I sat staring at the screen, my emotions lodged somewhere between dumbfounded and despondent. From what I was seeing, I knew I'd made a horrific mistake, and restitution must be made immediately. I'd been told time and time again there was no going back; what's done is done, you have to accept it, there's no living in the past. But a violation this total demanded from me only one response.
I had to uninstall Windows 8, and I had to do it immediately.
What possessed me to put the latest version of Microsoft's flagship operating system on my home computer this past fateful weekend, I'll never know. To some extent, I'm sure, it was the persistent ministrations of my PCMag colleaguesMichael Muchmore and Samara Lynn, who had been trying to sell me on Windows 8 for months. I'd dabbled in every major version since the Developer Preview, and never warmed to it, but I'd somehow succeeded in convincing myself that this time things would be different.
Yet the instant I saw my entire 1,920-by-1,200 monitor consumed with only the Windows 8 update notifications - the rest of the screen a field of white vast enough to drive Alaska to fits of murderous envy - it was clear I'd been drastically mistaken. Windows 8 is not, by any stretch of the imagination, for me. And it's time I stopped pretending otherwise.