Microsoft Hitting 7-inch Tablet Market with Windows Blue

[exfileme]

Windows 8 has always supported small screen sizes, but Microsoft may be focused on the app experience given the smaller virtual real estate.

Microsoft Hitting 7-inch Tablet Market with Windows Blue : Read more

 

[LORD_ORION]

Developer tools have always been good from MS for MS products. They are absolutely terrible when using open standards, because they pervert them to special MS versions.

However, reality check... what developer is going to choose to target a 1.5 million install base over 1 with a billion?

Now go and try and use Javascript and HTML5 on windows mobile to develop apps. Yep... terrible.

There is absolutely no way MS is going to win here.
Only a crazy person would develop exclusively for Windows RT, and if you are going to write apps for cross platform deployments, Microsoft is going to make you want to rip your hair out.

 

[vmem]

[citation][nom]LORD_ORION[/nom]However, reality check... what developer is going to choose to target a 1.5 million install base over 1 with a billion?[/citation]

Reality check for you buddy, it's 1.5 million surface devices sold. if you look at the total licensee sales of win8, it's more like 60 million at the moment.

I agree that a lot of those are OEM liscences, and many for desktops. however, the new direction Microsoft is taking is at least innovative, and has potential if done right. and doing yearly or every two year OS updates is a step in the right direction (and support for more mobile platforms)

 

[diddo]

"Hard work"? Gimme a serious desktop UI and let root in heck the 3+years of development of ZunifiedUI that is killing Microsoft!
@vmem: reality check is 0.4% of the market share/month going to W8, less than what is needed to retain current customers... negationism is useless against hard sales data: W8 is killing MS. Not OEM sales, that are dooming the entire market, see Dell dying an horrible death for all the unsold machines, see Netapplications market share, the same that had Vista progressing +1%month and Seven 2%month after their launch. W8 is twice worse than Vista for MS shareholders!

 

[memadmax]

Is it me, or is MS becoming more dumbas every day?

 

[soo-nah-mee]

IMO Microsoft was just too late to the table. Two years ago I would have loved have had a Windows tablet, but Android has become so good now that I have no intention of switching. The app selection for Windows 8 and RT are atrocious. Hell, at this point I'd ditch Windows 8 on my PC if Google would come out with a real desktop OS.

 

[thecolorblue]

[citation][nom]soo-nah-mee[/nom]IMO Microsoft was just too late to the table. Two years ago I would have loved have had a Windows tablet, but Android has become so good now that I have no intention of switching. The app selection for Windows 8 and RT are atrocious. Hell, at this point I'd ditch Windows 8 on my PC if Google would come out with a real desktop OS.[/citation]
do you game?

you could consider dual booting linux for everything (but games) and windows for games only... it's even FREE so you could set it up today and decide for yourself if is sucks balls or rocks your socks

 

[A Bad Day]

Will Windows Blu solve some of Win8's problems? Particularly for laptops and desktops?

 

[soo-nah-mee]

[citation][nom]thecolorblue[/nom]do you game?you could consider dual booting linux for everything (but games) and windows for games only... it's even FREE so you could set it up today and decide for yourself if is sucks balls or rocks your socks[/citation]I game occasionally, but Plex Media Server is my desktop's main reason for existence. I see they offer a Linux edition of said server, so maybe I'll finally give in and give Linux a shot. I've been hearing people rave about it for years.
So is Ubuntu the way to go?

 

[diddo]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Will Windows Blu solve some of Win8's problems? Particularly for laptops and desktops?[/citation]
Unless they stop saying they are a "device and services company", no.
Pro users, the pillars of their market, wants to buy software, not a service: if you are not the customer, you are the product.
OEM does not want to produce machines (fungible goods) competing with the developer of the OS used on the 90% of the machines (so dominant that cannot be considered a fungible good), and are fleeing away to produce other types of machines (or components for Apple, Google, and Amazon).
Developers does not want to write WinRT software for 2,5% of the market (with various highly advertised sales months showing a very slow adoption rate) that have to compete with Win32 software competitors running on the 90% of the market, AND with iOS and Android competitors with a wider market share - AND now with Bluestack Android software have a wider Windows audience than Store, not being limited to W8 machines!
With adoption rate being half than Vista, W8 seriously risks to peak UNDER OR AROUND 10% of the market at the top of its lifecycle!
And with an adoption rate LOWER than the replacement rate of old PCs, MS is shrinking its own market share everyday - not even China is longer buying WinPCs, today's new.

