Microsoft: People get used to Windows 8 in two days to two weeks

Microsoft claims ordinary consumers are getting along just fine with Windows 8. Julie Larson-Green, the Microsoft executive who leads Windows product development, says data collected by Microsoft shows people are becoming more familiar with the new features over time. She says it takes users between two days to two weeks to get to know Windows 8, a time period similar to what Microsoft saw with the introduction of the "ribbon interface" in Office 2007, an initially controversial change that was also led by Larson-Green.

The data, which is automatically send to Microsoft every day from people using the "customer experience improvement program", also show there's a cutover point, around six weeks in, where Windows 8 users start using the new things more than the things they're familiar with. Full details at Mashable.

“So far we’re seeing very encouraging things,” Larson-Green says of the large volume of data that Microsoft receives every day from people using Windows 8 who have chosen to join the company’s “customer experience improvement program.” All users are invited to enroll in that program when they first log into the new operating system. If they do so, anonymized information about how they are using the operating system is sent to Microsoft. Referring to complaints from some quarters, Larson-Green says: “Even with the rumblings, we feel confident that it’s a moment in time more than an actual problem.”

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Although some new users will struggle to figure out these features, Larson-Green says that 90 percent of them need just one session to discover the two that are most crucial to the interface design. Those are the Start screen and “Charms,” a menu that offers shortcuts to be summoned by a mouse or finger gestures..