Slashdot Mirror
ZDNet Proclaims "Windows: It's Over"
plastick writes "You can think Windows 8 will evolve into something better, but the numbers show that Windows is coming to a dead end. ZDNet is known to take the side of Microsoft in the past. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains: 'The very day the debate came to an end, this headline appeared: IDC: Global PC shipments plunge in worst drop in a generation. Sure, a lot of that was due to the growth of tablets and smartphones and the rise of the cloud, but Windows 8 gets to take a lot of the blame too. After all, the debate wasn't whether or not Windows 8 was any good. It's not. The debate was over whether it could be saved.'"
I haven't counted Usenet posts lately, so can anyone check with Netcraft?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Are people going to switch to Mac OS? Linux? Or stay on Windows 7 until a "spiritual successor" to Windows comes?
The article largely hinges on "Windows 8 comes out != PC hardware sales drop". Its just trolling for readers.
I like some Microsoft products, but honestly, if they ditch Windows, and move their products to .NET... then ensure the .NET platform runs on Apple, Linux and a few other platforms (not terribly hard, since the tech is mostly there anyway), I think they might see some improvement.
TBH... I like what Windows was for a short time, in the 2000-XP era, when most of the security holes had been patched, and 7 is OK... but they are majorly ruining the UI. They are trying to be clever, edgy and push the envelope... but doing so in a manner that copies Apple, and tries to go one step further. So they not only lose the 'clever' appearance, for a copycat appearance, but they are copying some of the worst changes for the desktop environment, that Apple is making.
Then again... except for businesses, and a relatively small number of hobbyists, the desktop will be mostly eliminated in the next 5-10 years. So... Windows dieing on the desktop may not be such a big thing for MS. The people who will keep it, are probably the least likely to use Windows (except businesses). The desktop is for creating, most users are simply are fine with consuming, and they'll move to portable platforms which make that easier. Even the portable platforms are starting to be good with producing - particularly multimedia which doesn't require much typing. MS has the possibility to catch-up on the portable side, but it's isn't likely, even though they have a great mobile product, that market is fairly strongly set with other good/great products, and it will be a hard battle, one MS's prodigally inept PR department can only lose.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I stopped with Windows around Ubuntu 8.04, was fully weaned on 8.10.
Cannot imagine going back, ever, unless they took FreeBSD and wrapped their stuff around that. Then, maybe.
But MS does deserve a smaller market share than before; I'm happy about that.
They aren't going away completely for a long time.
And going forward, Ubuntu is over. Still on 10.04 and kubuntu 12.04 and CentOS 6.3. Won't use Unity, will avoid Gnome 3 for as long as it takes to become compelling.
Love the choices available.
It isn't clear that MS has anything coherent in the 'stop ipads and cellphones and stuff from eating our casual customers' column; but all they'd have to do to move Win8 from 'Windows Vista's Revenge' to 'worthy, if not groundbreaking, series of incremental improvements to various aspects of Windows 7' would be to flip the switch and have non-touch devices default to 'desktop' and touch devices default to 'the UI formerly known as Metro'.
Pretty much everything is still present in Win8; but they seem content to just stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the problem, even as OEMs have started shipping ghastly craplets designed to vaguely resemble a start menu. I just don't get it.
the new design principles of cow path work flow, one way trap doors, modal dialogs, and above all the great mouse click god are destroying the metaphor. We are building for fools and soon only fools will be able to use it. A/B testing is the worst idea in UI design since the rubber eraser joystick that was on lap tops from people too cheap to buy a track pad.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
ZDNet is proclaiming the death of the PC / Windows...
again...
Just more clickbait fodder.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
As a Microsoft partner and management consultant I don't understand:
Realistically Microsoft only has one chance at long term success, and that includes firing Ballmer, restaffing the board, and radically changing its staff evaluation processes away from Darwinian struggle to "what's best for Microsoft as a whole".
What I expect it will do instead is gradually fade into irrelevance:
So Microsoft's predicament is worse than a single product failure - at a CEO level Microsoft is simply not doing enough to change.
