Windows 8 sales dissapointing

[Shane Nokes]

Why would it do that? The Windows button on a tablet works exactly the same way as it does on a keyboard (and has done since 1995). It toggles the Start screen on and off. It makes no sense for a launcher to be a closer.

Which is why calling it 'start' in my opinion was a bad idea...but it caught on way back, so it stuck.

There's nothing wrong with dropping back to the start screen and launching another app. It's actually designed to do that.

their sales can't be too bad, i just paid $15 for it this morning, and already back on windows 7. So they got $15 for nothing, ha.

Maybe it'll improve over time, i don't know. Was slower on my desktop than 7 was, and the hideous visuals made it even worse. Tried to force myself to like it, but i'm not as good at that as others.

and before others say it, yes im afraid of change.... when the change isn't for the better.

If you only spent less than a day with it you cannot say if the change is for the better or not.

Something that is new and very different often requires a bit of acclimation in order to determine if it is better or not overall. I hated 8 in some of the earlier builds. I would install it as a dual-boot, and then almost never use it.

It wasn't until RTM and putting it on my machines as the ONLY OS and forcing myself to use it that I started to get the bits and pieces. I started to figure out why things worked the way they did.

Now I can go back and use 7 just fine...but find myself missing certain things from 8.

His post was far more insightful than yours "and stuff".

Who are you to judge whether we're being honest or not about the reasons we dislike Windows 8. I know not being inlove with windows 8 is not allowed around here, but its the way it is.

Maybe you're just way more intelligent than most others. ;) "and stuff".

According to your own statement you spent less than a day with the OS. Sorry, but this reminds me of people who go out into the woods for a week, and then pretend they know what it was like to be an early settler of a region...

[Rippleman]

"IF" Windows 8 is a huge success, why would the person in charge of development (Steven Sinofsky) suddenly leave? Wouldn't you want to stick around and see the fruits of your labor and see the development of your idea you spent years and years working on?

[Shane Nokes]

"IF" Windows 8 is a huge success, why would the person in charge of development (Steven Sinofsky) suddenly leave? Wouldn't you want to stick around and see the fruits of your labor and see the development of your idea you spent years and years working on?

I've already answered this many times. SteveSi has been there for 23 years now, and has more than enough money to retire.

If they fired him for the supposed failure of Windows 8 then they wouldn't have put JL-G in charge since she is the person behind the part that people claim to hate the most.

Heck one of my old bosses retired this year after 18 years at MS, and he didn't need a reason to do so.

[syobon999]

I've already answered this many times. SteveSi has been there for 23 years now, and has more than enough money to retire.

If they fired him for the supposed failure of Windows 8 then they wouldn't have put JL-G in charge since she is the person behind the part that people claim to hate the most.

Heck one of my old bosses retired this year after 18 years at MS, and he didn't need a reason to do so.

:rolleyes:

its not supposed, Windows 8 is crashing and burning as we speak, its a massive failure because MS blindly followed the tablet trend.

[Dot Matrix]

its not supposed, Windows 8 is crashing and burning as we speak, its a massive failure because MS blindly followed the tablet trend.

Ok...

[PGHammer]

:rolleyes:

its not supposed, Windows 8 is crashing and burning as we speak, its a massive failure because MS blindly followed the tablet trend.

So Microsoft was supposed to simply ignore tablets and have Google with Android (and now the Chromebook) eat their lunch?

Tablets are popular for three reasons -

1. They are far more energy-thrifty (battery life) than notebooks - especially tablets with ARM or similar CPUs.

2. They are far lighter than notebooks.

3. They also cost anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent less than notebooks.

All of this is true of every tablet *except* the iPad (which is the outlier, as it costs the same as a Windows-based notebook).

Note that my three points are all OS-neutral - they are equally true (and applicable) to both Android and WindowsRT-based tablets.

That is also why tablets are, in fact, eating into sales OF notebooks - especially basic notebooks.

