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Is Windows 8 Microsoft's Riskiest Bet?
Microsoft has rolled out many new products and many revisions of old products over the past couple of decades. The releases haven't always gone well, as in the case of Windows Vista, but Redmond has managed to ride out the rough patches. However, Windows 8 is an even more dramatic revamp of one of Microsoft's top products than Vista was. At the same time, they're piling their tablet hopes onto Windows 8 as well. Does this make it Microsoft's riskiest bet ever?
"Thus the problem facing Microsoft: How to convince Windows users to rush out and buy an upgrade of a perfectly good (and relatively new, at least by Windows standards) operating system? Compounding the issue is the new Windows 8 design, with a Start screen that discards the traditional desktop interface in favor of a bunch of colorful tiles linked to applications. That revamp is supposed to make Windows 8 more touch-screen friendly, and thus optimized for tablet use; but it could turn off consumers who don’t like change, not to mention businesses that shudder at the idea of retraining their workers in new ways of doing things. ... if Surface and the other Windows 8 tablets fail to make an impact on the market, then Microsoft will have lost a major chance at seizing the new paradigm, which is centered on mobility and the cloud. Meanwhile, that same paradigm shift is drifting the center of peoples’ computing lives from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets—which puts Windows’ traditional center of strength at long-term risk.
It's suicide.
Windows 8...another thing to add to the long list of Obama's failures...
The releases haven't always gone well, as in the case of Windows Vista, but Redmond has managed to ride out the rough patches.
It's worth noting that Windows Vista still to this day has an install base of 12% of computers, more than every version of Mac OS combined. It was still gaining market share until October 2009, a little after Windows 7 was released. Although it wasn't gaining traction as fast as MS would have liked, they sold hundreds of millions of copies thanks to the fact that it's the defacto install on all new machines, and the same will be true for Windows 8.
Even a botched release for Microsoft by all accounts is considered a good day.
I think it is an educated risk, Windows 7 is well done and robust, and still has a future, much like XP lived all those years. So they are throwing Win 8 to see what happens.
Sig? Heil
It's risky as hell. Not for their PC business, really. Home users will get it because it's what comes on a PC. Corporate users will ignore it just like they ignored Vista.
The real danger is that by changing so much in the desktop version, users will get confused and annoyed. That kind of reaction taints an entire brand, exactly like how "Vista" became a four-letter word in the PC industry. Nobody wanted to touch it. If Windows 8 has a negative reaction among users due to how much they screwed up the UI formerly known as Metro, that won't stay contained.
It'll spread to the tablets and phones too. People will see a Windows tablet and immediately think of their last, negative experience with their home PC. Then they'll go buy an iPad.
That's the real danger. This might be a great tablet OS. But it's a shitty desktop OS, and you won't get people buying Windows tablets if they hate the Windows desktop.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Was New Coke risky?
Was Gnome 3 risky?
Was the American version of Iron Chef risky?
Was a sequel to The Matrix risky? (Actually, it shouldn't have been, but...)
We'll see how well this plays out.
sig: sauer
Like Vista, enterprises will wait. Heck some of them are now deploying Win 7. Win 8 does not offer a lot of enterprise features. For consumers, OEMs will offer Win 7 downgrade rights for desktops and non-touchscreen laptops. I'm sure they are pissed enough about MS competing against them with Surface. MS will count all downgrades as Win 8 installs to inflate their numbers.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Why not allow W8UI/Metro apps in window? I mean to me it's ridiculous that apps are fullscreen in desktop with multiple monitors... These metro apps must scale to different resolutions, they should handle windowing too.
and please don't make headlines that are a Yes or No question.
It's not risky because of there isn't enough uptake do to the start interface, they will release a patch for the PC. It's like playing 21, hitting on 12, and if a 10 comes up you get to change your bet....checkmate.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
tell them its "just like win7 but without the registry!" of course, it would only really work if it were true. it doesn't seem like ms makes technical improvements anymore - just dress it up with a newer, heavier shell.
Collecting "protection money" and locking competitors out at boot level - not so risky.
Where do 98, 98SE, NT4 and W2K fit into that "pattern"? You can make a pattern out of anything if you pick and choose.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Win 7 is great at home but it is not all roses for enterprise.
It won't be a total flop. They'll market the hell out of it. Heck, the IE9 ads are so flashy, you'd think they reinvented the internet and if you don't use IE9, you're SOL.
