Try this, maybe. I’m not sure if this is what’s happening with you, as I only use British English on mine, but it might be worth looking at.
Multiple monitors and Metro were the final straw for my decision to go back to Windows 7. I would have been content if I could have pinned the Start Screen functionality permanently to my flat screen TV. It does, after all, make for a semi decent looking 10-foot display (not perfect, but I’ve yet to find something that is), and would have allowed my gaming monitor to always boot to the desktop. I would have then been able to launch full screen Metro apps on a big display where their full-screen view would have made some sense, while leaving my desktop environment untouched and the way I wanted it. Except, of course, you can’t do that. Metro apps that you launch due to the system defaulting to those apps over the desktop equivalents launch on the monitor you activated them on and pull the whole start screen with it. Activate something from the charms bar on your non-10-foot display? Say hello to the Start Screen on that monitor too. Are there workarounds? Sure, but even those didn’t fix the problem completely for me.
Maybe they have since fixed it. At this point the only computer actually running Windows 8 in my house is my Acer Iconia W700 tablet–which is a touch screen device, where the start screen and Metro Internet Explorer actually work fairly well–so long as you don’t go into desktop mode, without a mouse attached, too often, where scaling issues mess with a number of applications, whether you stay at the default 150% (text and pop up text boxes break for a number of Windows applications) or change it to the desktop 100% (good luck hitting that maximized Chrome window back button with your finger).
Other reasons I upgraded back to 7:
(1)I own a full license for 7 Ultimate. I can access my linux fileserver NFS shares in 7 Ultimate. Only way to do that in 8 is to buy Enterprise. They eliminated an “Ultimate” option from 8, and 8 Pro lacks any installable NFS support. I will grant you that 7’s NFS implemenation is…fickle…but I can at least get it to work. I could probably just switch to a Samba implementation in Linux, but I have my reasons for not doing so.
(2)I have a Ceton InfiniTV tuner card. The ONLY solution for watching CableCARD protected content on a PC is Windows Media Center. Windows Media Center was removed from 8. If you want it back, you not only have to pony up an additional $99 bucks for the “Pro” upgrade, you have to chuck in another (I think) $10 on top of that to bring back the exact same (un-upgraded) WMC software that every copy of 7 except for Home Basic (I think) comes with by default. $110 bucks just to do what I’m already doing with 7? No thanks. The same applies if you want the DVD playback licensing with Windows Media Player. Granted, for DVD playback, free software solutions are a helluva lot better (VLC, MPC-HC, XBMC, Plex) anyways.
(3)Non-signed drivers require not just a UAC override but a reboot. Not just a reboot though; a reboot option “hidden” if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for. Which, after all is said and done, requires…another reboot, back to protected mode. Now I know, this is to protect the less tech savvy from installing something which turns out to be a huge security risk because they complained at the constant UAC prompts in Vista and ignored them in 7, so this rates the “lowest” of my complaints, but it is still annoying. I’d rather have 3 consecutive UAC warnings–“This Program wants to do this: Are you sure?” “Are you REALLY sure?” “Clicking past this one is on you, buddy”.
“It never ends, this shit”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ
NSFW!
If you want a menu that’s like the one in XP, it does that pretty well. If you want one that’s like Windows 95–it does that really well. The latter is actually what it was originally designed to do (as that option doesn’t exist on Vista+)
The only downside is the lack of a “frequently used programs” feature*. It is replaced with a “recently used programs” feature instead, which can be good enough for some, but was not for me. Also, the search isn’t quite as good, but usually it’s good enough.
*At least, as of the last time I tried it.
As for Windows 8: Sure, I defend it against what I consider unfair criticisms, but I do think it was a huge misstep on Microsoft’s part. I do not agree, however, that an attempt to create touch-friendly desktop OS was as doomed as you guys seem to think. I think they just screwed it up.
For example of a big mistake, I’ve often pointed out that the Start Screen makes a more logical replacement for the Desktop, not the Start Menu. Just add a couple more features, like a customizable background and the ability to pin tiles in place, and it pretty much is the desktop but with more features. Sure, the tile size is a bit big for mouse use, but that could be tailored to each version.