Microsoft, plain and simply, CANNOT ignore that trend, crappy economy or not; if it did, if the crappy economy continues (and all signs are saying that it will) the tablet market will eat at marketshare from underneath like a shark after a surfer.

Food for thought - consider the ASUS VivoRT; it's the Transformer Prime with WindowsRT - not Android - loaded in firmware.

Compare the two heads-up.

THEN get back to me with your thoughts.

[MorganX]

Let's see what happens after Christmas. Windows 8 is new, it's a bad economy, and lots of new hardware isn't released yet. I think it's going to do fine and consumers will be much more productive.

I personally, though I have quirks, won't go back and don't want to. Upgraded a girlfriend's laptop to 7 and realized things are much better in 8.

There are 3 bad things:

1) Start Page is inferior to Start Menu for nested folders, folder browsing, etc. However, I have found that while very neat and efficient, I was being lazy, keeping too much old crap, and just wasting a lot of time in stuff and the Start Menu made it easier to keep track of it all. I can't believe I'm saying it, but the limitations of the Start Page and the inability of the UI to manage long lists has made me focus more on actually doing stuff and not wasting time just in a mas of crap for the sake of being a techhie.

Having said that, the UI could use nested folders on the Start Page, I think. I kind of like being forced to only keep meaningful stuff at the forefront.

2) I think it's a good thing to clean up focus and keep all the tech crapped buried somewhere deep. Unfortunately, on occasion you need some of that crap and SEARCH ABSOLUTELY SUCKS in general. They need to unify it, NOW!

3) There's just no compelling apps taking advantage of Windows 8 on the Desktop and Tablet. Microsoft has just done a poor job of bringing quality apps to Windows Phone/Tablet. They suck at getting lifestyle/health/fitness apps and peripherals to the Windows Phone/Tablet platform.

It is early though, but MS is so far behind they NEED TO START PAYING DEVELOPERS to bring their apps. Microsoft hasn't even brought their core desktop games (solitaire, minesweeper, or even tap tiles) to Windows RT. If MS doesn't get apps to the platform, it will die. The hardware is there, the OS is there (even with it's annoyances), but at the end of the day, it's about the apps.

The Music and Video apps are still beta-ish quality, moreso the music app and the streaming/matching infrastructure. I don't know if there's a shortage of quality programmers or if MS actually rushed the whole thing. But there's just a lack of polish across the board that, in time, will get resolved but is very disappointing for now.

1 & 3 I expect to resolve themselves. 2, #2 is going to be a thorn for a long time. And if the app situation doesn't improve quickly, the platform could languish.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I upgraded my workstations at work to 8 and it was a disaster. Best day in months was when I downgraded them all back to 7. Win 8 is no enterprise OS imo. Even at home the confusing paradigm is getting on my nerves and I've contemplated going back to 7. I already have a dual boot so I can make in informed decision.

[PGHammer]

Let's see what happens after Christmas. Windows 8 is new, it's a bad economy, and lots of new hardware isn't released yet. I think it's going to do fine and consumers will be much more productive.

I personally, though I have quirks, won't go back and don't want to. Upgraded a girlfriend's laptop to 7 and realized things are much better in 8.

There are 3 bad things:

1) Start Page is inferior to Start Menu for nested folders, folder browsing, etc. However, I have found that while very neat and efficient, I was being lazy, keeping too much old crap, and just wasting a lot of time in stuff and the Start Menu made it easier to keep track of it all. I can't believe I'm saying it, but the limitations of the Start Page and the inability of the UI to manage long lists has made me focus more on actually doing stuff and not wasting time just in a mas of crap for the sake of being a techhie.

Having said that, the UI could use nested folders on the Start Page, I think. I kind of like being forced to only keep meaningful stuff at the forefront.

2) I think it's a good thing to clean up focus and keep all the tech crapped buried somewhere deep. Unfortunately, on occasion you need some of that crap and SEARCH ABSOLUTELY SUCKS in general. They need to unify it, NOW!

