Ballmer Could Be Out if Windows 8 Tanks, Analysts Say

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[citation][nom]bison88[/nom]I wonder how many people fall into the category of, "I love Windows RT, bought an iPad" or "Windows Phone 8 looks awesome, bought an Android".[/citation]
I like the look of WP8....but I have an Android phone. What's your point? MS screwed the pooch in the mobile market again. This whole thing of "We'll launch WP8 in October and roll out WP7.8 for the WP7 users we decided to screw over sometime in 'early 2013'"....makes it rather hard for me to justify buying another Windows Phone device. If MS wants to compete in the mobile market, they need to kick Ballmer to the curb and replace him with someone that's willing to take the mobile market seriously. There's no justification for having several months between WP8 launch and WP7.8 being pushed out aside from Ballmer's typical "half in, half out" BS... Ballmer is worthless and has been since day 1 (I'm referring to his birth here). The success or fail of Windows8 should have no bearing on whether he stays or goes. He's been detrimental to the company since taking over as CEO and at the rate things are going, MS will become insignificant sooner than later.

[citation][nom]chicofehr[/nom]I would love it if Bill Gates took over again. I think it would help Microsoft & maybe he will actually listen to us about the Start menu. Also replacing Ballmer pics on all the M$ articles would bring some sense of normal back to Tom's whatever that is. He should be in a movie someday with that crazy look but not a CEO though.[/citation]
Ballmer in a movie would be just as detrimental to Hollywood as he has been for MS.
 
[citation][nom]cyberserf[/nom]so what happened to the "Games for Windows" push? it is like they just don't care about PC's since they came out with the xbox. just like what they are now doing with their lame tablets and windows phone.[/citation]
Ballmer has a "half in, half out" approach to everything. He has serious commitment issues....aside from his commitment to do everything possible to sink MS....

[citation][nom]anononon[/nom]Ballmer has needed to GO for a long time now. investors aside, just look at their stock since that moron took over...[/citation]
Investors aren't happy with Ballmer. He's screwed the pooch in the tablet market. He's screwed the pooch in the cellphone market. The removal of hardware accelerated audio in Vista, the "WDDM" garbage.... Sure, making features exclusive to the newest version of Windows makes for a great marketing tactic....but it pisses off consumers and causes compatibility issues with hardware. Ballmer should have been gone before Vista launched. After the KinOne and KinTwo fiasco he should have been strung up by his balls.... Ballmer is clueless....and MS lacks real direction as a result....
 
The problem Microsoft may be having at the moment is an identity crisis.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that pretty much sums up Windows 8 as well. If MS would have just released two versions in the first place, we (consumer) probably wouldn't be bickering over this issue. Then again, would you be able to legitimize the purchase of Windows 8 with a classic feel compared to Windows 7, or would you even be able to tell a difference?
 
[citation][nom]kracker[/nom]Windows 8 has, in a way split people.Start menu vs metro people.[/citation]
Which is sad, because the real discussion should have been, from the beginning: walled-garden app store built into a "real" operating system, or, you know, not that. This cosmetic argument is a distraction from the real issue, which is that Microsoft has no right telling people what they can or cannot do with their computers.
 
[citation][nom]cbfelterbush[/nom]Outrageous amounts of hate. People are just grasping at things to "Hate" about Windows 8. In all reality it is nearly the same as Windows 7 once you make a few proper UI improvements. [/citation]
Therein lies the problem to me. If one does as you say, then how does the consumer justify the money to buy/upgrade and for what if after tweaking W8 and you cannot tell the difference between it and W7?
 
I wonder how sales of Windows 7 have been? Because Windows 8 spooked into buying two new Windows 7 PC's; purchases that I otherwise would not have made for sometime longer.

The 1st was a new laptop I ordered online in September. Several weeks before the introduction of 8. I had to do this, as I knew the mainstream vendor I was buying from would switch their entire production to 8.

And now I'm upgrading my gaming tower. New $275 Z77 deluxe motherborad, $300 CPU, ram ect. Plus another system builders copy of Windows 7. I'm going with the "Pro" version and a 2700K, even though "home" and an i5 would be fine. Another worry was the cheap tim used in the 3770K. I wanted to go Sandy Bridge, but decided any error would be on the side of caution. I'm thinking long term with this build, just in case future products don't get better and I'm suck with it.

Crazy really... ??? But Microsoft and Intel still get both sale. Boosted by 8.
 
I wonder how sales of Windows 7 have been? Because Windows 8 spooked into buying two new Windows 7 PC's; purchases that I otherwise would not have made for sometime longer.

The 1st was a new laptop I ordered online in September. Several weeks before the introduction of 8. I had to do this, as I knew the mainstream vendor I was buying from would switch their entire production to 8.

And now I'm upgrading my gaming tower. New $275 Z77 deluxe motherborad, $300 CPU, ram ect. Plus another system builders copy of Windows 7. I'm going with the "Pro" version and a 2700K, even though "home" and an i5 would be fine. Another worry was the cheap tim used in the 3770K. I wanted to go Sandy Bridge, but decided any error would be on the side of caution. I'm thinking long term with this build, just in case future products don't get better and I'm suck with it.

Crazy really... ??? But Microsoft and Intel still get both sale. Boosted by 8.
 
all MS needs to do is give options. they have moved away from that since Vista.
just put a menu at the beginning of install which asks some basic stuff.
choose menu: classic/aero/metro etc..
choose start: XP/7/metro etc..
just let people choose.
 
