Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share 285
An anonymous reader writes "With the first half of 2013 now over, Windows 8 continues to grow its share steadily but slowly, while Windows XP and Vista decline. In fact, Windows 8 has now passed the 5 percent mark, as well as surpassed the market share of its predecessor's predecessor, Windows Vista. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that June 2013 was an impressive one for Windows 8, which gained 0.83 percentage points (from 4.27 percent to 5.10 percent) while Windows 7 fell 0.48 percentage points (from 44.85 percent to 44.37 percent)."
Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
And mind you: it's not passing Vista's market share as it was in October 2007 (equally 10 months after launch as Windows 8 is now). It's just passed Vista's *current* market share.
No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").
If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4)
How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time (while 2000 was billed as the "business product").
If we're at the kind of point where comparisons to ME feel appropriate, then Win8 really is in trouble. At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap. Win8, on the other hand, has been pushed very hard as "the future".
me might have done comparatively well. pc sales were in a huge upswing back in those days.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
How did the takeup of ME compare? That was billed as the "consumer oriented" OS at the time ...... At least with ME, there was always a strong sense that it was never intended as much more than a short-term stopgap.
As I recall in those days, queues of people camped on PCWorld's doorstep for a few days before each new Windows release (like they do for Apple stuff today).
I do not recall ME being regarded as a stopgap. The name "ME" even suggested it was forward looking. True, those who knew better recognised it as W95 on a Zimmerframe - one last fling by MS to extract money from the consumer market with a pointless upgrade. I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.
Also, there was no gap to stop. Windows NT was already available and had been runnable on entry-level PCs' for some time (and did, in the form of XP just a year later). It was games compatibility that kept the crappy 95/98/ME bloodline going, but MS needed to tell the games writers to port their stuff to NT/XP sooner or later; and they should have done it sooner.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Interesting)
From the gamer's point of view, the problem with NT was its complete lack of directx functionality. This was addressed by 2k. But games developers could hardly be blamed for focussing on Win98 when MS's own tools for gaming weren't there on NT. Uptake of 2k was slower than it could have been, primarily due to third party driver issues that caused stability and performance issues for many games. That one's perhaps slightly harder to pin on MS.
I followed what is, I think, a very typical path for gamers at the time. I hung on to 98 until 2k service pack 2 was released, at which point most of the problems related to gaming under 2k had been addressed. I never made a conscious decision to move to XP, but a couple of years later, when I bought a new PC that came with it installed, there was no reason to move back to 2k.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Thing is, while the driver situation back then may have been better for Linux than Win2k, the simple fact was that you couldn't actually play most games on Linux.
Thinking back to the games I was mostly playing back in my final days as a Win98 user, when I was weighing up a shift to Win2k, I can recall a good few (as a postgrad student at the time, I had a lot more time for gaming than I had now). I was heavily into the online scene for Counter-Strike (was the head admin of a major UK league) and also fairly heavily into online Warcraft 3. I was also a more casual online player of Battlefield 1942 and Tribes 2. Offline, I spent a lot of time with the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series. Playing that lot on Linux? Very, very unlikely.
So it was a case of sticking with Win98, tolerating the requirement for reboots pretty much daily if you wanted to preserve performance and stability, and waiting for reports that 2k was actually usable.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
"That's when I started looking at Linux more seriously, especially after the clusterfuck of the 98-XP upgrade. It disabled my CD burning software saying it made the system unstable, despite the fact that I'd not had stability problems with 98, and would not ley me uninstall it.
This is why you never upgrade windows. You always do a fresh install. Yea its annoying to lose configurations and installed software but its not like it was difficult to get back up to speed, maybe a week at most. I learned after a 98-2k install that hard crashed (no bsod just locked up) after upgrade and wouldn't boot. From then on installing a new windows OS ment starting fresh which always worked flawlessly. And with windows we all know it better to start fresh.
