Windows 8 Falls Behind Even the Maligned Vista

[BoDEAN]

So unusable that you had to install a 3rd party hack to get back to using the startmenu? So you really are not using Windows 8 so much as an Windows machine that has been hacked........logical

Wow, that makes no sense. A third party app (Im sure you have them on your xp/vista/7 machine) to bring back a start menu, is a hack and because of that I am not using windows 8? Wow, please, EDUCATE yourself before posting. There is more to windows 8 than the start menu friend. Look under the hood.

[MorganX]

Herp herp I can play this game too.

The desktop is so much less organized than the start screen, and needs far more babysitting. I keep mine completely empty, and it's nice.

A person has to manually create a messy desktop, and there's a cleanup tool. The Win 8 desktop is comparable to the Win 7 desktop, not the start page vs. Desktop.

The start page becomes convoluted from installs. Even if it's neat, it gets messy with lots of tiles. I have gotten used to it and don't mind the start page, but I remove or don't create start menu icons for most apps. Too messy. I pin to taskbar after starting the app.

[Jose_49]

There's something people are missing and is: marketshare of 2007 != marketshare 2012. There are more computers, so the 1.6% is bigger than 2007's 2.2%.

[Growled Member]

What I wished is Windows 8 had offered dual modes for us desktop users, one for desktop mode with a start menu and one for those who wished to use the new start screen. It would have been perfect if one could switch back and forth between the two modes. A lot of us would have used desktop mode while slowly trying out and hopefully converting to the start screen mode. Both make sense in different circumstances.

[siah1214]

A person has to manually create a messy desktop, and there's a cleanup tool. The Win 8 desktop is comparable to the Win 7 desktop, not the start page vs. Desktop.

bull****. Between applications that use the desktop as the default save and applications that clutter up your desktop with far too many icons (the program itself, the updater, the 3rd party crapware updater), most users desktops are a complete mess of crap.

How old is that screenshot? There's the previous IE, the older uTorrent, duplicate Safari icons, etc... Does that say 2009 on the taskbar?

I google'd "messy desktop" and posted that picture, which is about the equivalent of Warwagon finding a random picture of a messy start screen and posting it like he had in the post before the one I quoted.

If you let it get messy, that's your own damn fault. The same principle applies for the start screen. If it gets messy, it's because you let it happen. And the start screen offers far more organization options than the desktop. And it's far more readable.

[ModernMech]

So I've read through all 14 pages of this topic, and not much is actually being said about the topic at hand.... seems like a bunch of back and forth flaming on the merits of the start screen.

Here's my take on the actual topic at hand.

Vista out of the gate was not a disaster. In fact, it sold very well. Hear me out... in the initial months, Microsoft was selling Vista licenses at a rate of 20M per month. By 2.5 months, this rate dropped to 16M per month. By 6 months, this rate dropped again to 10M per month. From July 07 - July 08 Microsoft sold an average of 9.6M Vista licenses per month, while (according to Gartner) the PC industry shipped about 20M PCs per month (worldwide). Thus in the initial months, Vista was selling quite well... how it sold later on in its life is what we remember as a disaster.

This is corroborated by the Hitslink data. I don't have all of the data the original author does, as Hitlink only reports back to Nov 2007. But according to the three data points he provides, market share was growing at a rate of about 1.15 percentage points per month for the first three months, and at a rate of .602 percentage points per month from Nov 2007 until the release of Windows 7.

As for hitslink statistics in particular, I am generally wary of them. First, they count unique users instead of pageviews. There are several problems with doing so, as you get different results depending on how you define a "unique" user, and no matter how you do it there are problems involved. Go by IP.... what about dynamic IPs or multiple users from the same IP. Go by cookies... what about browsers without cookies or users that disable cookies? Further, they weight their data based on CIA internet user data that is 4 years old. This same data also lumps mobile and desktop users in together, so weighting solely desktop users based on this is problematic. Finally, their network is only 4,000 sites, and the data is derived from only 150 million samples. I just don't think this is a large enough sample.

