Oh yeah, there are definitely technical advances, and they're not trivial. But they just don't compensate for the UI issues, and those are problematic.
e.g. on the interaction front, I'm not talking about technical interaction, but UI interaction - there's no reason metro apps can't run in a window nor classic apps can't run in fullscreen, even if their design won't be optimal for the non-normal UI. As is, you're forced to use two quite different UI's intermixed with one another. (Task-switching between classic+modern is problematic too).
I spend most of my time in and switching among the application I use to work/play in. I think the worst missing feature is the missing recent files/applications feature which means that ad-hoc workloads with various single-purpose tools are quite unhandy. It's not just recent files: the same thing counts for recent programs. Win7 provides taskbar (and start) pinning for your really common programs. Win8 provides start customization. But for the rest - the stuff you organically happen to use a lot for a particular task - Win8 has no alternative to the win7 recent programs.
Boot time: that's nice, but I really don't care very much - my old boot time was less than 30s, and now it's probably even less - but how often do you reboot?
I haven't noticed the multi-monitor support being better, what's the advantage?
In any case: there's no doubt that win8 has numerous technical advancements - and frankly, I like the modern interface. That makes it all the more aggravating that the UI is such a haphazard mess. The problem isn't modern - it's how they've done virtually no work in coordinating between the two UIs. If good integration is impossible, I'd even rather just have a mode-switch: render everything in classic mode, or everything in modern, regardless of what the app was really designed for.
e.g. on the interaction front, I'm not talking about technical interaction, but UI interaction - there's no reason metro apps can't run in a window nor classic apps can't run in fullscreen, even if their design won't be optimal for the non-normal UI. As is, you're forced to use two quite different UI's intermixed with one another. (Task-switching between classic+modern is problematic too).
I spend most of my time in and switching among the application I use to work/play in. I think the worst missing feature is the missing recent files/applications feature which means that ad-hoc workloads with various single-purpose tools are quite unhandy. It's not just recent files: the same thing counts for recent programs. Win7 provides taskbar (and start) pinning for your really common programs. Win8 provides start customization. But for the rest - the stuff you organically happen to use a lot for a particular task - Win8 has no alternative to the win7 recent programs.
Boot time: that's nice, but I really don't care very much - my old boot time was less than 30s, and now it's probably even less - but how often do you reboot?
I haven't noticed the multi-monitor support being better, what's the advantage?
In any case: there's no doubt that win8 has numerous technical advancements - and frankly, I like the modern interface. That makes it all the more aggravating that the UI is such a haphazard mess. The problem isn't modern - it's how they've done virtually no work in coordinating between the two UIs. If good integration is impossible, I'd even rather just have a mode-switch: render everything in classic mode, or everything in modern, regardless of what the app was really designed for.