If they can do that for IE, imaging what they can do with Win8.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
They just best the company that the future of computing is the tablet and not the desktop. They then did everything they could to force the enterprise to stop treating desktops like desktops (no you may /not/ shortcut your way into the desktop) and to start treating them like tablets wither they wanted to or not.
What do you mean you think you know you to manage tens of thousands of your users better than we do? The enterprise has made very clear they don't want metro forced on them and Microsoft has made very clear they are going to ram it down their throat anyways. It's the biggest corporate bet in the history of business. Who blinks first?
/I really wish people would quit copy Apple all the bloody time just because they are Apple.
95: good
98: not as good
98SE: good
ME: bad
2000: good
XP (initial): bad
XP (later): good
Vista: bad
7: good
If this whole tablet thing actually sticks, instead of being a fad, it might be a good move for Microsoft. I think they could have two OS's - one for desktops (7) and one for tablets (8) - that share a common code base. Apple is doing the same thing with IOS/OSX right now. It also gives MS a chance to do an end run around the hardware makers (DELL, Acer, etc.) and make not only the software but also the hardware. Just like Apple, and Google. Margins on PC's are pathetic but on tablets they seem to be pretty healthy. But - and this is a big but - the tablet is going to have to be priced aggressively. If they come in at $499 for a wi-fi tablet with 16GB of storage people will just get an iPad. The other risk is that they are way behind both Apple and Google on app development and will have to find some way to woo developers to their platform. Otherwise you have nice hardware with nothing to run on it. I'm not sure that the Metro interface is a good idea on desktops but at least it's a bold move from MS - something that has been sorely lacking for some time now.
Microsoft's hold on personal computing is slipping, partly due to their own lack of foresight, and they are in danger of being resigned to the role of "legacy personal computing". To get back on top, they have no choice but to do a hail mary pass at this stage.
I think the main overriding problem is that Microsoft as an organization doesn't know how to do that. They make money by maneuvering, with innovation coming a poor second. Mind you, there are very bright engineers working there, but management has for too many years been the consumer computer equivalent of a water economy (the government that controls the water can rot until it's just a shell, but will not be toppled from within) that they don't know how to act any differently. And so, they try a variation on a past strategy (come out with a product that's more strategic than useful, incidentally screwing their partners in the process) and assume it'll be business as usual. They might be right, but I don't think so.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The riskiest bet Microsoft ever made was selling IBM an operating system before they actually had one to sell. Imagine what would have happened to the fledgling Microsoft had they failed to come up with the product in time.
I am officially gone from
Windows CE
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows CEMENT!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Also within each release are the service packs. XP pre-SP1 was much maligned, and was generally a security and stability mess until SP2. Windows Vista today is pretty much on par with Windows 7 in terms of stability and compatibility, but still a little on the heavy side of resource usage. Vista also suffered from lightweight hardware, inefficient drivers, and overzealous UAC which poorly written software was all too happy to trigger. These problems have all been fixed since 2006. I'd take Vista SP2 any day over XP SP2.
How many of you will simply pass on WIN8? I know that I will, 100% certain. Just curious.
If Win95, WinMe and Vista are enough evidence, Microsoft never planned to have people upgrading to Win8... that will be left to Win9. Duh.
none
The problem is that the paradigm isn't shifting to mobile. There's certainly a lot of mobile use being added, but in the corporate world especially the vast majority of computer use is conventional desktops. Tablets and phones don't work well for data entry, or for typing up long documents, or for doing complex spreadsheets with lots of math and data entry. And mobile doesn't seem very compelling when the employee's going to be at his desk anyway.
Home users on the other hand seem to be adding mobile instead of replacing their desktops. They already have a desktop, and they aren't inclined to throw it out while it's still working. I don't see my artist friends throwing out their big Cintiq graphics tablets for a 10" screen, I don't see college students throwing out keyboards and trying to type long papers on a smartphone, and I don't see my gamer friends abandoning their high-performance gaming machines for a 1GHz system with a 7" screen and no custom keyboard commands because there's no keyboard.
Mobile and tablets are just as likely to replace the desktop as the desktop PC is to replace the corporate mainframe.
They have no real tablet share, so they aren't risking losing that.
They have no real smartphone share, so they aren't risking losing that.
They own desktop users body and soul, and there are scant real alternatives where users can go even if they hate it. So I don't see much risk here either.
Worse case, it's another Vista, which they tweak, and continue business as usual.
