Windows 8 adoption rate reportedly worse than Vista

[spaulagain]

What's funny is the premise and title of this thread was just proved wrong. Windows 8 is selling on par with Windows 7 according to Microsoft. People just love to throw FUD

 

[pdch]

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.

Yeah, MS did a lot of research on the Kin that told them no one liked it, but they ignored it and did what they wanted anyway. Microsoft also did a lot of research that told them that no one wants to close open apps on their phones, so they didn't give us a way to simply close apps from the card/carousel view in WP8 - which is now one of the top requested features for WP8.

If you pin to the top of the menu, YOU ARE USING THE START MENU!

If you pin to the desktop, YOU ARE USING THE DESKTOP, which is what most people are familiar with and now is not present at start up. If you do not have a touch device, unless you add a third party app, you have to go through the herky jerky gestures with tiles to get to where you would normally be at startup.

All of the above means you DO agree with me, just don't understand what you are talking about.

Also, I put the consumer preview on one of my Win7 systems that booted to the desktop in 18 seconds (6GBs SSD). It took me 38 seconds to get to the desktop with Win8 Consumer Preview AFTER making the Desktop the first accessible tile. So if you are in a work environment that requires work on legacy apps on the desktop, getting there is MORE difficult in Win8.

 

[pdch]

What's funny is the premise and title of this thread was just proved wrong. Windows 8 is selling on par with Windows 7 according to Microsoft. People just love to throw FUD

That is because Microsoft is counting sells to OEMs, not sell through. The sell through rate on Win8 is pretty horrid. The worst part of this debacle is that the original engineers had a switch to boot to desktop on non-touch devices and a certain somebody who is no longer with the company FORCED them to remove it. That is why the switch is still in the registry.

 

[Nataku4ca]

That is because Microsoft is counting sells to OEMs, not sell through. The sell through rate on Win8 is pretty horrid. The worst part of this debacle is that the original engineers had a switch to boot to desktop on non-touch devices and a certain somebody who is no longer with the company FORCED them to remove it. That is why the switch is still in the registry.

two problems, the rate of sells from Microsoft for Win7 is the same type, sales to OEMs, not through rate
the second problem is that other than some news report/blog, we have had no hard data on that front...

i don't know about u, but when the data does come out i would not compare it to Win7 as that would be unfair, and heck Vista is an even worse comparison, the XP era has just been way too long for those two version to be a good ruler to compare against, Vista imo back then had high hopes, even though they mucked it up by bad business strategy and 7 had to pick up the slack that Vista left, and back then computer replacement are actually necessary, unlike now u don't really need to replace it until it dies, (heck most people only need i3 4GB RAM and an SSD and it will last them a life time)

 

[tekhna]

two problems, the rate of sells from Microsoft for Win7 is the same type, sales to OEMs, not through rate
the second problem is that other than some news report/blog, we have had no hard data on that front...

i don't know about u, but when the data does come out i would not compare it to Win7 as that would be unfair, and heck Vista is an even worse comparison, the XP era has just been way too long for those two version to be a good ruler to compare against, Vista imo back then had high hopes, even though they mucked it up by bad business strategy and 7 had to pick up the slack that Vista left, and back then computer replacement are actually necessary, unlike now u don't really need to replace it until it dies, (heck most people only need i3 4GB RAM and an SSD and it will last them a life time)

What on god's green earth does this say? I think you're saying we shouldn't compare Windows 8 to previous OS iterations, but I'm not really sure? And you don't provide any reasoning for that, if in fact that's what you're arguing? The only reason you seem to provide is that people aren't replacing computers, which is true. I'm not sure how that absolves Windows 8 of dismal sales though. If anything, that points to deeper structural problems facing Microsoft if they don't make headway in the phone and tablet markets.

 

[Laura Knotek]

What on god's green earth does this say? I think you're saying we shouldn't compare Windows 8 to previous OS iterations, but I'm not really sure? And you don't provide any reasoning for that, if in fact that's what you're arguing? The only reason you seem to provide is that people aren't replacing computers, which is true. I'm not sure how that absolves Windows 8 of dismal sales though.

More people updated Windows by getting a new computer in the past, mainly because a new version of Windows required a new computer. The whole Vista fiasco was mostly due to the computers running XP but labeled "Vista Capable" that really weren't capable of running Vista. Those folks needed to buy new machines to run Vista and/or 7.

There was no need to buy a new computer to upgrade from Vista to 7/8. Many consumers upgraded from Vista to 7 due to the stability issues with Vista (that were mostly solved by Vista SP1 anyway).

