HP Brings Back Windows 7 'By Popular Demand' As Buyers Shun Windows 8 513
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Gregg Keizer reports at Computerworld that Hewlett-Packard has stuck their finger in Microsoft's eye by launching a new promotion that discounts several consumer PCs by $150 when equipped with Windows 7, saying the four-year-old OS is 'back by popular demand.' 'The reality is that there are a lot of people who still want Windows 7,' says Bob O'Donnel. 'This is a twist, though, and may appeal to those who said, "I do want a new PC, but I thought I couldn't get Windows 7."' The promotion reminded O'Donnell and others of the dark days of Windows Vista, when customers avoided Windows 7's predecessor and instead clamored for the older Windows XP on their new PCs. Then, customers who had heard mostly negative comments about Vista from friends, family and the media, decided they would rather work with the devil they knew rather than the new one they did not. 'It's not a perfect comparison,' says O'Donnell, of equating Windows 8 with Vista, 'but the perception of Windows 8 is negative. I said early on that Windows 8 could clearly be Vista Version 2, and that seems to have happened.' HP has decided that the popularity of Windows 7 is its best chance of encouraging more people to buy new computers in a declining market and is not the first time that HP has spoken out against Microsoft. 'Look at the business model difference between Intel and ARM. Look at the operating systems. In today's world, other than Microsoft there's no one else who charges for an operating system,' said HP executive Sridhar Solur in December, adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft." Also at SlashCloud.
New MS business plan (Score:5, Funny)
1) Relabel Windows 7 boxes "Windows 8 Desktop Edition"
2) Raise prices
3) Profit
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed that for you
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Informative)
Fixed that for you
You joke but that's pretty much how it is:
Windows 98 -- Worked
windows ME --Sucked
Windows XP -- Decent
Windows Vista -- Sucked
Windows 7 -- Functional Again
Windows 8 -- Sucks Again
It seems to take them one generation to flush the problems out of each new release so windows 8 is basically "windows 9 beta"
Re:New MS business plan (Score:4, Interesting)
win 8 = win 9 beta: sort of like Vista was win 7 rushed edition.
I actually don't mind 8.1 with desktop enabled as the login. I installed classic shell and haven't seen the start menu (or needed to) since. The new task manager is nice sort of a middle ground between process explorer and the classic task manager. The file transfer dialog progress indicator is nice too. Just little polishes on top of what Win 7 has. Nothing worthy of going out of your way to upgrade but I wouldn't go out of my way to downgrade either.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:4, Interesting)
Vista didn't actually suck all that much if you used it for enough time... the real problem with Vista* was that it took a while for the prefetch service to learn which applications you used most frequently. Once it got a handle on what you liked to do with the system, it was actually fairly zippy. During the first couple of weeks with Vista, however, it was horrible. SP1 improved this, but it was still an unpleasant experience for its first few weeks.
* -- that's aside from the obvious bits about driver incompatibility and the fact that they dropped an OS with a 1GB minimum RAM requirement (2GB for 64-bit) in an era when it was normal to see systems with 512MB.
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Vista didn't actually suck all that much if you used it for enough time...
Stockholm syndrome starts this way. With enough exposure to their captors the captive begins to empathise with their captors, as Stockholm syndrome progresses the captive begins to assist their captors and in some cases, even starts to believe in their cause.
Re:modern interface will need to be "re-imagined" (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a chance to log in and remotely look at a buddy's Win 8 system.
The big problem I noticed was all those tiles there that I would never ever use. "Photos, Facebook, Gmail, Other Social Media, Calendar, Contacts, ..." and I can't remember the other 20.
Holistically it's that all those things are dumped there, vs in the old days I use my desktop space for what *I* want there.
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Ya, the "default" applications seem overall less useful than the defaults you'd get on earlier systems. Given their design most feel more like web pages than applications. What's missing are some basics, like a notepad, file browser, or a game. The other huge drawback is that they all want to be full screen, great for a phone but stupid for a large monitor.
Overall I treat them just like OEM junk. Except that once you remove all the pointless ones you end up with only one button, "Desktop".