Already there is Classic Shell to restore the start menu and solve the main Win8 complaint:
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
Obvious if Win8 was received even worse than Vista, MS could simply issue a patch that does the same and have a soft fallback.
Bottom line, the fixes are easy, and the desktop users are going anywhere else anyway, so minimal risk.
"Buy Windows 8 or your computer will be unsafe to use in less than 7 and a half years."
For what it's worth, Windows Vista "expires" on 4/11/2017 and Windows XP "expires" on 4/8/2014. That's less than 20 months away, folks.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They've done this before, except the other direction. For years, MS insisted that phones and tablets should run Windows that worked almost exactly like a desktop version (with a pen), because: 1) Windows Everywhere!, and 2) people lived and died on MS apps, and they want the apps to work the same everywhere.
Compare to WIndows 8, where they're strongly suggesting (I say "strongly suggesting" because there is some backwards compatibility) the converse: desktops should run Windows 8 that works just like phones and tablets.
I like the idea of Windows 8, and the guts to take a risk. But I think Apple has the better strategy of having a common code base (OS X/iOS) and different but intelligently-converging UI's for laptops and handhelds. So Apple's established a tick-tock kind of rhythm of moving each UI forward, but also pushing developments between them. Things like moving more multi-touch gestures to their (larger) trackpads on their laptops, etc.
I guess Ballmer delegated the design of the Windows 8 UI to the right people, but also demanded MS's historic Windows Everywhere attitude.
I would say Bill Gates selling (excuse me....licensing) an OS he didn't own to one of the largest tech companies on the planet the riskiest move the company has ever made. Of course they didn't have nearly as much to lose back then so perhaps it's a wash...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
FTA:
but it could turn off consumers who don’t like change
No, no, no! They still don't get it.
It's not change that we're against.
What we're against is Windows being dis-optimized for desktop usage.
Microsoft had been improving the desktop experience over the years, from Win95 to Win7. Those changes were good. But Windows 8 is a sharp turn in the opposite direction, where the desktop experience has been deliberately degraded in favor of introducing a tablet-like experience. That change is bad.
Seems to me that Microsoft is trying to follow Apple moves because are quite successful. But Apple is mainly an hardware company and the operating system in an accessory revenue. More importantly the hardware ecosystem is reduced. Now I've tried to look at the new windows 8 beta image in a virtual machine, but even after playing with bios options and virtualbox configuration the operating system failed to install. If the final version remains so picky with the hardware refusing to run in a virtual machine or on a beige box PC, when 7 and Xp could run happily on the same hardware or virtual machine, it could me a graveyard stone in the adoption of the new operating system. If Windows 8 installation in older hardware or generic hardware is difficult, people will stay with older operating systems, or even try to downgrade the operating system on new machines, and this is naturally bad if not for sales, for the adoption.
I'd have to say "Yes." Our entire testing system revolves around virtual machines and VMWare. No install. Not testing. No verification. No support.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Obviously there will be a way to remove/not boot metro. MS wanted feedback on the new UI, locked it down on the early releases. They are not going to frick with the installed business base. Not.
The main risk for (Microsoft) is that the ensueing debacle wont be quite enough to unseat Ballmer and overturn the corosive and incestious manaagment culture.
It may be "risky" in pure dollar terms but some of the "bets" Microsoft made in the early days were bet-the-company bets.
This isn't unusual, most small companies have only a few major projects going on and a major failure on any one of them can doom the company. Of course, if it's a small company and it goes belly up, only a relatively few people are hurt. If it's a major company that make too many dumb-headed decisions tens of thousands of people can lose their livelihood and millions of customers can be stuck looking for a new vendor.
Now, if the major design changes that are going into Windows 8 were instead going into Windows 7, AND if MS didn't get many sales of Windows 8 other than in new-PC installs, the combined disaster of two OSes in a row that few would buy except for the need to get off of XP before it "expires" could cripple Microsoft. 3 or 4 such major disasters in a row could kill it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Definitely risky. The funny thing is the main reason for this is a single UI element - the start button. If they had left it in place and let people access the Metro UI from the charm menu barely anyone would be complaining.
Metro is decent and I'm sure people don't mind it being there, but forcing it on desktop users is a mistake.
Microsoft will be supporting four OS revs simultaneously until 2014: XP, Vista, W7, and W8.
BTW, playing with VS2012 this week. No borders or any visual indication of tabs on tab controls, but the tab controls are still there functioning and a central part of the UI? Microsoft has gone overboard on its "clean UI" bent. Perhaps W9 will settle on the W2K interface -- an ideal balance of chrome and, you know, actual functionality.
