Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a $248 Win8 PC.

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Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a $248 Win8 PC.

Posted by Unknown on Monday November 26, 2012 @10:12PM from the boosting-sales-numbers dept.

theodp writes "A little birdie told me which Windows 8 machines would sell out fast. 'Cheep' ones! While no official sales figures have emerged, anecdotal evidence suggests that cheap Windows 8 laptops were a big hit with Black Friday shoppers, leaving some Walmart and Best Buy bargain hunters disappointed at missing out on the sub-$250 deals. So, was the Doctor-Desktop-and-Mister-Metro dual nature of Windows 8 and lack of a touchscreen no big deal to these bargain basement 'Laptop Hunters', or did they not realize what they were buying? Or, as a GeekWire commenter suggests, perhaps they were really just looking to score an ultra-cheap Linux laptop!"

21 of 642 comments (clear)

I can assure you... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-26 22:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

They have no idea what they purchased, it was a cheap buy and they will be sorely disappointed when it runs like crap a year from now.
1. Re:I can assure you... by deniable · 2012-11-26 22:29 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  At that price, toss it a year from now and buy another.
2. Re:I can assure you... by serviscope_minor · 2012-11-26 22:30 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  it was a cheap buy and they will be sorely disappointed when it runs like crap a year from now.
  I know several people who bought very cheap netbooks and were very happy with them for a number of years. Heck, I still use my ageing eee 900 daily.
  Cheap doesn't mean bad or badly built. Not everyone needs a 64 processor monster to surf the web.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
3. Re:I can assure you... by wisty · 2012-11-26 23:07 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  What Moore giveth, HTML5 taketh away.
4. Re:I can assure you... by symbolset · 2012-11-26 23:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The phrase is: "What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away."
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
5. Re:I can assure you... by mystikkman · 2012-11-26 23:38 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not true since Vista. Slashdot is full of folks who've last used Windows more than 10 years ago and thus complain of things like bluescreens, bloat etc. which makes them look like idiots.
  Get with the times and at least update your hate machine.
6. Re:I can assure you... by Doctor_Jest · 2012-11-27 00:44 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  While Windows 7 was a vast improvement in many ways from the "open beta" that was Vista, Microsoft still has quite a few early design decisions that haunt them. I often wonder about how the Registry improves from release to release (it was a fairly crappy way of configuring the OS back in XP), but quite frankly the Registry itself is one of the things I loathe about Windows in the first place. But that's just me.
  
  But to say that MSFT can't write a good OS is just the height of arrogance, its elitist horseshit to make little nerds feel good about themselves
  What's funny is not that you bristle at the opinion, but that anyone's opinion that Microsoft can't do X or shouldn't do Y is somehow "elitist" horseshit. Sure the opinion was dripping with one poster's view of what makes a good OS, but the fact remains Microsoft has given us some massive turds in the history of Windows. The fact that they appear to have gotten it right with Windows 7 is not reinforced by the massive UI shift to leverage their Windows codebase into the smartphone market in Windows 8. And you agree with most of the rest of /. that the Metro UI is positively junk. It is showing the true nature of what a company searching for relevance in a changing technology climate can do, given enough money and micromanagement. (It could be any company, not just Microsoft...)
  What I cannot dismiss, and I do not believe is a fault of poor coding but more succinctly Microsoft's disdain for its customers, is the constant upheaval in Office file formats, phone home DRM, and an otherwise high regard for the *AA's built into the core OS in order to please them. I won't go into detail about that here, because it's been covered on /. umpteen times, but that nonsense alone has made me hate Microsoft at a basic level. Their culture, like Apple's, is one of contempt for the user's freedom to do what they wish with their purchased machine. The SecureBoot fiasco is just another in a long list of crimes. I say crimes, because frankly they were convicted of abusing monopoly power. That wasn't a witch hunt, like some contend. It was exposing the true nature of Microsoft, as reflected in their management. Rather like Jobs' personality and vision is reflected in Apple's walled garden and sealed computers (laptops in particular, but you can also point to the recent iMacs as another in a long line of removing freedom from the user...) I think we can both agree that Microsoft and Apple are one in the same when it comes to putting their goals of lock-in well above making good, solid OSes that get out of the way and let people be, well, people.
  
  --
  It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
7. Re:I can assure you... by Drakonblayde · 2012-11-27 00:44 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I tried, but since my hate machine is running Windows ME, Windows Update tells me to frak myself.
8. Re:I can assure you... by symbolset · 2012-11-27 00:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  But to say that MSFT can't write a good OS is just the height of arrogance, its elitist horseshit to make little nerds feel good about themselves by ignoring the fact that there are literally hundreds of millions of Windows installs out there and you know what? people are happy with them, it does what they want it to do.
  This is probably going to come off as rude, and for that I'm sorry. You say that Microsoft can write good software. Being a member of the community these last 30 years and skilled in the art, I would ask: "show me."
  I ain't seen it yet.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
9. Re:I can assure you... by ozmanjusri · 2012-11-27 01:51 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  At that price, toss it a year from now
  It'll be a race to the bottom for Win8 PC prices now. That's the only way they'll get them off the shelves.
  Windows 8 sales flounder as critics pan clumsy interface
  Windows 8 sales in Australia and overseas are below expectations, with one US expert describing its user interface as "a monster that terrorises poor office workers and strangles their productivity".
  http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/computers/windows-8-sales-flounder-as-critics-pan-clumsy-interface-20121126-2a2d0.html
  
  --
  "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
10. Re:I can assure you... by DoraLives · 2012-11-27 02:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I beg to differ.
  