Back in the days of 2k/XP changing a motherboard which had a different chipset ment endless headaches. You had to be sure you uninstalled all of your hardware drivers then shut down and installed the new mobo. Then boot up and pray the brain dead windows kernel would see the changes and try a default IDE/ATA driver instead of BSOD. Going from a single core/non-HT CPU to a dual CPU or HT CPU? Then you had to fuck around with the HAL to get a multiprocessor HAL working (back when moving from P3 -> p4/xeon). windows 7 was much better and could handle a hardware swap, so could Vista, amazingly.
Linux has always worked flawlessly and is always superior to windows when it comes to driver and hardware. You could yank a hard drive with Linux installed from an Intel PC and install it into an AMD PC with COMPLETELY different hardware and it would happily boot. Though, back in the days of ISA cards things weren't that easy. But it never was except for maybe DOS when you assigned memory ranges, IRQ's and DMA's by hand and you knew your limits.
Nowadays I only use Windows 7 on a PC for gaming and general use. Everything else is Linux, even my laptop. I don't hate windows, I just don't need it to do everything I want/need to do. And some things windows simply can't do without hacks or third party software which may or may not work (eg. SSHFS).
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Informative)
I never ran ME, but understand that it was actually worse than 98.
No, I don't think it was worse, I just think it was rushed.
Me deprecated many of the VxD drivers used with Windows 98, and needed updated WDM drivers that didn't require real mode. Also, it came with generic USB drivers, and USB was just becoming widely popular, but with lots of "almost-compatible" devices on the market, requiring special drivers. The manufacturers weren't ready, and the result was highly unstable Me systems, especially when using USB or older hardware.
But they felt they HAD to rush it - Windows 2000 was coming.
Windows 2000 really was the solution, but Microsoft did the big mistake of not marketing it towards consumers. Then XP came, which basically was a dumbed down 2000 with updated graphics, and it took the world with storm. But boy, was it buggy before SP1. Anyone sane would run 2000 instead.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
What may be more notable, is the staying power of Win XP.
Win XP is with 37% market share not far behind the 44% of Win 7 (two major versions ahead of XP, and released almost four years ago by now). If all computers that had been replaced would have received Win 7, the market share of Win 7 compared to Win XP should be much higher: if the average lifetime of a PC is five years, some 80% of the computers that were in use back in summer 2009 have been replaced by now. Yet newer-than-XP versions of Windows are far behind that number.
And while it's market share is falling, it's falling only slowly, with a 0.5% loss over the past month. And I really can not imagine just 0.5% of computers are being replaced in a month - at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month. So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably both. People are holding on to a machine that works because of the economic situation and a lot of people still prefer XP to anything else and install it on brand new systems. I guess it will be until 2014 when support is dropped that the numbers will show some real drops, although it will be mainly from businesses as they are the ones who care about support in the first place. I doubt home users will think a lack of updates is a bad thing.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Informative)
I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.
My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).
Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.
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Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there.
I have a machine which runs Vista because it won't run anything else. Has R690M chipset which the free driver doesn't work on, and which fglrx never supported. The drivers I need are not included in any Linux distribution out there — they don't exist, because ATI lied about their commitment to Open Source, and their commitment to Linux as well.
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Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that's why I'm still using my iMac from 2007. It's got a fairly fast Core 2 Duo chip and 6 GB RAM and basically the only thing I need is a browser and text editor. A newer/faster machine is simply not worth the investment.
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> So is it that XP computers are all just old ones that are not being replaced? Or is it that XP is being installed on new computers? Both are about as unbelievable, yet I can't think of another reason XP's market share is falling so much slower than the computer replacement rate.
Both. Some corporate images are still based on XP, and XP compatibility is required when purchasing new hardware. I know this is unbelievable, but there was a similar situation with NT4.0, which was used way post the point wher
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Informative)
Or it could be that the statistics are being pulled from sources that have unusually slow adoption rate. I typically check the statistics that I see come from netmarketshare and the like from a couple other sources, and I've always noticed that they lag considerably from both another source, and my own statistics from visitors from my client's web sites.
