Windows 8 adoption rate reportedly worse than Vista

[Black Helicopter Steve]

What makes Win8 great is also what is the barrier for adoption: touch. Touch is what is holding my organization from making much of an investment in Win8 now. I have used the trackpads and everything, but I think the OS works best with a touchscreen monitor because that is when users actually enjoy using the OS from my observations. Also, there is no compelling reason to invest in touch because there are not a ton of work applications that utilize it right now.

 

[TonyDedrick]

I currently have two non-touch PCs running Windows 8. I have yet to experience the device on a touch enabled device. So I can't speak to how great it is. I have heard from many on here and a few friends who are tech geeks that its best to use the OS on a touch device. Maybe that sentiment is a barrier?

My two PCs used Vista previously and I though they ran okay. I only upgraded cause the price couldn't be beat. With that said, I personally don't know anyone who isn't a tech geek that is running out to upgrade their PC or by new devices just to use Windows 8. Someone like my mother in law, who really is open to learning new technology, would see no pressing need to upgrade as long as her computer running Vista can do the things average folks need to do.

Unless emails crap gold or somehow Windows 8 and touch devices results in getting free crap from Amazon, what reason does someone have for upgrading if it isn't a necessity?

 

[anthonyng]

My good old x200t came with Vista, I didn't have a problem with it, just found that don't reboot/cold boot it and if you do, wait have a coffee then all will be fine shortly after I had an ssd in it so that helped. I upgraded to windows 7 on the x200t... I was thinking to put win8 on it too but I need that to be stable for my work and still use ie8 for compatibility reasons.


Only thing holding me back from win8 is a long overdue upgrade and the ThinkPad helix is not out yet! Worried if it's going to be limited to 4gb of ram though

 

[brmiller1976]

I'm not surprised. The tech press has devoted endless column-inches (real and virtual) to slamming W8 for 18 months now. The average person has never used W8 but "knows" that its terrible because they saw it on CNet in an article written by a Mac ****** who covers "PCs."

 

[KingCrimson]

Yes, I do need more reasons. None of those are applicable to my usage patterns. Would some of them be nice? Sure. Do any of them matter enough to plunk down cash? **** no. I'm totally satisfied with my mid-2009 Macbook in 2013. I've upgraded to 8 gigs of RAM, replaced the battery once, and use bootcamp frequently, no need for anything more.

Congrats you're not in the market for a new PC.

 

[KingCrimson]

Use it as a tablet.

The new Dell XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook - YouTube

That looks awkward as **** to use.

 

[jlynnm350z]

I have connections high up at Microsoft, can't tell you any more on that, you'll just have to trust me. Besides the internet never lies. I got my hands on a copy of Windows 9. I downloaded on my computer, WOW!!! It's purely voice command, no keyboard no mouse. Its written with alien code they found from the Roswell crash. Can't go into details, lets just say the future is here now. . . Today. . . The wait is over. One more thing, its CPU intelligence gets greater every time you use it, that's right it learns!!! I'm scared very scared.

 

[mlm1950]

That looks awkward as **** to use.

I agree. I would never use that type of system.

 

[fatclue_98]

I agree. I would never use that type of system.

Don't knock it till you tried it. A lot easier than conventional twisting hinge convertibles.

 

[Stiv X]

I put Win 8 on my aging desktop running Vista to see if I liked it. It took a day or two of my constant playing with the computer to realize that once I had it configured the way I liked it, I actually came to love it. I like it so much, I put Win 8 on my wife's laptop, bought my daughter a Win 8 laptop, and even bought myself a Surface RT. I am now looking at the WP8 devices as my contract with Sprint is up this month. I might just switch to AT&T and get my some Nokia love.

 

[squire777]

I though I should just add my two cents on Vista.

The first problem with Vista was that people who didn't meet the hardware requirements went for the upgrade and then complained that their system had become too slow, or unusable. If people had bothered to look at the hardware requirements there wouldn't have been that many people upset with it.

Secondly, when you first installed Vista (upgrading from an old Windows) it would index all your files. The indexing took up a lot of resources for the first day that you ran Vista but after that it cleared up.

The first service pack also sorted out a lot of issues and made many features more stable. I think I had fewer blue screens in Vista than in XP.

 

[inteller]

Vista is as solid as Windows 7. Windows 7 is just Vista Service Pack 2. Windows 8 suffers from shoddy hardware. All the non touch DRECK that HP and Dell are shoveling out the door are ruining sales. People see one touch enabled Win8 machine and then want ALL Win8 machines to be touch. Then they walk up to a $350 HP dreck machine and get turned off. Touch needs to be pushed down into lower price points and screen resolutions also need to be pushed up. The premium paid for a simple 1080p touch display is horrendous.

 

[lancguy]

Shouldn't need a 3rd party app to do what your users want. That is the problem with win8, during all of the beta's, consumers kept telling Microsoft what they wanted and MS ignored them - which is quickly becoming Microsoft's MO in all aspects of their business. The ONLY reason to go to Win8 is Touch. If you don't have a touch enabled device, it is a pain in the a$$, so why upgrade if your Win7 works like you want and the new OS DOES NOT work like you want. Most Windows users have learned to AVOID third party plug-ins like start8 because of malware or other drawbacks such as memory leaks or CPU cycles. As a result, the normal Windows veteran does NOT see that as a viable option to do what they are already doing.

I completely disagree with this. Ms did a lot of research through their voluntary usage monitoring and found that people weren't using the start menu. Lets be honest, beyond shutting down, how many of us actually used the start menu to start a program? We usually pin it to the top of the menu, the task bar, or desktop. Who had time to find the correct folder?
Also, I had both betas of w8 and did not have any problems not having a touch screen. There is significant increases in performance for the os. It boots faster. Shuts down faster. Programs load and run faster. And in some cases ApS are quicker than loading a program. Is it perfect? No, but nothing is.