Windows 8 is unusable on Desktops and Metro compared to Apple touch solution just sucks because it takes huge amount of space with very poor content and nightmare of navigation. Metro needs to die ASAP. We need Windows 9 with Windows 7 interface and Windows 8 internal improvements. As far as Tablets and Windows Phone goes i could care less until i see something different than Metro.
 
[citation][nom]shafe88[/nom]I don't think most people will take too kindly to loosing their start button/menu....[/citation]
I meant PURE windows 7, with Windows 8 base, pure desktop, with the start button.
 
[citation][nom]john15v16[/nom]Yay...Steve Ballmer is weird guy and lacks the vision which bill gates had...I just don't take him seriously anymore...especially after his stage performance. check it out on youtube and LOL as much as needed...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc[/citation]
What a dip. Classic case of trying way too hard, above one's own charisma level.
 
Without Balmer or Gates, I don't think there would be a Microsoft anymore similiar to how IBM is now. It will just get divided into a management nightmare.

As far as Balmer verse Gates, I like Balmer more. Bill Gates only had Windows which is a great piece of software. Then used anti-competitive tactics to create a monopoly in the OS market.

Balmer is a bit different. He is not using anti-competitive tactics and has expanded the company into Consoles, MP3 Players, and Phones. I think with all the changes at Microsoft, creating familiarity between the devices offered is a good idea. They just fell short with Windows 8 for PC users as its not as clean as one would want. Windows Phone 8 is definetly the superior product out now. The Surface is definetly superior to the iPad and Android based tablets. The XBox 360 is outdated.

The other thing I like coming out of Microsoft right now is they are researching the way people interact with electronics to make it simple. The Kinect on the PC will be a good example of this. File sharing across all your windows devices is also a nice touch.

So when it comes to Windows 8 being a failure. I don't think it can be said yet as many will avoid the OS until the first service pack anyway. Also 40 million copies is a pretty good number for a couple months out on a new OS. Less then 1% of Windows PCs, is still a number Apple or Linux distros would be envious of.
 
Microsoft has less than 30% of the overall OS market share... Android and iOS are the leaders.

Windows 8, its RT and Phone versions are not flying off shelves.... Some of us (me included) are not spending $40 for the "upgrade".
 
With all of the under the hood improvements in Windows 8, I don't like the idea of booting into my Win7 partition (haven't used it in a while, not since Visual Studio was made ready on it). Love it on the desktop, laptop, and phone.
 
win8 is not that bad people. sure, metro store sucked when it launched. it's getting better. give them another 6 months and you'll start to wonder how you could live without win8's metro interface. 😛
 
Did any of you people that are complaining actually use Windows 8 for a fair amount of time and still struggle with your ability to navigate the OS without a start button? For all of the technology "experts" on this site, there appear to be a lot of dense people posting here. Anything you people do in Windows 7 with ubber gaming desktops, you can do faster in Windows 8 once you learn how. Its hard to learn new things I guess.
 
Retired folks want a quick desktop experience. No touch . W7 is good. I read that W8 is not necessary for desktop/laptop users like me. Someday I might get a nice tablet to replace my laptop for traveling. The babyboomer generation is retiring in droves. Consider those who don't commute and don't have to be connected to the WWW 24/7. Improve W7 by adding improvements; not big changes; maybe next a W7a?
 
What a lot of analysts have failed to include in their analysis, is that computing is as important to corporate world as to the consumers. Now tablets or upstarts in the world is going to destroy Microsoft dominance as long as they remain irrelevant to the corporate world. Consumers have not been using Microsoft mobile products for ages, and yet Microsoft maintain a stranglehold at the corporate world. And until most companies allow the employees to work offsite as they wish, and but totally mobile instead of have to sit at an office table, the desktop PCs in the corporate world is not going to be replaced by iPad or Android anytime soon. All this talk about Microsoft is being slowly destroyed by Apple is just wishful thinking.
 
The problem with Windows 8 is that MS tries to force you into an incomplete and under powered UI that represents less than a 1/4 of the system. Anytime you want to do ANYTHING you switch UI's to the real desktop.

Metro should be an application and nothing more, and it is being forced on the user to bolster a non-existent mobile/tablet market share for MS. It is an epic failure.
 
[citation][nom]disolitude[/nom]Did any of you people that are complaining actually use Windows 8 for a fair amount of time and still struggle with your ability to navigate the OS without a start button? For all of the technology "experts" on this site, there appear to be a lot of dense people posting here. Anything you people do in Windows 7 with ubber gaming desktops, you can do faster in Windows 8 once you learn how. Its hard to learn new things I guess.[/citation]

I tried it. I could figure it out. I just didn't want to. It was unnatural to have to be navigating screens with font size 300 text.
 
[citation][nom]Stickmansam[/nom]To all those saying Windows 8 start menu issues can be fixed by a third party app I have only this. Why should I pay to upgrade my windows 7 to an OS i will have to install third party apps to make it work the way i want, like I do with Chrome/Firefox/Skype/Steam etc?I am not going to pay $40+ just to get the meagre boot up time decrease, better Windows Explorer, better Task Manager, incredibly improved networking, copying, Dx11.1 (WDDM 1.2). Oh and did I mention better support for multimedia and documents (such as PDF) straight out of the box?[/citation]

There I fixed it for you buddy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZgcAacIxU

Happy downvoting wannabe power users/enthusiasts!
 
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