62 replies to this topic 4 votes

[MorganX]

nekrosoft13, on 22 November 2012 - 14:47, said:

windows 8 sells like crap, because it is crap. hard to make someone buy windows 8, when the already have much better 7

Come on now, the Music app is crap, and some of the other Metro apps leave a lot to be desired, but Windows 8 as it relates to upgrade from 7, is actually superior as far as stability and performance I'm finding. The only difference is the Start Menu is now a Start Page, and well, Search is an abomination.

The real problem is apps perform really well on Windows 8; unfortunately for MS, same apps perform as well on Windows 7. Finally got Burnout Paradise 2 with super DirectX 11 graphics (read: Need for Speed, Most Wanted = Burnout Paradise 2 with super DirectX 11 graphics). Great on Windows 8, runs exactly the same on Windows 7.

Office 2013 is the best Office yet IMO, runs super on Windows 8. Runs super on Windows 7.

That's going to be Windows 8's problem until there are great apps for Windows 8/RT/Metro.

[PGHammer]

nekrosoft13, on 22 November 2012 - 14:47, said:

windows 8 sells like crap, because it is crap. hard to make someone buy windows 8, when the already have much better 7

Wrong - the advantage that 7 has over 8 is that folks are already familiar with it; that is, in fact, the ONLY advantage 7 has. When the economy is crap, however, it's enough.

I can actually give you a datapoint from earlier in Windows' history, in fact - Windows 3.x vs. Windows for Workgroups 3.11. The original Windows for Workgroups (3.1) was, except for some networking features, utterly identical to Windows 3.1, yet despite the better networking support (not just for workgroups, but it was a better LAN client than Windows 3.x even on Novell LANs), it languished so badly it gained the unfortunate sobriquet of "Windows for Warehouses". What got Windows for Workgroups out of the warehouses and onto thousands of PCs was a face-off between it and Windows 3.1 on identical hardware otherwise, and WfWG cleaned Windows 3.x' clock performance-wise.

Also, let's get real - if Windows 8 had, instead of changing as radically as it did, kept the familiar Windows 7 UI, complete with Start menu, it likely would be dismissed, by the SAME folks pooh-poohing Windows 8 today, as not different enough to warrant upgrading. As much as folks chastised Windows 7 for being too basic/bland/boring, let a major change come about and folks start getting a hankering for *vanilla*. FUD and excuses - and I'm getting rather disgusted with both.

[rippleman]

windows 7 also had an advantage due to the fact that some people didn't upgrade for years and years and years skipping Vista.

[MorganX]

PGHammer, on 22 November 2012 - 19:20, said:

Also, let's get real - if Windows 8 had, instead of changing as radically as it did, kept the familiar Windows 7 UI, complete with Start menu, it likely would be dismissed, by the SAME folks pooh-poohing Windows 8 today, as not different enough to warrant upgrading. As much as folks chastised Windows 7 for being too basic/bland/boring, let a major change come about and folks start getting a hankering for *vanilla*. FUD and excuses - and I'm getting rather disgusted with both.

Can't agree with this part. The key being radical. I think no one would complain about the Windows 8 upgrade as far as the desktop environment goes. They'd be quite happy as many miss Aero glass. Many just want better system-wide icons, lol (which they will never get). It's the radical change that took away what some people find quite productive. Unified search that virtually always returned what you were looking for in a nice accessible area with full context menus from that result. That simply won't work in the metro UI, it could, but it would keep contextual menu at the forefront of usability/productivity and context menus don't really lend themselves to Metro.

Hierarchical menus is what many miss from Start menu and is quite productive and useful. Metro "cannot" handle long lists or easily/quickly dig deep. Even some nice, and free, metro file browsers are nowhere near as quick or efficient as the Start menu with Computer displayed as a list.

I do think the masses are fine without it. Power users will absolutely miss it, though explorer is still there at the end of the day. The bigger issue may be Microsoft made this radical change in spite of what it's core supporters, who have supported them for years, wanted.

Nothing about this radical change is easy. It had to be done, it did not have to be done in a vacuum which MS chose to do. Change isn't easy. It's not going to be easy for power users who are now the minority, and it clearly won't be easy for Microsoft to change it's internal culture who's disfunctionality is showing itself in the Windows 8 Product line (excluding the Server product which as usual, delivers in spite of the bloated bureaucracy that is now Microsoft)

Edit: If everything worked well, which it does not, I think this would be going down easier. But you can't expect people to take steps backwards with a smile. And some things are not better, are worse, and will hopefully improve. I've said it before, great apps, which includes games, makes everything OK. For the first time, MS doesn't have that at the moment. At least none that can't be had on Windows 7 where the people complaining are quite satisfied.

[JaredFrost]

rippleman, on 22 November 2012 - 19:29, said:

windows 7 also had an advantage due to the fact that some people didn't upgrade for years and years and years skipping Vista.

I agree with this, but also that Windows 8 isn't very good for desktop hardware.

