You beat me - I only read 44

Yes, Delphi was a revelation. I could not understand why developers stuck with VB when Delphi was a better, easier-to-use, faster alternative. It was obvious at many Microsoft presentations that they had a real respect for Delphi. Tellingly, the tutorial that came with VB3 was written in Delphi (it would have been slow and clunky in VB3). Compared with Delphi, I was unimpressed with VB6. All that changed with VB.NET - at last BASIC was a real OO language. C# was also impressive - it looked like Java but smelled like Delphi - the ascendancy of Delphi was over. (Although, in those early days of .NET, if you wanted to run a basic, performance-driven desktop application outside of the managed environment, what would you use? C++, Delphi, VB6?)

Most new Windows 8 users I have seen love it. New users need training. 5 minutes will do it. Best advice - avoid add-ons like Start8 (completely unnecessary and slow down effective use of start screen, desktop and app screen). Windows 8.1 is basically Windows 7 with Start Screen replacing slower, clunkier start menu. When I have many apps open on desktop, I find it faster to go to, say, Excel via Start Screen than collapsing windows to desktop shortcut and certainly faster than using start button in the old days. I do of course set up desktop and start screen to my usage pattern.

Grammar alert. The error replacing the correct "losing market share" with the incorrect and meaningless "loosing market share" is becoming so common. Why? "loosen" is what you do when your trousers are too tight.

I assume you have a keyboard. Windows-C gets you to the charms fast. I can find no use-case for going back to anything as clunky as the Start Menu or any new pretenders such as Start-88. I have arranged the Start Page to suit my usage eg most frequently required on the left - sensible groupings - eliminating links to unused programs. Also put frequently used desktop programs as shortcuts on desktop. The beauty of Windows has always been its configurability. For rarely used programs, such as regedit, I resort to the Windows-R Run option. I spend 90% of my time in (on?) the desktop but find no issue in dropping into the start page if need be - the transition is so quick and fluid - especially using wheel-mouse (this was even the case with an old laptop with only 512MB of RAM). Other people mention the (shouting) caps menus in VS and Office. They do look bad but these are easily fixed and converted to lowercase and all is well. I have used every version of Windows since Windows 1. Favourites 3.1, 98, XP, 7, and 8. (By the way I also use Mac OSX, IOS7, and Android).

Damn. I knew I had to get my eyes tested.

I am getting tired of silly comments about vb. Presumably by someone who has not checked out vb since vb6.

Power Basic is a further development of Borand's Turbo Basic and was a compiler while GWBasic and Visual Basic were still interpreted at that time. QuickBasic stole some of its thunder. MUSAC, a student management system that is widely used in New Zealand, was originally written in Power Basic (based on an original, simpler system written for a TRS-80). Power Basic is available as Windows and DOS or console compilers. It is a fully developed and consistent form of traditional Basic syntax. A visual designer module for Windows GUI apps is available. If you loved QuickBasic or GWBasic in their day, I recommend Power Basic as a modern, fully supported, and powerful modern equivalent that can create useful applications. Although it might be argued you should really get over it... (I have not actually used Power Basic since v3.0 back in the early 90s).

What is all this "Vista is evil" brouhaha? I was a user of XP. Installed Vista - no problem (except for slow single file copies). Vista SP1 better. Win7 better still. Did people just believe the Apple advertising BS? Were people concerned by MS decision to use all available memory at any time to improve performance so that it seemed (to untutored users) that it was a resource hog? Somebody tell me. What WAS the problem?