Forget Sinofsky. He was one guy and W8 has been coming down the tracks for what, four years now?
The blame here lies with Microsoft board of Directors. Windows 8 wasn't some backroom project, hardware spinoff, or specialised division. It was the company's flagship product, its core product, whose success literally makes or brakes the company.
And the board has fubbed it; Bigtime. The whole project was a disaster since its inception, and despite the recession it's very clear that the entire iDink paradigm Windows 8 attempted to hoist on users is so bad, so awful, that ordinary users are literally giving on on buying PCs full stop. A competent board would have been on top of this, foreseen the problems, and had them resolved before launch. We are now 8 months into launch and Windows 8 is a beached whale leading the whole PC industry pod onshore in its wake.
The first thing that needed to turn this around -- before any resigns, Service Packs, interface revamps, or marketing campaigns -- the very first things is that a swathe of the board needs to go. There's a cohort of bankers and industrialist there who probably have no idea how to run their own industries, let alone a computer software company. If my experience with Ireland is any indication, I imagine these directors are serial board hoppers anyway, so they won't be missed.
Microsoft is a software company. It needs software people on the board. Engineers, programmers, computer scientists, etc; with management experience, but who actually know what software actually is, and how it is developed, sold, and used. If MS puts qualified people in charge they can begin to turn the boat around; but they stick with the current shower of corporate BSers at the helm, this whale will stay dying on the beach for a very long time.
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm not a windows guy. My laptop is a macbook pro and my day to day workstation is debian. However, I recently built a windows gaming computer and I like windows 8. Is it different? Yes. Does it have a learning curve? Yes. In the end it's stable, solid, easy to use, and looks nice.
The reason PC sales are down is because computing power has reached a point where we don't need a new computer every 2-3 years. My mac mini is 6 years old. I only need to replace it because apple won't support it any longer. Otherwise it's speed and power is fine. I expect my new desktop windows 8 PC will last me at least 6 or 7 years.
Gone is the day of the power computer. Desktop computing has reached the point where there is no leap in upgrading. It's incremental, people only do incremental upgrades when their old equipment dies.
Like Biff, Microsoft used to be so easy to hate (being the bully and all), but now, at the end of the story, they've become so reduced from their former self and are nothing more than a pathetic, blithering idiot, you almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
Anyway, I wonder if all of this negative news is enough to get Balmer tossed out.... Isn't that what is supposed to happen to CEOs when things go this wrong this fast?
I suppose its nothing to do with the fact that the PC I bought 5 years ago is pretty much still as good as those I can get off the shelf today. Other factors include the global economy being in the toilet. Of course Tablets have had an impact but the office is still mostly PC based with some Mac thrown in for good measure. Blaming M$ for the decline in PC sales is like blaming Obama for starting the War in Iraq!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Correct, I am using it on my personal laptop and on my PC at work, it is fast and stable enough so far.
My home PC is still running win7 but that's because it is stable and if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Grandma has no idea what you're talking about.
MS's main problem is that they still think like monopolists. That's the core of the Win 8 problem -- people at MS telling us what we'll take, and that we'll like it. That they know better.
I'm a Gnome 2 refugee typing this on a Macbook Air, not a MS apologist. But Windows 7 is a very fine desktop OS. All they have to do is to stop trying to kill it off. Put it back on the PCs in the stores. Admit that Ballmer screwed the pooch, and let him go. He's a leader from the monopoly era, and not well suited to this moment.
Active Directory is a huge asset for MS. There's a whole ecosystem of tools that people use to do work in companies that will be very hard for anyone else to displace. Excel is amazing, and it's central to the conduct of business all over the world. People in offices all over the world live in Outlook. These aren't small advantages.
in the old days, they had their boots on our necks, and we all hated them. I remember that very clearly. But now, as tech professionals, we need them to get it together, for the health of the tech industry as a whole. Too much is sitting on top of them for their implosion to be a good thing.
The 15% drop in PC-sales last quarter, that's the numbers they are talking about.