Conversely, statcounter has 3 million sites and 17 billion page views per month. Much larger sample. They also do not weight their samples and count pageviews, not unique users. You can do your own weighting and manipulation of the raw data. But just the fact that the sample size is so much larger is a big bonus. Comparing the two sources, you can see that hitslink consistently under represents the marketshare of newer OSs compared to statcounter. This might suggest that hitslinks "network" or methodology is biased toward corporations, which tend not to jump on new operating systems. It was the same for Vista, Windows 7, and now Windows 8.

Anyway, I think it's extremely problematic to compare the growth rate of an OS from 2007 to the growth rate of an OS 5 years later. First, in 2007, Windows Vista had many sources to draw from. Back then, Windows 2000, ME, 98, NT, and even Windows 95 had an appreciable market share of about 5% collectively. These users were itching to ditch their old ancient systems, and that marketshare got folded into Vista's very quickly. This collective marketshare now stands at about .01% today. Today, Windows 8 does not face the same advantage. It's even more detrimental that users of Windows 7 and XP are more than happy to supplement their old systems with new tablets that don't run any Windows OS. For the foregoing reasons, it's specious to directly compare Windows 8 growth with the growth of Windows Vista, no matter how the percentages stack up.

So how is Windows 8 growing? At pretty much the same rate as Windows 7 was just before Windows 8 launched. Take a look at Statcounter's data for the 30 day period prior to Windows 8 launching. During this time Windows 7 was growing at a rate of .0272 percentage points per day. For the 30 day period following Oct 26, Windows 8 grew at an average of .0287 percentage points per day. Statcounter isn't breaking Win8 data on a daily basis, but from the Other category we can estimate that today it's peaking at about 2.5% on the weekends with a weekday baseline of about 2% (If you want to talk about as a percent of Windows Machine, it peaked at about 3.11% on Christmas Day). Even more telling is that Windows 7 has been on the decline since the very day Windows 8 was released.

[Dot Matrix]

Vista out of the gate was not a disaster. In fact, it sold very well.

I bought Vista two months after it's release, and never looked back to XP. I find it hard to believe people put up with XP for so long. Vista was like a breath of fresh air, after XP became stank with security and stability issues.

[ModernMech]

There's something people are missing and is: marketshare of 2007 != marketshare 2012. There are more computers, so the 1.6% is bigger than 2007's 2.2%.

This very much reminds me of the following attempt at statistical fraud:

Another thing the author does not do is include Windows 8 Touch in with Windows 8 market share in his analysis. For some reason Hitslink breaks them out separately. Note Windows 8 Touch is different from Windows RT, which is also listed by Hitslink. This was a very very sloppy article, and a perfect example of how not to draw conclusions from statistics. Yet it feeds a belief people seem to hunger for (the demise of Microsoft) so it's getting much undue attention and people are treating it as if it's at all credible.

[ModernMech]

I bought Vista two months after it's release, and never looked back to XP. I find it hard to believe people put up with XP for so long. Vista was like a breath of fresh air, after XP became stank with security and stability issues.

I had a machine which ran Vista beautifully since day one, and a machine which was nothing but trouble. I belive Vista's troubles were part driver related, part resource consumption related, and part overzealous UAC. It took a while for developers to get in line with 1 and 3, and hardware to get in line with 2. Microsoft solved all of Vista's problems with UAC refinements and service tweaks. Windows 8 has no problems with the former... everything is related to the start screen. I believe with a couple tweaks with Windows Blue they'll be able to address 75% of these concerns as well. The other 25% will probably never be happy no matter what you do.

I've seen a lot of comments here that all Microsoft needed to do was add a checkbox for a choice of start screen or metro. I forget who said it, but the one post was lamenting on the fact that there's not enough choice. I find this sentiment very ironic, given that the reason there is a choice of over 30 start menu replacements today is because MS did not include this option. If MS had put in the option, there would be LESS choice.