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
True. Performance wise it is a nice OS. I mean more of the "compelling reason to upgrade". Vista fell on its face by needing fairly high end systems (particularly graphics), UAC, and lack of drivers. Win 8 has failed because the typical person I run into either doesn't care about the core new feature: modern apps (neutral) or actively want to work around never having to see them (negative). Your computer might run ~5% faster and have 10 less running services on it than win 7 but if you have to see the stupid start screen every time you try to use it you'll just stick with Win 7.
I suspect by Win 9 timeframe: touch will be much more common place including on desktop hardware (and touchpads), the modern apps interface will be streamlined, and likely MS will have backed off from the modern first approach even more than 8.1 did. All will lead Win 9 to do what Win 7 did for Vista: actually get people to buy new hardware.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much this.
Win8 has some really concrete improvements under the hood.
The biggest problem the OS has had was the idiotic decision to force people onto a tablet interface.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Informative)
Win 8 is totally fine once you make it into Win 7 either by uninstalling 8 or installing enough add-ons to hide it.
Seriously...MS screwed up by making such a drastic change to the UI that's been around for the better part of forever. While the under-the-hood changes did add quite a bit they could have left them under the hood and left the UI mostly intact. Tweak a few things to make them easier but...why start with a clean slate and recreate everything? Some things are so buried or just missing ... it's ridiculous. For home users it's not as drastic but business/enterprise? Do you know how difficult it is get get a secretary to click a different colored icon during an upgrade? Now you want one to learn Metro...I've watched people quit because of changes like that totally disrupting their work environment. Sad but true.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
The new task manager is nice? Are you kidding? There have to be close to 50 processes running on the machine, so why does it show a blank window in its default view? Terrible. In its more functional views, it wastes desktop real estate with that tons-of-white-space-and-large-font trend that's infecting everything.
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The new task manager is nice? Are you kidding? There have to be close to 50 processes running on the machine, so why does it show a blank window in its default view? Terrible. In its more functional views, it wastes desktop real estate with that tons-of-white-space-and-large-font trend that's infecting everything.
The new task manager is loads better than the old one. It clearly distinguishes between windowed apps and background processes, shows more stats by default (in "More details" mode), has much better startup modification abilities, uses color to show resource usage, etc. etc. I welcome the whitespace, as it makes it easier to read the data. These days, with higher resolution monitors, space isn't as much as a premium as it was when the XP task manager (which is largely unchanged in 7) was made.
Also, its defau
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you
You joke but that's pretty much how it is:
Windows 98 -- Worked
windows ME --Sucked
Windows XP -- Decent
Windows Vista -- Sucked
Windows 7 -- Functional Again
Windows 8 -- Sucks Again
It seems to take them one generation to flush the problems out of each new release so windows 8 is basically "windows 9 beta"
Unfortunately, Microsoft has broken the pattern. You can go from XP to Vista to Windows 7 and each one is only a slight change from the previous version. Windows 8 however, is a horrendous piece of shit that changed things that didn't need to be changed, fixed things that didn't need to be fixed and broke anything that wasn't already broken.
Relabeling Windows 7 as Windows 9 would be the best ting they could do.
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Remember their (fictitious) slogan from back then? "At Microsoft, quality is job 3.1"
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I haven't found the start menu to be the problem that many of the complainers are whining about. Instead, I'm not liking the gesture-only approach. Gestures are never user friendly, even when they're intended as accelerators. One of the principles of a GUI is that your options should be visible. Instead, Win 8 forces me to remember a fairly long list: "swipe from the left to swap tasks, swipe from the left then back again to bring up the list of tasks, swipe from the right to bring up charms, swipe from
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
I like Windows 8. Think fear of change is the biggest problem.
Keep thinking that. I bought my better half a W8 touch screen laptop. So I've had to learn it. And now I sort of know how to get around.
And great Bolshy Yarblockos, it still sucks. So much of the needed functions that I could easily find in W95 through W7 is hardly discoverable in W8. Virtually everything I want to do, I have to open a browser and do a web search to find out.
And the advantage? Not one thing. I've just spent 20 minutes figuring out how to do something that used to take me 20 seconds. And for years and years I could do it in 20 seconds. I't not a fear of change, it's changing stupid simple stuff that didn't need changed. It's like putting the shoelaces on the bottom of shoes because it's different.
