Windows 8, Tablets Blamed For Record Drop In PC Sales

[devotedsniper]

Yikes. Is Windows 8 really that bad? I may be getting a gaming PC this summer, so I don't know whether or not to just go for Windows 7. Suggestions?

8 Works very well, it's as stable if not more than 7, it boots and generally runs as fast if not faster than 7 too. Compatibility is roughly the same as 7 (only thing which ive found not compatible is SQL Server 08, and i doubt you'll be running that) The only downfalls is Metro, it's not bad it works fine on my desktop even though it's really for tablets, it's just different.

Oh and as for gaming, FPS there's nothing in it, like 1-4fps depending on the game, nothing you would notice anyway. See here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-gaming-performance,3331-13.html

 

[webkilla]

I work IT at my local city hall. They have over three thousand employees and all their workstations still run winXP. we dread having to upgrade OS, because the vast majority of the people working there are exceedingly IT-inept.

We know that if we roll in Win8 we'll have our co-workers bullrushing our helpdesk because very few people will be able to figure out how to use it. Trust me. These are people who's workstations haven't changed since... well... winXP, so going to win8 would probably mean having to retrain the majority of the three thousand people who work here. Sure, a lot of them might not need more than a single show&tell, but there will still be at least a thousand or so who will feel completely lost without a start menu, or will be endlessly confused by the start screen.

...yes I'm aware its not exactly rocket science to use win8, but I've got co-workers who look at you like you're a alien from planet X if you ask them to send an image file in anything other than pdf because that's the only format they've personally used for the last 10 years.

TLR - my workplace is hestitant about upgrading to win8 because it'd be a monumental bother to retrain three thousand co-workers

 

[VanBasten]

There is absolutely no reason to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

There is absolutely no reason not to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

 

[null_pointer]

The article is a bit misleading. While off the shelf, consumer grade PC's have been declining in popularity for years, I personally find that the market for custom built machines has never been better. The rapidly declining cost of great quality components and the rapid increase of shitty operating systems has led a lot of people to my door, pondering if a custom built pc is a good option for them. And in a vast majority of cases, it is.

I think that one major cause of this is the slow but inevitable downfall of the Laptop market. Once the gold standard in mobility, laptops take the middle ground between the performance of a Desktop and the mobility of a tablet. Yes, we have variations on the standard concept of a laptop, like gaming laptops or ultrabooks, but in essence, both of these options are a last attempt to keep the laptop relavent to the current generation of technology users.

So why a custom built pc? Because you can't beat the power for the price. I just built a computer for one of my good friends, the total cost of the PC was about $600 (not including the cost of a monitor or a windows 7 license, which he already owned) He's a gamer, and on average this system handled Skyrim at 30fps on ultra. This kind of performance is everything that he asked for and more.

 

[MPerce]

I really doubt Windows 8 had much of an effect on the PC sales. We're just seeing the consumer turnover from PC to mobile/tablets.

Nowadays, tablets and smart phones can do pretty much everything that your average person needs out of a computer: Internet, email, and typing documents. Why buy a bulky, expensive desktop when you have a cheaper, easier alternative? PC's still have the edge in gaming capabilities, but that's becoming less important as tablets continue to improve on that front, and graphics in gaming become less important with the rise of the indie scene.

It's awfully weird to think about, but we're going to see the population of PC/Mac users decrease dramatically over the next couple of years.

 

[Whoracle]

[...]Name me one reason for me to roll back to Windows 7, then I'll take anyone's claims that "Windows 8 is a shit OS" and THEN I'll roll back.[...]

Well, open Metro IE10, and try connection to a website running anywhere in your local network (ie. 192.168.x.y). Your router, your local design webserver, the webinterface of your printer/scnaner/whathaveyou. Come back afterwards and we'll talk further.

Same goes for any metro app, by the way. Chrome and FF just haven't released their metro builds yet, afaik.

And yes, you can circumvent ALL problems with win8 with the odd extra tool and such. But to repeat the gripes people always have with Linux in such discussions: Why should I have to? If I have to modify the system heavily just to get it working like the predecessor (sp?) was, then why upgrade?

It goes the other way: Why should one choose Win8 over Win7?

 

[Fayathon]

Yikes. Is Windows 8 really that bad? I may be getting a gaming PC this summer, so I don't know whether or not to just go for Windows 7. Suggestions?

I bought a new laptop to replace my busted netbook, I can't stomach Win8 from just a functionality standpoint. Hell Ubuntu has more in common with Windows 7 than 8 does. If you're building a machine to game on get Win7, Win8 is garbage for anything other than tablets.

OT: So we're re-confirming the pattern of Windows OSes? One good, one bad, rinse, repeat ad nauseum?

There is absolutely no reason to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

There is absolutely no reason not to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

I like having a computer that works without having to twiddle with Metro's tablet interface. If I wanted a tablet interface I'd have a tablet.

