PC Vendors Worried About Windows 8's Future

[rds1220]

If I had to compare Windows Vista to Windows 7 versus Windows 7 to Windows 8, our sales numbers aren't as high as from the Vista to Windows 7 era."

Well no shit Einstein this is what happens when you force a crappy OS onto people. Sorry but people know crap when they see it and despite what Microsoft tells you people aren't going to flock by the millions to buy a computer with Windows 8.

Moreover, it's been criticized for being a part of the decreasing growth of the PC industry.

This is exactly what I've been saying and in every article Micsoft fanboys thumb me down for it. It's not just that Microsoft has a horrible OS it's that it' horrible, they are forcing it on people and people aren't buying it. This is just further hurting an already bad computer market. Someone should have told Microsoft before they tried to copy CrApple that if people wanted a CrApple OS they would buy Apple computers.

 

[stingray71]

"official figures have pointed towards a disappointing launch for the long-awaited operating system."

I for one was not waiting for, I'm guess most others were not either. W7 is working well for me. Couple years on current install without issue.

We are moving away from desktop/laptop centric to mobile device (smartphones/tablets) centric society. Much faster than anticipated. If it weren't for PC gaming, I could get by with a humble laptop and my mobile devices without issue.

 

[bystander]

Let's just say that Win 7 would have been a flop had Vista not came first. Vista gave the hardware partners time to learn to use the new driver system so everything was compatible when Vista came out. It also gave MS a chance to see that many of their new changes needed tweaks.

I have a feeling Win 8 is going to serve a similar role, but it may also serve as a way to get people on board with touch.

 

[rds1220]

[citation][nom]bystander[/nom]Let's just say that Win 7 would have been a flop had Vista not came first. Vista gave the hardware partners time to learn to use the new driver system so everything was compatible when Vista came out. It also gave MS a chance to see that many of their new changes needed tweaks.I have a feeling Win 8 is going to serve a similar role, but it may also serve as a way to get people on board with touch.[/citation]

That is what people have been saying but we will have to wait and see. Despite the bad feedback given in the Beta test Microsoft has continued with thier FU approach towards end users. It would seem smart to change things like get rid of the metro garbage and bing back the start button but if they keep with thier FU approach I wouldn't count on much changing. It seems their attitude is we know best FU we'll do what we want and now it's hurting them.

 

[wlachan]

Let's face it, MS doesn't know UI, and their Metro is the silliest UI ever. It looks like a college project got loose by accident. Perhaps MS had too much inner politics, each department was busy killing each others because I cannot think of any reason that such resource rich company can pump out boring useless crap time and again for so many years.

 

[southernshark]

I tend to think the PC manufacturers need to step it up.

How many of them offer touch screens? How many even offer decent resolution in their laptops?

How come 1080p is still a standard resolution even in PCs monitors?

How many PC boxes offer bluetooth standard? Why isn't wifi on the mobo? Why do I need to plug into a USB port to use a wireless mouse? Shouldn't that feature be built in?

These kind of questions are just as important, if not more important than the OS.

 

[Stevemeister]

I think a few folks have summed it up well. Windows 7 works great and with a product lifecycle of 6 - 8 years releasing a new OS in 3 years (esp when the incumbent is so good) is just too short a cycle. Even XP was pretty good and with a few tweaks to things like ease of network set up I'd have been happy to run that OS for a few more years. I ran XP 64 bit version which was very fast, extremely stable and utilized waaaaay less memory capacity than Windows 7.

 

[tonitelaoag]

the ultimate blunder of win8 is forcing us to install simple apps thru their store which should have been pre installed in the first place. win7 is a beast and a beauty in itself, no contest against the osx during its launch, i remember when i was a newly converted osx 10.6 users from winxp, but when i got hold of win7 i never look back again to mac and old win o.s.

 

[tomfreak]

Just patch the startmenu UI as an optional UI then all these UI hate will gone. I still have noidea whats stopping them doing a simple patch that can boost sales by millions.

win7 sales are good because Vista are too crappy to begin with, XP are getting old at the same time. it is a perfect recipe combo to boost sales, but this is not the same when u try to replace good decent OS win7.