The average consumer doesn't usually upgrade Windows without buying a new PC. People who upgrade Windows without buying a new PC tend to be the tech geeks.

 

[Nataku4ca]

What on god's green earth does this say? I think you're saying we shouldn't compare Windows 8 to previous OS iterations, but I'm not really sure? And you don't provide any reasoning for that, if in fact that's what you're arguing? The only reason you seem to provide is that people aren't replacing computers, which is true. I'm not sure how that absolves Windows 8 of dismal sales though. If anything, that points to deeper structural problems facing Microsoft if they don't make headway in the phone and tablet markets.

hmm... now that you mentioned it, it is a bit confusing to read, lak611 fixed it for me though

thanks lak611 :smile:

 

[conanheath]

Change is hard and MS seems to get beat up at every turn. I don't care what the rest of the world does. I am in love with W8. Yes I said it. Sony Vaio touch screen running W8, Surface RT and Lumia 920. Perfect setup for me and everything is synced, networked and works great. Sooner or later people will have to upgrade and learn it. And if you are going to upgrade, touch screen is the only way to go.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Change is hard and MS seems to get beat up at every turn. I don't care what the rest of the world does. I am in love with W8. Yes I said it. Sony Vaio touch screen running W8, Surface RT and Lumia 920. Perfect setup for me and everything is synced, networked and works great. Sooner or later people will have to upgrade and learn it. And if you are going to upgrade, touch screen is the only way to go.

I'm already running Windows 8 Pro x64 on a 4-year-old laptop and love it.

I'm going to get a new ultrabook with touchscreen this year, but I'm still waiting for more machines to be released.

 

[tekhna]

More people updated Windows by getting a new computer in the past, mainly because a new version of Windows required a new computer. The whole Vista fiasco was mostly due to the computers running XP but labeled "Vista Capable" that really weren't capable of running Vista. Those folks needed to buy new machines to run Vista and/or 7.

There was no need to buy a new computer to upgrade from Vista to 7/8. Many consumers upgraded from Vista to 7 due to the stability issues with Vista (that were mostly solved by Vista SP1 anyway).

The average consumer doesn't usually upgrade Windows without buying a new PC. People who upgrade Windows without buying a new PC tend to be the tech geeks.

Right. But no one's buying new PCs, and no one is upgrading to Windows 8. And of the folks buying new laptops, not many are buying Windows laptops, much less Windows 8 laptops. In fact, of the top 10 laptops on Amazon, the number one laptop is a Chromebook (wtf??), four of them are Macbooks, and 5 of them are Windows laptops. Of the Windows laptops, not all of them are even Windows 8 laptops.

 

[conanheath]

Right. But no one's buying new PCs, and no one is upgrading to Windows 8. And of the folks buying new laptops, not many are buying Windows laptops, much less Windows 8 laptops. In fact, of the top 10 laptops on Amazon, the number one laptop is a Chromebook (wtf??), four of them are Macbooks, and 5 of them are Windows laptops. Of the Windows laptops, not all of them are even Windows 8 laptops.

And with every idiot with a blog and every news source posting negative reviews it won't get any better. Every review about Win 8 is negative because its different. Nobody likes change. Chromebook is so popular because internet is all 90% of the people need and want. They don't need a full blown PC. RT is perfect for those people if MS would market it that way. MS made the right decision to go with RT and tiled interface for both OS's. They really need to fire the marketing guys. They are trying to be Apple 5 yrs after Apple was Apple. All style and flash with no substance. Nobody knows the difference between RT and W8 because MS hasn't advertised anything but a keyboard clicking into a slab. They think a product will sell itself because they are MS and it always has.

Sorry guys, put this in the wrong thread.

 

[CHIP72]

Right. But no one's buying new PCs, and no one is upgrading to Windows 8. And of the folks buying new laptops, not many are buying Windows laptops, much less Windows 8 laptops. In fact, of the top 10 laptops on Amazon, the number one laptop is a Chromebook (wtf??), four of them are Macbooks, and 5 of them are Windows laptops. Of the Windows laptops, not all of them are even Windows 8 laptops.

1) There are, for all intents and purposes, TWO Chromebooks available right now. There are a lot more than two Windows 8 laptops available right now. Additionally, the referenced Chromebook costs only $250, so price is a big factor in its popularity. (Disclosure note: I intend to buy that referenced Chromebook, the Samsung Chromebook XE303, in the next couple of weeks myself. However, I already own a Windows 8 laptop, the Asus VivoBook X202E.)