For example, my statistics show 6.6% for Windows 8 , 7.88% for Vista, 30.28% for XP, and 54.69% for Windows 7.
netmarketshare shows 5.1% for Windows 8, 4.62% for Vista, 37.17% for XP, and 44.37% for Windows 7.
My other source shows 12.7% for Windows 8, 7.2% for Vista, 7.9% for XP, and 66% for Windows 7.
There is quite a bit of difference between the three, but ntmarketshare typically seems to poll from placed that hang on to their systems longer than most, I'm guessing some very large businesses as their primary source, which skews their numbers.
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I should note that my other source is taken from mainly home PC's, so adoption rate is typically quicker than the average.
netmarketshare seems to favor large businesses, so their adoption rate is abysmal.
And my own client's statistics is a blend of the two.
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Net statistics bias towards heavy internet usage which biases towards heavy usage which bias towards frequent upgraders. You want data on all machines you have to count the people who use their computer once every 2 weeks or only do one or two things with it.
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I would suspect that XP users have well below average replacement rates. The XP people are the people who keep their computers for 10 years on the home / small business front. On the corporate front those are companies that haven't been spending on desktop infrastructure and still have XP licenses. The ones that are probably going to have a rough transition now that Microsoft is finally EOL XP and forcing them onto Win7.
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at an average lifespan of 5 years for a PC there should be nearly 1.7% replacement rate per month.
When was that replacement rate calculated? When Americans still had money?
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Informative)
No consumer-oriented version of Windows has ever seen such a slow adoption as Windows 8 is showing now.
That's a worthless measure of success for Windows. 99.9% of copies are sold on new PCs or as part of bulk licences in businesses. The former is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely of new PC sales. The latter is no indication of Windows 8 acceptance, merely IT spending and the amount of lag between release and companies rolling out new operating systems.
Conversely because almost 100% of Windows 7 users installed SP1 that doesn't mean SP1 was a huge success, merely that it was put forwards as a critical update and people had no reason to reject it.
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You say it like Microsoft is a victim of the circumstances. But some people in the industry are saying PC sales and IT spending is down because of Windows 8.
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
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Most consumers don't upgrade the OS on their existing hardware. Most of them get the next version of Windows when they get new hardware. For the most part, consumers are staying with existing hardware longer.
Most businesses are now migrating to Win 7 to replace XP. They skipped Vista for many issues. E
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Funny)
I'm waiting for them to put out a press release when they hit 5x Linux market share.
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How long do you suppose Microsoft can hold out until Windows 9?
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 9? You think MS can go three full Windows releases without changing the naming scheme? That hasn't happened since Windows 1,2 and 3.
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It has: Win '95, Win '98, Win 2000.
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Windows Me was in between. And of course "Windows 98 Second Edition", which might win the "silliest name of a Windows version ever" award.
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Windows Me was in between. And of course "Windows 98 Second Edition", which might win the "silliest name of a Windows version ever" award.
You probably forgot about "Bob"
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Bob was stupid, and had a stupid name, but it wasn't a Windows version. It was a shell. It was released to run on Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5.
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Only as silly as Windows Server 2008R2, and Windows Server 2010R2.
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Exactly. The NT branch is what Windows is on now. They ceased development of the DOS branch with ME.
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Actually the first Windows versions were:
1985 - Windows 1.0
1987 - Windows 2.0
1988 - Windows/286 2.10 & Windows/386 2.10
1990 - Windows 3.0
1992 - Windows 3.1
1993 - Windows 3.11 for Workgroups & Windows 3.2 Simplified Chinese
1995 - Windows 4.0 alpha (extremely short lived, renamed as Windows 95 after a alpha release was leaked to various FTP sites. It did not have the "Start Button")
On the NT side:
1993 - Windows NT 3.1
1994 - Windows NT 3.5
1995 - Windows NT 3.51
Re:Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
How long do you suppose Microsoft can hold out until Windows 9?
More to the point, how long do you suppose WE the users can hold out until Windows 9?