 

[Rainforce]

There is absolutely no reason to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

There is absolutely no reason not to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

why yes there is: it's called win 7 : D!

on a more serious note: win7 is running fine, and with the new changes in the UI I'd need to learn, mixed reports on compatibility, the fact that win7 is already everything I want it to be (apart from the interface that is HIGHLY ANIMATED and needs pixelshader compatible HW - seriously, wtf? if I'd want that I'd buy apple [EDIT: plus, the oversized start bar]), plus the fact what a pain in the ass it is to install a new OS from scratch anyways...

yeah, no reason to go 8 if you have 7.
no NEED.

then again, there's probably also no point in downgrading either, because who the hell would want to reinstall a pc just for a minor shift in convenience?

 

[SpAc3man]

Dead wrong! In my attempt to install Final Fantasy 7 and 8 PC ports (fairly shitty ports done by Eidos in the 90s), I came across a windows-8 only problem when attempting to patch the programs after install. Half the patches (either .bat files or simple .exe files) that had worked with no error on every OS since 98 (excluding vista, which I never owned to test with) simply refused to work. The OS told me it didn't recognize the file, and left it at that. It didn't give me a list of programs to try running it with, it didn't let me just tell it to run the .exe anyway, it simply told me it didn't recognize them and stopped caring. And no, no amount of running as administrator or in compatibility mode fixed the problem. Believe me, I tried all that bullshit - the operating system simply gave no fucks, and refused to run the files.

That was in the first 24 hours of my wrestling with Windows 8. If you say it runs everything windows 7 ran, you are dead wrong, and I proved it in the first day of running that piece of shit OS.

Oh no. Your exe and batch files from 1998 won't run on an OS released in 2012.
Almost sounds like you are trying to run 16 bit executables on a 64 bit OS.
What exactly was the error message it gave you?

 

[romxxii]

Yikes. Is Windows 8 really that bad? I may be getting a gaming PC this summer, so I don't know whether or not to just go for Windows 7. Suggestions?

There is absolutely no reason to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

Correction: there is absolutely no reason to have Metro UI on a desktop PC. The distinction is important.

 

[Rainforce]

Yikes. Is Windows 8 really that bad? I may be getting a gaming PC this summer, so I don't know whether or not to just go for Windows 7. Suggestions?

There is absolutely no reason to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

Correction: there is absolutely no reason to have Metro UI on a desktop PC. The distinction is important.

I actually want to see the person who can argue against this in a reasonable manner.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well as per usual their statistics might be correct, but the conclusions are pot shots at barely correlated events.
I detest Win8 as much as can be but making shit up really doesn't help with anything.

 

[The White Hunter]

Yikes. Is Windows 8 really that bad? I may be getting a gaming PC this summer, so I don't know whether or not to just go for Windows 7. Suggestions?

Get 8, it's around the same price and generally performs better apart from a few outlying games. Hopefully SP1 will be out by the summer in a rush to get the thing moving units and make up for bad press.

The big issue is the divided nature of the OS, with probably the best desktop experience they've given (it brings back a lot of stuff people whined about, like up and down in the file browser), but sacrifices a start menu to give you the Modern UI thingy thatd oesn't really work on a desktop, and I see that they want it for the laptop/tablet hybrid things but still, it sucks on a desktop. Grab a program like basic shell or start8 (some are free some need donation) and install it, it gets rid of the modern ui effectively.

Edit: Perhaps consider Ubuntu. It's growing quite quickly as a gaming platform between his Gabenesses infatuation with it and the indie scenes love of open source stuff.

Also Ubuntu is free! Might need the odd running of wine but it saves you £80, £80 that can be spent on delicious hardware.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

There is absolutely no reason to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

There is absolutely no reason not to have Win8 on a desktop PC.

Yes there is.

The UI is fucking atrocious and unintuitive if it isn't on a tablet, various control settings are scattered everywhere and as a business model (annual fees to use Microsoft Word? Get Bent!) it is currently incompatible with mid to large company needs.

It seems designed to grab market share from Apple's casual users all the while neglecting the fact that Microsoft's biggest market was businesses and as such seen little growth in that area.

The scope of Windows 8 is too narrow, it's too complex for the tech illiterate who are still clinging on to XP, and too simple for general business use. Only casual tech users with some computer literacy have an advantage to upgrade but even then Apple would be a obvious first choice due to image and branding.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I don't find that this is a reason of the decline.

I think it's because Windows 8 sucks compared to Windows 7 (Vista vs XP anyone? same thing). The computer hardware retailers and everyone else keeps trying to convince us otherwise and shove it down our throats every where we go.

