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Windows 7 Still Being Sold On Up To 93% of British PCs
nk497 writes "The vast majority of PCs sold by British PC makers are running Windows 7 — not Windows 8. PC Pro spoke to several PC builders, with some reporting as many as 93% of recently sold machines were on the older OS. One company initially sold its PCs with Windows 8, but feedback from users soon changed that. Customers quickly began to specify systems with Windows 7, those with Windows 8 'took delivery and wanted to change back to Windows 7' – a process the firm described as a 'nightmare.' Another firm found success by installing a 'start menu' tool on Windows 8 machines, and others said the switch would have gone smoother if Microsoft has offered a Windows 8 tutorial or better explained the new OS."
Windows 8 UI is ghastly. With Classic Shell though, you'll never need to load metro again, and then its just a fast Win 7...
The new name for Windows 8: Vista Part 2.
is 100% too sensational a number? Up to doesn't mean squat
There's a number of reasons for not switching from Windows 7.
First, it's the operating system most of us always wanted. It gets closer to a perfected version of Windows XP. It does everything we need with the software and the interface paradigms we've known for 20 years.
Second, I don't trust any new product until it has been on the market for 18 months in order to get the bugs out. Developers know why, and the reason isn't developers (generally).
Finally, I distrust trends. They blow through, take your money, and blow out the other door. I trust reliability and paradigms that are time-tested.
As a lack of positive reason, I'm not sure what Windows 8 offers that Windows 7 does not. There are improvements; they look really neat. I'd like to play with them, on some computer I'm not using for work when I have lots of spare time to play around with it.
The computer is a tool for me. I use it to achieve other ends. Thus I'm not that fascinated with the OS and want it to "just work." Windows 7 does that, or an adequate job of it at least, on a wide variety of hardware.
XP is still tolerable but gets it support removed this year
What, AGAIN?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I bought my mother an Asus "Ultrabook" for christmas as her old laptop had finally given out. It had a hard drive failure last week, and rather than send it in I decided to swap out the drive myself.
Never have I had more trouble attempting to reinstall something like I did with Windows 8. Previously, you could just get a windows ISO, punch in the OEM serial from the sticker on the case, and you'd be set. Now, everything is certificate based, and will only work with a specific OEM copy of Windows made for that machine, and NOTHING else. On top of this, ASUS wants $50 for the disc to reinstall windows.
This OS was a giant step towards appliance computing for Microsoft. If the next version is like this or worse, I'll deal with support issues for my family on Linux instead.
My brother (in the US) just ordered a PC from a manufacturer's website (discontinued model, inventory clearance, actually a decent deal).
Windows 8 was the default. Windows 7 was a $50 option (over 10% of the total price). He paid the $50.
Microsoft, are you listening? (Yeah, I didn't think so...)
Win8 is just horrible win 7 is at least what vista should of been ..
That's because W7 is the service pack for Vista. Also, the phrase is, "should have been".
XP is still tolerable but gets it support removed this year
XP is far superior in numerous ways to W7. What used to take seconds is now a long, drawn out process of burrowing deep into menus or worse, having to go someplace else to make a change to where you are currently at. Add in that setting a folder view is not consistent across drives, you can't see every program installed through the butchered Start menu or if you mistype a network path through the Search box you can't immediately retype but have to wait for the timeout to occur, and W7 is a classic example of why you never let programmers design your applications.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Having recently taken the plunge, the new user experience can be summarised as "swipe a bit, here's some corners, now don't drown". I really like the OS now I've had some practice, in both its content-browsing Metro guise and as an updated version of Windows 7 but they've made no effort to bridge the gap between the two in such a way that a confident use of one can get to grips with the other. It takes some real lateral thinking to see what the mouse or touchpad equivalent of a touchscreen gesture is.
It doesn't help that touchpad gesture support is uniformly terrible. A look at regedit suggests that scrolling support is mostly hacked in on a per-app basis.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Windows 7 Still Being Sold On Up To 93% of British PCs
Good old "up to" - how many times have those two little words helped someone weasel out of a corner, or pull in punters from off the street.
PC Pro spoke to several PC builders, with some reporting as many as 93% of recently sold machines were on the older OS
"Some" is most likely journo-speak for "one." And it's probably one that caters to the hardened geek/gamer crowd, both of whom are going to be avoiding 8 for a while yet.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Windows 2000 was also a win.
The ideas behind Windows Vista were sound, they were just badly implemented until about SP2. Windows 7 was Vista done properly.
The difference with Windows 8 is that the whole idea of having a single interface for both tablets and desktops was wrong. It's not that there are some annoying bugs that need to be fixed, the whole specification of it is flawed. For Windows 9, Microsoft will need to either go back to the drawing board, or alternatively release a Windows 7.1 that brings any new under-the-hood stuff to the Windows 7 UI.
If MSFT keeps screwing with their licensing terms, ala Office 2013 for us folks who aren't connected all the time, I won't be buying it so no worries.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Of course Microsoft is listening.
They know that they can make regular people buy 2 OS' for each laptop. What else are lemmings to do? Install Linux? (Maybe in 2015 after Linux gaming takes off.)
It's like corporations buying PCs with OEM windows installed and then get wiped to install their Corporate image using another license. So each PC uses 2 licenses: OEM (non-transferable) and Corporate.
It's win-win times 2 for Microsoft. They can abuse their customers and still roll in it. They have a monopoly.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The article is about PC builders who are installing Win7 at the customers request, not high-street retailers where customers are not given a choice. This is not Slashdot trying to convince everyone Win8 is terrible, it's PC buyers who are rejecting it when given the option.
and black people hate change, and yellow people hate change, and red people hate change, and brown people hate change...
The pattern:
95- Crap
NT- Good
98- Crap
98 SE- Good enough
ME- Crap
2000- Good
XP at launch- Crap
XP after a near complete rewrite through service packs- Good
Vista- Crap
7- Good
8- Crap
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
There is no harm in trying to look the same but the desktop overlooks the fact that hardly anybody has a touch screen monitor and not many people are likely to get one whilst they sit vertically on the desk.
It makes sense in a tablet or phone format but if you have a separate keyboard you may as well have a separate mouse and this makes the whole touch interface redundant.
Win 7 was, and is, great. It does what it's supposed to with some flaws but flaws that are easy to live with.
Windows 2000 was also a win.
In terms of quality at release, Windows 2000 is unmatched by any other version of windows save perhaps 3.51. All the problems with Windows 8 seem to lie in the interface, which differentiates it from other hated versions of Windows. It's a shame Microsoft can't admit failure in a timely fashion.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can still use Office 365 offline (the licence lets you download the desktop apps). Of course, you have to pay for it every year.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why am I reminded of Star Trek?
But the idea is to have a single interface for tablets, computers and *phones*.
So that brings the idea from "wrong" into "brain-fucked stupid."
ME was released after 2000.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
It isn't the fact that the screen is vertical that would prevent people from getting a touch screen.
Yes, yes it is. The industry learned that lesson in the 80s. Of course, we like to repeat our mistakes every 20-30 years in this industry, so who knows.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's worse than you think: they missed a very smart play for this nonsense. A single system-level API for tablets, computers, phones, and the X-Box would have been an amazing thing. The same UI is exactly wrong: the same API call for, e.g., a context menu, producing something appropriate for each platform would have been great - and while you can't go very far in that direction on the UI, you sure can on the system-facing parts. If the same system call gets me a new file in the right place for, e.g., program settings, on a phone, game console, or server, it would be far easier to hire devs for any of those platforms.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.