3) There's just no compelling apps taking advantage of Windows 8 on the Desktop and Tablet. Microsoft has just done a poor job of bringing quality apps to Windows Phone/Tablet. They suck at getting lifestyle/health/fitness apps and peripherals to the Windows Phone/Tablet platform.

It is early though, but MS is so far behind they NEED TO START PAYING DEVELOPERS to bring their apps. Microsoft hasn't even brought their core desktop games (solitaire, minesweeper, or even tap tiles) to Windows RT. If MS doesn't get apps to the platform, it will die. The hardware is there, the OS is there (even with it's annoyances), but at the end of the day, it's about the apps.

The Music and Video apps are still beta-ish quality, moreso the music app and the streaming/matching infrastructure. I don't know if there's a shortage of quality programmers or if MS actually rushed the whole thing. But there's just a lack of polish across the board that, in time, will get resolved but is very disappointing for now.

1 & 3 I expect to resolve themselves. 2, #2 is going to be a thorn for a long time. And if the app situation doesn't improve quickly, the platform could languish.

Let's see what happens after Christmas. Windows 8 is new, it's a bad economy, and lots of new hardware isn't released yet. I think it's going to do fine and consumers will be much more productive.

I personally, though I have quirks, won't go back and don't want to. Upgraded a girlfriend's laptop to 7 and realized things are much better in 8.

There are 3 bad things:

1) Start Page is inferior to Start Menu for nested folders, folder browsing, etc. However, I have found that while very neat and efficient, I was being lazy, keeping too much old crap, and just wasting a lot of time in stuff and the Start Menu made it easier to keep track of it all. I can't believe I'm saying it, but the limitations of the Start Page and the inability of the UI to manage long lists has made me focus more on actually doing stuff and not wasting time just in a mas of crap for the sake of being a techhie.

Having said that, the UI could use nested folders on the Start Page, I think. I kind of like being forced to only keep meaningful stuff at the forefront.

2) I think it's a good thing to clean up focus and keep all the tech crapped buried somewhere deep. Unfortunately, on occasion you need some of that crap and SEARCH ABSOLUTELY SUCKS in general. They need to unify it, NOW!

3) There's just no compelling apps taking advantage of Windows 8 on the Desktop and Tablet. Microsoft has just done a poor job of bringing quality apps to Windows Phone/Tablet. They suck at getting lifestyle/health/fitness apps and peripherals to the Windows Phone/Tablet platform.

It is early though, but MS is so far behind they NEED TO START PAYING DEVELOPERS to bring their apps. Microsoft hasn't even brought their core desktop games (solitaire, minesweeper, or even tap tiles) to Windows RT. If MS doesn't get apps to the platform, it will die. The hardware is there, the OS is there (even with it's annoyances), but at the end of the day, it's about the apps.

The Music and Video apps are still beta-ish quality, moreso the music app and the streaming/matching infrastructure. I don't know if there's a shortage of quality programmers or if MS actually rushed the whole thing. But there's just a lack of polish across the board that, in time, will get resolved but is very disappointing for now.

1 & 3 I expect to resolve themselves. 2, #2 is going to be a thorn for a long time. And if the app situation doesn't improve quickly, the platform could languish.

1A. Nested folders is a bad design even with the Start menu - it is, in fact, one of THE most griped about things about it, going back to Windows 9x. (In fact, folder nesting is a leftover from Windows 3.x' Program Groups "feature".) Desktop shortcuts started off as a workaround from folder nesting in the Start menu - the StartScreen merely extends it.

2A. Search was no better with the Start menu - in fact, it was much worse. Oddly enough, thanks to the zoom-in/zoom-out feature in the StartScreen, I need to search much less if I am searching for something other than a specific application; application seach is, in fact, the slickest trick that Windows 8 has - Windows pre-8 has nothing like it.