I dread the day my Win 7 machines die because I'll have to replace them with those blasted Win 8 machines. I'd much rather stretch my existing machines' life until Microsoft gets its act together and I can safely skip the Win 8 experience. Exactly the same way I went straight from XP to Win 7 and avoided Vista.
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Unless some OEM decides, against all good sense, to either give the corporate market the shaft or to multiply their driver-support headaches by using substantially different hardware, rather than just different plastics kits and other minor differentiation, between 'corporate' and 'home/small business', we'll probably still be seeing Win7 compatible machines for years to come. Unless you are a volume license customer, coming up with a copy of Win7 that passes activation is your problem(so you might want to
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"Unless you are a volume license customer, coming up with a copy of Win7 that passes activation is your problem"
no it's not. In fact Windows 7 is easier to deal with in this regard compared to windows XP and Vista. just find an OEM disc, then use one of the windows loader variants to crack the OEM crud. after that you can automate a keychanger to use your legal key and get around all the garbage for activation.
I have made several automatic install disks that do all of this for me from a DELL OEM window
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"More to the point, how long do you suppose WE the users can hold out until Windows 9?"
Scumbag hardware makers are your problem. if you cant get Win7 drivers it is because the hardware maker was a scumbag and set the minimum OS id at Win8. the underlying kernel and driver substructure is 100% identical for Vista, Win7,Win8.
That would be the only reason to switch. to prolong your windows 7 bliss, research any hardware you buy for the next 4 years to make sure that windows 7 drivers exist.
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Yet Vista never managed to get more than a mere 26%, and that's the best number I could find. Some research indicates Vista's market share actually maxed at about 19%.
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That completely depends on the release date of Windows 9. Windows 7 for example was released before Vista could surpass XP's market share.
Re: Surpassing Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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I assume it's still around in Windows 8, though I'm not sure if the "Pro" or whatever license of 8 gives you a free XP license.
Unfortunately, no, the XP mode is gone in Windows 8 (even Pro). Instead they suggest you use Hyper-V (which is included in W8 Pro), but that is a poor replacement. It lacks app virtualization. no XP license is included, and VMware Player is a better product anyway.
Re: Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me know how writing code or actual real letters goes on your smartphone or tablet. The desktop market isn't going away, it just won't move as many machines (since they last longer now).
Re: Surpassing Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
That's testing rather than writing code and a Surface Pro isn't really a tablet, it's a laptop pretending to be a tablet. It has an actual full fledged OS on it and runs x86. You could also accomplish the same with a touch screen monitor on a much more powerful desktop that would build faster and give more area to work on your code in. Don't get me wrong, not saying tablets don't have their uses, but they are substandard for many, many activities.
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Android isn't a desktop OS, nor is it intended to be. It is designed specifically for high levels of process isolation and low power consumption. These are the opposite of what you want on a desktop where you are looking for power and interoperability. Windows 8 is a huge misstep driven by trying to compete with the vertically integrated dominance than is making Apple so much money. Metro is simply a move to push Windows Market on the world that is failing. If it wasn't for Metro, Windows 8 is actually
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Seven stopped being windows and stopped being sold?
So it should (Score:5, Funny)
It's the best OS MS have produced in my opinion, runs well and like the UI and yes I'm running a desktop computer! I use OSX, iOS, Ubuntu and Windows so maybe am used to switching UIs so learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.
Re:So it should (Score:5, Interesting)
A real problem with Metro is that so many basic actions are hidden or counter-intuitive. You're doing something wrong if people have to search for help on how to close an app or manage windows on your OS. And before they can even try and search for that info, they have to use another computer to search for help on getting the damn address bar to appear in IE! People's hatred for Metro doesn't just come from having to learn a new UI, a lot of it is due to (piss-)poor design.
Re:So it should (Score:5, Informative)
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it actually just kills your user session and hibernates
Yep. And if you copy files to a directory that is in memory in the hibernated system (say from a Mac or Linux dual boot partition) Windows 8 will eat your files with corruption! All because Microsoft lied so they could add another "feature".