 

[CHIP72]

XP was out for 6 years before Vista came out, and XP wasn't always completely stable, and had slowdown issues over time. People were waiting around for the next version, near the end.

7 has only been out for 3 years, and is rock-solid.

I think this (bolded part) is the biggest reason. Most people aren't going to shell out $500+ for a new computer when their current computer works just fine. And Windows 7 works very well compared to Windows XP (which worked a lot better than Windows 98, but I digress). Many people (myself included) went straight from XP to 7 and are quite happy with their Windows 7 computer's performance. (Of course, that didn't stop me from getting a Windows 8 touchscreen laptop. :grin

 

[narv]

I think this (bolded part) is the biggest reason. Most people aren't going to shell out $500+ for a new computer when their current computer works just fine. And Windows 7 works very well compared to Windows XP (which worked a lot better than Windows 98, but I digress). Many people (myself included) went straight from XP to 7 and are quite happy with their Windows 7 computer's performance. (Of course, that didn't stop me from getting a Windows 8 touchscreen laptop. :grin

Currently (until the end of the month) it's only $40 to upgrade all the way from XP to 8 Pro. People have a lot of misconceptions about windows 8 which is unfortunate because it's a very stable operating system. It's faster than windows 7 (all tests show this. even boots faster than windows 7 on my 6 year old desktop im on right now that was originally made for Vista), AND has all the new features of windows 8 and integration with social media right in the OS as well as skydrive and the other windows 8 systems like phones, tablets, and laptops. Not to mention all the easy to get apps you can install on your PC.. gone are the days of having to search for software on google for a task and spend $30 on it, or not know if it's a legit piece of software and possibly get a virus.. You can rest easy know that every app in that store has been scanned and approved by Microsoft.

Not to mention win 8 now has a built in anti-virus (not just the alerts). Windows 8 is the first time that windows defender is a full blown anti-virus software which is not the case for windows 7. Depending on if you trust Microsoft or not to make their own anti-virus, you wont need to get other, possibly slower or ad-ridden software.

But you'd be hard-pressed to find too many blogs like CNet or The Verge writing and article saying that.. you'll only find "AMG! MAH START MENU LOOKS DIFFERENT!".. PS.. show me the mac OS start menu... they seem to live ok...

 

[jgraves4480]

Defender doesn't work well as anti virus software. Tried it out. W8 won't let a lot of my old software work. It is not backwards compatible. I upgraded and really wish I hadn't because of this. They released it knowing it had huge bugs. I like the idea behind it, but I don't want it connect every PC to mine automatically! That was just stupid. I will move 8 to my desktop as soon as I finish building it and put vista back on my laptop. Its all a money game any ways. Don't get me wrong though. My laptop has a single core and 2 video cards, so 8 is kinda too much for it. If one video at 1080p from my 8x can't run on it, then I have to go back. Better to let a dual core desktop or quad core run 8. Now if I can just get dell to make a 64bit audio driver for my laptop then I could keep 8 on it without issue.

 

[narv]

i assume you are talking about when it "finds" something and tells you it stopped it? You can tell it to run anyway. Did you try that and it still not let your software work?

 

[tekhna]

I completely disagree with this. Ms did a lot of research through their voluntary usage monitoring and found that people weren't using the start menu. Lets be honest, beyond shutting down, how many of us actually used the start menu to start a program? We usually pin it to the top of the menu, the task bar, or desktop. Who had time to find the correct folder?
Also, I had both betas of w8 and did not have any problems not having a touch screen. There is significant increases in performance for the os. It boots faster. Shuts down faster. Programs load and run faster. And in some cases ApS are quicker than loading a program. Is it perfect? No, but nothing is.

I don't disagree with you that the issue isn't really the presence or absence of the start bar. To me the issue is fullscreen apps. I hate it in OS X, I hate it in Windows. Windows can't even truly be called Windows anymore, it's a misnomer now.

 

[narv]

I don't disagree with you that the issue isn't really the presence or absence of the start bar. To me the issue is fullscreen apps. I hate it in OS X, I hate it in Windows. Windows can't even truly be called Windows anymore, it's a misnomer now.

Don't forget you can still do the side-by-side view of apps.. assuming you have the minimum resolution requirement which chances are if you got a monitor in the last 4 years you do. I think it's 1366 width min requirement.. You can run the apps on the side while you have the desktop in the rest... this is not side-by-side 50/50 like windows open in windows 7... it's more like a 30/70.

So you can keep the messaging app up.. or Skype app up.. while you use the desktop.. some apps you probably wont want to do that.. but like most games for the desktop, they'll use the full screen mode for best viewing.

 

[Nataku4ca]

now, im not trying to attack you, but can you name a few software that is not working on 8? because I have not seen any of my program stop working so far, just curious may be I can help out

as for speed... I don't really understand why it would be worse if you had vista before? 8 uses the pretty much the same amount of resource as 7 and 7 uses a lot less resource than vista, may be a bad driver? (my upgrade was from 7 to 8 so haven't felt any improvement or degration other than the much faster boot speed)

as for connect to every pc automatically, did it give u the option to say yes or no? because when I upgraded my desktop it did ask it, and the concept behind it was really because network neighborhood kept getting bashed... it still doesn't work as good as I hope it could be, but it's an improvement and if you don't want it, it can be shut off if you don't want it

I agree with you on Defender, at least to my understanding it's only job is to check system files to make sure they are good, not meant to be antivirus