Windows 7 came out when a lot of people were still using Windows XP, they held off getting a Windows Vista PC, or did and upgraded Vista afterwards because 7 was said to be much better by almost all the -techs-, that helped push a lot of copies.

---------------------

Now we have Windows 8, a short time after, with no real major new desktop hardware advances, people just don't see the need to upgrade
Sure, there will be a few people here and there replacing broken hardware/etc, and since there is a buttload of people on the planet it may
even be upwards of 100+m given enough time.

Most companies wont see the value in upgrading to Windows 8 either, added costs in licenses, the man hours rolling it out, the initial
productivity cost, that may or may not level out.

You can't really blame the economy, sure Windows 7 had deals, but nowhere near the low cost of purchase Windows 8 has
And depending on where you are, the economy may or may not be better than it was in 2009, here it is better.

Only time will tell, personally I think Microsoft will cave into demand for the option to use the start screen vs the start menu
And I really don't see why some ModernUI diehards are so against that, as if consumer choice was bad or something

[Dot Matrix]

JaredFrost, on 22 November 2012 - 19:59, said:

Only time will tell, personally I think Microsoft will cave into demand for the option to use the start screen vs the start menu
And I really don't see why some ModernUI diehards are so against that, as if consumer choice was bad or something

If it can't be used with tablets and other PC form factors, I don't think you will see it come back in the fashion you want it to. Personally, I don't even think it will come back, nor do I think it needs to come back. Windows 8 is the beginning of a transformation into a new OS. Microsoft has stated they want to move forward, not back.

[Orange Battery]

They was onto such a good thing with Win 7, they could have added an option for a Win Phone UI when in mobile mode and what a beauty it could have been.

[Davo]

All the people bemoaning the lack of customization in Windows 8 and praising the Start Menu/Windows 7 amuse me so much. The inability to do something as simple as use classic visual style on ironically, the Start Menu, is one reason why I never moved to 7. Windows 7 become cluttered and unorganized with so many redundant menus and options that it was as if they were trying to mimic Blackberry.

Right now there are only three things I'm not liking about Windows 8: Metro IE, hidden power menu, and the lack of a Wireless Connection Manager. The latter has me rather ****ed as it literally makes no sense from a keep-it-simple or system security perspective. As I learned with 7 though, sometimes Microsoft changes core computer functionality just for the heck of it.

[JaredFrost]

Dot Matrix, on 22 November 2012 - 20:10, said:

If it can't be used with tablets and other PC form factors, I don't think you will see it come back in the fashion you want it to. Personally, I don't even think it will come back, nor do I think it needs to come back. Windows 8 is the beginning of a transformation into a new OS. Microsoft has stated they want to move forward, not back.

At this point we're both speculating on what may happen, as I said only time will tell, but for me, there is no one size fits all for UI vs input, you'll just end up with a frankenstein UI that on
neither platforms excels.

Also a lot of people view the ModernUI as several steps backwards in desktop UI design, in tablet design though, I'm sure it functions well, but then you have the desktop element
in this frankenstein UI holding the touch devices back, this isn't a win win situation in my mind, both sides lose.

[Growled]

Windows 8 is too new. Give people time to adjust to it and in a year or so I suspect things will be much different.

[Azies]

Ouch, it's a shame too, Windows 8 isn't that bad of an OS.

[The King of GnG]

So there's hope for a desktop-only version of Windows 9. I would buy that. Windows 8? Never.

[AJerman]

Another day on Neowin, another Windows 8 defense thread. This is getting really old. Last I heard the Win 8 defenders were claiming it's sales were amazing and anything or anyone that said otherwise was lying, so what's the point in this thread?

[PGHammer]

AJerman, on 23 November 2012 - 12:43, said:

Another day on Neowin, another Windows 8 defense thread. This is getting really old. Last I heard the Win 8 defenders were claiming it's sales were amazing and anything or anyone that said otherwise was lying, so what's the point in this thread?

The folks jumping on Windows 8 sales because they aren't as good as those for Windows 7.

I, for one, didn't expect sales (especially in terms of new hardware) to be as good for 8 as they were for 7 (the retraining costs alone pretty much made that a certainty in terms of the business/enterprise area). The fact that there's little to no real reason to upgrade your hardware (if you are running Vista or 7 today) to run 8 is another factor dampening new hardware sales. In a way, upgrade sales are taking the place of new-hardware sales where Windows 8 is concerned.

The OS is not the driver to upgrade hardware any more.

AJerman, on 23 November 2012 - 12:43, said:

Another day on Neowin, another Windows 8 defense thread. This is getting really old. Last I heard the Win 8 defenders were claiming it's sales were amazing and anything or anyone that said otherwise was lying, so what's the point in this thread?

More like another day, another person looking for something (anything) to spin into a Windows 8 bashfest.

[Northgrove]

MFH, on 22 November 2012 - 13:22, said:

It's just so convenient claiming the economy is the reason why Windows 8 is well bellow projections...

It's times like these that you really need to compare to how the rest of the industry is doing.

The economy isn't singling out software or hardware.