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Windows 8 Even Less Popular Than Vista
New submitter NettiWelho writes with even more bad news for Microsoft. From the article: "Windows 8 uptake has slipped behind Vista's at the same point after its release. Windows 8 online usage share is around 1.6% of all Windows PCs, which is less than the 2.2% share that Windows Vista commanded at the same two-month mark after release. Net Applications monitors operating system usage by recording OS version for around 40,000 sites it monitors for clients. The slowdown for Windows 8 adoption is a bad sign for Microsoft, who experienced great success with the release of Windows 7. Data was measured up to the 22nd of December, so there is still time by the end of the month for Windows 8 to claim a higher percentage of the user base."
It's not like they've not tried to clean the image of Microsoft when Vista was poorly received.
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I didn't think it was possible to make something worse than Vista, but Microsoft did it. They really are out of touch with consumers by trying to ram this crappy UI down their throats. Looks like there's a lot of resistance. 2012 wasn't a very good year for Microsoft. 2013 should be even worse.
People clung on to XP because Vista was crap, then dived on Win7 and declared it to be the best thing ever. Those same folks aren't going to give up 7 until the hardware support starts to die off, at which point Windows 9 will appear and the cycle will start again.
Assuming Microsoft are still around to make Win9 and we haven't all had to make the choice between OSX or Linux
1. The default UI was Metro.
2. They took my start button away.
3. Multi Monitor support was changed (Task bar now goes across all monitors).
While not major, it's still very annoying.
I know you can get utilities/hacks, etc... to fix this, but I shouldn't have to. At the minimum, they should have given options to turn them back on, even if they were off by default. So now they are trying to force their way of doing things on me.
Maybe they'll do better with Windows 9...but for now Windows 7 for me.
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Most of the consumers are preferring to buy Tablets over PC so I guess the numbers of new Windows 8 PC are bound to be down as well. The fact that Windows 8 is horrible is probably just icing on the cake.
I imagine Microsoft may just release a patch that fixes everything into a "classic" view to gain more sales.
If they do, I will quickly look into Windows 8 for deployment at my job.
As it stands now, I wouldnt deploy it because it would cause too many headaches for tech support, teaching people how to use the Operating system.
User interface guidelines. Android is finally realizing they needed interface guidelines. Apple has done great in both OSX and IOS. But Gnome team and Microsoft seems to be ignoring every standard and going gooey eyed over tablets.
My tablet is not my work computer, not my game system, and not my media box. Its my portable content reader.
Listen to your users.
I got called in to help my Mother's barely computer-literate friend with her new super-duper Windows 8 laptop.
Good grief. What a nightmare. What normally takes a few minutes with 7 (slap on Firefox and a few other progs. done) took half a day and I even had to do a factory reset when the lappy decided my user account didn't have enough privilege to run UAC ("Please enter your administrator password" - WHERE?!?!?) The funny part was when I got a call a day later telling me the machine didn't work, it was stuck on "Some picture of a skyscraper". Ah, that would be the lock screen. How do we get rid of that? Errr, move the mouse down to the bottom of the display, click and drag the picture up thus revealing the password box underneath. ARE YOU SERIOUS MICROSOFT!?!??! Yeah, I know this makes perfect sense on tablets. She wasn't using a tablet, so WTF?
Based on this one exposure I'm betting millions of average people will currently be tearing their hair out over the Win 8 monstrosity. Telling them they can download hacks & fixes & third-party tools isn't going to help. Telling them to forget half their Win 7 controls and just remember various keyboard shortcuts isn't going to help, either.
As for the Metro GUI. Good grief. I've been overlaying different-sized windows since the days of my Atari ST. Metro seems to be either full-screen, or a kind of triptych tiling system. Not so handy for anyone with a display bigger than nine inches (i.e. 99.9% of Windows users).
It isn't terribly tricky to script an invocation of "explorer.exe shell:::{3080F90D-D7AD-11D9-BD98-0000947B0257}" on login;
And this is why Linux will always fail on the desktop. While users have to type shit like that it will never be adopted to the masses and Windows will continue to... oh never mind.