[vf-]

Vista was like a breath of fresh air, after XP became stank with security and stability issues.

XP had stability problems? since when... XP wasn't a hard drive grinder, or causing (Not responding...) explorer issues. As well as slow networking problems.

[Dot Matrix]

XP had stability problems? since when... XP wasn't a hard drive grinder, or causing (Not responding...) explorer issues. As well as slow networking problems.

Graphics drivers were a pain to keep stable. I got blue screens left and right because of it's stability issues.

[vf-]

Vista wasn't so rosy either... http://www.hardwareh...ding-error.html

[MorganX]

bull****. Between applications that use the desktop as the default save and applications that clutter up your desktop with far too many icons (the program itself, the updater, the 3rd party crapware updater), most users desktops are a complete mess of crap.

100% fiction. 99.9% of all installs allow the option of creating a desktop icon and start menu entry. If users want the icon on the desktop, it's not convoluted. It's exactly what they want, and the desktop default is to align icons to grid.

The "Start" Page is populated by start menu items which 100% of users you're talking about (fictional users with a desktop full of folder shortcuts and whatnot in your mock up) create by default which makes a messy start page. Install any app and every little start menu shortcut from the main app to any shortcuts to help files, settings, uninstall shortcuts and the like overpopulate the Start Page.

I really don't care either way, but please stick to reality to make your points. Neither one of you know what most users desktops look like. But without a doubt, the Start Page is a mess if you install Win32 apps. You will be cleaning it up often and there is no way for it to elegantly handle lots of tiles. Perhaps in Windows 9.

[Jose_49]

I bought Vista two months after it's release, and never looked back to XP. I find it hard to believe people put up with XP for so long. Vista was like a breath of fresh air, after XP became stank with security and stability issues.

Vista was bogus, and hardware was crap.

Drivers malfunctioned and little support was given.

Very slow boot times, and hang ups.

And no, I'm not talking for someone else, but myself.

[Dot Matrix]

100% fiction. 99.9% of all installs allow the option of creating a desktop icon and start menu entry. If users want the icon on the desktop, it's not convoluted. It's exactly what they want, and the desktop default is to align icons.

The "Start" Page is populated by start menu items which 100% of users you're talking about (fictional users with a desktop full of folder shortcuts and whatnot in your mock up) create by default which makes a messy start page. Install any app and every little start menu shortcut from the main app to any shortcuts to help files, settings, uninstall shortcuts and the like overpopulate the Start Page.

I really don't care either way, but please stick to reality to make your points.

I haven't had any trouble with junk cluttering my screen. Office 2013 gave me only the main icons, and so did VS2013. Not sure what archaic programs you're running, but the fact that they barf icons onto the screen isn't Microsoft's issue. Microsoft doesn't control any one third party app. If it wants to throw icons all over the OS, there's nothing they can do. The issue is with developers not caring. Microsoft tried to get them to stop with their clutter in Vista, but they kept going at it regardless. Windows 8 might finally give them the push to straighten their acts out.

[Jose_49]

100% fiction. 99.9% of all installs allow the option of creating a desktop icon and start menu entry. If users want the icon on the desktop' date=' it's not convoluted. It's exactly what they want, and the desktop default is to align icons.

The "Start" Page is populated by start menu items which 100% of users you're talking about (fictional users with a desktop full of folder shortcuts and whatnot in your mock up) create by default which makes a messy start page. Install any app and every little start menu shortcut from the main app to any shortcuts to help files, settings, uninstall shortcuts and the like overpopulate the Start Page.

I really don't care either way, but please stick to reality to make your points.[/quote']

http://winaero.com/c...omment.news.168

[Luc2k]

Its amazing how many programs you need to get the same/similar functionality to W7.

[Eric Veteran]

[Thread closed]

This topic has gone off from whatever it was supposed to be about into a flame-fest.