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That would not be true. Shut down and restarts aren't the hybrid hibernate that you talk about. That's only if you tell it to sleep, or it goes into hibernation. Or you tell it to shutdown and you have your system set to allow hibernation. Most desktops won't be configured that way. Even if you do have hibernation enabled, and you tell it to restart, then it isn't one of those "hybrid boots".
And in any case, for most users in the cases it actually does a hybrid boot, they wouldn't care that it's not do
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Which is just an extension of the old kludges they've been implementing since XP...
Displaying the login screen quickly isn't terribly useful if its continuing to boot in the background such that your login and initial use of the machine is significantly slower.
The real boot time, is the time it takes to be ready for you to use it properly.
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Maybe. But that just means you get to see Win8 sit there ignoring you for longer after it boots.
My copy boots a whole 25% faster than XP did on the same hardware (45s v 60s - old style HD), it then sits for longer than that before I can get anything to actually respond to input enough to do anything! It's the usual smoke&mirrors, the frustration's still there, they just delayed it a little.
If Win8 didn't need rebooting so often fast bootup would be irrelevant anyway. I used to reboot my XP install every
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It's all well and good having an OS that boots quickly - everyone like that. However, it would be interesting to compare the time saved due to a fast boot, to that wasted by trying to find which "Visual Studio 2..." is the one you actually want.
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learning Metro was no big deal compared to someone who has only seen the Start button all their computer life.
Um, the problem isn't learning it, the problem is liking it.
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I don't want to "Learn" Metro! I just want to use my computer!
If the interface is not obvious then it is getting in the way, and Metro (or whatever it is called this week) just gets in the way
The Start button was a faster than the program manager ...
the Search in the start menu was often faster than using the Start menu
Metro is in all cases slower
I don't want to run windows, use windows etc ... I want to use the programs that run on it ....!
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Yay, I can check the get regular weather & social updates on the start screen. Funnily enough, that's not a priority for most business users. And I especially like trying to reorganise the tiles - it's like playing a Sliding Puzzle [wikipedia.org] - how could anyone hate that?
Re:So it should (Score:5, Insightful)
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Metro is a weird interface, being a long time xp and os x user it feels very counter intuitive, I seem to go into desktop mode as soon as I boot and get annoyed when metro pulls me out off it (eg when editing a photo).8.1 will be a welcome update.
you're better off installing classic shell than waiting for 8.1. the start button just takes you to metro.
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and get annoyed when metro pulls me out off it (eg when editing a photo)
You can change your file associations to use non-Metro software. The image viewer that came with 7 is still there in 8, so you can set it to be your default for viewing images. (Or there are some great alternatives out there, I like Irfanview.) Same deal with Windows Media Player, you can tell it to use the desktop version rather than the Metro version. (Or in my case, Media Player Classic.)
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To be fair, Metro seems to work fine if all you do is browse the internet, play some games and perhaps even occasionally edit a Word document.
The only people that don't like Metro are the professional users, developers and power-users. Though there are a lot of us, we're still the minority.
I think Metro will do just fine for the home market and the serious market will just have to wait for 9 (or whatever it'll be called).
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To be fair, Metro seems to work fine if all you do is browse the internet, play some games and perhaps even occasionally edit a Word document. The only people that don't like Metro are the professional users, developers and power-users. Though there are a lot of us, we're still the minority. I think Metro will do just fine for the home market and the serious market will just have to wait for 9 (or whatever it'll be called).
Talking to many non-power users, especially less tech-literate people they all seem to find win 8 confusing and hard to use. Specifically I have had people complaining to me about it defaulting to using windows live accounts for login and not being able to find anything.
In my personal experience with it I've encountered bugs, such as file sharing seeming to be completely broken in terms of login-in to win 8 shares with samba, etc.
Re:So it should (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So it should (Score:5, Funny)
You are forgetting users like my step mother who can't figure out why her new laptop acts like someone's phone instead like her computer at work. If she wanted something that acted like a smart phone she would have bought a smart phone.
Years ago my daughter bought a laptop which came with the then brand new Windows Vista. She called me and asked if I could put Windows on it for her...
