Windows 8, Tablets Blamed For Record Drop In PC Sales

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Windows 8 certainly didn't help, especially since it really needs more customization options (I don't want to have to use the mouse to shut down by PC). However, from owning both a Windows 7 PC and a Windows 8 laptop, I cannot say the new OS is inferior to it's predecessor. Rather, I would say it was simply not designed for PCs at all and is so radically different as to not be the Windows operating system that we effectively grew up with. Anyone with half a brain and about 15 minutes of hands on time can tell you that it was designed for touchscreens (something I tried to get for my laptop, but could not find one with the hardware specs I was looking for). It took me a few days to get used to the touchpad commands (ex. the sidebar requires a slight swipe from the right, rotate screens from the left, etc.) and I can't see how you would do this with an actual mouse.

However, the apps, things like Skype, Hulu, Stocks/Weather, Outlook, Steam (with an add-on), XBox Smartglass, numerous Bing apps, and others, do run smoother than their browser counterparts. I actually wish there were Win7 counterparts to these apps that I could add on. But that's more my opinion than anything else.

The point is that this is a real transition phase for the PC, and what Win8 really needs is a patch which allows a traditional Windows menu style (along with few dozen more customization options that change more than start menu colors to a handful of presets, as well as). It's not the pit of evil that people have made it out to be. It's just different, and Microsoft tried to change in a more abrupt way than we are used to...

 

[Vigormortis]

A few things to consider when looking at this IDC report:

1: Some of their estimates were made prior, or in absence of, financial reports
2: They track only a portion of the hardware market
3: IDC isn't accounting for many small market sales nor many individual hardware sales, concentrating almost solely on a limited number of OEM sales and distribution
4: Many markets are still in a recession
5: There's been a decline in hardware requirement progression due to slowed advances in software (a self perpetuating problem)
6: Some of the companies listed have actually reported growth in some markets, notably ASUS in the US, specifically.
7: x86 Server sales are also not tracked

I guess what I'm saying is, there's a lot more to this data than just "PC usage/gaming is dying". And, while markets are certainly down, I'm not entirely convinced it's as doom-and-gloom as people are painting it.

I'm going to wait for the end-of-year report before I accept any conclusions.

 

[-Dragmire-]

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?

The metro UI is kinda crap but I hear it's pretty good under the hood.

 

[Micalas]

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.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

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?

No...in fact it's one of the best Windows releases I've ever encountered (at least from a stability standpoint). People are just mad that it has a new start menu and don't want to adjust to something slightly different (even though it's easily replaceable).

The stability is indeed superb... but I must admit that I haven't had any issues whatsoever with running a multitude of wildly different Windows 7 installs on quite a range of different hardware.

I like a lot of under the hood code optimizations and the general streamlined feel. I like the minimalist approach as it sucks up less resources, even though I must admit that I've meanwhile taken to like Windows 7 very much. Windows 7 just works and can be tamed and trained to be a very efficient workhorse powerhouse beast. Windows 8 is not only schizophrenic, it's also hellbent on doing its thing no matter what I want, need or require it to do. I don't like that.

It's one thing to want to modernize and simplify. It's an entirely different thing to mess with the concept of the desktop UI and introduce a confusing new 'simple interface' that, whilst being easy to comprehend, still has not stopped messing with users and their expectations. It's hard to explain to computer illiterates why they have two flavours of software, it's hard to explain why and how it is a good thing why their computer switches between the two, and it's damn hard to keep calm about users filling up their RAM with running a whole bunch of 'Apps' that are mostly run purely by accident but keep running in the background. It's also highly questionable to introduce a GUI that is clearly optimized for touchy feely fondlescreens and expect your average keyboard and mouse user to find it very enjoyable. Yes, the Start button being gone is not a good joke, and it is one that I find quite offensive. It is, indeed, still quite easy to replace and hide ugly mofo Metro/Modern UI, but the inherent duality of the schizo OS GUI language is giving me all sorts of headaches on a daily basis, even though I still manage to hold out on actually installing it myself on my gear beyond the pre-release version that continues to live happily in its own virtual box. I can live with the changes in/on/to the desktop. I am not willing to put up with the scrubbed Start button/menu and the forced idiocy that is Metro/Modern. I almost got myself a Windows phone, because I thought - and still think - that it really works on touchscreen-fitted mobiles. Then I installed Windows 8 and I, pretty much instantly, knew that I cannot condone such a hefty change without offering an option to easily opt out.

