Interesting read. I agree with it totally.
I can't play it with a mouse and keyboard it's that bad. I also had to go in and change my audio settings because of crackling.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20111111/8866/Skyrim_or_How_Not_to_Make_a_PC_Game.php

This review is centered on the UI and other tangible aspects of the game. While I don't disagree, I would call this more of a 'rant' than an 'article'. He has absolutely nothing to say about the actual gameplay, story, or environment. That's the sad thing, about the interwebs... Everyone with an opinion can have their rants posted, ad-naseum, across the world.

To each his own...

But he's talking about the state of the game, not the gameplay itself.
The state is the problem.

Agree with article basically 100%. I too have been suffering from the perfectly fine FPS dropping down to like 5 FPS at completely random times when there isn't any thing extra going on in game..

I also think it was a bit rantish... but I agree with quite a bit of it, nonetheless. I was disappointed to see that some of the reviews I've read were only on consoles, and the PC version really needs some reviewers out there who aren't afraid to dig deep (or in Skyrim's case, not very deep) and point out some serious issues with porting the game from console.

I don't have the issues he mentions (apart from the non-functional design of the UI, obviously). High+ settings on a has-been system works perfectly I think i've also gotten achivements despite using console?

And really, if you're buying a Bethesda game on release you should expect bugs. And then some.

I know people are having issues, but it is definitely down to hardware configuration, something common to PC games unfortunately, and the UI isn't as customized for PCs as it should have been.

HOWEVER, saying Bethesda doesn't care about PC development is a low blow in the article. For instance, I have no problems with my PC version. I'm 30 hours in. No lag, I'm able to use the mouse or keyboard in every single menu, and the game looks and runs better than even Oblivion does on this same computer. The only thing I've personally experienced is a couple of graphics glitches that stuck a screen effect on my player (solved by reloading) and a few scripting errors in quests.

If it is running well on multiple old PCs for people then the only thing Bethesda failed at was not testing the PC version on enough variations of PC hardware configurations, and to be fair, there are hundreds of thousands of those and a lot of PC games drop the ball in that department. Of course the console versions are more stable and have fewer issues! They are a closed system with the exact same hardware for every player!

I've played most Bethesda games using that engine (because let's face it, Creation engine is nothing else than a modified GameBryo used in Oblivion and Fallout, Bethesda itself has said so). While I, too, have been very lucky and never had any major issues aside from the usual CTD every 1 or 2 hours, there are some people that are just out of luck with Bethesda games. Ultimately it comes down to specific hardware/software configurations, I guess, but that doesn't really help those affected by it.

Anyway. Seeing how Skyrim turned out it's no wonder people are accusing Bethesda of not caring much about PC. The game is a rather sloppy console port. Bad UI, technical issues due to questionable choices (shadows rendered on the CPU, still not more than two cores used, anyone?). Clearly consoles are the lead platform for this release. How much better would it be for PC users had they cared about a genuine pc interface or some technical optimizations to allow for better usage of contemporary hardware?
Luckily on PC we have mods. The one reason why I still think that PC delivers the better experience. But relying on modders to fix it (again) is not exactly inspiring confidence...