Vista was different. There was no heir apparent. Now there are two. That may be difference enough.
I presume you are referring to OS X and linux? Not going to happen. Even if Windows 8 was a colossal flop, Windows 7 still exists and people would simply use it instead just like they did with Vista. Microsoft has enough cash to survive Windows 8 failing horribly. The only real alternative that will be considered is Windows 7.
Apple's PC products are too expensive for businesses and Apple makes little effort to pursue business customers. Furthermore Apple doesn't make $250 PCs - they don't even try to compete at the low end of the market. Their products are nice but they don't try to be everything to everyone and they would go out of business if they tried. OS X is not a threat to Windows dominance.
As for linux, as much as I like it, linux has no reasonable prospects of becoming a desktop of choice for PCs anytime soon. It certainly isn't going to supplant Windows. It doesn't have access to certain key pieces of software as native applications. (No LibreOffice is not going to seriously challenge Microsoft Office in the near future unfortunately) It has very little support among OEMs and even a horrible failure of Windows 8 would not change that. Windows installed base is too strong to overcome on the PC platform as we know it. Where linux can and does beat Windows is on platforms where Microsoft has no installed base and software ecosystem to overcome. Mobile phones, tablets, servers, etc. Linux does just fine on these. Perhaps in time these other areas will provide enough to be a threat to Microsoft on PCs but I can't see it happening for at least another 10 years.
Posting Anon because, well, I'm posting this on an rtm Win 8 machine so you guess why.
The persistent question is "Why did we do this?" It's not faster, not more intuitive, not easier, not really anything more than pretty IF you're using Win 8 on a computer. It is really nice on a small touchscreen device, but that's not the big debate.
What does Win 8 give me on the desktop versus Win 7?
Not really anything except for a terribly ugly fullscreen MEGABIG START MENU with icons that update themselves.
More navigation and less actual work. A lot of extra clicks to find simple crap like control panel settings.
IE 10, which despite what the terribly annoying ads say is still embarrassingly slow compared to Firefox.
And wtf if I just want to work some documents? I have to dig thru even more "Libraries" and "Favorites" and "Desktop > User > Libraries" and "Recent Places" that all point to the same folders and confuse the living hell out of novice users. Putting "tiles" on top of this does not help, it makes it worse.
The straight poop is that "people" (the larger part of the 80/20 pop) do not care about the details of this. They just want to use a browser and email that point to data in the magic cloud, and they want to use word and excel that point to documents they can see/move/copy/delete locally in one or two clicks. Win 7 is a 2- or 3-click UI, so people tend to like it, and get used to the annoyances in trade for being pretty stable. Win 8 is a 4-5-click + dual-personality UI so more likely than not we're f#cked.
I ask folks over on the Win8 team whether they learned anything from the large userbase hit Ubuntu took when they implemented Unity, an UI similar to the Metro^h^h^h^h^hWin8 UI. Most of them don't even know about it, don't look at OSX, never heard of X11 or Gnome, KDE, etc etc. They have no interest; a lot of this crap was thought up in a vacuum, given cursory userlab testing, and whatever looked shiniest and had the most political oomph internally got shoved into this half-baked mess. Don'tCallItMetroBecauseMetroAGSuedUs? Apparently we have as much due diligence to the name as we gave to much of the UI design.
Maybe I'm underestimating the number of Win8/Surface tablets we're going to sell, but I'm putting in a sell order...
XP was only a security and stability mess compared to Windows 2000. Certainly not when compared to Windows ME.
I was thinking about this the other day. That I would like to see what Vista has been patched to currently. Not badly enough to install it on anything. I never had a problem with it...but it ran on my gaming machine that had more than enough power to run it well. A friend had a laptop that had vista on it and it was atrocious.
Wow, that's a cool theory. I'd have to check the timing of things, but that would be a brilliant way to switch from sugar to HFCS (curses upon it and its inventors).
Ballmer wants to be remembered for doing something no one else at MS could do - make Bob look good.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Consumers like good, well thought out changes but get turned off changes that are poorly implemented or unnecessary. Metro on PC with no touch screen feels like they copy/pasted some tablet UI code into Windows and called it a day. The work required to properly integrate Metro with a PC UI hasn't been done and most consumers will be turned off by that, not the fact that its a change.
