Slashdot Mirror
HP Brings Back Windows 7 'By Popular Demand' As Buyers Shun Windows 8
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Gregg Keizer reports at Computerworld that Hewlett-Packard has stuck their finger in Microsoft's eye by launching a new promotion that discounts several consumer PCs by $150 when equipped with Windows 7, saying the four-year-old OS is 'back by popular demand.' 'The reality is that there are a lot of people who still want Windows 7,' says Bob O'Donnel. 'This is a twist, though, and may appeal to those who said, "I do want a new PC, but I thought I couldn't get Windows 7."' The promotion reminded O'Donnell and others of the dark days of Windows Vista, when customers avoided Windows 7's predecessor and instead clamored for the older Windows XP on their new PCs. Then, customers who had heard mostly negative comments about Vista from friends, family and the media, decided they would rather work with the devil they knew rather than the new one they did not. 'It's not a perfect comparison,' says O'Donnell, of equating Windows 8 with Vista, 'but the perception of Windows 8 is negative. I said early on that Windows 8 could clearly be Vista Version 2, and that seems to have happened.' HP has decided that the popularity of Windows 7 is its best chance of encouraging more people to buy new computers in a declining market and is not the first time that HP has spoken out against Microsoft. 'Look at the business model difference between Intel and ARM. Look at the operating systems. In today's world, other than Microsoft there's no one else who charges for an operating system,' said HP executive Sridhar Solur in December, adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft." Also at SlashCloud.
1) Relabel Windows 7 boxes "Windows 8 Desktop Edition"
2) Raise prices
3) Profit
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Windows 8 is designed around a touch-screen interface; one that is a struggle to operate via a keyboard and mouse.
For entertainment, a touch-screen interface is fine. But, believe it or not, people *still* do *real work* on desktop PCs. And for that use case, Windows 8 is a massive productivity downgrade.
Let's call a spade a spade: the touch-screen interface SUCKS on a traditional desktop or laptop PC. It's not a matter of "trying something new". It's a matter of using the right tool for the job, and the touch-screen interface is the WRONG tool for this job. To be fair, the linux touch-screen interfaces don't belong on a PC any more than windows 8. They belong on phones and tablets.
Read Paul T's column on Win Supersite. Windows 9 is going to have a start menu for desktop-centric uses.
Is HP providing an easy upgrade path from 8 to 7?
My daughter is going to College in the fall. She is by no means tech savvy. But she was choosing a Cromebook with local storage instead of anything win8. And she likes a windows phone.
adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft
People make now these revolutionary statements, but they will forget fast. Behind the scenes, Microsoft is likely already fixing what sucks about Windows 8, including bringing the Start Menu back. After the release of next Windows, this little (extremely expensive) Win8 mistake can be swept under the rug just like ME and Vista. But something which Microsoft knows best is keeping their foothold of running Windows on every PC. I bet Ballmer and Myerson are just spinning around in their office chairs laughing and saying "no, Mr. HP, you will be running Windows".
You can still buy pre-installed Windows 7 on a Dell (business section).
If Microsoft are determined to shoot themselves in the foot, by failing to let people have what they want then so be it.
Philip
Philip
Signatures are broken
1) Why would you buy a PC from HP? The amount of crapware on the laptop we got for my wife several years ago was downright pathetic -- what should have been a fast machine was dog slow because HP has embedded dozens of things little more useful than Clippy ("I see you are near a wireless network, the HP Network assistant is here to help"). The sheer amount of garbage rendered the machine unusable without hours of disabling stuff. (In fairness, the mother in law's Toshiba had the same problems, because vendor builds suck.)
2) Will Microsoft even allow this? I should think they'd be saying "nope, you can't sell those any more".
3) Wow, Windows 8 much be a turd if people are going back to a four-year old OS. Someone missed the mark by a long shot.
