NPD Group Analysts Say Windows 8 Sales Sluggish 269
Nerval's Lobster writes "While Microsoft claims it's sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses in the month since launch—a more rapid pace than Windows 7—new data from research firm The NPD Group suggests that isn't helping sales of actual Windows devices, which, in its estimation, are down 21 percent from last year. Desktops dropped 9 percent year-over-year, while notebooks fell 24 percent. 'After just four weeks on the market, it's still early to place blame on Windows 8 for the ongoing weakness in the PC market,' Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at The NPD Group, wrote in a Nov. 29 statement attached to the data. 'We still have the whole holiday selling season ahead of us, but clearly Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for.'" That seems to match the public grumbling of Acer and Asus about early sales. And though these figures exclude Surface sales, the newly announced prices on for new Windows 8 Pro-equipped Surface tablets might not endear them to anyone. Have you (or has your business?) moved to Windows 8?
businesses? (Score:2, Informative)
I know mine will never use Windows 8
Our Experience (Score:5, Informative)
My Business Customers say "Windows 7" (Score:2, Informative)
When offering Windows 8 Pro to business customers that were replacing old crotchety XP machines one customer said "we'll pay an extra $100 for Windows 7 if necessary. But, we don't want Windows 8". I'm not seeing much love for 8 from customers, even though I use it and like it.
That's not what the report says at all. (Score:5, Informative)
They also have a very strange definition of "four weeks on the market" as the period they're looking at is Oct 22, 2012 - Nov 14 2012... which includes 5 days prior to Windows 8 being released. With Microsoft selling about 1.5M licenses a day in these initial weeks, 5 days where sales are practically zero is a lot to include in the data.
Re:It isn't Windows 8 I find to be the barrier... (Score:5, Informative)
But the local computer shop or data recovery firm sure cares, as secure boot eliminates their ability to bypass windows to recover data direct from storage.
That is FUD, lies, and misinformation.
a) secure boot can be easily disabled within bios/uefi on all x86 units, which is all current Windows 8 desktops, all current windows 8 laptops, and a big chunk of the windows 8 tablets too.* So if you drag in a working windows 8 pc, they can boot their favorite live cd with minimal effort.
b) Worst case they'd pull the hard drive out of the defective unit and just extract the data directly. Half the data recovery jobs a computer shop deals with are due to hardware failure where the laptop or desktop is fried, and pulling the hard drive out is the smart thing to do if the rest of the PC hardware doesn't work or is failing or is unreliable.
Secureboot is nearly irrelevant in this scenario.
Really, the only people secureboot currently impacts in any non-trivial way are people who want to dual boot linux and windows 8 on the same PC.
* WinRT tablets are the exception, but those devices are very much ipad market product, and data recovery would proceed along the same lines it does for an ipad. Can you boot an ipad up off your favorite linux live CD to recover the data? Of course not. Same thing.
Joe Shmoe will care that the latest virus to infest his system leaves his data corrupted and secure boot prevents any remedial actions.
Joe Shmoe doesn't think that far ahead.
Re:It isn't Windows 8 I find to be the barrier... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Some Anecdotal Data (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It isn't Windows 8 I find to be the barrier... (Score:4, Informative)
For you. For a lot of people, even very computer literate people (developers and power users), it's substantially more difficult.
Re:It isn't Windows 8 I find to be the barrier... (Score:5, Informative)
So how easy is easy? Would going into the menu, finding the setting that says "Secure Boot" and changing that from "Enabled" to "Disabled" be too hard? (or Yes to No, or selecting "Disable Secure Boot" or whatever that open is called. Maybe it's something obtuse, like "Enable legacy boot"?).
Because every x86-based PC MUST have the option to disable secure boot. It's a requirement to get the Windows 8 certified logo on it.
The most obvious reason why is because people may want to well, boto a legacy OS like Windows 7.
And WIndows 8 can boot in legacy mode too, because despite most PCs shipping with UEFI (for a few years now - it's been Intel's thing except they also splash it with a BIOS setup app that configures the BIOS boot), most UEFI BIOSes out there right now do NOT support secure boot (again, legacy - UEFI has been around a while far longer than secure boot). And heck, I don't think Macs even support secure boot period even when booting in EFI mode.
Re:Your overconfidence is astounding (Score:3, Informative)
While IE10 has indeed be made Windows 8 completely unsuitable for user web-browsing, the architectural choice of moving IE10 into the Windows 8 kernel has left a security hole of goatse.cx proportions.
Windows 8: where all Al Gore's Internet can root for success!
Evidence to back that up? Not and not from this guy? [youtube.com]
FYI I am not an IE user per say, but I do give credit to Microsoft for improving their crappiest product last decade and making web developers and users alike much needed sanity.If people stopped bashing IE then it we could give corps a great reason to upgrade from crappy versions which benefit everyone as we want more HTML 5.
IE 10 has a dual sandbox for not only ASLR, and DEP, but also heap spraying protection as well. It has not been integrated at all into the kernel since the days of IE 6. The only integrating that IE 10 does is the grapnics for smooth fluid scrolling and video in Direct X11.1 and WDDM 1.2 which explains why it is not on Windows 7 yet.