I think you're right, though I think it has 50-50 or better of being a 3rd party app. I think there already is something like "StartDock" out there, but I'm too lazy to confirm it. Meanwhile, that leads us to whether MS will do Apple-Style Bitching about "Jail Breaking Terrorists".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
:)
See that's what I've been saying for ages. Way back around 2003 and then executed in 2006 I planned a solid-spec XP machine I nicknamed "Twilight" (In the Asimovian sense, not the teen romance!) The idea was that by 2003 "Longhorn" was in ugly trouble, then when I did it, was the early days of the Vista disaster, true to form, Windows 7 is "Vista Fixed". But I tried to think farther than that. So here we are with Win8 Metro. The PR is blinding. So if it doesn't croak, I DO want to see the "Post Windows 8 World" and I thing that will FINALLY be the context to upgrade in. But I gotta survive the next 3 years.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I've read it a few times now that the point of forcing Metro on everyone is so that the developers know there will be a market for their work. What is the alternative, wait for Windows Phone to fail and die a slow death as Apple and Google take over?
The real problem with windows phone and attracting developers willing and able produce useful apps was .NET. Nobody writes anything non-trivial in .NET so we are left with a windows appstore filled almost entirely with trivial garbage.
Opening up native code, getting rid of CE and a completed SDK will do more for the windows phone platform by itself than pissing off desktop users ever could.
Once you have a common language you can write all yer shit once and have it work everywhere..porting costs a whole lot less and the operating system goes back to being an unimportant commodity as it should have been from day one.
I do a lot of file management. I do a decent bit of it at work (managing files in subversion repositories, for which tortoisesvn, and by extension, a file manager, is by far the most convenient tool). I do a lot of it at home, because I'm always adding to my music collection, and I like keeping my music tagged and sorted. Sorted according to my own weird scheme, that is, into folders, not in itunes or anything.
Am I in a minority for that? Probably. Is it a -tiny- minority? Clearly it's a big enough one to support a good handful of not-free-as-in-beer replacement Windows file managers... (none of which are perfect; I've tried out most of them at this point.)
Really, the various Windows-default GUIs themselves -don't- offer you much over Win95. Win2k had a much nicer search interfaces, then they took it out again. Other than that, Win95 was where it was at, UI-wise. Of course, Win95 was unstable as all frack. Hence, pretty much everyone who cares at all about such things agrees, XP was the best (stable, -and- still basically the same if-it-works-don't-fix-it UI from Win95).
On the other hand, various non-default UIs, even the ones that for the most part still look the same (which I like - again, why fix what works?), do have features that would be nice if Windows would make native. Tabbed and/or multipane browsing, for instance, or proper non-borken batched file copy/move, or better search.
but snopes.com says that five years before New Coke they were already allowed to replace half the sugar with HFCS, and six months prior to New Coke they could use 100% HFCS instead of sugar.
I am not the AC above. That is, though, the correct answer.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sure, it IS their riskiest bet, but it is a bet on market direction, not whether Windows will live or die as a PC OS. They have already generated revenue from Windows 7, and likely will continue to at least get Windows 7 revenue from the remaining XP era hang ons.
So realistically MS is not so worried about the existing 90% market share. It is what comes next. Apple has gotten pretty good as some voodoo making the most profit with a tiny portion of the market, for whatever reason (probably something in the water supply). The next market will be Cell phones, Tablets, Set Top boxes. If MS doesn't do something now, that would be the stupidest risk they could take. It has been in the works for a while now. Many Windows Phone dev folks were unhappy that there did not seem to be an honest push for WP7. Truth is now known that is because it was (is) throw away code, and upper MS knew that.
From what I have seen of windows 8 so far (quite a bit actually) it can be a fine competitor, and will take a release or 2 to mature as expected. The risk is will that then be the right timing for it? I say they have a pretty good shot.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
But then we're on XP SP3 + 50-100 upgrades since. So that's your metric, not SP2.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I've got Win7 on a laptop. If it dies I might get Win8 on the replacement but if my tablet dies there's no way I'm buying a locked-down WinRT replacement.
Tablets and phones don't work well for data entry, or for typing up long documents, or for doing complex spreadsheets with lots of math and data entry.
Are you kidding? That stuff all has relatively low CPU requirements. Add an external keyboard/mouse and external monitor and many smartphones/tablets would be capable of handling them just fine.
Ya likely. I suspect the core technology behind windows 9 will be much the same as windows 8. The technology isn't the problem (other than some of the secure booting stuff and linux but I'm not sure how that will play out in the real world), it's the design. How microsoft manages to have such bad design I don't know. It's not like a video game were you can be off by 10% and have the game feel slow, or a weapon under powered or whatever. This is like they had two completely different design teams design completely different products and then said 'both'.