4) "adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft." From the numbers, it would appear that Android is well on its way to dominating the next generation of computers, even if people here don't think tablets are actually computers. Microsoft is no longer competing with Apple and Linux, they're competing with Google.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I hope that means a proper menu with expanding options off it - not the 'fuck you' compromise in Windows 8.1 where a 'start button' brings up the supershitty touch interface
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
That's it entirely, but you say it like it's something small. That's like saying, "what's to fix on the Pontiac Aztek other than the butt-ugly exterior?" Or, "what's to fix in the New Jersey government other than all the corruption?"
Pretty much exactly this.
Except for RAM, the vast majority of PC users will never fully max out their machine. They won't even get close to what the CPU can do. Even 10 years ago when someone asked me what kind of PC they should buy, I would tell them to buy the oldest machine they can find with twice as much memory as they think they need -- because in my experience, lots of RAM contributes more to the longevity of a machine than loads of CPU.
Nowadays, I think gamers and people doing heavy-duty work are the only people who need to be upgrading regularly.
The latest and greatest is often not all that great, and the differences between the old and the new are incremental.
For many many people, the PC they've had for several years now works just fine and doesn't need to be upgraded. For many more, a tablet will cover 90% of their needs 90% of the time (and, yes, that's a completely contrived statistic).
Microsoft made crap tons of money over the years by people being on the upgrade treadmill and getting the latest version of Office. And that is no longer a compelling reason for most people -- I know I use more .doc files than I do .docx files, and I'm not sure I could name a single feature in the latest Office which is any different than the previous version.
And, quite randomly since they mention Vista -- my main PC is a machine I bought in '09 with 8GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores running Vista, and with many TB of disk space. Having thrown a lot of resources at it, I've actually enjoyed Vista. On small machines it was a resource hog, but if you gave it lots of resources, it was actually pretty good in my experience.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So someone brought back Windows 7 and it just happens to be the one with the lowest quality laptops with the highest failure rate since numbers were kept. They also are in the bottom 3 worst rated support quality. So to me, this is absolutely nothing. By the way, if you want a computer that doesn't suck, my shop has sold about 20 toshiba laptops from Toshiba Direct. They still have some systems with Windows 7 Home Premium that are built at the factory to order for around $400 with free shipping. They're quite nice too and fully featured. Why is there no "Toshiba brings back Windows 7" headline? Because they never actually stopped shipping it in the first place.
Except for RAM, the vast majority of PC users will never fully max out their machine. They won't even get close to what the CPU can do. Even 10 years ago when someone asked me what kind of PC they should buy, I would tell them to buy the oldest machine they can find with twice as much memory as they think they need -- because in my experience, lots of RAM contributes more to the longevity of a machine than loads of CPU.
This is probably true, but I don't think most people have realised this. Recently, when a colleague's Win 7 laptop started to run slowly she announced that it was time to get a new computer. Most people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer starts running slowly that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change. It either doesn't occur them that a reinstall of Windows can fix the problem or they don't have the skills/confidence/motivation to perform the operation.
soylentnews.org
Win NT and 2K were "business" OS's, not consumer. They were also priced accordingly.
Before you label this as another "year of linux on the desktop!" post, hear me out
I have a retired neighbor that knows nothing of computers, but being retired he needs something to do all day. So with Vista, he uses the internet to connect to his car club and use email with his car club friends. He also uses websites with a fair degree of competency. He is so unsure of himself though, that he asks me hoe for help on a fairly regular basis with questions like "What happened to the little man?" (MSN sys tray icon, discontinued in 2013, replaced with Skype, and yes, that was another question) and "Where'd my icon go?" and plenty of other questions regarding the changing behavior of websites. He's got a very static view of things.A friend of his was also a victim of a virus that stole his banking into, so he was very concerned about that.
So when he asked me what laptop to get, and being on fixed income, his needs were simple, and I didn't want to have to field questions about Windows 8, which would have been a nightmare. Dual mode? Charms Bar? Yeah right.