So, no, it is not just about not wanting or not being able to adjust to a 'new start menu' - the start menu is gone, it got replaced by a full screen home cinema emulation of Windows Phone OS. That is the bit I don't like, and that is the bit I take personal. It's why I abandoned Apple, and if Windows 8, Windows 'Blue' and beyond force someone else's asshat visions on me, I'll abandon Windows after thirty years of merry co-existence. This is not just tough times, this is an assault and an affront.

 

[dharmaBum0]

If you design your OS interface to look like you should buy an expensive, under-powered, unnecessary touch-screen desktop/laptop to use it, then yes, Win8 carries some blame.

("But you don't need that stuff for Win8!" So, besides the completely token and inexplicably forced UI change done to heavy-handedly advertise/enforce an already extinct phone/tablet ecosystem, there are trivial, imperceptible optimizations that MS could easily include into a service pack of the still-young Win7. It's not the OS that's broken, it's MS that's broken.)

But it's probably the result of increasing upgrade cycles. The last few generations of hardware have started to outpace software for most applications. Everything is still programmed like we're all using 1-core, 1GB RAM machines. Most new phones have more power than that. Hell, even most games are geared towards near-decade old consoles and don't require much power to run anymore, and the big PC-exclusives (LoL, DoTA, WoW, ect) are low-resource as well.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

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.

Another fun thing is how Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to hide away your product key. In case you don't have a slip of paper or an email or a sticker and can't seem to find one, you need to extract it prior to messing up your system. What options will your average user have after disaster already struck? Well, one can request a replacement key from Microsoft... or one could buy a new copy of Windows 8. Cool trick, eh?

 

[Micalas]

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.

Another fun thing is how Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to hide away your product key. In case you don't have a slip of paper or an email or a sticker and can't seem to find one, you need to extract it prior to messing up your system. What options will your average user have after disaster already struck? Well, one can request a replacement key from Microsoft... or one could buy a new copy of Windows 8. Cool trick, eh?

I'm glad I didn't have THAT problem. My rage would have been legendary. I have the OEM discs and it comes with a sticker that you can put on your computer. (or leave it on the packaging so you can reuse the software for every subsequent computer you buy.

 

[Nowhere Man]

Windows 8 is so unnecessary and terrible looking. Anyone ever notice how it looks like AOL?

What a huge step backwards.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Now would be a good time for Google to get Android to scale and run on PCs. A cross-platform OS that scales to the device it is installed on could very well be the thing that might kill Microsoft.

^^^^Definitely this. I love android. Its got the support of windows and the freedom and open source-ness of Linux. Google's one of those companies that I let own my soul cause they just keep giving me stuff. All that it would need would be some kind of emulator to run random, old or less resource intensive Windows programs on it until it became popular

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, Microsoft, you can just 'deal with it'.

(Surprised nobody was gonna say this.)

After all, you're such a refined and successful company and users don't matter really, right? Heh. Or hey, maybe you could spot how your OSs tend to alternate between good and bad alot. Have you not, through your numerous systems, found the pattern to remain constantly successful? It's crazy. Windows 95? People hated it. 98? They were fine. Milleniumm? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdeUdogxL5A] Hated. XP? Good. Vista? Death. Seven? Faboo. Eight? Bob Dylon.

Please, just find a medium that people will be okay with and base your future ideas on it. I know you don't actually NEED more money, really, but this would prevent setbacks.

 

[faefrost]

All of you guys spreading FUD about how bad Windows 8 is compared to 7, I ask you all kindly to stop. I say this as Windows 8 has improvements over 7 that put it good in my book, but is botched in design issues (sort of; I live with it just fine).

Anyway, I don't get this sudden blame on Windows 8. 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. There's no reason for me to run back to older technology of a simple user interface fiaso which can be circumvented with a simple program.

I don't get this FUD, honest...

Windows 8 may seem to be fine for the target audience that it seems to have been designed around. Private, mostly home use end users. people like those posting here.

