Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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 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).
Lastly, you dont need the start button if you learn how to use whats there.. Thats like complaining when going from Win 3.1 to 95. They got rid of my Program Manager I wish they gave me a way to turn it back on..
They did, from 95 up until XP SP1 ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142255 ). Of course back then they actually had people who thought about the impact of new interface design on users:
http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/kds_txt.htm
At one point in the design of Windows 95 they considered having two separate UIs, the windowed interface we know and a separate, simplified interface they thought might be suitable for beginners, and which seems to have featured a set of tiles that launched the various applications. Although the design "tested well, because it successfully constrained user actions to a very small set", it was abandoned because "If just one function a user needed was not supported in the beginner shell, s/he would have to abandon it (at least temporarily)", learning "would not necessarily transfer well to the standard shell", and "users had to learn two ways of interacting with the computer, which was confusing". I wonder if the Windows 8 design team were aware of this document..?
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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.