Perhaps some folks still get excited about their operating system. I need my operating system to allow me to change configurations, allow me to run programs that allow me to do my real work, and then get the hell out of the way. And nothing else. That is not W8.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Funny)
Windows NT - doesn't fit the pattern so people ignore it
Windows 2000 - doesn't fit the pattern so people ignore it
not consumer OS's (Score:5, Informative)
Win NT and 2K were "business" OS's, not consumer. They were also priced accordingly.
Re:not consumer OS's (Score:5, Informative)
NT 3.51 wasn't really meant to be a desktop OS. It was aligned with NT 3.51 server and skipped all bells and whistles from the desktop side. They also were competing with OS/2 Warp
NT 4 was a step forward - usable as a stable desktop with drivers to support peripherals but still aimed at administrators and developers who would eschew the bells and whistles for a more stable computer. Remember this was the time when a daily reboot was required for Win 9x
Win 2000 was the first real attempt at bringing PnP and other consumer-oriented technologies to the business OS. It had it's faults but overall definitely worked.
XP took that a step further and fully combined personal and consumer OS's.
Back in the NT and 2k days...I don't think many consumers paid retail prices for their OS. MS basically allowed piracy to get market penetration and made plenty of money from businesses and PC resellers since they had the default (essentially only) OS.
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Well.... yeah, because we're generally talking about consumer Windows. I was working in *nix support at a large company in 1996 when they migrated to Windows 95, and it was a ghastly experience. Something about every PC wanting to be a catalog master... or something like that... I don't remember the term exactly, but it caused horrible things to happen on the network, and the single Windows admin (they only had one, because Windows manages itself...) was tearing his hair out. He actually complained to up
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Windows 98, Not so good.
Windows ME, Broke the drivers
Windows 2000, A good OS that does it jobs, Based on NT Kernel.
Windows XP, Worked and was decent, however early in the game it got attacked by hackers like there was no tomorrow.
Vista, It actually worked well... However the UI was too protective.
Windows 7, A much improved
Windows 8, Works just as well as windows 7... However too many people have and cant stand that fact that it is different.
95, XP, Vista, and Windows 8 offered significant change to the UI,
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I think Vista's real problem was that MS let PC manufacturers slap it on underpowered hardware. I used to get Vista laptops in with 2GB of RAM and integrated video, but they came from the manufacturer with all of the Aero Glass glitzy features turned on. The users would complain constantly about how slow they were. I'd upgrade them to 4GB and turn off Aero, and they were suddenly very nice machines.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft Windows: the Star Trek movies of Operating Systems
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft still has to figure out how to integrate Metro apps with Windows 9 or customers will complain and they will lose Windows Store revenue.
Metro isn't just about merging tablet and desktop operating systems. It's also about moving people toward the Windows Store and a Microsoft Account. Skype for desktop allows signing in with a Skype account. Skype for Metro requires either a Microsoft account or merging your Skype account into a Microsoft Account, as do downloading many Metro apps.
Microsoft is starting to realize that being just a software company in a shrinking market is a bad position to be in. They want to get people stuck in their Microsoft account/Microsoft app store/Bing/Skype/Outlook.com mail/Office 365 subscriptions in order to generate revenue off of people in the long term instead of just the initial sale. The large number of Chromebooks sold in 2013 was likely a wake up call - not only do they come with Google Docs which people are starting to use instead of Microsoft Office, but Microsoft Office actually can't be sold to those customers except for Office Web Apps through a live.com account.
The types of devices that people are using is changing and Google/Apple/Microsoft all seem like they're trying to offer a total solution to customer needs that makes it difficult to leave one faction without losing your integrated e-mail/office software/messenger/phone/laptop/search ecosystem. Most people here probably don't particularly want those things integrated for various reasons but it does make things useful to the average consumer who prefers to use a touchscreen because a mouse is too difficult to use.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft is starting to realize that being just a software company in a shrinking market is a bad position to be in. They want to get people stuck in their Microsoft account/Microsoft app store/Bing/Skype/Outlook.com mail/Office 365 subscriptions in order to generate revenue off of people in the long term instead of just the initial sale. The large number of Chromebooks sold in 2013 was likely a wake up call - not only do they come with Google Docs which people are starting to use instead of Microsoft Office, but Microsoft Office actually can't be sold to those customers except for Office Web Apps through a live.com account.