But the real numbers are of course that 92% of desktop users world wide are using Windows. Hell, they could lose almost half their users and they still wouldn't be over.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Lots of Windows developers warned you Windows 8 was going to be a big mistake. You ignored us and stumbled on like an angry dunk. I used Windows 8 in the shops. It sucked and was clear customers wouldn't warm to it. With the writing on the wall developers took the plunge to Tablet development. People still wanted their PCs, but instead of re-inventing the desktop and instead you laid another Zune and forgot to flush. You have squandered the biggest computing monopoly ever, but this time people are leaving so I don't think there is a come back. Bye Bye Balmer.
Windows 8 App Developer Says Process Stinks
http://www.informationweek.com/security/application-security/windows-8-app-developer-says-process-sti/240010598
More Game Developers Unhappy With Windows 8
http://linuxgamenews.com/post/29001456897/more-game-developers-unhappy-with-windows-8
Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8 # warning signs as far back as 2011!
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/06/html5-centric-windows-8-leaves-microsoft-developers-horrified/
Don’t Blame Us for Windows 8s Slow Sales, PC Makers Say
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/oem-windows-8/
Really?
I remember buying my first Mac Mini when it first came out for £399 - the base Mac Mini available today is £499.
I remember buying my first Macbook when it first came out for £799 - the base Apple laptop available today is £849 (and its got a smaller screen).
There's a lot of comments floating around which say "when you install this this 3rd party start menu and make it boot straight to desktop, it's fine".
What they are saying is that if you undo all the big ideas that were added in Windows 8 it's fine. That's not good, you know.
when you pry it from my cold dead hand!
Good people go to bed earlier.
All it would take is a service pack. Let users decide if they want Metro or not. Let users decide if they want the start menu taking over their entire screen. I can't see how this would be complicated. The biggest hurdle is getting a marketing department to admit they made a mistake. The only time I can remember that ever happening was with New Coke. Coca-Cola sucked it up, gave the consumers what they wanted, and saved their brand. The ball is in Microsoft's court.
But, again this report under estimates the staying power of PC in the corporate world. Very systematically they MS neutralized Unix and usurped all the corporate intranet. Exchange server has become the de-facto authentication server even for companies that use Google Apps to reduce their MS-Office/Outlook/SharePoint costs. It is well entrenched in the corporations. Home users and younger generation have stopped buying PCs/Laptops and are increasingly using pads, tablets and smartphones. Having to interoperate with all these devices have cut the traditional advantage MS had with its monoculture.
MS is on its way of becoming the son of IBM. Lots of well funded research projects, and stranglehold on some sectors, mostly staying in business world and staying away from personal and entertainment world. It will sell X-Box someday to concentrate on its "core mission".
Apple is NOT the new Microsoft. Apple is probably the new Sony. Google is probably the new Microsoft. Let us see if it can avoid following the same path as IBM and Microsoft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
People look at those new phones and tablets, see the Windows logo and think about the antivirus running on their PC at home and at work. Some of them even remember editing the register. They feel a shiver down their spine and move to the next shelf. That's the number 1 problem, IMHO.
Number 2, the UI issue the article is about.
Most posters so far don't seem to know or understand what happened in Winh8.
Its_not a UI change. Its a UI and core system change, and a turning most of what was Windows to 'Legacy'.
The problem is much deeper than the UI. The problem is MS has explained very poorly what the new core OS and APIs are, and what tools and development was needed to make it fly. Most ordinary windows devs were left simply not knowing what APIs were going to be new or legacy.
I've fitted and made Windows 8 work for me (care of classic shell, and a few tweaks), and under the bonnet frankly there are good engineering works to be had. But the new UI is on par with the poorest touch interfaces I have seen. Its compounded by brilliance like the keyboard shortcuts that MS pushed in relation for it. Nobody in the Windows team seemed to realise that requiring bucketloads of keyboard shortcuts in a UI that is supposed to be touch based is an absolute fail.