I have actually now tried Windows 8: after my mother in law's computer broke I helped set up the new one.
Seemed a bit meh, to be honest. A bit of a random mishmash of two unrelated GUI concepts. Also she decided to remove most of the animated tiles because they're generally pointless (something I happen to agree on). We were both a bit baffled that some of them uninstall cleanly because they're "apps" and some take you to an apparently unrelated place in the new equivalent of add/remove programs because they're "programs" not "apps". It really feels like two operating systems which only barely work together.
A lot of weird stuff too, like having to find magic corners/edges that do things. It was kind of OK after a lot of random clicking around.
They also seem to have tried to implement a slightly confusing and rather ruimentary window management scheme of some sort for tiling or virtual desktops or something. It feels very primitive. I think I'll stick to fvwm.
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Astonishing isn't it? They've taken an excellent product (by MS standards) and done their best to bury it under a silly hybrid UI setup. Take 10 minutes to install Classic Shell, configure it to boot straight to the desktop (start menu enabled, hot corners disabled), re-register the file types that have been hijacked by Metro apps, and you have arguably the best conventional version of Windows to date - fast booting, integrated antivirus, upgraded task manager, ISO mounting, and a nice clean theme, etc.
Basically all the bad press could have been avoided if they'd made Metro and the start menu globally optional without third party solutions. IT departments (even if they get past the reviews) will take one look at the default configuration and its unpredictable switches between desktop and Metro, think support calls, and file the whole thing as 'Do Not Want'. That MS are already making noises about Windows Blue for 2013 suggests they've realised there's little chance of widespread corporate adoption for Windows 8.
Seemed a bit meh, to be honest. A bit of a random mishmash of two unrelated GUI concepts.
I was surprised that MS didn't convert the Windows Accessories (Notepad, Calculator, etc.) to Modern apps. And then the old Control Panel was left there, but some settings are still managed through the Modern UI. As the icing of the cake, the whole new UI is just butt-ugly. These kind of glaring issues leave quite a half-baked taste of Windows 8. It feels like they slapped on the Modern UI there, but weren't confident enough to polish the experience throughly.
Last week I got my first look at Windows 8 when trying to set up my 72 year old cousin's new PC that came with it installed. We got it up, but having never looked at it nor even considered getting it I couldn't tell her the first thing about using it. If there had been some EASY and OBVIOUS way to get rid of the METRO interface and go back to a Classic Shell she might have been happy with it, but after an hour of trying to do anything useful she wanted it boxed up and she has already returned it for a refund.
I have never really been that fond of Windows since I started working with Unix and Linux back in the late 1990's but this time I think Microsoft has played a game of Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic pistol.
What you say is true but even when we avoid the annoyances that Metro brings, the improvements in Windows 8 STILL aren't worth the cost and hassle of upgrading. Those of us who care about the truly useful improvements in Windows 8 have had access to free and decent workarounds for years. All-in-all, they are pretty minor improvements. I can find no must-have, killer feature in Windows 8.
Windows 8, minus Metro, would have made a great service pack though.
I can't find it anymore,but I had to laugh when there was a poll awhile ago that said 50% of people who tried windows 8 liked it. Just looking at the sales numbers told you that as BS. When reality and your poll numbers don't match, chances are reality is correct.
I just don't see everything going black box though, there is just too much need for a general purpose OS. If anything, someone will come out with a BSD variant or something. As long as the OS UI is as good as Windows 98 or better that will be good enough for businesses. (It better be a lot more stable of course.)
I simply can't see Balmer lasting much longer. They have the code to put a Windows 7 style interface in 8, they just stripped it out. All it would take is a service pack to put that back in there. They'll slap a new name on it though, like Windows 8 second edition or something, perhaps give it the windows 9 label. The board is probably making plans to get rid of him, they just need to find a replacement and give Balmer a little more rope to hang himself with. They are probably trying to figure out how Gates is going to react to Balmer getting the boot.