I keep hearing that this mod is a must have, is it so bad without it? I'd rather not deal with mods right now.

It's bad with a controller too... It's perfectly usable, just not efficient. You'll do lots and lots of scrolling that could be avoided by making smarter use of available screen space.

Personally I'm more annoyed by the star constellation carousel, but I don't think there's a way to fix it.

Vanilla UI is like an unnecessary minigame.

I personally put SkyUI in the same category as Unofficial Patches; must have for everyone. There simply is absolutely no excuse not to use them.

This^^ absolutely agree!

This is how I feel too. I have never been annoyed by Skyrim's UI. Anything is better than Oblivion's tabbed menu system.

I've never used it and I've never felt the need to use it. Same thing for the unofficial patches.

Ever thought that maybe others do not feel the same way? I only got SkyUI because the mods I wanted, required it. Otherwise, I had no problems with vanilla UI. SkyUI is handy, indeed, but it isn't what I'd call a must.

Not to use is to leave the game significantly crippled. Everyone does as he/she wants but not wanting to fix gameplay crippling features makes me a bit confused.

The UI isn't as crippled as you exaggeratedly make it out to be.

Nor the controls for that matter.

it is not so bad, only inefficient and chaotic. no problem to use it if you have the patience for it as someone said before, it is kind of a mini game in the game... an annoying one imo. and you can "save" weapon and armor sets in skyui what makes 1hand dual wield a LOT more fun.

and Terra Nova has also answered this better than I would.

I was a little reticent about SkyUI until I installed and I'd now never go back to the default menu system.

Both Sky UI and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3222/? are must haves for me and between them sort out most of the things I don't like about the default UI.

Let's take peak at the inventory. Once certain category has more than three items, it becomes annoying to use. Scroll, scroll, scroll... Get the point? It provides no kind sorting so finding certain items is hard. Additionally UI provides absolutely no relevant information about item without highliting them one by one. That makes finding certain items even harder and fustrating.

Skyrim has the worst UI I've ever seen in any game period. It's absolutely horrendous.

I just realized I've completely forgotten what the vanilla UI looks like

If you never played Skyrim, go ahead and leave it in its vanilla state. There is no reason to install anything for the first playthrough.

User interface design is an art in itself.

For what I understand, SKYUI is for the people who have their inventory full of so many crap that they are unable to find their way in it with the original UI. What my characters carry in each section fit the screen; no need to scroll down.

Eh skyrim in it's vanilla state is a crap shoot, some people will never encounter one bug in the entirety of them playing the game, some can't walk three steps without getting bugged out. I'd suggest at least the unofficial patches for the first playthrough, I personally would never play without SkyUI but that's just me.

And yet, I was never bothered by all the scrolling. And lol I still scroll even with SkyUI but then, I have not explored it's MCM settings because like I said, I only need it for SkyUI based mods.

Eh, as far as UI design goes Skyrim's is pretty atrocious. "Better than Oblivion" isn't an excuse... Bethesda hasn't made a good interface since Morrowind. They really need to get rid of that 'form over function' philosophy. You can say it's not crippled, it doesn't make the game unplayable so it's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that Skyrim's UI is a prime example of several elementary mistakes.

I'm sorry I make use of my character's entire carrying capacity. I wasn't aware I was supposed to impose additional restrictions upon her and throw out everything that exceeds her 150 weight limit. The manual didn't mention anything about it. Thank you for your invaluable advice, I'll play Skyrim the only correct way from now on.

As far as I'm concerned I don't care how you use your inventory; I was just pointing at something. Now SkyUI was made for you and judging by your reaction I was right about people not being able to find their way in the original UI just because they have too much stuff in it. I wonder how people playing on consoles do.

The UI is atrocious. If you can use the mod, do so.

The best UI for these games was Morrowind's. It gave everything that was needed and could be tweaked to work the way the player wanted it to (placement, size, whether it showed up or not). Since that game, the UI has gone downhill.

Weird thing, the UI was close to the same for the Xbox as it was for the PC, so it is possible to have a good UI on both platforms.

This, Morrowind was their best UI period.

The original UI was made for everyone, but judging by SkyUI's popularity it clearly doesn't work for everyone. Saying that it's fine because you, with your very specific and uncommon playstyle, don't have any problems, is silly. I actually have no idea if carrying too many items is a problem or not, I never carry so much these days (and I haven't used vanilla UI since 2011, so I wouldn't remember), but I could and I shouldn't be punished for it by a badly designed interface.