 

[lancar]

I was under the impression that it wasn't windows 8 as much as the graphical fidelity curve being topped out. We're almost at photorealism with the current high end hardware now, and with my 2 year old medium-budget rig i can still run nearly all new releases on "high" graphical settings without any problems, so why would I want to upgrade?

I do agree that Windows 8 makes be recoil and hiss like an angry cat whenever I see it, though. I think microsoft have to realize that the new era of Tablets and mobile devices has split the old PC customer base. People simply want different things from a tablet than they do a PC, same with a mobil platform like a smartphone. Sure, some will migrate to the platform they feel suit their needs the best, but there are still things that PC's can do and Tablets can't, and vice versa.
Not to mention the crucial familiarity factor. People are familiar with the old windows interface and look for something similar whenever they actually upgrade. We're creatures of habit, after all.

It needs to be mentioned, though, that we're at the end of a console generation and the enthusiast crowd is waiting to see what's going to happen. People are holding onto their money in anticipation of the new console lineup, and when all the options are presented, only then will we begin to see which way the new trend will head. Maybe PC's will be relegated to business and enthusiast crowds only, or maybe the consoles will fade and PC's will experience a boost?

I personally don't like consoles, so am hoping for the latter, but it could go either way. We'll just have to wait and see, because right now the whole market is holding its breath.

 

[Xariat]

I find it funny how everyone arguing against Win8 has lists of reasons and arguments as to why windows8 is arse on a plate.
but everyone arguing for Win8 is just saying that "it's stable and run games better than win7".

My win7 build is stable.
My win7 pc run my games.

what does win8 bring to the table that could possibly outweigh the heaps of negatives?
does it dispense chocolate covered cold bars?

If not, I see no reason to upgrade my system and no reason why I should not have the choice to use win7 if I want to buy a new laptop. My dad tried just that, bought a laptop with win8 and a win7 OS separately, turns out the OS is locked on a bios (or something like that, I wasn't there when he attempted the rollback) level and can not be changed. wasted a ton of money and that laptop is now just a really expensive paperweight.

 

[votemarvel]

My big irritation with Windows 8 is how functions are split across the Metro and Classic displays. For example you can't fully manage user accounts from just the Metro control panel, you have to go to the classic version to do some functions.

Why?

Genuinely what is the point in doing it like that? It just creates more busy work for people.

Other than the schizophrenic nature of Windows 8 settings, the other thing that annoys me is how everything gets dumped onto the start screen, it is not a neat replacement for the start menu.

I installed Office XP (old I know but I see no reason to upgrade to a newer version) and everything is put onto the start screen, it becomes cluttered very quickly. Now I'd want Word and Frontpage there but it also dumps the Microsoft Office Tools onto there as well, meaning I have to then take the extra time to Unpin those icons.

Why on Earth can't it put the Office Tools into a folder on the start screen like they are on the start menu?

In the end I installed Classic Shell to give me a start menu, it even lets me boot straight to the desktop. However that then brings up the point of if I am using Windows 8 like Windows 7, why don't I just use Windows 7?

Windows 8 is a good operating system but they've misjudged how people are going to want to use it on a non-touch device.

 

[votemarvel]

Had Windows 8. It shit the bed twice in the 5 short months I've had the computer I built. One night it's working fine, no changes to the OS, no new programs, no viruses, nothing. Then it tells me a system file is missing so it crashes. I try to restart and it doesn't make it past Windows screen.

I figured I'd use the disc to reinstall the system file. No such luck. The repair function said it couldn't do anything. So I tried to use the OS refresh option. It told me my hard drive is locked so it can't do anything. So I deleted the partition and tried to re-download the OS. It told me that Windows could not install on this device.

Then I bought Windows 7 discs and installed it on the device that Windows 8 told me it couldn't install itself on. Fuck Windows 8 and fuck everyone who was involved in it's creation. May their families burn in hell.

I had something similar happen to me.

I have Windows 8 in a dual-boot with XP. It was working fine until one day Windows 8 says it couldn't start.

Popped in the W8 disc to run the repair wizard and it wouldn't even recognise that Windows 8 existed on my PC. I tried several times with no luck.

Here is where things turn odd though. I put in the Windows 7 disc and the repair wizard did recognise Windows 8 as being there but couldn't fix it. Not surprising since it is the older version.

I then tried the W8 disc again and the repair wizard now recognised Windows 8 and fixed it.

Utterly bizarre that Windows 7 could recognise Windows 8 as being there but Windows 8 didn't recognise itself.

 

[Monsterfurby]

"has worse games compatibility than Win7"

This is a lie stop spreading FUD, Windows 8 is fine it's a more stable windows 7 with a homescreen and no start button.

Take it from a Win8 user who is all too happy to still have a Win7 desktop PC around: It doesn't even run Skype (which is OWNED AND PUBLISHED by Microsoft now) properly. Several games do not fare much better.