You can add in more brilliance - like screwing with Explorer and putting in the appalling ribbon menu bar. Only, they did not fix the ribbon. So its got groupings of small icons mixed in with some that are good enough for touch - and these are too small to work in a touch interface. Sheer fucking genius. And either make the control panel in the dekstop side, or in the new UI. In 8 for some reason the control settings and options get split on both sides and its a plain mess. How it passed UI testing and end user testing is beyond comprehension.
It was fascinating during the development cycle to read some of the justification for the changes. They took feedback collected from end user machines. But not mine. And probably not yours. I know of nobody sane who does not turn that off. So, they collated data from the wrong userbase - and then decided that 'no one is using the start button, lets get rid of it' (I know I simplified the background, but hey..)
The only place where Windows 8 with the new UI works is on ARM, and its been a mistake to put and drive this into the X86 and X64 world. Windows 8 with an option for he new UI should have been the default there, with desktop as the default OS and with legacy and current customer support for the long term being the objective.
And a couple more things from the new UI angle. The applications are tedious, poor, and low quality. And thats before you get into the full screen nature of them UI, and the horrendous square everything. Every single part of it is sharp edged, square, old. There is nothing fresh about it. It reminds me orf the simplifed UI from win2k. This may have reduced system load and it may have been required, but it does not look nice. It does not feel nice. It does not feel modern, or fresh. It just feels bad. And in doing this they had to throw away features from 7 that were previously touted and positive steps forward.
The bottom line is as a release OS - it is a trainwreck. And not just in look and feel, but way beyond. Its a train wreck at the API and engineering level too. Now 99% of the audience is on the wrong track. Moving them over requires that they are going to have to change the gauge on all their wheels.
This is an incredible uphill problem. Move everyone from what they know and like, to what they don't. and .. don't.
The real problem is that the Windows end client is actually the grounding for the MS server and application layers. If the end client fails, these will fail also. And this means that_right now_ the board at MS should be rolling heads.
We`re all equal
It would be as far as Microsoft's revenue is concerned. They don't collect a dime from all those existing OS installs. Unless they convince people to buy new versions, along with new versions of MS Office, their revenue will take a nosedive.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Windows may be dead or dying for a HOME operating system. For business, it will keep on going.
Businesses have critical dependencies on specific software and business methods that tie into it. Such businesses, which comprise a HUGE market, are not going to switch from Windows to MacOS or anything else in the foreseeable future. To do so, they would require a full-on replacement for Windows that includes a full Windows API so every program can run just like it does on Windows, with the same access to hardware, system resources and other programs. And they are not going to go there without a GUARANTEE that whatever proposed replacement will run every program with no trouble.
Never mind that Microsoft never gave them perfect forward migration or any guarantee of it. But they were Microsoft, the same company, so there was some degree of trust that they were going to make the new system reasonably compatible with the old API and they did ever since Windows NT. Conservative companies even so waited at least a year after release before they started phasing in new systems. Sometimes well over two years.
And they're not going to go for a small company's product or a free (e.g. Linux) replacement for Windows because there's nobody to sue if they fuck up your systems and stop critical business processes.
Maybe in a decade, Microsoft will be mostly gone from the business world. Probably not.
That's completely true. But that actually is more of a problem with the entire model around selling and developing software than a problem specific to Microsoft. Photoshop for example has been "complete" for years. I hope for Adobe they have a list of "killer features" in a drawer somewhere so they can include one in every new release and hope to sell some copies, but in reality the software is simply finished. Which makes a lot of sense after 20+ years of development.
Software-as-a-service is where the money is in the long term. But unluckily for Microsoft that mostly means web applications right now. And they don't care if you run them on Windows or not. Microsoft doesn't want to do business in that world, so they simply try to keep the "sell a new version of the same old stuff every X years"-boat afloat for as long as they can.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Unfortunately, there's a Grand Canyon worth of a gap between "it works great on my one laptop" and "it works great on 60,000 supported corporate PCs."