Re:So it should (Score:5, Interesting)
It works just like the start menu, only bigger. You use just like you would the regular start menu, type whatever you want to run and press enter. Don't see how this can be such a huge gripe. I haven't switched to Win8 yet but from what little I've used it, I couldn't find much of a problem with it apart from poor network drivers.
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Type 'readme', then wonder which result is the one I want... assuming it's even in the list because a lot of my apps are portable and sitting on another drive Win8 doesn't want to search.
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The huge gripe is that not everyone uses the start menu in the same way as everyone else. Personally, I hate the "search to launch something" functionality; I only search for things when I don't know where they are. This is handy to have in the start menu when I know what something is called but don't know where it is... but my memory is primarily spatial and I have a terrible memory for names, so I remember things by placement and the shape of what the icons/words look like rather than by remembering the l
Re:So it should (Score:5, Interesting)
If it was really a "new paradigm", ie the whole OS was built around it, it would actually be fine. The problem is that Metro feels more like a hacked on 3rd party replacement for the Start Menu, than something that works well with the Windows desktop.
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Reading through the comments there isn't too much disagreement about the underlying OS its with Metro.
I first used a computer back in 1981 and seen and used a lot of UIs over the years as well as using different UIs over different systems at the same time, hence I don't tend to invest effort in learning the ins and outs. On a desktop machine without a touchscreen I flip between desktop and metro and am fine with search to find something as that's how I find things on the Internet. My typing speed isn't so b
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Reading through the comments there isn't too much disagreement about the underlying OS [the disagreement is] with Metro.
Got it in one.
I first used a computer back in 1981 and seen and used a lot of UIs over the years ... My typing speed isn't so bad having used all those CLIs over the years.
Me too
[I] am fine with search to find something as that's how I find things on the Internet.
I don't just use the Internet. There is a polarisation here between (shall we say) people who are organised and people who are not. I know where my stuff is, in organised directories, but MS seems to assume that everyone is disorganised and needs to search. We organised people find that insulting and patronising.
Metro with a touchscreen works and in fact for my three year old she finds it awkward that my 2010 Mac Book Pro doesn't have a [touch]screen
Good Lord, take a look at your foot Lord Uxbridge, it seems to have been shot off! So Metro is OK for 3-year-olds. That is what many of us have been saying all along.
Is Metro perfect, no, but at least its a start to move away from a desktop metaphor that was introduced way back when
That is
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"start to move away from a desktop metaphor "
At this point, there are more handheld devices than there are people on the planet. Windows has essentially zero presence in that market.
Huh (Score:5, Funny)
I guess cramming it down people's throats really *is* an effective way to gain marketshare...
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Exactly, it's not like they have a choice. I do wonder how these statistics are gathered, and how many of those people use it for a day or so and then install Linux; does it account for that?. It's like TV Ratings, send a few hundred surveys to people and based on those, simply assume that's what everybody is watching.
What gets me is all the news about the NSA and Microsoft. I simply can't understand why people would use Windows after all that, it's insane and no logical at all.
XP - 37% with less than a year of support (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support (Score:5, Funny)
A lack of support might push a few businesses to adopt a newer version of Windows, but I doubt people at home will care. Actually, a lack of updates might be seen as a feature (no reboots!) by those who are still holding on to a 12+ year old operating system.
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actually businesses won't care either in the short term.
As when th updates start businesses will no longer worry that an update might break their tools, so they can keep on working without fear. Also a lot of businesses are going virtual.
I took a new job last august, the machine I was initially given was win 2K. Now they updated it almost immediately for me, but other than the crappy keyboard, mouse and monitor,all it ran was remote desktop to the server.
Re:XP - 37% with less than a year of support (Score:5, Insightful)
I would count the age of up to date XP installs from the issue date of SP3, early May 2008.
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Yes the name XP might be but over the years the various service packs changed it dramatically.
In what ways have the Service Packs changed XP such that average (or even "power") user would notice?
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That was netbooks mainly. Those were never designed to be 4 year machines.