See, the difference between Microsoft and Google or Apple, is that people gladly and willingly signed up [1] for Google logins and AppleIDs because the products are simply that much better than the competition. The complaints are largely dwarfed out by by happy (or at least non-complaining) users.
Microsoft's position for Win8 is completely compromised by Metro being a BAD idea on desktops. Had they executed this better, they could have delivered something that kept the goodness of Win7, but slowly put pressure on App devs (ie, sexy new interface/foundation classes only avaialble for WinStore release) to move. Even Apple with all their skill at app stores couldn't force all the Mac App dev to happen in the Store (and Mac devs were very interested).
Just like a driver asleep at the wheel waking up to see a cliff oncoming (that was visible for miles had they been awake), and veering wildly to avoid falling off.. Microsoft is trying to force the situation, and losing it by over-compensating.
[1] note: the whole strongarming of G+ onto the existing Google products is more Microsoft-ish - I wonder if that's due to all the ex-softies that joined Google?
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Funny)
And Windows XP as Windows 11.
Ha! Spinal Tap reference! Imagine Steve Ballmer dancing around an 18" Stonehenge.
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And oh how they danced [...] for fear that daybreak would come too soon...
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Isn't that the rumored Windows 9, coming soon?
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Informative)
Supposedly Windows 9 will stick to desktop mode when it's installed on a desktop and run Metro apps in a windows instead of going to Metro mode. I suppose if we're to expect an invasion of dockable tablets this compromise is acceptable.
If docked: disable Metro mode and open Metro apps in a normal window in desktop mode
If in tablet mode: run metro apps full screen
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...open Metro apps in a normal window in desktop mode
A "nuke it from orbit" entry on a restored start menu that makes the Metro window disappear in a mushroom cloud would be fun.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, drop Metro on the desktop/laptop already.
For folks that like it, make it a downloadable add-on.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:4, Informative)
But then how can Microsoft coax users toward their walled garden of software that they get a cut of the revenue from while simultaneously making users sign in to their Microsoft Accounts? It's not an accident that in Win 8.1 it defaults to dropping you back into Metro whether you want it to or not and the easiest way to get out is to open a desktop application.
Metro isn't about what the user wants from the operating system, it's about what Microsoft wants from the user.
Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is the difference between a monopoly and a normal company. A normal company has to make more money by pleasing customers -- higher quality, more features, better overall value proposition, etc. A monopoly will inevitably take the sleazy route of forcing customers to do things they don't want to"
I'm not sure "monopoly" is the right word but a lot of companies, particularly tech companies seem to go through two distinct phases:
Phase 1: Expand customer base as quickly as possible by pleasing customers
Phase 2: Once customer base has reached saturation and growth from new customers is slow, new growth comes from increasing the amount of money that can be made from each customer. This usually involves pissing off the customer base.
Once a company can no longer grow its customer base at a significant rate it's either 1) become evil or 2) tell the board of directors that you won't increase revenue. Guess which one is the more popular option.
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And Google.
And McDonald's Mighty wings..........
Re:New MS business plan (Score:4, Interesting)
In today's world, other than Microsoft there's no one else who charges for an operating system.
Apple keeps all hardware in-house. They certainly do charge for the OS, they just build it into the price of the full system.
Google is an advertising company. They don't seem to care much about anything except getting people to use their services to display their ads. If that means working on an OS they don't charge for, so be it.
So Microsoft is the only one of these three whose business model is primarily software. And, as it turns out, Microsoft is becoming a devices-and-services company in order to more effectively compete with the above two... but only a fool (or a hater) would assume that such a large company can or should make that full transition overnight.
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Re:New MS business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
In the old days it was only us tech nerds who would use such stuff - everyone else would just make do with what Microsoft gave them and curse what the PC vendors added on.
HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2/9 (Score:3)
HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2/9 or maybe and this is a long shot get mac os X on there hardware.
Re:HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2 (Score:4, Informative)
Read Paul T's column on Win Supersite. Windows 9 is going to have a start menu for desktop-centric uses.
