What, and deny Micro$oft the chance to sell huge bulk licensing deals to hardware manufacturers to STIMULATE the hardware market? Be honest, hands up who has bought a shiny new machine with W8 on it when your old machine with W7 on it was performing reasonably well still? I know I did (partly through curiousity just to get under the hood to find out if it was really as bad as everyone made out or whether it was just "basically" configured and with a bit of careful tinkering could be resolved)
I'll probably get castigated for this, but I now actually quite like W8.1. I dont spend more than 10 seconds a day on the START screen, mind.....