This is why Windows 8 will fail until Microsoft gives everyone back the Start menu they are used to.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
They won't bring back the start menu. At least not yet. Otherwise there won't be any reason to upgrade to Windows 9.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
True, but gone are the days when everybody rushed out to get the latest and greatest as soon as it was released.
Whens the last time you ever heard anyone say "You HAVE to try the new Windows"?
Microsoft has NEVER been cool, and I dont know that many people have cared enough about their computer to care what version MS released.
(first of all, inb4 all the jugheads calling me a M$ shill)...
After using W8 for a few months (due to hardware support for a slide scanner) I don't see much basis for all the hate. Yeah, the UI is retarded and flashy and gets in the way of getting things done , but I've learned to adapt.
What I don't get is why people aren't all raging about how broken window focus management has been since Windows 7. It used to be you could <alt>+<tab> and cycle through windows in a predictable manner, so you weren't required to remove your hands from the freakin' keyboard when you're working at 90 miles an hour. Or is this just a dual-monitor fsckup?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Apple successfully implemented a culture of "upgrading for the sake of upgrading", which Windows wasn't able to be a part of. "Omg, this new device is exactly the same as the previous one, but its BETTER!! BUY BUY BUY!".
So compared to that, Windows is "failing". The sales are exactly as expected between, as you said, machines being powerful "enough" for most users, and desktops/laptops simply not being needed nearly as much anymore in the realm of smartphones and tablets...but for journalists/analysts/investors, thats no longer good enough.
You have to beat sale records after sale records regardless of market conditions. Once people trade in their foodstamps for the next version of Windows the way they do it for an iPhone, people on the internet will say it succeeded. And its totally binary: its either an iphone-like success, or its a failure.
In all seriousness, Windows is definately not going away. It will lose market and mindshare. Competition is good. I don't think it will ever die, at least not in the foreseeable future...it may just go down to a 50%~ marketshare instead of being a near monopoly. Thats still plenty successful, and good for the market. Not good for investors, but..... :)
Around win3.11 and Win95 - people seemed to be quite excited about those.
True, but gone are the days when everybody rushed out to get the latest and greatest as soon as it was released.
Whens the last time you ever heard anyone say "You HAVE to try the new Windows"?
Microsoft has NEVER been cool, and I dont know that many people have cared enough about their computer to care what version MS released.
Actually, I remember iPhone-like midnight queues for Windows 95 launch (yes, that old).
Only people who weren't around in the 90s think that. In reality it makes no sense whatsoever though.
This is what happened in consumerworld: Windows 95 had people lining up. Windows 98 and 98SE were extremely successful. Windows Me got bad press, but it was still widely used. XP was a powerhouse of course. And then came Vista, which was the first version of Windows ever to fail to gain a significant marketshare (it peaked at something like 30% before Windows 7 came out and then quickly faded away into obscurity). Windows 7 was seen as both a viable upgrade from XP and an escape from Vista, so that worked out fairly well. And now we have Windows 8, which is the second version of Windows every to fail to gain momentum. Even though W8 has been out for 6 months and it already went through a holiday season, market share is still stuck solid in single digits, passed easily by both Linux and Mac OS X and according to some research the numbers are even below the share of people who are still on Vista.
And before you say something about NT: every single version of that was successful in their target market.
The skip-version-theory simply isn't true. Only two versions of Windows have ever failed and of those two, Windows 8 failed the most.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
They could switch to OSX but I don't think the company would be interested in the hardware premium or replacing all the PCs. Something like Ubuntu with something other than unity set as the default desktop environment would work fine for most of the users.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A HUGE amount of back end processing systems are Unix based. Because in the olden days, Biig Metal or Unix-type systems were the only ones that could handle large data processing reliably. (That is still the case: I have had Unix servers with up to a decade of up-time.)
In the mid nineties MS went after the back-end processing market of businesses. While they had some success (And some spectacular failures) what prevented MS from gaining major foothold in enterprise data centers was the implosion of the Internet bubble and the availability of reliable, easy to use Open Source versions of Unix.
