This is so much better than the top comment "This is an abomination." and a much better critique.

I think pg should create a filter to weed out all comments which have stuff like "I'm not trying to be a hater/douchebag/downvote me/rude/etc but".

I don't know if it is because this is a design-based project and not a development project, but I don't understand why people are complaining about the complainers. Just as many people ask why someone did something a certain way - or why they'd do something at all - in threads based on programming projects and I think it is just as valid here.

In my experience on HN, there aren't enough quality posts on design. In fact, a lot of the most upvoted ones promote poor practices. I've stopped basing whether or not I go into a design threads on the upvotes, because some of the most beautiful projects I've seen have collected dust here, while others thrive despite their rampant shortcomings.

This is basic UI design in the form of basic CSS. You would be seriously hardpressed to find a more generic branding standard than one that relies on simple solid blocks and white text, something that can be pulled off in decades-old browsers, and here we have a website that a) illustrates a lack of understanding of the UI itself and b) a lack of understanding CSS, which makes up the framework.

Honestly if I worked in a studio that was doing work for Microsoft and asked a designer to create these web assets, I would send them back to the drawing board if this is what they presented to me. I think that's why you're seeing a lot of these "negative" comments. It looks and works like a last-minute homework assignment, especially for something where everything is already defined for you in public branding documentation and on Microsoft's own websites.

How am I supposed to say that without coming off as a jerk?

While critiques are awesome, those sorts of comments actually provide valuable insight.

Judging by frequency/consistency of topic, they can be used as a launch point for improving a product. They often include insight into what people making snap judgements (hint: we all do) think about your product/website/etc. While longer form critiques give excellent advice, short comments such as these provide a different take, which actually informs the critiques as well.

  1) The hover effect over the colored blocks feels odd, almost like the default
     blue border around image links.

Also, the ones above the features section are clickable while the ones below it are not, but they are styled the same way. I had to spend some clicks to figure it out.

If you visit msn.com in metro IE, the tiles have a tilt-click effect that emulate the real metro tiles. I think skydrive.com does this too to some effect. It would be nice if Microsoft could release an official open source library.