  I've been doing home computer repair for the general public for literal decades. I used to do it as a side job or for charity, but it's been my sole income for many years now. Bottom line: I've got a fair amount of experience working with equipment that's on the failing end of its life cycle, all of which has been entrusted to the tender mercies of your typical non-savvy user.
  
  And I'm a pattern recognizer, too.
  
  And nowadays the pattern is one of complete random events, for all classes of home computers.
  
  I've got people with ten year old eMachines running XP who's hardware continues to run without the slightest issue, and I've got people with brand-new three-thousand dollar specialty machines who can't catch a break, with bad motherboards, PSU's dying and taking other components out with them when they go, hard drive failures of every stripe and color, and on and on and on.
  
  I've decided that there's really no sensible difference in equipment anymore, so far as reliability goes.
  
  It all comes out of the same factory in China somewhere, and none of us really know what the hell is going on over on that end of the production cycle.
  
  It has become a crapshoot, plain and simple.
  
  Used to be, more expensive, "quality" computers could be expected to last longer, but no more.
  
  They're all using the same components from the same vendors, and if that's not enough, the batch-to-batch variabilities and imponderables are now completely impossible to keep effective or meaningful track of anymore.
  
  And what once was a clear pattern of "quality" goods giving a nice return on investment, has now become random noise.
  
  Nowadays any of it can fail for any reason at any time. May as well get the cheap stuff and try to cut your losses up front.
  
  --
  Is it fascism yet?
Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-26 22:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

People aren't buying "Windows 8" PCs, they are buying "cheap" PCs that, as an amazing coincidence, come preinstalled with the latest version of Windows (which is... Windows 8)
What's the point of this article, and why the comparison with Apple?
1. Re:Maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-26 22:26 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  What's the point of 99% of the complete shit that theodp submits?
Re:I really hope.... by mdsharpe · 2012-11-26 22:39 · Score: 5, Informative

The first boot tutorial shows mouse gestures or touch gestures or both, depending on the machine's capabilities.
Re:I really hope.... by rikkards · 2012-11-26 22:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

There isn't (well not a normal desktop). There is a tutorial about Metro when you first log in.
I was hugely skeptical about 8 and installed it on a spare machine the wife will be using. I have probably put about 5 hours in of just playing around and to be honest it is surprisingly easy to get used to and not bad to work with. The Windows key is definitely your friend. I was thinking you would need touch as well before but it works fine without. There is still a couple areas where I question but I wouldn't necessarily reimage a machine back to 7 if it had 8 at this point.
Windows 8 is a fail by ShakaUVM · 2012-11-26 23:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

Earlier today, the entire chess club surrounded one of these new $250 Windows 8 machines. They were all poking at the screen, but while it was changing colors on them, it wasn't responding. (Guess what guys? That's not a touchscreen. Those colors are what you get when you poke a normal LCD display.) They were convinced that all Windows 8 machines had touchscreens, though, and so they never used the touchpad.
And then they tried shutting it down. I was mocking them for a while, as an entire chess club couldn't figure it out, so then they passed it to me and I couldn't figure it out either. Turns out the option to shut it down is hidden behind an invisible menu, hidden behind two other submenus unrelated to shutting things down.
We eventually had to look it up online, as I expect many people will have to do.
It was an interesting case study though, in how fucked up Microsoft made the Metro UI.
Re:Cheap windows 8... by ruir · 2012-11-26 23:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

If it worth the effort dealing with hardware, UEFI, lack of support for Linux, hacking and the overall inconsistency (yet), of the several Linux desktops /: I use and hack Linux servers/and in virtual infra-structures (aka cloud for PHBs), but cant bother to have Linux for my desktop. Time is money.
Let's nip this one in the bud by Flipao · 2012-11-26 23:40 · Score: 5, Informative

The Laptop Hunters campaign is almost 4 years old, and completely irrelevant in this day and age when we're talking about perception of value, it costs just over $300 to buy into Apple's ecosystem and even less to buy into Google's..

I find it interesting that this tidbit was glossed over.