I don't really understand how the high level process at Microsoft even manages this. Vista I sort of understand, the biggest detractor was the overly obsessed UAC and they had a clear vision with that, a bad vision, but a vision at least. I'm not sure how the senior windows guys load up windows 8 and think 'ya, we should definitely launch this' or 'crap, we need to get this out the door asap, whatever state we can have it in'. How are they going to get 2012 holiday sales with a terrible product?
Now I could be proven wrong in a couple of weeks when they demo windows phone 8, and it's possible the whole plan will suddenly come together and the UI problems in Windows 8 will seem like a understandable if unfortunate compromise so they could get the whole product family out the door. But I doubt it.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/09/15/install_windows_8_dev_preview_in_vmware_workstation
Looks like the x86 iso on VMWare Workstation 8 is the suggested configuration.
My UI evolution: CLI ONLY (and not very user friendly CLI at that) -> Text based menu systems (including the early ASCII dropdown menus and such -> WIMP GUI -> Early mobile devices (non-touchscreen) - > Continued evolution of the WIMP GUI -> Mobile devices w/early touchscreens -> Mobile devices and other devices with modern touchscreens
Mix in there the fact that that is only a rough approximation of the timeline, countless other types of UIs via games and game platforms, and I'm sure some stuff I'm forgetting and I'm damn sure at this point I know what works for me.
Win8's UI is not what I want. No amount of marketing, shilling, or any other crap is going to change my mind. They do not know better than me at this point. Further I can see past the crap and know what they are trying to do; force a UI on people that increases their own pockets to put it bluntly/simply.
Yes, I want a modern good UI on my mobile devices. But no, I do not want and will not accept that type of UI on my desktop/laptop where the WIMP/CLI interface works very well. There may come a day that the WIMP/CLI interface is surpassed by something new. But a smartphone/tablet UI is not it.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Why do you say that? My support calls have dropped to almost zero due to the ease of use of Windows 7. Laptop power management and wireless management is as good as anything I've ever seen. The Fax and Scan manager is so easy even executives can use it. On the desktops it is easier for the user to do tasks like add printers and find programs. Paint is easier with the ribbon and opens and saves in a variety of formats. The snipping tool is easier than third party software. Deployment is a snap, reliability is assured, drivers are very reliable (Vista sometimes installs the wrong driver), remote management is simple, and Windows 7 runs on fairly well on old and crappy hardware. What, exactly, is your problem with Windows 7 for the enterprise?
also screen size / Photoshop type work
wifi sucks for working with big data sets even more so with a small local disk.
Following Microsoft's trend this one will bomb.
Windows 98 - Good
Windows ME - Bomb
Windows XP - Good
Windows Vista - Bomb
Windows 7 - Good
Windows 8 - ????
Apple's PC products are too expensive for businesses
not really. not when you factor in that businesses are buying "enterprise" class laptops with hefty support contracts. businesses don't buy the $499 refurbished special.
the main reason apple isn't as big in the enterprise is because you have IT departments entrenched in windows technology. even if we admit that apple is a better solution, it would take decades to get microsoft out of there.
and, it's already changing. i work at 10k employee tech company and apart from a linux laptop i haven't seen anything but macs. i'm sure windows is around in other groups, and i would even bet it's still a majority, but the proof is in the pudding. my group works entirely on macs without problems, and our IT dept supports macs 100%.
Nobody's going to use a tablet if they actually have to do useful work.
Somebody's got their heads up their ass at Redmond if they think that it's appropriate to try to roll those two use cases together.
maybe google should start bullying (throwing money at) oems into supplying with chromeos or android
You used M$ in a sentence after 2001, therefore your argument is invalid.
Slashdot, get it together. This isn't high school. Headlines answerable by the word "No" ? That's fail.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Windows CEMENT
win xp initial release only stopped working for me when programs that i needed started coming out that required sp2... the intitial release of the OS itself was ok
Applications moving to the web and the drive for BYOD might not kill Windows and Microsoft, but it will be very close and come much sooner than anybody would expect.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I'm thinking they will do like they did with vista and win7. Vista was crap and they knew it. Win7 contained much of the same crap but they added a few nice things on top. Compared to vista(which is how the online bloggers reviewed it), win7was great! In the end people upgraded and Micro$oft still got to force all kinds of crap on there users. They did it with ME too.
