I view it as an upcoming learning experience for MS.

Dammit!!!   Well if that's the case I want my 40 bucks back.

Thank goodness for that...pheeew.

Thing is, kona, we have 2 Android tablet PC's that are tied into Google, so whether I/we like Google or not, it has become a fact of life for just about everyone who use the internet or a smart phone these days.  True, I'd prefer not to use Google products whenever possible, but there was no doing that in the case of the tablets. 

It was either an iPad or an Android device because nothing else was available at the time, and the Android won hands down, price-wise and for the  extras out of the box over an iPad.... Flash, USB, HDMI, etc, etc. In fact, my niece, who's an ardent i-everything fan, saw what these tablets can do and ditched [and sold] her iPad to get for one herself.  Nope, no way was I going with an iPad, though I will probably look into one of MS' Surface tablets a bit further down the track.

I thought that at first, and because of Metro, which I thought unavoidable at the time, there was no way I would upgrade to Win 8, either.  However, it occurred to me that MS is not likely to ever return to Windows as we know it, and that each successive edition is likely to depart even farther from it.  So with that in mind, and the likelihood that MS will cease support for previous OSes by Windows 11, I figured it was best to get on board now, before the gap broadens too much and it becomes too steep a learning curve when that time comes.

It's something to think about, and with Windows 8 Professional going for just USD$39.99 for a limited time, there's probably no better time than the present to get on board.

I wouldn't count on it not selling.  A local electronics store near me had a rush on Win 8 Pro for $69.00 and sold out [200 copies] the first morning it went on sale.  Similarly, Officeworks in the same complex ran out that afternoon and advised its customers, that due to high demand, no more would be available from MS until mid to late next week.  And the PC store in the same complex, had 20 copies and sold out an hour after it opened.  We're talking around 500 - 600 copies from one suburban shopping centre... and that's just one of 7 complexes with electronics outlets in my regional city alone, not to mention all the independent PC and electronics stores city-wide 

Oh, and those figures were just Windows 8 installation discs.  PC's with Win 8 pre-installed were not part of the discussions I had with staff while in those stores on Saturday, but it'd be safe to say several pre-installed machines were sold on day 1.

Nah, by the time you count the first day sales in my small city, the state capital, the 7 other state/territory capitals, and all the regional cities of Australia, not to mention 1st day sales for the rest of the world, me thinks MS will do quite well out of Win 8.  We'll soon see, cos MS will be crowing about it in a few days I'm sure.

So, when support ceases for Win 7 and all before it, well there's always a Mac or Linux if you don't care for the direction Windows has taken.  I don't particularly like the tile interface on a desktop, either, and there's a lot of other shitI don't like about Win 8, but I see the need to adapt sooner rather than later, because the learning curve will be too steep if one waits until Win 11 to give Win 7 the flick and upgrade.  By then I imagine Windows will be pretty much unrecognisable to anyone who stuck with Win 7 or older, so it's either get with the program now or get left behind.

Well to do that I would need a new computer. I don't have any income so I am stuck in Windows XP land or Linux land for the time being. I doubt Windows 8 would run well on a 10 year old Pentium 4 setup even after the upgrades.

Besides why would I want to use Metro? Or install Stardock software to make it go away?

Well Dave, it's hard to say exactly how much performance increase I've gotten over the pre-releases, if any, because the RTM was running on a platter drive, and the final release is on two 120gb SSD's in a RAID0 array.  However, I previously ran Win 7 on the same platter drive and Win 8 RTM was definitely faster on that, and the final release is quicker than Win 7 on the SSD RAID0 array. 

I have the AMD FX x8 8170 @ 3.9ghz, [Turboboost to 4.2ghz] which is pretty quick and built on the Bulldozer architecture.  However, it is as rare as hens teeth... like not available everywhere, and the AMD FX x8 8350 @ 4.0ghz [Turboboost to 4.2ghz], which is built on the Piledriver architecture, would be the better way to go, as several improvements performance-wise have been made to this newest series.  You can read more about it here.

True, the heavy price reduction over previous editions will have had something to do with it, but the local market size was/is miniscule, to put it mildly.  When you consider that more people live in Central New York than in the whole of Australia, and that my local vicinity comprises of less than 1/50th of the entire population of about 22 million, I'd say the market size had nothing to do with it.  Point is, Win 8 seems to have sold well here in Australia.

Time will tell, but Win 8 isn't going away any time soon... and MS is unlikely to backpedal now it has come this far.