Bah!
Dear Microsoft:
I've actually enjoyed using some of your products for years, generally abandoning them when the Hunt For Sales brought Unnecessary Sweeping Change.
Outlook and Word are now rendered largely unusable to the casual or occasional user who doesn't have the time or budget for formal education in the new version of what used to be a reasonably intuitive product line. True, I needed help occasionally, but I was always able to recognize when this was the case.
Now I waste time trying to use the things before once again going to Google to find out how to do something I once considered trivial (the official Microsoft help is about as much use as hiccups are to a glassblower). Guess which product line is not allowed on my personal computer equipment any more?
You need to know something: I am never, repeat: never, going to own a Microsoft tablet computer. Designing your software to the assumption I will eventually See The Light will only result in hastening my switch to non-Microsoft-originated operating systems.
I do not need touch control, nor do I applaud your drive to make everything look and feel like I should be poking it with a finger. Tiles are ugly wastes of desktop that have no utility for me whatsoever. Foisting them on me is phenomenally bad in PR terms and a dead cert sales killer.
Please pass the word to your partners. I recently tossed out a very well known anti-virus/firewall package I'd used for years because they replaced the attractive and easy to figure out user interface with a bug-ugly tiled nightmare with less functionality.
Said package vendor is still mailing me under the impression I simply "forgot" to renew - against the evidence that my system no longer pings Vendor Central using the stealth "notifier services" that stayed around after I'd run the uninstall process. Azathoth bless Sysinternals for cutting the search and destroy process to only half an hour. Now there is a package of stuff with "We Get It" design.
I write stuff using my computer. For that I need a keyboard that doesn't either consume screen real estate or come packaged in such a small form factor my hands are pressed together while typing.
I draw stuff using my computer. The single advantage of doing so is that the drawing itself is never occluded by the drawing instrument. If I had one thing to say to Mr "no stylus" Jobs it would be "YOU CAN"T SEE WHAT YOU ARE DRAWING WHEN YOUR HAND IS IN THE WAY, F*CKHEAD".
Mr Jobs is sadly no longer with us, but the point still stands. Having the drawing instrument, be it a pen-and-tablet or mouse, off to the side well clear of the work being created is such a massively useful thing I'm staggered that people honestly can't see that for themselves. Ten seconds with a tablet computer and a drawing app should demonstrate it nicely to anyone.
One can only conclude that the people still foisting a "no mouse, touchy-touchy" model on me never use these products, and the less said about the suitability of such people for designing tools for my use the better.
So, at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious I'll sum it up:
1) What people like me want from the operating system is that it look and interact with them much like Windows XP. When thousands of people are telling you that they want to use your software bugs'n'all despite your screaming that they are being dense for doing so, perhaps it's time to stop using "they're stupid" and concede that perhaps you have been. Concentrate on refitting the engine and making the door locks more secure and stop f*cking about with the knobs and dials.
2) What people like me want from an Office Suite is that it be as easy to use as possible and that the thing that are broken under the hood be fixed, not the baby out with the bathwater chop'n'channel you keep giving us. I'm already done with MS Office for my own use. Your fault.
Just think: If you'd spent all that money educating people that even though Windows Whatever looked much the same as Windows Oldhat it performed better and was much safer to use, you'd have probably maintained that fantastic market share you won with clever and timely UI design (and a fair bit of clever marketing) in the first place. Now the sand is washing out from under you and your core business is a collection of products more and more people don't want to deal with.
Me included, and I *like* Windows 7, mostly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