I have been writing all enterprise based applications for the past ten years as web based apps. Our current mobile stuff is also Web based (with a thin webkit client to handle the presentation on the specific device). While MS does have an installed corporate base, I'm not buying any stock soon. Their only successful product in the last decade has been the X-Box.
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
Since the death of the Amiga and Atari ST. Computer users have had two or three options, Windows, Mac or Linux ( there was a time between the death of the two computers and the birth of a viable Linux -- so at that time there were only two options. Linux were geeky, and Macs were expensive.
At the same time the net arose, and it was internet stuff that became the biggest consumer of cpu time. For most home users. Windows was really the only option.
OK. I'm vry geeky and I used to use Windows a lot. One of the main reasons, all the developer tools that worked much better in Windows.
Then one day I got a drive by virus. I went to one of those, post your Hijack this logs and we will help sites. The esperience was enough to make me decide to go then and there with Linux.
While I am geeky, I do not want to spend my time maintaining my computer. I want to spend it doing the geeky stuff that I like, and I discovered that if you are your own sysadmin Linux is a lot easier to use. I have almost never had file system corruption and the times that I did it was because of failing hard drives not the OS.
I generally don't worry about viruses. I don't have to worry often about conflicting installation of software. Every Friday I update my whole system no problem.
The thing is that underneath it all Windows is a poorly engineered system with a lot of bad decisions which got by for a long time because of it's monopoly power ,Moore's law, and the ability to hire tousands of chimpanzees too bang out code on keyboards in an attempt to hide Windows flaws. The problem now for MS is that when people check something else out, they are not likely to go back.
This is correct, that is why we are not rolling out Windows 8 from my IT department.
Besides the fact that we never roll out a new OS this young. Let other people beta it first, Win7 is doing fine so far.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Damn near every article that proclaims the death of Windows/MS has been posted here for years
The death of Microsoft here maybe was due to technical users, using viable [often better alternatives] while seeing the shortcoming of the Microsoft Platform...it just never really happened because of Microsoft's entrenched Monopoly. Now After the rise of the Pack of four...call it Mobile and Internet or Linux if you want, where Microsoft has failed, in a level playing field.
This topic is about Microsoft burning its Monopoly Desktop market in the hope of capturing the Mobile Market by turning their Universal Desktop product into a locked down tablet...Against Apple and Google, and that is being reported in the Mainstream Media, everyone has one.
Absolutely right.
Windows also incorporates centralized management features that either don't exist or are not as easy to use in other operating systems. It's all standardized, easy to implement, and relatively seamless. These traits allow relatively low-skilled people to support Windows.
I was having some authentication issues and didn't have the permissions to remove and readd my computer to the domain (pretty sure the machine password was out of sync). The tech that came to my computer didn't know how to run a command in DOS, but she did know how to remove my computer from the domain, rename it, and re-add it. Is this a good thing for the computing environment? Definitely not. But it's definitely good for companies' bottom line because they don't have to pay people who really know what they're doing and are highly educated.
Unfortunately the ability for low-skilled people to keep the lights on extends to servers too. No doubt Windows can develop some REALLY complex problems, but by and large getting services up and running isn't that big of a deal.
Software support is definitely critical too. Legacy applications are the bane of my security-focused existence. They cause all sorts of problems, but they keep the work going.
There are just no realistic alternatives at this point. You can point to one OS or another as having some of the desirable traits needed in an enterprise OS, but the point is that none of them have ALL of those desirable traits. Application support goes way way beyond a word processor, spreadsheet, and power point...there are thousands of specialized applications that are critical for businesses to run. Companies like hospitals have made HUGE investments in software to manage EMRs and issues with the user interface of one version of windows are not going to cause them to abandon that investment overnight.
That's just it.
I don't WANT to have to "learn to adapt".
Especially not for some imbecilic tweaks in the UI that remove functionality and stop me from working efficiently.
For me, time is money. And all the time I have to waste trying to dick around in the new UI, instead of getting work done, is money Microsoft is stealing from me.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
When XP first came out people were bitching and moaning how you would drag windows 2000 workstation out of their cold dead hands before they touched it. XP really didn't become a stable hit till Service Pack 2 gave it a complete overhaul
Agree with most of what you said, but gone are the days when you see a massive spike in PC sales due to the newest release of Windows or customers rushing out to buy the upgrade for their current OS.