The start menu should have stuck around (and should show on the Start Screen/desktop), but the All Programs item should have changed the desktop into the Apps screen (save with hierarchical bend) with a clearly visible back button to take you back to the main desktop.
Finally, they should have focused heavily on keeping old apps but making them work in the touch environment. The advantage of having Windows on a tablet is being able to run the same apps you ran before. They should have went out of their way to make it easy for developers to make a touch version of their app.
Doing these things, plus the changes they are making 8.1, would have made the experience much more interconnected, and thus achieved their goal of getting desktop users familiar with the new touch interface, so that they would be more likely to buy Windows-based tablets. Ultimately, that was the point of having tablets and desktops share an OS. With the tablet market the way it is, a new OS would not have made headway against the giants of Android and iOS, any more than Windows Phone did on phones.
As others have pointed out, touch screens would be a problem. But I think you may be ignorant of(or forgetting) another aspect of PCs. If you’re setting out to own a new PC, and have a copy of Windows 7, why on earth would you buy something loaded with Windows 8? You would buy/build a machine with no OS, thereby reducing that portion of the cost of your PC, and then install Windows 7 on it. I don’t think Mac users have any equivalent option, so it may not have occurred to you.
To be fair, Microsoft was just copying Ubuntu’s earlier enforced introduction of Unity, a toylike multi-gadget touch-orientated shell which alienated users and other distros: that copying had to include the OS failing.
Turn off all updates. Problem solved; your computer won’t cause you to wait, won’t change operations, procedures, functions and menus unexpectedly. Everything will work as expected. Updates are the Devil’s spawn.
I’m happily running 10.5.8 and will continue to do so until the hardware finally drops dead. Macs cost more in the beginning, but IME last much longer.
Yes, I have. AOL did not give people the option to turn off updates, though, unless we shut down the computer.
Actually, I do manually check for updates on a regular basis. But I really don’t need most of the updates.
My XP running laptop is from 2006. I paid half the price of an equivalent mac. I recently paid 25 USD to upgrade the RAM, which has significantly improved performance. I too expect to run the laptop till it refuses to run. Something tells me I wouldn’t have been able to get double the life/value out of the equivalent mac.
I just added a shutdown tile and a restart tile to the start screen.
I still don’t understand why some people are having such a problem finding the settings button. It’s right there in the Charms bar. It’s not functionally different from having it in the old start menu - the bar’s just on the right instead of the bottom. I agree that Windows 8 isn’t all that great, but complaining about them moving the power button to the right side of the desktop is a little absurd. It is NOT hard to find.
I’ve been finding my Start Button in the same place for almost twenty years. I hope it never moves.
Sounds like an anomaly to me, tho I’ve only had one non-Mac laptop. I’ve ended up destroying most of the PC desktops I used at work and the Compac laptop was useless quickly due to software upgrading past it’s ability to deal with it. OTOH, I have one of the original Mac desktops (something II) and an old Powerbook (2000? earlier?) that both still work. If I only used my laptop for travel, I’d still be on the Powerbook, but I have to upgrade occasionally to be able to use the newest software for Photoshop, etc. Except when my cat manages to spill a glass of wine on it, which is why this one is only seven years old. 
No, it’s a pretty standard HP laptop actually.
The second thing I do after installing on KDE is to set the menu to Classic Menu Style with a right click.
How would you be using the latest Photoshop, web browser, office suite, etc running 10.5.x? It is obsolete. Any pre-Intel Apple is fairly worthless unless you stick with old software all-around.
I’m not using the latest Photoshop - it’s when I cannot do what I want and have to buy the latest Photoshop or whatever that I finally buy a new laptop.
You may think that 10.5 is obsolete, but it does everything I need it to do and its the only computer I use these days. Never have understood the rush to buy something just because it’s new.
I’ve also noticed another advantage to Win 8 over previous versions (although I’m not sure how much has to do with the specifics of this particular computer): It’s seems a lot more stable. Whenever a particular program or process hangs, I’m almost always able to pull up the task manager, find whatever is causing the problem, and kill it, as opposed to having to restart the entire system, which was much more often the case in the past. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had to restart this computer even once so far because of something crashing.
Although, to be fair, I’m not sure exactly how much this differs from Win 7, as I only ever really used that on a rather shitty laptop that never really behaved sensibly in the first place.