3A. That is going to depend more on application developers in general than Microsoft in particular - however, that is why I have little interest in WindowsRT personally. However, there is nothing wrong with running Win32 applicaitons in Windows 8 - just because a ModernUI app exists does not mean that you have to use it. Part of the problem that ModernUI/RT faces in terms of Windows 8 is that developers are used to Win32 as an API - and Windows 8 still supports that API; it has to benefit a developer to change APIs from Win32 to WinRT. So far, most developers that are writing WinRT apps are not Win32 developers primarily (by and large, the RT apps we are seeing are coming from non-Windows developers, such as those with prior development in mobile/Android or even console-platform or browser-platform development) - hence the poor quality of RT app development in general. It also doens't help that the API itself doesn't have the history behind it of Win32.

[MorganX]

I upgraded my workstations at work to 8 and it was a disaster. Best day in months was when I downgraded them all back to 7. Win 8 is no enterprise OS imo. Even at home the confusing paradigm is getting on my nerves and I've contemplated going back to 7. I already have a dual boot so I can make in informed decision.

I don't think the paradigm is confusing. Just not sure it's worth the retraining in the Enterprise for common office workers. Eventually it will happen though and won't be as bad as we think. Just a nuisance I see no reason to endure at this time.

As for it being an Enterprise OS? You're going to have to explain more why it isn't and enterprise OS. It joins the domain, it can be completely managed with GPOs. It's as much and enterprise OS as xp, vista, and 7.

If you are on the cutting edge with SharePoint, it's more of an enterprise OS, though I guess Office 2013 gets that credit, not necessarily the app.

If you work with lots of files and folders, you need to be in the explorer UI and 7 probably seems more familiar. The Start Page is actually just the Start Menu. If you're in the start menu at work "that" much, I'm not sure the OS is your biggest problem.

I'm really not wanting to defend Windows 8, but I would like to see some real cons. I even buy it's just not worth it to retrain, or there's no compelling apps and 7 is just fine, why incur the cost right now. But too confusing, can't life without start button. As someone who was initially a hater, I just stopped being lazy and used the thing, and it's quite good.

Just out of curiosity, from and enterprise standpoint, what's worse? Start Page, or Search implementation?

[MorganX]

1A. Nested folders is a bad design even with the Start menu - it is, in fact, one of THE most griped about things about it, going back to Windows 9x. (In fact, folder nesting is a leftover from Windows 3.x' Program Groups "feature".) Desktop shortcuts started off as a workaround from folder nesting in the Start menu - the StartScreen merely extends it.

2A. Search was no better with the Start menu - in fact, it was much worse. Oddly enough, thanks to the zoom-in/zoom-out feature in the StartScreen, I need to search much less if I am searching for something other than a specific application; application seach is, in fact, the slickest trick that Windows 8 has - Windows pre-8 has nothing like it.

3A. That is going to depend more on application developers in general than Microsoft in particular - however, that is why I have little interest in WindowsRT personally. However, there is nothing wrong with running Win32 applicaitons in Windows 8 - just because a ModernUI app exists does not mean that you have to use it. Part of the problem that ModernUI/RT faces in terms of Windows 8 is that developers are used to Win32 as an API - and Windows 8 still supports that API; it has to benefit a developer to change APIs from Win32 to WinRT. So far, most developers that are writing WinRT apps are not Win32 developers primarily (by and large, the RT apps we are seeing are coming from non-Windows developers, such as those with prior development in mobile/Android or even console-platform or browser-platform development) - hence the poor quality of RT app development in general. It also doens't help that the API itself doesn't have the history behind it of Win32.

1 & 2: You have got to be kidding. I know you're not. But your experiences with nested folders and search baffle me. Start page Zoom for searching, seriously? /s

3: I don't disagree with what you say here. But as it relates to the success of Windows 8 particularly in the consumer space, no one cares. Microsoft needs to make sure quality apps get to the platform, one way or another.