It is however a complete and utter abomination to the group that is by far the largest MS installed customer base (and the most captive customer base). Business and Enterprise's. It is awful. None of Win 8's supposed improvements make any difference to this group. It piles millions of dollars of unneeded and pointless transition costs. It's bizarre UI is so unintuitive that users require far more training than with any other MS OS transition, with no real benefit to the company or corporation. (Win 7 gave them a 64 bit OS with a higher RAM threshold. Win 8 gives them absolutely nothing that they need or have ever asked for).

Oh and some say, "It runs everything that Win 7 does, and it even has compatibility modes". Uh huh. Blatantly untrue. It runs most off the shelf retail software products. But specialized business stuff. Stuff that companies have invested millions of dollars in over the years, and have evolved and patched and grown through the 20+ years of MS's OS evolution's? Well no they don't all work. There are bugs and squirrels. Millions of them. It's ugly out there. As an example, someone above raved about how much better Win 8's multi monitor support is. Well yes, for a home user using a multi monitor gaming rid, or simple tasks. But get into a real environment? I deal with and support medical imaging systems for a living. PACS programs such as McKessen. The things Radiologists use to view various imaging scans. These systems are specifically designed to use 2-4 monitors. It's part of their core function. Windows 8 in its effort to be all things to all users, does not let the programs work. The core of Win 8 is grossly incompatible with these systems. When asked about Win 8 the developers laugh hysterically. The general consensus seems to be that they would rather migrate their programs to Linnux or Mac OS before dealing with Win 8. (And they have a history of skipping MS releases. Non of them supported Vista either. Although Vista at least kinda worked, Win 8, nope.)

My point isn't to rant about the one specific set of circumstances I have encountered, but rather to impress that the huge business market has absolutely no use for or interest in Windows 8. Win 8 is in fact so different from everything that has come before that it is starting to force decision points in the Companies IT architecture. It is forcing them to re-evaluate their status as a captive customer base of MS.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

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.

Another fun thing is how Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to hide away your product key. In case you don't have a slip of paper or an email or a sticker and can't seem to find one, you need to extract it prior to messing up your system. What options will your average user have after disaster already struck? Well, one can request a replacement key from Microsoft... or one could buy a new copy of Windows 8. Cool trick, eh?

I'm glad I didn't have THAT problem. My rage would have been legendary. I have the OEM discs and it comes with a sticker that you can put on your computer. (or leave it on the packaging so you can reuse the software for every subsequent computer you buy.

Ah. Lookie here, I found it:

" One of the improvements Microsoft is making to Activation 3.0 for newly built machines that come preloaded with Windows 8, you won?t have a COA (Certificate of Authenticity) sticker attached to the machine anymore. Instead, this will be embedded in the BIOS. This will avoid product keys from being compromised and OEMs will buy what they need."

 

[Formica Archonis]

Of course, it's not without its faults, and the splitting of settings functionality between the Desktop's Control Panel and the Charm Bar's PC Settings is borderline disastrous. I get the thinking, I really do - the General Settings contains the sorts of things that putz users might actually want to change (minor aesthetics, passwords etc) while the Control Panel is buried under a couple more layers to keep it for the power users who want the Admin tools and system management options - but damn, it doesn't half feel like people who want to do more than Facebook and e-mail are being left behind in the desperate race to the bottom.

I'm glad someone else noticed this! MS has been trying to make the OS into a toy sandbox forever and a day. Same with their progressively further camouflaging the idea of directory/folder structure with that whole "library" thing. It might help a few people, but it makes a technician's job harder. And the returns are forever diminishing. Each new change will help fewer and fewer people for the rising number it inconveniences.

Here's the problem: I have yet to meet an OS that the truly dedicated upfucker can not fuck up. There are people who will poke at things they don't understand - the less they understand it the more they are attracted to it - and as long as they have physical access to the PC THEY WILL BREAK IT.

Seems like half my job is working around safeguards put into place that went haywire. (Acer recovery partitions, I'm looking at you.)

 

[Matt K]

Windows 8 may seem to be fine for the target audience that it seems to have been designed around. Private, mostly home use end users. people like those posting here.

It is however a complete and utter abomination to the group that is by far the largest MS installed customer base (and the most captive customer base). Business and Enterprise's....

