to go find the old tsclient, though, so it seems they're trying to phase it out for this useless new one.
They are pushing WinRT hard right now. WinRT requires the Windows Store (MS's version of the Apple and Android app stores). WinRT works on both desktop and ARM devices, but Intel's got an ARM-killer at the starting gate that is a low-power, multicore x86-architecture chip that will work with existing Win64 apps (and WoW64 for 32-bit apps like Windows already does). There's no way MS didn't know about this. The only reason WinRT exists anymore is for the Windows Store.
Windows had a great market for business, research and engineering due to its versatility. The direction towards WinRT removes a lot of that. Either they have forgotten their client base, or they want to jump on the "replace every two years" bandwagon of mobile hardware. Either way, it's bad.
bersome on a desktop.
