I love how Gartner is ignored routinely by the IT community until suddenly some people hear what they want to hear and start quoting it repeatedly. Misquoting it mind you. It's not "Gartner", it's one employee's blog post and it was one of four or five in a series examining Windows 8. And he was really positive about it.
"My overall opinion on Windows 8 is actually really good. That’s why I’m surprised at the amount of press – they love taking that one sentence and pulling it out of context. That’s driving me nuts. Overall, it’s actually a compelling product, combining a tablet OS and a desktop OS... I think that’s a very smart move."
As to "0xB16B00B5"... instead of removing it, could they not just have added "0xB16C0C" and called it equality?