"No other OS offers what windows can at that price-point."
Yes, but what does Windows 8 give you that you couldn't do with Windows 7 or even Windows XP? Windows isn't going away, but I doubt that many PC users, even businesses, are shelling out $$$ to upgrade their OEM versions of Windows. They'll just wait until they have to replace the hardware. Thus, the fate of Windows is tied to the fortunes of the devices which run it. As PC sales shrink, so too will sales of Windows licenses. It's not "going away" but it's going to be nothing like the old days.
You hear the same crap every time windows releases a new OS.
Maybe, but this is backed by 3 quarters of dropping sales.
With Windows XP, Windows was basically "done". Everything added after that was cruft and not worth the upgrade. Sure, snapping windows to the side of your screen is sorta nice, but that doesn't justify an entire new operating system. There are utilities available for XP which offer the exact same features.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Unix on the Mac, Linux on all the Android devices. for decades, folks have said that Unix is very user-friendly, it is just particular about who it chooses as friends. appears the old fox has got some fancy duds and moves, and gotten out of Ma Bell's basement at last.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I was having some authentication issues and didn't have the permissions to remove and readd my computer to the domain (pretty sure the machine password was out of sync). The tech that came to my computer didn't know how to run a command in DOS, but she did know how to remove my computer from the domain, rename it, and re-add it. Is this a good thing for the computing environment? Definitely not. But it's definitely good for companies' bottom line because they don't have to pay people who really know what they're doing and are highly educated.
This is not good, it's extremely short sighted...
Yes, you can hire low paid and low competence techs, but the end result will be flakey and insecure... You could hire incompetent techs to run linux too and the result would be almost as bad.
Windows is inherently unreliable, and will require more of the low paid techs to constantly fix stupid problems.
Trivial problems often get dealt with in inefficient ways by incompetent techs who don't understand what's really going on, they end up just rebooting and hoping the problem goes away rather than trying to work out what actually happened and fix it.
Incompetent techs may be cheaper than competent ones, but you will usually need a lot more of them.
How much does a major security breach cost? Your risk of having one goes up significantly if you hire cheap incompetent staff.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
ME's problem was that there was no visible difference between it and '98. Consumers had no reason to upgrade, and it had a poor stability reputation, so they avoided it.
Vista had a bad reputation before it was even released, entirely because some whiny MS-haters got their hands on the Beta and tried to find everything they could to complain about. I was selling computers at a large retailer when Vista came out, and for 6 months beforehand, people came in (with alarming frequency), telling me how bad Vista was going to be, and that they needed a new XP box while they could still get one. Vista was hated because of a soiled reputation before it was even released. Most of the FUD I was being told wasn't even based on any truth, it was purely rumors (and some of them were pretty far-fetched; 'I'm going to have to get a new email address! My old monitor, keyboard, and mouse won't work, and I love my 15" CRT! Ahhh!').
8's problem is that people don't need an upgrade. It really is a hardware problem. I now own a computer shop, and sell XP boxes alongside 8. Nobody wants 7. The people who want a new computer like 8. They're always cautious, but you can tell they're excited -- they don't want to buy something new and have it feel just like the old thing. Reception has been very good. The people who don't want 8 are the stick-in-the-mud whiners who are still bellyaching over the fact Clinton get reelected. They don't want 7 either. They probably would be thrilled if I still sold boxes running 95. The reason PC sales have been slow is simply that nobody needs to upgrade. If their motherboard dies, they buy a new PC. If they bring me a PC for a hard drive upgrade, and it's running a P4 with 512 of Ram, I'll steer them towards a new computer because it's cheaper than upgrading everything. Otherwise, people are happy to stick with what they have. After all, they just spent their 'toy money' on a new smartphone/tablet/55" TV.
