What do normal people think of new Windows 8 PCs?

At the risk of being accused of bias, I have learnt by bitter experience over the past 5 years or so, to beware of anything, absolutely ANYTHING that comes from the pen of Ed Bott. From memory, he is a man that even made the flaws of Vista appear to be reasons for purchasing the product. Let every person make up his own mind - I could be so very, very wrong and maligning Ed quite unjustly........but I have no recollection of any Bott article on an aspect of Windows that didn't put high praise on that OS or its associated Redmond software. Caveat emptor.

Ridcully wrote:beware of anything, absolutely ANYTHING that comes from the pen of Ed Bott.

Well, it becomes obvious nothing has changed, when early in the piece Ed correctly states, "The sample size is far too small to draw any firm conclusions....". Obviously, this minor fact is not going to stop a paid shill for M$, as Ed treads ever onward amidst a forrest of pro-Windows article links and "buy Windows" ads/buttons. I mean, what did you expect from a pro-M$ website? A favorable review of OBSD by an unbiased writer?

Oh deary me......another person with similar ideas to mine. That's two persons Edward can name in his libel suit. To quote a small skeletal rodent from Terry Pratchett: SNH SNH SNH.

I'll third that. Take anything Ed Bott (and paid for) says with a 50 lb. bag of salt.

ZDnet is for watching the fun in the "mosh pit" of comments. Few serious articles appear there, even including those of Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols...

SJVN does write some good stuff and some serious stuff. Other writers are a mixed bag at best, and I do think the nonsense outweighs the quality material.

As I see it, Ed Bott is fine, talking about the technical minutia of Windows OSs, and even sometimes objecting about how MS, the corporation, neglects their customers' interests in certain respects -- but ultimately he's a dyed-in-the-wool Windows chauvinist, and anything that goes beyond in-crowd "just among us true-believers" criticism is anathema to him.

Before I discovered Linux, and was simply learning to use and manage my own PC (ie. Windows '95, '98, and '98se) I found his column very useful, perhaps even enlightening. But as my understanding grew, and as I was exposed to alternative OSs and alternative perspectives, he seemed (or perhaps became) not merely partisan, but more and more canalized in an MS-filtered outlook, which rather distinctly calls to mind the way a gosling gets imprinted on the first animate object in its environment.

Which is a shame, because though blinkered, he's not stupid or lazy like all too many other tech columnists. If only he had been able to adapt better...

edit:

Oh yeah, I've pretty much stopped reading his column, too, except very occasionally when he ventures into Linux/Open Source territory, and I both (1) have the time and (2) am in the mood, to find the spectacle entertaining.

> ...early in the piece Ed correctly states, "The sample size is far too small to draw any firm conclusions.... [but overall I found...]"...

Well, in fairness, that little detail won't generally stop a Linux-fan from offering an opinion either...

("Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander", and all that.)

My earlier comment above about Ed Bott still holds, but this particular piece strikes me as pretty reasonable. If some other columnist had written a similar column, about some newly available Linux hardware, referring to "Ubuntu" in place of "Windows", would we be complaining about it? I doubt it.

Yes BernardSwiss......the problem is separating the few wheat grains from the chaff, and Ed has produced so much chaff that sooner or later one learns to consign every barrow load of Ed-based chaff to the mulch heap without looking for the few grains of wheat in it.

I wouldn't describe these "real" people as "normal." They are average consumers who gather everything they know about technology from Best Buy and Walmart advertisement circulars. And there is almost no greater insult to human existence than to be called "average."