Unpacking my brand new Dell Inspiron 17 7000 I was keen on test-driving this new touchy, feely stuff for the first time.
Acutally I was prepared for the worst and went out really impressed!
I, for myself, am using this machine as it would be with Win7, just nicer.
Hit the Start (Keyboard) button like before and the instant search returns your applications, files and more stuff just like before. With the metro area you have now even more space to arrange the most-often-used applications and give them a little bit of grouping and prioritizing by having larger or smaller icons.
Still, I need some time to get a grasp on full-screen apps and how to switch between full and desktop mode.
Alltogether, I cannot comprehend why everybody is having problems with this new kind of design and paradigm.
Now comes the bad news. Win 8 and Win 8.1 is still having a lot of pitfalls. I for myself had to disable hibernation or the new windows stand-by mode because my laptop kept freezing after the second or third resume. Furthermore, eventually after switching users or returning from stand-by, the mouse is unresponsive to left-click but everything else works just find.
For my type of laptop this can be solved by double-finger scrolling once, which rips the touchpad driver out of its misery and everything is back to normal again.