Turning it up to 8: if you're going to make something easy to use and intuitive, don't hide the power button
Make sure your staff know how to demonstrate all the features customers may expect.
I've installed Windows 8 out of an insane sense of adventure, and it's running better than you'd expect.
"Dip & Squeeze? Pick one, jerks!"
What sold me on it was the fantastic $15 upgrade price, for people who recently bought a Windows 7 system. I was planning on dual-booting both Windows 7 and 8 in case things went horribly wrong. Well the installer was so "user friendly" I didn't even find the option to install the dual-boot version, and before you knew it, I was running version 8. Happily enough, the installation was very smooth, no data was lost, and it was time to sleep.
Except that I wanted to find the "shut down" command. Hitting my computer's physical power button would've worked, but I wanted to find the "software" method. It was late and I was tired, and it was nowhere obvious, so a quick Google search revealed that the quick and dirty option was to hit ctrl+alt+del, which reveled the power button in the lower right of my screen. The next day I also found it under the 'Settings' menu which roughly equalled the same number of mouse clicks as you'd experience in most other systems, so I forgave Microsoft this little quirk.
Things got more bizarre when I wandered over to the Microsoft store in the Eaton Centre, to check out the Surface tablets. Having played around with the iPad, Android, and Playbook offerings, I knew how tablets "should" work. How could I perform some basic functions involving flipping the shared screen between programs I asked?
The grey-shirted sales rep fumbled my question, swiping the screen erratically. Fortunately the senior sales guy - in an orange shirt - rescued him and showed off the solution.
Good for them to find a way to answer my question. Sad to see wildly differing levels of knowledge on what should have been basic functions. Even worse that a tablet, which by its nature should be easy to use and intuitive, would require a two-man intervention before its secrets could be revealed.
Having said all that, it gave me some ideas on how to improve some audit workprograms I'm designing to make sure even the freshest student newly arrived out of school can figure out some simple instructions with minimal guidance. There's always learning moments out there.