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People often try to read into this some undying love for XP. The reality is the useful life of hardware has been extended and combined with the recent and current ecomic climate, hardware purchases have been delayed or cancelled. As a case in point, I just upgraded my main development desktop. The old one was built in Dec 2002 and it was only recently that the performance dropped below tolerable. I would have upgraded the windows OS to 7 but it failed the compatability test.
I think the take away from my
Regular users (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet even non-techie users don't like Metro.... for a start, where will they store their documents now? The desktop and the recycle bin were the usual two favourite locations pre Win 8. :P
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On the desktop.
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Until they say they can't find a file they want, and can't remember the name of it, and call their family member who knows computers to ask them to find it for them.
Win7 as an alternative (Score:2)
I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked, so many were pissed back then, but you didn't have any feasible alternative at the moment. Today things have changed and you've got plenty of alternatives: Win7, WinXP, MacOS, Linux, etc. You've also got smartphones and tablets which for many are more than enough for them.
OTOH, last month I've got a Lenovo laptop which came with Win7 preinstalled and Win8 disks to install it. If it was the other way around maybe Win8 adoption
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With 95 you were given the choice of using the new explorer interface or the old task man interface that 3.11 used... Many users chose to stick with the old ui.
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With 95 you were given the choice of using the new explorer interface or the old task man interface that 3.11 used... Many users chose to stick with the old ui.
Really?? First I ever heard of this...
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I remember when MS launched Win95 people were very attached to how Win3.11 worked, so many were pissed back then, but you didn't have any feasible alternative at the moment. Today things have changed and you've got plenty of alternatives: Win7, WinXP, MacOS, Linux, etc. You've also got smartphones and tablets which for many are more than enough for them.
OTOH, last month I've got a Lenovo laptop which came with Win7 preinstalled and Win8 disks to install it. If it was the other way around maybe Win8 adoption rate would be higher.
Funny, I remember when Win95 launched and most people were very enthused about it as it was a great upgrade.
Off-topic link (Score:2)
The link that ought to have been in the summary:
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=11&qpcustomb=0 [netmarketshare.com]
Hooray! (Score:3)
Because PC buyers have no choice (Score:3)
Most places that sell PCs only sell Win8. If you can get Win7 at all, you have to pay a premium for it.
Also, people figure "I might as well buy it now, since I am going to be forced to use it anyway."
People are *not* buying Win8 because they like it. If people had a choice, they would stay with win7, or XP.
Market share, but they hid the real story (Score:3)
Claiming this is market share, that implies this is for new sales only, not installed base. Sounds like they screwed up the terminology... otherwise, that doesn't say much at all good about Windows 8.... and also suggests some crazy people are still buying new Windows Vista systems.
If this really does mean installed base, then you have to ask how that's actually computed. If it's just based on sales figures, it's likely very skewed in Windows 8's favor. On the day that Windows 8 shipped, all of the enterprise licensees started buying Windows 8 licenses. These are the licenses that let the IT department clone their standard disc for all new PCs and just pay MS for each one. These licenses, of course, include full downgrade rights, and most of them are still being used for Windows 7 or Windows XP... but they come up as Windows 8 for the purpose of sales figures. The last study on this I saw showed that less than 60% of the actual sold Windows 8 licenses were actually being used for Windows 8. Some detail on which set of assumptions (lies, etc) this is used for would be interesting.
And the real news... earlier this year, late last year, etc. many different similar installed base reports put MacOS growing from 4.8% last year to just over 5% earlier this year -- this is internationally, Apple of course does much better domestically. It's probably just a difference in their calculations versus the various other industry numbers people.. but if MacOS really did jump 2% in one quarter, in installed base rather than just quarterly sales, that would be big news. Of course, that growth might come as much from a failing PC market as some rally of Apple products.
Re:Still sucks (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot to write Microsoft with a '$' .. you heretic.
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fullhd windows needs you to adjust dpi scaling. just do it, nobody expects you to read text that's the size of ant legs.
OK, then what do you do about all the apps that don't display correctly?