And they're not going to go for a small company's product or a free (e.g. Linux) replacement for Windows because there's nobody to sue if they fuck up your systems and stop critical business processes.
When was the last time Microsoft got sued for something like this? I don't think you actually could win that lawsuit.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And they're not going to go for a small company's product or a free (e.g. Linux) replacement for Windows because there's nobody to sue if they fuck up your systems and stop critical business processes.
Like how Microsoft has fucked up Windows 8 and stopped critical business processes from working on it? Good luck with that lawsuit. This idea of companies making software decisions because they need someone to sue has always been ridiculous. I talk to a fair number of people going from Oracle to PostgreSQL who bring up this argument as a major issue in their way. I ask them if they can name a single instance where someone sued Oracle for releasing buggy software and won. The "need someone to sue" myth is even getting weaker lately, as many companies update their EULA so that individual users must accept arbitration. That's all about keeping them from jumping onto a class action lawsuit instead.
...because it's perfectly normal to go back to '99 image editing functionality just because tablets rulez and PCs suxxorz.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Resistance to XP included the new product activation "feature". I stayed on Windows 2000 until its EOL in 2010 because Microsoft could decide your copy of Windows wasn't "Genuine" at any time and disable it, and those were unacceptable terms for me to run a business on. I'll only use Windows XP and 7 inside of a VM, where I can both easily take a snapshot of the system in a working state and move it onto new hardware without asking Microsoft for approval.
Windows Me was SHIT. Absolute trash. I'm 100% on board with you there.
I wasn't trying to prove anything; just bringing up old memories of one of the didn't-skip-a-release-and-still-functioned versions of Windows.
Going back to "Me" - I don't know anyone who used that version. The maybe 30-40% of customers at the PC repair shop I worked in at the time that brought in machines running Windows Me were malware AND/OR random crash-laiden. Of that percentage, only about 10% refused to have their machine downgraded to 98 or, hell, just have a new machine built for $599 running XP. The gap between releases was a little over a year, but during that year new PC sales were not forced to be "the newest OS by Microsoft"-loaded like they are today with Windows 8. Not to stray too much from the conversation, but I really don't remember what happened with the introduction of Windows 7 (if all new computers were forced to have it) because I was suffering from post-brain surgery for epilepsy at the time and really, truly, don't remember.
Anyway, after the release of 8, the "every other version sucked" mechanism was repeated enough that it graduated to a general rule in my head. I still maintain that the skip-a-version started in 2000 with "Me", but you're right, as well.
I'm thinking too much here, but I want to say that XP was only really accepted because MS forced people to by having it be the only non-server-based OS they sold for about 6 years. Forced people to adapt. The good ol' Windows 2000 people were all, "Duh, it's about time everyone started using an NT-based OS!"
Now, I'm wondering if the same thing is happening with Windows 8; are they going to stand behind it as the only one they will sell and support with new machines and in stores until people accept it, or will they admit they didn't get it perfect on the first shot and
a.) spin it off to touch devices, or
b.) adapt the UI to support a defaulted but still customizable "touch is Metro" and "desktop is Explorer" model.
Of course, I never expect Microsoft in a'trillyun years to admit, "come out" or "accept outwardly" that they made a mistake. :)
Also the big proponents to upgrading where the very corps and MBAs who are insistent on XP today lol.
If you wanted to keep word 95 and your boss/vendor upgraded to Word 97, by hell you upgraded to remain relevant! They pushed hard much like you want to appear cool with your college buddies iwth the latest igadget and macbook. You were hip and could show off in Starbucks in all your glory!
Now you are irrelevent if you word 2013 resume looks like crap in Word 2003! You are irrelevant if you do not support IE 6. You are irrelevant if you are not a generation older technology wise. It is a complete -180 universe like an inverse where for consumers it is this way with iPhones.
MS was very fucking cool in those days. Part of me wonders since Steve Jobs left if Apple will be uncool again in 10 years? Bill Gates run MS tight and it went to shit right after he left. He left during XP's haydays and it never returned to its former glory.
http://saveie6.com/