I don't know about you, depending on what you do for a living and your hobbies etc it can take days to reinstall software. You might be up and going shortly, not everyone else will be.

Video driver updates I see mentioned already. I have had a few programs that are productivity and game based - that have the ability to work in a window or fullscreen do the same. The screen flashes and or resets all or just some of the icons on the desktop. I find that if I have moved things around and have not right clicked on the mouse on the desktop to refresh the screen, whatever I haved moved sometimes moves back.

I have found Windows 8.1 to be a REALLY stable OS. Over many months of heavy use and I have never had a crash or seen a blue screen. I don't need to reboot, unless there is a system update. They are doing something right.

Good Books are my answer.

I install all of the major browsers for testing. I was a huge Firefox fan until it bloated, back in the days before Windows 7. I switched to Chrome, mostly for browsing and developing. Firefox has since speeded up and I do use that more than I used too. IE is a slow start up and it's toolbar malware clean-up sometimes can be a real problem. Opera is becoming a nice browser, but is painfully slow in starting up and is grabby with file extension permissions. Safari on windows is not a favorite workflow of mine.

I am going to be 49 Friday. I started with an Amiga 500 compiling from the command line on floppies with SAS C. Then I drawn to the world of MS. I am C++ programmer who was drawn to web development. Over the last few years I started using the LAMP stack and PHP so Linux just seemed to be a natural choice. You are never to old to learn. If you want to put the time into it, you will enjoy the things you can do in Linux.

I can say there is only one thing that I find disturbing about Microsoft Security Essentials. I had been using the product in it's paid form "One Care" for a year or so. This was about 3 years ago. I had it continually keep telling me I needed to take security checks to determine if my install of Windows was authentic - it was, I do not steal. I don't know about you guys, but how many times have you had to do that in the past? This used to pop up a lot on the MS developers site. I use Windows 7 64-bit. I guess there was a bug with "one" of the versions of the authentication checking module - that was XP based somewhere on the Microsoft site. Well I found it and it told me my version of Windows 7 was not authentic and then upon a reboot my partition was bricked. Calls to paid support lead nowhere in this case as it was an isolated problem - that was not supposed to happen as they said. They put me through the ringer to make sure I was not a software thief. I had all my receipts and bought my upgrade on the MS store. After that embarrassing few minutes, there was no solution. I lost some data and a 1TB Drive as well. When you start to mix other business interests with things that other AV software developers have no reason interest or need to delve in, that are not related to AV or Malware - things happen. All to often, although it IS better than it used to be - I hate getting the you have to re-install speech on a paid support call. I know the issue most likely does not exist anymore as this product has matured. The problem of Mixing things with the OS is no stranger to Windows. I use Norton :)

I guess it all depends on the needs of the user and how the OS supplies their needs. If you still dependent on Windows apps and workflow to work, then you will need it and what comes with it. As a programmer I have been able to replace large amounts of my workflow with Linux, and I still depend on Win for other needs. If you are used to using Visual Studio, you are not going to be happy with Linux. I do not develop native Windows apps - so that is why my workflow is different. I have turned on many people who use their PC's for consumption only, onto Linux Mint or Ubuntu and they are very happy. Not everyone is a programmer. They can not mess it up very easy, especially if they have no use for the command line. I get less help calls, than I do with torched Win installs from the people I know. Every one is different as are their needs.

Hi Glenn, I have a Kindle Fire which adds another way to read PDF's. There is a PDF Reader App available in the Kindle App Store. You can then either download the PDF from your email account or the web. If you do not have a Kindle Fire then emailing them to your Kindle Email address as other readers have posted seems to be the best way to read a PDF on a traditional E-Ink Screen Kindle. Dennis Saeva

I honestly think they have a winner with Win 7, paying attention to a tablet market is not a dumb move by any means. After seeing W8 in action, I am wondering what they are thinking. Most people do not want serious change on their DESKTOP like this. It is just another example of an out of sync company, that is at a horizon in their existence. The desktop market has changed because of tablets & phones, but as always they doing what they see fit. I love Windows, but this and the fact that they are going to not allow browser competition with their ARM tablet line, hardware acceleration issues, is history repeating itself. Down to earth consumers are looking elsewhere for home computing quickly. I already have Carpel Tunnel, I am not dragging screens with a mouse. Indie development is in a renaissance, the tides have changed. They really should think a bit about a "choice" for an honest to goodness Windows Interface as needed. I am already planning for the worst and may be switching to a Mac or Linux for development, if it gets this bad. I do not want to, but what I see is not a good sign, yet.