 

[joe nate]

official figures have pointed towards a disappointing launch for the long-awaited operating system

That's the problem. It wasn't long-awaited, nor was it even awaited. Have you ever hear anyone say "Windows 7 sucks, give me a new windows OS that is completely different?" No, you didn't.

For what it's worth they could have implemented the native touch support and multiple monitor support from Windows 8 into a service pack for windows 7 and added a new optional download of the metro interface, and you'd have much happier customers.

 

[assasin32]

From my understanding of Win 8 they could just make it "better" by doing one of their famous bundles of software with it. Have a button to make Metro disapear forever and another one which gives you a start button. Problem solved not much of a hassle customers happpy, sales probably go up.

One other thing they just need to do, start making cheap laptops again there is almost none. So their losing out a lot of sales to Tablets. We just got Windows RT, start making ARM based laptops which are cheap. Look at the Samsung Chromebook it's $250 and has great build quality from what I hear along with bluetooth, camera, 11.6in screen, ambient light sensor, 16gb SSD, etc. I want options similar to that with Windows RT and you have a perfect netbook.

 

[somebodyspecial]

Stop selling windows 8 on PC's and sales will increas 20+%. Simple as that. All enthusiasts just quit buying PC's (which is probably around 20% of the market). Meaning people who know better won't buy it. News is spreading and it's going to get worse. Valve pushing Linux now, Nvidia just improved doubled the performance of their drivers in linux (obviously working with Valve on this), can't wait to move from MS. You pissed me off the first time I saw "calculating" and "discovering" in windows explorer and haven't stopped pissing me off since. Put a button in windows 8 that says "click here to return to winXP explorer and speeds" and I'll be interested. Aside from a few scant cool features of win7, I'd take back XP in a heartbeat for performance. Aero is crap and win8 is just terrible for getting anything done. Everything is another 2-3 clicks over win7, and another 3-4 over xp. They've hidden every thing I use all the time behind tons of walls. If you make your OS useless to me, I don't want to use it...LOL. Well DUH.

Can't wait for games to be ported enough to linux to make it (or android/chrome whatever) my desktop OS of choice for everyday stuff. After running win8 for 2 weeks I have no intention of looking at it again until I hear things like "start button is back", "there's a button now to undo the madness", "Rightclick Repair network connection is back" etc etc...So many bad decisions in the last two OS's.

Bring back XP64 (which I still dual boot, just don't go into it much now) with DX11 and lets call it a day All the glitz and graphics crap just gets in my way. I'm not saying win7 is bad, but it's just not as good as XP despite all the pretty crap, transparent glass crap etc. You can take it all back I have no need for any of it. I'm faster using taskbar than any visual identification crap and have essentially done everything I could humanly possible to turn win7 into xp. I worked at lightspeed in XP64 , and xp in general was much better to troubleshoot with people. I sincerely hope I NEVER have to troubleshoot win8 or even waste time learning something I already hate. It was removed from my PC in less than 3 weeks and my dad has sworn total rebellion if I foist it on him or my mom...ROFL. "I'm over 60 son, I have no intention of re-learning how to use my PC for no gain in performance"...LOL.

I couldn't have said it better myself. No comment on what my mom said.

 

[f-14]

can you say windows millenium, rehashed as vista and again as win8

 

[Guest]

So all those windows 8 licenses are just sitting on the hard drives of OEMs, and if M$ would just let them install windows 7, I am sure sales would improve, but welcome to the M$ induced PC recession! Nobody who uses the desktop to get real work done, wants an AdWare/CrapStore pasted on to their desktop OS UI!

 

[Guest]

Im still longing for games to transition to an open source graphics library, so i can so good bye to windows forever. Not a month goes by that i dont dread the fact that directx became the standard for games. If it had only been open gl, i would have dumped windows long long ago.

My next computer upgrade im going to a hypervisor version of linux, and just keeping a hosted windows xp install for games.

Im done with windows, you can keep your metro crap.

 

[pocketdrummer]

[citation][nom]NightLight[/nom]let me sum win 8 up in just a few words: great for (i)sheep, not so great for enthousiasts. it's obvious that it is made to steal some mac users back, and they made a great effort to create an ecosystem of their own. i salute ms for this bold move, but maybe they should split things up: Server, Sheep, and Enthousiasts (think NT / 2000)...[/citation]

Enthusiasts.

