I won't defend the bad UI but you can get to the charm menu just by using Windows+C. Also, installing ClassicShell takes literally thirty seconds and then you have a standard Win7-style UI. The kernel and other OS internals in 8.1 are faster and more stable than 7.

>faster and more stable than 7.

You tricked by update cycle. Each new version is faster because has no updates that fix holes. Test it, install new virtualboxed w7sp1 into w7sp1 with updates and feel the difference.

That's the reason why I never install updates (this forces me to be ultracareful on the web, but I'm ok).

this is most certainly not the case, and I really doubt you "feel" any difference at all.

While you were 'in doubt' I recently reinstalled my old laptop (with the same restricted set of software except updates) so it can boot quickly and open explorer instantly, not in a couple of seconds. This behavior disappears at the time you install all updates. I experienced that many times on many pcs. Not that you should trust me, test it.

Try accessing that charm bar in an RDP session to a server... that was fun (NOT)... Though classic shell was my go-to with Windows 8/8.1, I mostly use 10 as-is. The more annoying thing is when web search results would come above local apps (Win, type app-name, ...), first thing I disabled after seeing that.

Overall, I still prefer Windows UI (since v7) over other options I've tried (macOS, Ubuntu Unity, gnome 3). I just wish they'd reign in some of the privacy and finish the polish on some areas of settings/usability already, there are still plenty of pre-vista style configuration panels that don't scale properly, and are too hard to get to.

I think the thinking is that you were supposed to just hit the power button on your PC tower; just like how you can hit the power button on a tablet/phone/xbox one/laptops.

Not ideal if you've put your tower in some far-off corner under your desk, of course.

Nobody does that because in Windows 7, the power button was by default wired to immediately suspend to ram. Why would a user expect it to act differently?

Daily, at least. Depends what you're doing, I suppose, but playing with large files in image editing software means a lot of memory gets doled out and virtually none of it ever makes it back into the pool when a program exits (Windows seems to be overly concerned that you might want to use that memory with that program again "right away", where "right away" means sometime in the next six weeks or so). There's little point in suspending; that just leaves the machine in a laggy state. And by "laggy", I mean Eclipse-on-a-Pentium-3 laggy. Shutting down when the machine's not actively in use means I get a better shot at not having to reboot in the middle of session.

Quite often, given how fast Hybrid Boot is. Nowadays I rarely sleep it, I either want it to leave it churning on an encode or something, or just powered off to come back to a fresh environment. I really only sleep it if I'm absolutely in the middle of something that just cannot be effectively saved.

I'm long-since done with Hibernate entirely and have switched it off to reclaim the space used by hiberfil.sys (powercfg /hibernate off).

I never understand why so many people find it so hard to change, and get used to a simpler way of doing things. Your computer has a power button, or (if it's a laptop) you can simply close it. Windows supports sleep and standby very well.

We have two oldfashioned desktop computers running Windows 10 in our home. They are shared by the family and kids for email, browsing and gaming, everyone (and even several of our kids friends') has a Microsoft account on each computer. The computers are turned "on" and "off" many times a day, using the POWER button. The computers take less than 3 seconds to start, as they are actually just sleeping.

Once a day. Keeps my room cool!