 

[Espen Lund]

Ubuntu is fine aslong as your drivers work out. It's not trying to revolutionize, and the start menu is slighty slow to load. I have tried 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04, and to me it feels like a barebone windows xp installation. The driver detection is superb, but both Nvidia and AMD drivers are not on par with the windows ones. So the performance in games, is not optimal.

Personally i'll recommend you to stay to Windows as of now, it has a lot going for it. Until more developers are supporting Linux as a platform, or Steambox becomes a sucess. I don't see Ubuntu becoming popular until that happens. It just doesn't seem to be a product people are gathering interest for.

 

[John Nemesh]

Is that "Windows Blue (screen)" or "Windows Blew"?

 

[twelve25]

[citation][nom]John Nemesh[/nom]Is that "Windows Blue (screen)" or "Windows Blew"?[/citation]

It's "The Windows Blues"

That's what most people get when the realize they have to install third party "hacks" to get a usable desktop OS.

 

[ironenr]

@John

You mean "Blue Screen of Death"?

 

[koss64]

Having a cheap windows 8 tablet would be great in my book. Honestly I like what MS is promoting with the run everywhere tagline,thats what RT was all about being able to run a program regardless if its on a tablet or desktop which to me is cool.

 

[twelve25]

Having a cheap windows 8 tablet would be great in my book. Honestly I like what MS is promoting with the run everywhere tagline,thats what RT was all about being able to run a program regardless if its on a tablet or desktop which to me is cool.

You've just illustrated the problem perfectly. You can't run desktop apps on Windows RT because the processor uses incompatible instruction set. Having a ubiquitous OS implies that you can, but the actual hardware says you can't. So all this leaves is confused customers who get a terrible desktop OS, and tablets with the appearance of a desktop OS, but are incapable of running desktop apps.

 

[Guest]

id consider a 7" surface if it was £200, with an optional keyboard dock as well

 

[hannibal]

Yes the Widows ecosystem needs allso those cheap tablets to become more popular. I am sure that next christmas may be good time for affordable win8.1 tablets. Now at this moment they are too expensive for most customers!

 

[janetonly42]

[citation][nom]thecolorblue[/nom]do you game?you could consider dual booting linux for everything (but games) and windows for games only... it's even FREE so you could set it up today and decide for yourself if is sucks balls or rocks your socks[/citation]
Thats what I do but a Macbook Pro too. STEAM is running on OS X and Ubuntu now. The days of keeping MS at all just for games is coming to an end.

 

[killerclick]

``Microsoft Hitting 7-Inch Tablet Market`` should be ``Microsoft stumbling into 7-Inch Tablet Market with Overpriced Half-baked Products``

 

[Ahmad Freeman]

so will it be x86 or what

 

[John Nemesh]

Funny how all the MS fanboys here are downvoting any posts critical of Microsoft's crappy OS!

 

[blurr91]

I will definitely consider a Windows tablet if it's priced at $200. I base my decision on the lowest priced notebook (not netbook or chrome book) at around $300. A tablet at more than $300 will compete against a notebook for my budget. A notebook does a lot more than a tablet.

 

[DjEaZy]

Microsoft Hitting 7-inch Tablet Market with Windows Blue? How?! M$ did not even made a hit in bigger tablet market...

 

[RDesigns]

It's actually very simple, Microsoft should just stick with Windows Phone 8 for Phones and ARM tablets and Windows 8 with selectable Metro for X86 Tablets and touch PC's, and Desktop mode for non-touch PC's, simple as that.

Win 8 phone is by far the best phone experience for me, modern design, good navigation, responsive and smooth, BB10 and Android is about on par design wise, I didn't spend enough time to get used to the BB10 navigation, both look like modern IOS copies though (neither has the smooth and responsive balance) and IOS is way behind in interface design (although more responsive than the rest), it really does feel 6 or 7 years old when you look at it...

I think if they fix the desktop for normal PC's and get rid of RT, there really isn't anything wrong with Windows 8.