You know, Firefox has spell check built in. How does this still happen?

 

[Guest]

MS was smoking crack when they designed Win 8 nuff said.

 

[manicmike]

The four stages to acknowledging the changing face of once familiar tech...

Fear ---> Complaining ---> Accepting ---> Implementing (Think the switch between the Office 2003 Menu Style to the Office 2007 Ribbon Style)

I played with several previews, like it enough to buy the $40 license to upgrade, configged it to boot to Desktop. If you shut up enough to give it a serious attempt, it isn't half bad, to me the Start screen is on of those "There but I rarely use it" features. It's kind of neat, and as the UI gets more refined to better work on a desktop I might play with it a bit more...

I will say it is god awful on a laptop's touch pad, had to buy a little wireless mouse. That said, Win 8 is meant to be, in a sense, platform independant; Go from the Surface Tabet to the Desktop to the Win 8 Phone straight into the presentation, and they're throwing the average consumer a bone by letting it tie into the next Xbox. Like it or not, it's here to stay. Don't like it? Learn Linux/UNIX. Nuff said

 

[notsleep]

ms should have removed 32-bit only version of windows 8. they need to kill off 32-bit like 5 years ago!

having said that, i hated metro the first week or so but now starting to warm up to it. the ability to touch and move grows on you after a while.

however, i think the 'store' needs updating. like when i'm browsing a metro app, i want to be able to click on the vendor and have all the apps made by said vendor display. instead, i have to switch to 'search' from start menu in order to search. i want to be able to do it while i'm in the store app.

 

[Wamphryi]

I am running Win 8 now and it works well once it is customized. I see the Metro Interface once a day and that is pretty much it. Win 8 has a lot to offer and has a lot of potential. Its main problem is that it does not deliver the experience people want straight out of the box. It can be made to fit the user experience but it requires a significant amount of configuration at a UI level. This is what makes Win 8 different from any other OS I have installed since Win 3.11.

For those who want to take their Rigs outside of the more standard set ups then Win 8 is the way to go. Yes I know that is not the popular view but Win 8 is not Vista. Its stable for one thing.

 

[bigdog44]

They just started selling tablets, and the tablets increased popularity has no doubt taken a bite out as well

 

[MarioJP]

I don't know what to say but other than the computer world is not about PC's anymore. It is about EVERYTHING that has a OS on it. 5 years from now. Computing devices are going to be everywhere. Sad to say this but the mobile market has spoken. People don't need computers for their basic stuff. The PC market is simply not exciting compared to a new smartphone or tablet. Sure Microsoft might be pissing off the "old crowd" but change sooner or later is going to happen. Why you people are saying put the start in win. Do you think the rest of the world are going to care what computing device there are using. For all i know quad core smartphones are coming. I think the PC market as a whole is on the endangered species list lol. I mean its getting to the point that practically any computing device is capable of something that was once a dream 10 years ago. Biggest worry is intel. What if Intel decides to pull the plug on socket chip and go with SOC. Then what. Bye bye PC enthusiast?? I might get down rank but it is the truth. It is written on the wall.

 

[spectrewind]

[citation][nom]meluvcookies[/nom]It continually amazes me how the common sense of boards like this one can predict the failure of something like Win8 MONTHS (if not years) in advance, and yet Microsoft (and others) continue down their paths of failure. Here's hoping that Win9 puts the "Win" back in windows.[/citation]

The same thing used to amaze me. Just follow the money.

You have these publicly traded companies where the company leadership spends more time sweating bullets trying to deliver on inflated, myopic promises to short-term invested share holders while long-term business plans and product quality suffer as a result.

Why would M$ be any different?

 

[Caffeinecarl]

[citation][nom]f-14[/nom]can you say windows millenium, rehashed as vista and again as win8[/citation]
That's an insult to Windows ME!

 

[spectrewind]

[citation][nom]pocketdrummer[/nom]Enthusiasts.You know, Firefox has spell check built in. How does this still happen?[/citation]

They have to leave room for grammar trolls like you to step in and ignore the message of what is being communicated for trying to sn33r @ s0me1 4 sp3ll1ng pr0b3m$...

.... forest for the trees ...