So I set him up with Linux Mint 15 (Cinnamon) on a bargain laptop from Newegg that came with W8 on it. I pre-configured automatic updates for everything except applications (security and stability) and set the theme to the XP theme (He had previously used XP) very literally and let him have it. I got one question from him since. How to install solitaire. Stupid me, I forgot to show him the Software Center. Its installed now. I check in with him from time to time and he got a MyFi for it, and his girlfriend (also not very computer savvy, but better than him) configured the MyFi, and I never heard a peep. He's had it about 4 months now and only that one question. Not a complaint and no little men have disappeared.
Year of Linux on the desktop? No, but for him it is.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It:
1. Fits too much crap on your screen at once disorienting you.
2. Doesn't function as a logical tree-style menu.
3. Covers the whole screen.
So you pretty much reworded all the bad things about it to sorta kinda make them appear to not be horrible. Well done. You will have a good career in either advertising or politics.
Most people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer starts running slowly that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
Actually, many people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer doesn't do what they expect it should that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
"My email doesn't work anymore! Should I upgrade?" (saved wrong password)
"I can't find the buttons I used to have! Do I need to upgrade?" (accidentally hid toolbar)
"I can't hear any sounds on my computer anymore! Do I need a new one?" (volume on mute)
This is particularly true of older people, who don't really understand anything about how a computer functions. I've heard of someone recently who thought a new computer was necessary just because she wanted to change her email address.
So, yeah, when you have folks like this, there definitely is a much larger pool of people who would have no idea how to attempt an OS reinstall or how to "clean" their system to speed it up again.
This promotion actually made me go over and check HPs website out, only to be disappointed that the two laptops offered both had 1366x768 resolution screens. Come on HP. You outfit this Envy laptop with the latest i7 and 12GB of RAM, and then hobble it with such a lousy screen? I don't care what the operating system is, no sale.
I think I would still pick 8.1 over Windows 7. Metro does suck but it is tolerable and the OS is otherwise very stable and fast, even more so than Windows 7. Microsoft really fucked up though by treating mouse/keyboard/monitor users like second class citizens in an upgrade to their own operating system.
So? What else do you need to look at while selecting something from a menu?
You're right. When I open the bookmarks menu in Firefox, everything on my screen should go away and be replaced by a scrolling mass of big tiles. It just makes perfect sense.
Not everything has to be a tree control.
You're right. When I look for Photoshop to start it, it makes no sense for it to be under 'Adobe', with InDesign and Premiere. They should all just be scattered at random in a big scrolling mass of tiles.
WTF? I mean, really, WTF? Aren't /.ers supposed to have an IQ higher than room temperature?
That why most of us can see what a disaster Window 8 is.
The Start Screen is, simply, the worst possible UI design I could think up while keeping it still technically usable.
Fitting more shortcuts on the screen at once isn't a good thing. It just increases the clutter.
Drilling through folders is a good thing. It lets you keep less frequently used stuff out of the way, but still easy to find when you need to find it. (And don't say you can just start typing the name of the program you want instead of drilling down. I don't know the name of every program I rarely use, so I'll still be hunting, but in a more difficult way.)
Take advantage of the whole screen is a bad thing. It breaks my mental continuity and flow every single time. I don't want to switch completely away from the desktop to perform an operation on the desktop. That makes no sense at all.
The Start Screen is 1/3 of what makes me hate Windows 8 (which I've been using daily for over a year now). Another third is the "hot areas" you hover your mouse over, and the last third is those damned charms.
The problems with Windwos 8 are all centered around trying to make it both a desktop and a tablet interface. Those two are very, very different use cases and trying to cover them both in a single UI is guaranteed to make that UI suck in one case or the other (or both).
I had a chance to log in and remotely look at a buddy's Win 8 system.
The big problem I noticed was all those tiles there that I would never ever use. "Photos, Facebook, Gmail, Other Social Media, Calendar, Contacts, ..." and I can't remember the other 20.
Holistically it's that all those things are dumped there, vs in the old days I use my desktop space for what *I* want there.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine