Windows 8, Tablets Blamed For Record Drop In PC Sales

[SonOfVoorhees]

WIN8 is really good for PCs, maybe when touch screens become the norm for moniters then people will use it. But MS i think want everything linked so i think the nextbox may have some thing similiar as its OS. So it can be linked to phones, tablets and PCs.

 

[oldtaku]

MS is no longer in the position where it can force everyone to do things its way just because. Especially when 'Just Because' is 'so we can take over the phone and tablet market at the expense of you desktop users.'

So, Windows 9, do you rethink or do you just double down? I know Windows Blue complicates things, since they were already committed by the time they started.

 

[Formica Archonis]

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.

Yeah, but it's that other 1% that causes problems. So many tax programs drop their crap outside the standard folders that where I am standard company policy is to back everything up. They might be better now, but given that you have to hold that data for seven years....

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.

Good one! My favorite are ones who run ancient recovery disks or full-drive imaging software on the wrong PC. One of the memorable ones from Computer Stupidities covers just that topic [http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_listen.shtml]. (The one starting "In my college days, I was responsible for a lab of about sixty desktop PCs.")

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.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about that! Fortunately I haven't seen THAT many Win8 OEM things pass by, mostly just stuff built out of parts. Though we did have a corporate customer get screwed over to the tune of several dozen Windows 8 Pro licenses when they bought them and then ran afoul of the new activation stuff that keeps the Windows 8 non-pro license key in the firmware, and forces use of that even if you use an OEM Pro disk.

 

[The Lugz]

All that cheep Chinese labor and experienced programing won't help if you run your OS like fucking Scrooge McDuck.

Nah, Scrooge McDuck pays his employees!

... sometimes.

in all seriousness, Microsoft released the operating system it wanted, not the operating system we needed at the time

Microsoft is run by the anti-batman.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

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.

Precisely.

In an attempt to grab some casual customers off Apple, they've either pissed off or ignored their one major advantage over Apple, the business market.

Which is why there is now some very serious talk of switching over to a Linux distro post Windows 7 going on at ITS as Windows 8 is seen as 'not even worth testing' something that even Vista didn't achieve.

 

[Yopaz]

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, it's not really that bad. It might take some time to get used to, some features are annoying, some features are actually quite cool.

I think that the PC market has slowed down because there's a new console generation coming. If you are a PC gamer now, there is no reason to upgrade. The smart thing to do is wait for the next console generation, by which time the hardware will be cheaper and you'll have a better idea of what you'll need to spend to get an enjoyable experience with console ports.

And that applies to laptops too, since many laptops run games these days, but might struggle with next gen console ports.

Windows 8 doesn't help, but there would still be a slump even if it was as popular as 7.

Yeah, I agree. The upcoming generation is something that might be affecting sales. I know I am usually waiting for new technology if it's coming in the near future. That's what I did with my current gaming computer, although I was waiting for Intel to release their new line... Then I had to wait for them to fix the issues with that...

 

[aelreth]

Government is going to a Win 7 interface not Win8, sorry MS. You alienated EVERYONE. I have yet to talk to someone that has a Win 8 interface that has as many hard drives as I do. I also talk to ITs in my Organization and I have yet to encounter a Win 8 voluntary adopter.

 

[infohippie]

I really want to meet whoever decided that forcing a PC to use a tablet-like UI was a good idea.

Here you go: Julie Larson-Green [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Larson-Green], the genius who also brought us the Ribbon in MS Office.

 

[loa]

I got a windows 8 tablet and don't see how it's supposed to be terrible?
Runs pretty stable for me.

 

[Johnson McGee]

Win 8 simply has a very small audience. Deveolpers and other various tech heads that preferred Windows to Mac for it's openness now have absolutely no reason not to jump ship to increasingly easier to use linux based systems rather than relearn Windows. While casual users, business types and grandmas can just go straight for tablets. At the same time the remaining demand for PCs coming from gamers and the like are types that are more likely than others to build a custom unit and therefore choose win 7 or 8 or other based on their preferences.

IMO, user interface was by far not a priority issue to improve on in Win 7. MS should have focused on further optimizing the stability and lowering system resource use. For something so 'malleable' as a UI why not just give the consumer the choice? and I'm a busy PhD student and I don't want to have learning a new operating system stacked on top of transferring files and reinstalling programs if I get a new PC. Plus, what I've heard about the restrictive install rules turns me off greatly. Is Win8 good? I don't know, I don't care.

 

[theultimateend]

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).

I've had better luck with 7 than any OS release by Microsoft ever. So I don't see how 8 could be that much better unless it scrubs my back and brings me sleepy time tea.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

I got a windows 8 tablet and don't see how it's supposed to be terrible?
Runs pretty stable for me.

Win8 is great for tablets, PCs are not tablets though.

 

[infohippie]

Oh and for those that don't like the start screen there are add ons out there that restore the traditional task bar and start button and disable native metro boot. (I use Start8 from Stardock but there are others to)

I don't like the Start screen but I can deal. What really bugs me about TIFKAM (The Interface Formerly Known As Metro) on a desktop device are the frickin' "Hot Corners" and the godawful "Charms Bar". Plus the weird disconnect between Control Panel for the desktop interface and the equivalent for TIFKAM. Why are some items available only on one or the other, but there is no single location from which I can control everything? Terrible, terrible design. And apart from all the functional issues there is the simple fact that it is just so ugly.

Do you have fixes for those problems? Something that replaces the hot corners with plain old clickable icons and fucks off that stupid "Charms Bar" entirely, putting its contents back into sensible places?

 

[AuronFtw]

And no Windows 8 isn't actually BAD, and may be very stable, it just offers no benefit for a conventional PC, has worse games compatibility than Win7, and has a whole new interface to learn, which is designed for touchscreens and poorly optimised for Mouse and Keyboard.

Lies. Windows 8 runs everything Windows 7 does with no problems. Occasionally you may need to tell something to run in compatibility mode but nothing more than that.

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.

 

[Remus]

This is becoming a repeating cycle with MS, where the odd numbered Windows releases are solid while the even ones are experimental. It's nice to see a company willing to innovate and try new things. It just kinda sucks for the end user, who has to wait for the "good" release to upgrade their OS.

 

[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.