Windows 8 is just part 1 of there plan to get people to upgrade to the next great version of windows.
It's none of Google's business. The OEMs make what they make, and Google has to stay away from subsidies to avoid the sphere of control that has made Windows so sucktacular. They have to try hard to not tell all OEMs what to invent, or what not to invent, though they can give clues like their Nexus line does, because OEMs are really clever but once they start down that road they will look always to Google for guidance and not look on their own for the Next Big Thing.
OEMs can differentiate with Android. They can put any peripherals they want, use any processor they want (Intel included) because the underlying OS is Linux and all the peripheral manufacurers and processor manufacturers target Linux and Android. They can customize the Linux and Android for whatever their target is: smooth performance at least price, best display, most branding on the home screen, whatever they like - because they have the source code. They can pollute it with crudware, exchanging customer experience for software vendor subsidy to drive the price down - or not. They are free to customize it - and many do - or they can choose to leave it as close as possible to the way Google gave it, which is also a profitable choice. They have the source code.
This differentiation is the difference between brands that makes an Asus tablet preferable to an Acer tablet with almost identical specs at the same price, or equally attractive at a higher price. Asus has higher brand value in tablets. By consistently delivering an outstanding customer experience Apple gets the most differentiation and the highest brand value of all, and that equates to higher gross margins or higher sales (and hence lower per-unit costs and so higher gross margins at the same price) as customers will pay more for a product from a brand that's reliably good and significantly different. The greater the distance of the brand in reliability of a good experience and more significant the difference from the rest of the pack, the more margin can be demanded.
Delivering software upgrades on time adds to the brand value through differentiation too, as some vendors don't service the customer as well after the sale. Asus does take care of this. My original Transformer TF101 got ICS promptly, and the update was nicely done. This makes me more willing to put my money in their products in the future.
I haven't been a big Apple fan since the '80's, but I have to have to hand it to them. The iPad was sufficiently different that it avoided the "uncanny valley" of too much, but not quite enough difference and became its own thing without compare. They had so reliably delivered a good experience with iPhone that people were willing to try it out. On a fluke I got two on launch day as VDI clients for a big demo, and carrying them around made me more attractive than a man with both a toddler and a puppy. It hit instant meme status, and they had to call the factory and ask them to run four shifts for a year. That's winning through differentiation.
This is not rocket surgery.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What Microsoft is doing is a little bit like the crying wolf story we all heard when we were told
A little kid cried wolf the first time, people rushed to help him, only to find there was no wolf
He cried wolf the second time, people rushed to help him, and again, no wolf
The third time, wolves came, and he yelled " WOLF ! WOLF !! ", but nobody came
Same thing with Microsoft
They could have produce good software - and they could, given the resources they have, the amount of very talented individuals they hired, and all that - and then sell them at fair prices
But no
They produce bloatwares, bugwares, and uselesswares
Times and times again users are forced to upgrade, upgrade, and then upgrade again, and each time, users have to part with their hard earn money just because if they do not upgrade, the software that they have bought is no longer supported, and can not read files in newer formats
The more Microsoft have put users through this mindless threadmill, the more users get disgusted, and the more they seek out alternatives that are available outside the Microsoft channels
For example:
The success of Open-Office (now Libre-Office) mainly was propelled by users who are disgusted with Microsoft, rather than those who genuinely awed by the power of Open/Libre-Office
And when it comes to Windows 8, users reaction to it is almost similar with what had happened to Gnome 3 - Users are utterly disgusted with the design, the usefulness, and the need to do the [groan] upgrade, again !!
Disclaimer:
Formerly I worked in Microsoft, many many eons ago
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Once Windows 8 is released Microsoft will lose all it's cash in a sudden inexplicable explosion, resulting in the entire mass of MS including the people imploding on itself in an inescapable plunge toward a gravity well, sucking all of Redmond into it. This is absolutely going to happen, because I know the future. Even though Windows 8 has a desktop, which can be left open, looking very usable by normal Windows users, and offers added features like an entirely new way of doing things, will be COMPLETELY rejected by every living thing. I know these things because I can predict the future. Oh, and sure, I've been waiting since 1998, having been a Linux lover for years and years (true), I predict that Linux, just like they use to say ad nauseum, will take over the desktop! The Cathedral and Bazzaar, people! Any day now a sleeping public will wake up to the fact that their usable, integrated Windows OS with all it's attendant features will suddenly, also inexplicably, hate it. Everyone will fall inline with every terrible prognostication that has been spouted on Slashdot. Oh yeah, baby, the jig is up for Microsoft! They won't ever do anything people will like ever again, because they suck so bad. Really? Unfortunately reality doesn't respond to people's wishes. Windows 8 in my estimation will do just fine. Most here will find new things to complain about, and Linux still won't make a dent in the desktop. How Windows does on tablets remains to be seen. I certainly will take a serious look at them.