2) There are roughly a half-dozen Apple laptops on the market right now and probably at least three or four times that many Windows 8 laptops on the market (and the disparity is growing). As is the case with the Chromebook, a limited product selection increases the sales of the products that are available.

 

[narv]

you have to go through the herky jerky gestures with tiles to get to where you would normally be at startup.

It's "herky jerky gestures" to click the desktop tile? o.0 Just make it double-wide and make it the top tile in the top left corner.. Then click it.. and you're at your desktop.. then from there click the program you wish to use... OR... pin the program to the start menu and click that and have it open like it was on the desktop... o.0

It took me 38 seconds to get to the desktop with Win8 Consumer Preview AFTER making the Desktop the first accessible tile

Are you saying that you are basing this on an unpatched version of windows 8 for final release? I am running on a 7 year old computer that came with vista that took over a minute to get to the desktop. Then I installed windows 7 and it took about 40 seconds to boot up.. now with windows 8 it takes me 15 seconds... Just because it didn't work with whatever configuration of a preview beta build you used, doesn't mean it doesn't work how MANY people are saying it is on released and patched versions of the software.

 

[Rick Carroll]

OK, I realize this is a Windows Phone board, But I really don't understand MSFT. They took a FAILED phone platform (Metro) and decided to make it full screen on their desktop OS. I hate Metro. It is ugly. I also don't want my PC to act like a #$%^ing smartphone. This board generally reflects the views of the 2% market share of Windows Phone (which was much better in WM6.1 when it had a START BUTTON) users that actually enjoy the clunky, ugly, messed up UI. I like the hierarchical start button. It is organized and makes sense from a deployment standpoint. (BTW, the user base at my work would quit if we forced them to Win8... half of them can't even work XP.)

Furthermore: WTF is up with everything trying to get hooked into your social media? WHY would I want facebook integrated into my desktop? I though the point of metro when WP7 was released was that you didn't want to be staring at your phone all the time (because it's ugly and sucks). integrating it into my desktop doesn't even make me want to look at FB more, it just pisses me off with annoying notifications. ( I feel the same way about the FB app on my android phone)

Lastly, I shouldn't need a 3rd party app to "fix" what should be default in the first place. Metro should be an option, not forced down my throat at boot time. And Win7 users could have the same boot times if they took a few days and learned how to properly configure their OS.

For the record I am a desktop engineer, and did testing on Windows 8 at work. I reimaged to win7 after a couple hours of playing with the abject failure that is Win8. Flame this post if you want, I probably won't reply.

 

[MacDaMachine]

^^^
Lmfao

 

[WindowsPhone8User]

Lol@Above... Metro Is BEAUTIFUL

 

[Rick Carroll]

Oh yeah, I forgot to address the App Store. #$%^ that SH!T. This is more of making your PC into a smartphone. It made sense for Apple to do it in MacOS. They had a genuine problem getting people to realize what software was available for for Macs. It was also a marketing ploy. A successful one at that. I am not against trying to monetize things but for Windows users who have been abused by bloatware over the decades, this to me is more of the same, and is a step too far. #$%^ your app store. No one needs it.

 

[jabtano]

What is the fuss ? if one doesn't like to use the Metro style just jump on over to the good old desktop and use it . I'm liking Win8 very much. at home all of the P/C's and laptops are now running it. In work I have three PC running and come next month everything will be switched over to it. I find very stable, very fast, surface pro is going to complete the upgrade for us.

 

[Rick Carroll]

What is the fuss ? if one doesn't like to use the Metro style just jump on over to the good old desktop and use it

OK try to use win8 *without metro* without a 3rd party app or some funky registry edits. O wait, you can't. *That* sir, is the fuss. And of course you like it, you're a windows phone user.

 

[conanheath]

OK try to use win8 *without metro* without a 3rd party app or some funky registry edits. O wait, you can't. *That* sir, is the fuss. And of course you like it, you're a windows phone user.

If it was up left to people like you we would be typing this in dos and a mouse would be a furry rodent. You're an engineer right? You probably sit in front of a desktop all day. Its a mobile computing world. Touch interface is the next step. You spend all day in cad. Guess what, you make up maybe 3% of market. MS doesn't care about what you want. MS wants to appeal to the other 97%. And making Windows more touch friendly and user friendly is how they will do that. You don't have to like it, but sooner or later you will have to use it. Or, don't complain when you are "retired" by some collage kid who will do it faster because they aren't afraid of progress.