I have a BSEE degree, and have been in broadcasting both in production and transmission since 1980.  I saw the  tail end of the 2 inch quad videotape era where you edited with a razor blade and Scotch tape all the way to the current 4K editing workstations....  but for home use, the Movie Maker  included in XP was simple but functional.  With support ending for XP, I  was just forced to upgrade to Windows 8.  The XP system had an Athlon K7 chip running at 1800 Mhz and was maxed out at 1 GB of memory.   So I had to get a completely  new system with 16 GB memory, quad-core AMD chip running at 3 Ghz.  The  Movie Maker included with Windows 8 is not only dumbed down with removed functiionality, but the designers seem to have no clue about proper  editing procedures  ---  those general rules apply not only to today's  digital video, but movies,  live shows, novels, speeches, even music.  The beginning and end are usually fine, but most edits are cuts WITHIN the video...when people start getting long winded, or go off on a tangent, or repeating  what they already said, or giving "too much information" that bores or confuses the  audience, or picking buggers out of their nose. 

On the XP version, you just highlight the unwanted stuff and press delete.   Whether  it's in the middle or at either end.  The Window 8 version lets you only set a later starting point and a sooner ending point.  To make cuts WITHIN the video -- where MOST need to made  -- you apparently have to split the video and make one part end sooner  and the next part start later.  Try doing that 20 times and getting all the segments put back and combined.  (The timeline shows minutes and seconds, but the trim point only accepts input in seconds --So I have to grab a caculator   8:30 = 530 seconds)

It just acts OPPOSITE of long standing convention  --  you TRIM what you want to get rid of -- like you trim a piece of meat -- you take off 

fat and keep the lean part.  On  this Windows  8 version, you set the start and stop points of the TRIM function and it gets rid of everything EXCEPT the part you wanted to trim out.  Who would think the default (and ONLY)  action for TRIMMING 8  seconds out of a 10 minute video would be that you only wanted to keep 8 seconds of it and get rid of the rest?

Anyone ever watch TV news where it shows the announcer is talking and then switches to a photo, or a chart while the announcer continues?  The XP version just let you drop a still picture of a defined duration  on top of the video while the audio continued.   Easy.  The NEW version -- if you drop in an image for 10 seconds on top of the video   -- you get the image with 10 seconds of  SILENCE and the sound resumes when the clip of the image ends --- and 10 seconds is added to the length of the project.  This very simple still image insert apparently requires you to  separate the audio and video tracks,  then move the audio track 10 seconds BACK, and then cut 10 seconds off the beginning of the remaining video, hope it's still in sync.  

So I will have to BUY a video editing program.  I already had to buy $120 Office to get full Outlook for email since the free Outlook Express will not run on Windows 7 or 8 -- this old school guy wants POP3 email  downloaded to MY machine, deleted from the server, and archived by me.  Not on some cloud based system -- Microsoft can't even decide what to  CALL it  ---  It's Hotmail ---I mean Windows Live Mail  -  no just WINDOWS Mail -- I mean Outlook.com  --   not to be confused with Outlook  --  It's all safely stored  on your own Windows Sky Drive -- I mean Windows ONE  Drive....

What is Microsoft thinking?  I was not only forced to buy a new system , but to endure Windows 8 with its "pre kindergarten  introduction to computers" interface -  don't need to read, write, or think -- just touch the correct  colored square and get  a banana slice.  Good Lana!