I personally wouldn't be caught dead using it. It's basically a locked down windows "app store" version.
Microsoft and the rest of the DRM lawyer crowd is going to discover drastically that locked down products have a limited market. 80 percent of pirating is try before you buy or convincing someone else to use a product. The OS has to be reinstalled every 6 months so when people lose software and discover they need it that week they buy it. So while Microsoft lost on OS copies they more than make up for it with copes for office.
I can remember buying three copies of roxio dvd 5-6 even though I had a free copy at home simply because I didn't have a copy available where I was at the time.
If I were MS I simply would have spun it off as a separate product. Even giving it away for free because they will make money primarily from their app store. I might not have even used "Windows".
I downloaded the MSDN Windows 8 .isos on Wednesay morning and installed the Enterprise flavor on VMware Workstation without incident. What problems are you seeing?
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
look at the tablet market now... apple must now sue or die in the tablet market just to compete... being different only works for so long, and there are too many copycat companies in too many different countries for apple to maintain any kind of stranglehold
Everybody that knows his history agrees that you have to skip every second release of Windows. Windows 8 is not going to do much, but I don't really think MS is expecting it to. It is just an experiment to see how the home users will like it. If the home users like the new interface, and Windows 9 comes with Metro while MS drops support for Windows 7, then we can talk about how big a bet the new version of Windows is. As enterprises still haven't recovered the costs from moving to Windows 7 they will definitely not move to something new (even if the exact same interface is in place) as long as tech-support is offered. MS definitely knows this.
And, in my workplace, nobody likes the idea of an app-store either. Some people wanted to get a company iPad to show off at exhibitions (practically just to show potential partners our company's PR-presentation) and had to go through a lot of hassle in order be allowed to buy one. Our IT's problem was that the app-store opens up many security holes that can be used to steal confidential information (I don't know how this should work, but that is what they said). So if Win 8 comes with similar app-store "features" then that will just add to the reasons (or the excuses) for not upgrading.
I had the CP working in VirtualBox seemingly fine.
not really. not when you factor in that businesses are buying "enterprise" class laptops with hefty support contracts. businesses don't buy the $499 refurbished special.
The hardware isn't what keeps people from buying Macs - the software is. Businesses are demonstrably NOT buying Macbooks and native Macintosh software in general. Businesses aren't going to buy a Mac because much of the time all the software they need requires a PC or at least requires a PC to be supported by the vendor. Sure, you can run Windows software using Parallels or VMWare or Bootcamp (for additional $) but there is little point in doing that when you can simply buy a Windows based PC in the first place. Apple's support is fine but it is definitely NOT tailored to the needs of business and the software that many companies need to run is not supported on a Mac at all.
I like Macs and I'm even using one as I type this but companies are not going to switch from PCs to Macs en-mass any time in the foreseeable future. The only real threat to Windows is people switching away from PCs in general. I could see smartphones gaining the ability to dock with a monitor and keyboard and becoming de-facto PCs. Tablets will erode some PC market share - how much will be interesting to watch. These might be threats to Windows. OS X on a Mac in its present form is not.
my group works entirely on macs without problems, and our IT dept supports macs 100%.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Macs have a market share below 20%. You might work among people who use Macs heavily and your company's needs might be such that Mac are a great fit for your organization but that is very much the exception and not going to change anytime soon. I work with a lot of companies and I can count on my hands with fingers left over the number of companies I've seen that are all or mostly Mac. Some graphics design shops, a few smallish software companies, and a few others. Most use PCs and the data supports that being the case. The majority of Mac buyers are people buying for personal use.
All Microsoft had to do to make windows 8 a success, both financially and critically, was to make applications load faster. Think about it. People are simple, impatient creatures, as are their bosses. Imagine an app that loads in 10 secs on windows 7 and then 5 secs on windows 8. Companies would jump on that upgrade ship in a heartbeat! It's all increased productivity. That's it, that's all they had to do. But no, they go messing around with interfaces and workflows. Bunch of idjits.