Windows 8 comes out Friday. It’s only $40 for the upgrade version (for a limited time). We have a couple of XP machines that I may upgrade, but I’ll leave the Windows 7 machines alone. I figure Windows 8’s at least gotta be better than XP. I hear one of the most annoying parts is that they got rid of the red X that you use to close applications. Instead, you have to grab the top of the window and drag it downward to shrink the window out of existence. Cause, hey, everybody loves dragging. Hopefully the Alt-F4 close shortcut still works. Replacing a single click with click and drag sounds like they were too obsessed with the touchpad interface. The start menu is now an entire start screen. I guess I like that idea. You can get to administrative tools with the Windows key-X shortcut, which is also good. But if this turns out to follow the “every other Windows version is a lemon” rule, you should definitely get it if you’re on the Windows ME-Vista upgrade path.