Oh I completely agree. My job had a tough enough time migrating from Office 2003 to Office 2010 (we use a special shell for typing up reports). I can't imagine them trying to migrate to W8 (although we also tend to skip every other release) especially with all the custom programs we run (3-4 for just every day use).

 

[aceman67]

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

I can guarantee that a Win8 PC will boot faster then a Win7 PC if they have the same hardware.

Windows 8 is more stable. The User Interface (Other then Metro, I'm with everyone on that, the only thing its good for is its Netflix App) is better then Win7.

The Task Manager is Absolutely AMAZING, being able to shut down a service from the TM is a god-send, a Program using a disk drive too much? You can easily figure out what it is and shut it down. You can't do that in Win7.

Oh, Games run just as well, if not better, on Win8.

Like its been said before, Win8 is getting a bad rap for being a little different and people being too lazy to get used to a new thing, but I like it, so please do yourself and others a favor: Don't make sweeping generalizations and for the love of god, Support your argument if you want people to at least listen to you, let alone begin to understand your point of view.

 

[bravetoaster]

Actually, they're really trying to push 8.

MS has been trying to get someone to give a damn about Surface for over a decade and Windows 8 finally provides them with an opportunity to force some folks into using it. I'd imagine it also stung when the iPhone came out and everyone still ignored Surface.

 

[SnowyGamester]

snip

While I agree the disconnect between normal desktop usage and the metro style apps is jarring and fiddly it becomes irrelevant once you uninstall all of the Metro apps - they aren't really suited to a desktop anyway. Once you've passed that the entire Metro interface becomes little other than a tucked away full screen quick launch with a full start menu behind it just two clicks away. Suggesting that it's reason enough to completely abandon the system just seems petty.

 

[SnowyGamester]

You seem to be over estimating what a P4 with a Gig of RAM can do. Almost all modern websites will chug on a computer like that.

The main family computer around here is still a 3ghz P4 with shitty integrated graphics and it doesn't have any trouble with the Facebooks or the YouTubes (it even play's 'HD' video fine, if you can call that horribly compressed crap HD). I'm sure the low end P4s would struggle a bit more but the one I'm running hardly chugs. It can't multitask for shit though...but since most people using it don't even know how to minimize a window that's more or less inconsequential.

 

[Kinitawowi]

I'm glad someone else noticed this! MS has been trying to make the OS into a toy sandbox forever and a day. Same with their progressively further camouflaging the idea of directory/folder structure with that whole "library" thing. It might help a few people, but it makes a technician's job harder. And the returns are forever diminishing. Each new change will help fewer and fewer people for the rising number it inconveniences.

See, if anything it's made one part of a technician's job slightly easier - data backup. No more searching around to see where they've hidden all their data (and probably getting in trouble for it); just copy the entirety of C:\Users and bam, that's 99% of what you're after right there.

Here's the problem: I have yet to meet an OS that the truly dedicated upfucker can not fuck up. There are people who will poke at things they don't understand - the less they understand it the more they are attracted to it - and as long as they have physical access to the PC THEY WILL BREAK IT.

The line I've always spouted is "never underestimate the ingenuity of an idiot". Seriously, at one point I had a customer come in who couldn't work out why their Sony kept on booting into the recovery and diagnostics every time they switched it on. Answer? They were pressing the "VAIO" auto-assist button to start the machine, rather than the power. Yeah.

Seems like half my job is working around safeguards put into place that went haywire. (Acer recovery partitions, I'm looking at you.)

Oh god, that's my other beef with Windows 8. Considering how deprecated the concept is, it's incredible how many people still expect their computer to come with a stack of CDs to reinstall the OS and drivers if it goes wrong (they have no idea what a partition is, never mind what a recovery partition might be used for). Most manufacturers in the Windows 7 era at least included in-OS software to create recovery media for you, but Windows 8 is on an absolute mission to annihilate and suppress the idea; both by trying to take over the recovery process with the cack-handed and half-arsed Refresh system, the creation process with the "create a recovery drive" option that misses most of the OS (and only lets you back up onto USB sticks), and by refusing to boot to anything other than the primary HDD unless you kick the crap out of it. Add in the Secure Boot bullshit that stops you changing hardware in OEM desktops, and yeah, suckage.