However, the scene wasn’t so rosy for Microsoft at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, where analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray and team observed and tabulated traffic and sales at Microsoft and Apple stores. Microsoft saw 47 percent less foot traffic than the Apple Store did, and far fewer sales — 3.5 items per hour, compared with 17.2 items per hour at the Apple Store, as reported by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt. Most of the items purchased from the Microsoft Store were Xbox 360 games. During the two hours that the Piper Jaffray team observed the Microsoft Store, they didn’t see any Microsoft Surface tablets being purchased.
Re:I really hope.... by kannibal_klown · 2012-11-27 01:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's nowhere near as bad as the many reviews make it out to be.
Yes, it has its issues and I don't agree with everything they did. And it's obvious they're trying to bring Tablet and PC together.
But I applaud trying something "different" Face it, the UI design for Windows hasn't changed much since the 3.1 days (or I perhaps the 95 days). Even OSX has had pretty much the same UI since it was released, and has a LOT in common with its old System X days.
And Windows 8 is actually fairly nice, ONCE you get used to it. That's the problem: you're getting used to something that's different that what you've known for the last 20+ years. The various reviews use previous OS's as a template to say "THIS is good design, and here's why" when really they're just stating UX concepts that were founded AROUND the interfaces that were popular and long-living.
The only real annoying things to me are:
- Shutting Down / Rebooting is insanely stupid. Like 8 mouse clicks.
- The 3rd party metro apps go over-board with the scrolling text. To the point that you can't tell what a lot of those 3rd party "tiles" actually are. Most of the ones that come with Windows 8 are fine though: the title of the app or an icon is on the tile so you know what's what.
Will it last long? Probably not, enough people will not like getting used to it that I'm sure Microsoft will have to back-peddle in Windows 9 to a more classic UI.
Re:Run 98SE on that computer. by IndustrialComplex · 2012-11-27 02:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Caveat: I'm a 99% windows user with just about enough unix experience to traverse a directory structure.
I'm not sure how you quantify faster, there are a lot of things which mean 'faster' to me:
From the initiation of the OS boot process to when my scripts start loading VHDs it takes about 15 seconds. (I use that as a benchmark because that's approximately where the system becomes responsive to a user on a clean install) I've not yet timed Ubuntu for booting, so I can't compare that directly (I don't think loading from the USB is a fair comparison since my OS is loading from RAID0 SSDs)
However, in terms of actual performance once the OS is up and running or installed on a machine... It doesn't seem nearly as fast. Certainly not the freaking Dash application search thing. The UI design on that is horrible. I find myself wondering if I actually clicked it, I assume yes because the rest of the screen dimmed, but I've been having nothing but trouble with it so I typically just launch everything from the terminal now.
I'll be installing Ubuntu directly to the machine later today, so I'll get a good comparison on boot times and a clean install, but in terms of pure 'faster' performance from the user perspective, not based on what I've seen. Anecdotal evidence, but that's all that matters to me because I don't care if it works better in theory or in general, I only care if it works better for me.
The thing is: I WANT to like linux. It's why I have a semi-annual install fest on my machines (which slowly migrate back to Windows over several months), but there is no way I can consider it 'faster' if the instant I run into an issue there isn't an intuitive way to correct the issue. That eats up my time, and that colors my perception of the speed of the system. Right now, Linux seems to be much like a F1 race car. Sure, when it goes, it goes fast, but in between those periods of speed are significant chunks of time where a team of experts is rebuilding, tuning, and prepping the system for it's next sprint.
I know this is probably pretty obvious, but I run into an issue with a machine that is running an ATI R300x video card. Unity does not play well with it. So right now I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with it, and reading the tech threads mentions things like "This issue is known, and may be worked on" Of course, these threads are 2-3 years old, so I wonder if I'm just missing the obvious fix/patch/update/setting which resolves the issue. I haven't found it yet, I haven't looked hard though, but it's already taken up more time than I care to invest when I KNOW I could just install XP and have the system running well in 90 minutes. I'll probably toss some more time into it this weekend, but in the meantime that system will just be my hobby/learning system and that's a big issue for the perception of linux. Again, I bet it will be fast... after it's running (which may just involve me buying a whole new piece of hardware)
Heck, I wanted to install a python environment/stack (enthought), and it took me a good bit of time to just get it to install (chmod to make it executable, proper syntax to run the .sh file) Then I had to double check the appropriate path since that isn't intuitive to me yet (do I put it in /bin? Or somewhere in home?) So I install it, and then I'm told to make sure my PATH is updated... do I do that in .profile, .bashrc, somewhere else? How do I make I make that stick? Once I do it, I'll know it but...
Remember I'm a newbie to this, and thus all of this tweaking around the backend just to get things to the point where they would be faster costs me time, and every minute I spend looking up arcane error messages, or wondering how the hell do I do..., is a minute that I'm thinking "I could be done already if I had just stuck with Windows"
So faster comes to mean a lot of different things, and the fact that a mail client or firefox loads up 0.3s faster than the windows equivalent doesn't mean much (to me).

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Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Re:Run 98SE on that computer. by asylumx · 2012-11-27 03:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Do you think that the GP having to uninstall and install various distros and try them out is going to make him feel like linux, as a whole, is somehow FASTER?