[Elliott]

Doesn't it work exactly the same way as it does on the iPad, i.e. press the home/windows button to get back to the launcher?

That wasn't a requirement for pre-Windows 8 touch devices.

[Dot Matrix]

Start needs more colors/backgrounds. Already bored with the limited selection, and the sharp colors never match with the desktop.

[Growled Member]

I upgraded my workstations at work to 8 and it was a disaster. Best day in months was when I downgraded them all back to 7. Win 8 is no enterprise OS imo. Even at home the confusing paradigm is getting on my nerves and I've contemplated going back to 7. I already have a dual boot so I can make in informed decision.

You can make Windows 8 look and behave just like Windows 7 with programs like Start8. 99% of the people would never know the difference.

[The Evil Overlord]

Well I tried 8, had my local Curry's (UK Electronics Retailer) Win8 Rep give me a lesson on it for 2 hours, tried it at home took it back the following day got DEMANDED my money back, and got a Note 10.1 much easier to use, prettier too look at, and because of my phone, took me 10 minutes to show my wife how to use it, I even considered an ipad over the win8, and that says something, so yes I may be an ignorant fool failing to see the change afoot, whatever, I have never had any of these issues since windows 95 on an old 386.

And for everyone who will call me out for not liking 8, I don't care, it's my money, and if company one isn't going to give me what I want, I'll go to company 2 or company3.

Keeping customers happy (imo) is more important than the 'Well, you're using it wrong' statement, as a happy customer is a repeat customer.

Edit, Growled, good point, I didn't think of that.

[Dot Matrix]

You can make Windows 8 look and behave just like Windows 7 with programs like Start8. 99% of the people would never know the difference.

No company in their right mind is going to deploy third party schtuff.

[Growled Member]

No company in their right mind is going to deploy third party schtuff.

Which is why I think the start menu will be back, if not in Windows 8 then in Windows 9.

[Dot Matrix]

Which is why I think the start menu will be back, if not in Windows 8 then in Windows 9.

There is nothing wrong with the Start Screen for business use. They are not going to put it back in after investing so much time into the Start Screen.

[(Account no longer active)]

Here we go again...

[Growled Member]

There is nothing wrong with the Start Screen for business use. They are not going to put it back in after investing so much time into the Start Screen.

We'll see. :)

[Dot Matrix]

We'll see. :)

They'll adapt, just like they have before with other changes. *cough* Aero *cough*

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Start needs more colors/backgrounds. Already bored with the limited selection, and the sharp colors never match with the desktop.

How can this be? There is something you don't like about Windows 8? :o I didn't think that was possible...

Just when I was beginning to think you were a Microsoft controlled drone...

[The Evil Overlord]

They'll adapt, just like they have before with other changes. *cough* Aero *cough*

What's wrong with Aero? By this I mean I haven't had any problems with it, nor anyone I know, the only thing I noticed was when I run PSP X, windows will change the theme to basic, but when I close psp it changes the theme back automatically.

[Mr. Gibs]

What's wrong with Aero? By this I mean I haven't had any problems with it, nor anyone I know, the only thing I noticed was when I run PSP X, windows will change the theme to basic, but when I close psp it changes the theme back automatically.

I think what he means is when Vista came out Aero was pretty hated, and now Aero is loved.

Pretty much with any new version of Windows, people will always hate parts (if not all) of it and then in a few months / years they'll start calling it the best thing ever. Just like when XP, Vista, and 7 were released people hated it and refused to change and now XP and 7 are like the best versions of Windows ever.

[The Evil Overlord]

I think what he means is when Vista came out Aero was pretty hated, and now Aero is loved.

Pretty much with any new version of Windows, people will always hate parts (if not all) of it and then in a few months / years they'll start calling it the best thing ever. Just like when XP, Vista, and 7 were released people hated it and refused to change and now XP and 7 are like the best versions of Windows ever.

Ahh, ok thanks :)