I've Gone Metro

Much to my surprise, someone gifted me a brand new laptop yesterday. I can't find a model number on this thing anywhere, but it's an HP Envy with Beats audio, a 1 TB HDD, 12gigs of  ram, an i7 Intel processor and Windows 8.1. It also boasts a 17" screen and backlit keyboard.

Since my previous laptop was about 5 years old, the specs upgrade is welcome. My "old" laptop is also an HP, a 15.6" with an AMD 2.2gig quad core processor, 500gig HDD and 6 gigs of ram, upgradeable to eight.

Likes

• Brand spanking new.

Dislikes

• While the keyboard is backlit (which is a feature I've been wanting for a while) the keyboard layout is ridiculous. The left shift key is so far away I cane barely reach it, instead \i keep hitting the "\" whenever \i\'m typing. As someone who types all day long, this is very annoying. Yes, I'm aware that I just need to create new habits, new muscle memory for the smaller, further away shift button, but \i really would rather just have a keyboard designed for adults.
• All my other "shortcut" keys have moved. Keys like "HOME" or "END," "DELETE" and "Page Up/Down." More muscle memory, less functionality.
• Not to mention, the entire keyboard is spaced just differently enough that I keep hitting the wrong keys. Let me type a sentence without fixing anything after the fact: \the quick brown fox jumped over the laxy dog.
• Gah!
• I thought I'd give the Metro UI a go, but I have to say, the more I use it, the more it annoys me. 

• So many steps to do the most basic things, like rearranging the Tiles.
• Apparently you have to use the touch screen for a lot of the features. The trackpad is nearly useless. What a pain the ass. I like my trackpad, having been using one for more than a decade, and love just swiping my thumb across it to get where I want to go.  
• All the basic menu items that were hidden in Win7 from XP, are hidden even further inside layers of UI. What a pain in the ass. 

• Where my fingers naturally want to go to find the \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\shift key \i either hit the "\" or CAPS LOCK. I'm fairly certain my typing has from 50 wpm to three.

I"m seeing a lot of spelling and punctuation errors in my foreseeable future and that's something \i don't like one bit. \\\\\\\\\\have \i ever been perfect? \no, but \i don't think \i've ever been this bad, even as \\a child.

\gah\\\1