I have used them but I hate how they try to help me in battle when I dismount. I hate how I can't do any form of attack from the horse, I'd like to slow it down and use my bow. I sometimes find myself just sprinting away from the enemy because I dont feel like dismounting and remounting. Its painfully annoying when wimpy animals like wolves come too. Sigh.

Yea, I like the horse too. The only problem I have with it, is when I try back up the horse, he spins around instead of stepping backwards. I know very well that horses can walk backwards, like they could on Oblivion.

I love horses, but honestly, if I have to travel really fast and it is night time, I just turn into a werewolf. I get there much much faster than riding a horse would have. About the only reason I am a werewolf actually.
Although, I've been using Frost for about 60-some hours now, and have only had to reload 3 times, all because I was stupid and jumped off of a cliff that I thought was a lot shorter. The horses tend to last in combat, at least Frost does, so long as I don't just leave her to fight some stupid bandit with an enchanted war axe on her own.

I like using my horse for exploration, but I miss an option for giving the horse commands like you can with humanoid companions. Would be nice to command the horse not to attack f.ex, but then again it isnt hard to pickup aggro from the horse. I find it quite amusing to whatch the horse go blazing into combat like a crazed barbarian on crystalmeth.

No. He keeps [censored] tanking even if I park him like hundred meters away.

for me skyrim ism ore than ujust a game, its a work of art and an awesome immerssive world, I hate using fast travel and love using my worse to go from place to place, also you can avoid anoying encounters like felines bears and thel ike when you are lower levels that for some reason are placed along the roads being higher level than you -.-

I'm trying to force myself to stop using fast travel and rely solely on my horse. I wish there was a mod to permanentely disable fast travel, so I am not tempted to use it.

As good as most of this game is, there are some moronic design decisions, how horses are done is one of them.... Why do they always rush into battle?

I would say im fairly lucky then.

I bought my horse as soon as I could and I have had since, sure it jumps into a fight (Saved my ass from the Ice troll) and it has a tendancy to vanish after a fight but I normally find it waiting for me at the next village/skyrim load point.

I love my horse XD

I'm surprised noone has mentioned it yet. But along with all the other problems people have pointed out it also only allows 3rd person when riding a horse.
This isn't a big deal for some but for me it just takes me right out of the game. I like to be my character in a RPG, I don't like being a camera following some guy. Completely kills any immersion.
Also the camara is really twitchy when riding a horse, especially when going up or down hill.

I don't. If the horse was faster, I would.

Have already asked this question in another thread, but this seems more active.
In oblivion, there was a difference between the cheydinal horse and the though bruma horse. I havent noticed that they are different , although the dont look the same.
Is this true or is some horses stronger/faster?

Horses would be better implemented if you could store things on them (I expect mods will fix this, horse packs were one of my go-to's in oblivion), and if horses were required for fast travel. As of right now, they're just a gimmick.

I bought the horse they were selling at the Whiterun stable and rode him all the way to the gate of Whiterun, where I left him to go inside and take care of some business. The funny thing is that now when I fast travel anywhere he automatically appears there with me when I arrive. This happens even when I walk to a location without bringing my horse and then fast travel from there to sonewhere else. When I get to location B, my horse is magically there. I haven't bothered to worry about it because I am hoping that since the game assumes I am fast travelling by horse, maybe it will cut down some of the in-game elapsed travel time. Not sure if that is true though.

Woah, Shadowmere is in Skyrim? She's actually back?
I loved her in Oblivion

I only use horses when i find one that's nobody guarding or if one of them doesn't have the "Steal" command, so i can freely take it. I wouldn't spend money on them though, i would lose them anyway..

Not unless your RPing someone who has a horse. They definitely need mounted combat. Although Shadowmere will fight.

I didn't bother until the Dark Brotherhood gave me Shadowmere ( R.I.P ) We had an unfortunate accident involving a very steep cliff. I survived, Shadowmere did not. She was one hell of horse. She often spear headed attacks and fended off foes. I sometimes found myself assisting her in combat. I mess Shadowmere, oh how I mess Shadowmere.....

I bought a horse, and I named him Topsy.

I like Topsy. He gets me where I need to go fast, even when I'm over encumbered.

I like using my horse when travelling long distances, and I don't feel like fast travelling all over the place.
And to repeat what has been said about a million times in this thread, it's annoying how aggressive the horse is, I hope they'll patch it.

I don't know if this was the case in Oblivion (although there you couldn't even move..), but if you're over encumbered and mount your horse, you can fast travel to get all that sweet loot back home, which I find pretty sweet.

That's reason enough to use a horse right there. Now that I know that I will be using mine more.

This.

I use a horse to travel around, surveying the land and discover locations. If it is something of interest, then I will wait until I get to a town or city and simply fast travel to the area.

Is Shadowmere essential in Skyrim like she was in Oblivion? Or can she be killed?