Re:HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2 (Score:5, Interesting)
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What is wrong with the Start Screen vs Start Menu?
The Start Screen can:
Re:HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2 (Score:5, Insightful)
It:
1. Fits too much crap on your screen at once disorienting you.
2. Doesn't function as a logical tree-style menu.
3. Covers the whole screen.
So you pretty much reworded all the bad things about it to sorta kinda make them appear to not be horrible. Well done. You will have a good career in either advertising or politics.
Re:HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2 (Score:5, Insightful)
So? What else do you need to look at while selecting something from a menu?
You're right. When I open the bookmarks menu in Firefox, everything on my screen should go away and be replaced by a scrolling mass of big tiles. It just makes perfect sense.
Not everything has to be a tree control.
You're right. When I look for Photoshop to start it, it makes no sense for it to be under 'Adobe', with InDesign and Premiere. They should all just be scattered at random in a big scrolling mass of tiles.
WTF? I mean, really, WTF? Aren't /.ers supposed to have an IQ higher than room temperature?
That why most of us can see what a disaster Window 8 is.
Re:HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2 (Score:5, Interesting)
The Start Screen is, simply, the worst possible UI design I could think up while keeping it still technically usable.
Fitting more shortcuts on the screen at once isn't a good thing. It just increases the clutter.
Drilling through folders is a good thing. It lets you keep less frequently used stuff out of the way, but still easy to find when you need to find it. (And don't say you can just start typing the name of the program you want instead of drilling down. I don't know the name of every program I rarely use, so I'll still be hunting, but in a more difficult way.)
Take advantage of the whole screen is a bad thing. It breaks my mental continuity and flow every single time. I don't want to switch completely away from the desktop to perform an operation on the desktop. That makes no sense at all.
The Start Screen is 1/3 of what makes me hate Windows 8 (which I've been using daily for over a year now). Another third is the "hot areas" you hover your mouse over, and the last third is those damned charms.
The problems with Windwos 8 are all centered around trying to make it both a desktop and a tablet interface. Those two are very, very different use cases and trying to cover them both in a single UI is guaranteed to make that UI suck in one case or the other (or both).
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Re:HP has the pull to get MS to fix windows by 8.2 (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it entirely, but you say it like it's something small. That's like saying, "what's to fix on the Pontiac Aztek other than the butt-ugly exterior?" Or, "what's to fix in the New Jersey government other than all the corruption?"
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If you do that, you'll have to nuke the entire US to be fair. NJ's main fault is that it isn't quite as good at hiding its corruption as many other states. This whole country is hopelessly corrupt.
meanwhile..... (Score:2)
Any non-business is just dealing with the Start Screen or installed Classic Shell.
Re:meanwhile.... (Score:3)
Actually, if the sales numbers are to be believed, people just aren't buying new PCs at all.
Re:meanwhile.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much exactly this.
Except for RAM, the vast majority of PC users will never fully max out their machine. They won't even get close to what the CPU can do. Even 10 years ago when someone asked me what kind of PC they should buy, I would tell them to buy the oldest machine they can find with twice as much memory as they think they need -- because in my experience, lots of RAM contributes more to the longevity of a machine than loads of CPU.
Nowadays, I think gamers and people doing heavy-duty work are the only people who need to be upgrading regularly.
The latest and greatest is often not all that great, and the differences between the old and the new are incremental.
For many many people, the PC they've had for several years now works just fine and doesn't need to be upgraded. For many more, a tablet will cover 90% of their needs 90% of the time (and, yes, that's a completely contrived statistic).
Microsoft made crap tons of money over the years by people being on the upgrade treadmill and getting the latest version of Office. And that is no longer a compelling reason for most people -- I know I use more .doc files than I do .docx files, and I'm not sure I could name a single feature in the latest Office which is any different than the previous version.
And, quite randomly since they mention Vista -- my main PC is a machine I bought in '09 with 8GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores running Vista, and with many TB of disk space. Having thrown a lot of resources at it, I've actually enjoyed Vista. On small machines it was a resource hog, but if you gave it lots of resources, it was actually pretty good in my experience.
Re:meanwhile.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for RAM, the vast majority of PC users will never fully max out their machine. They won't even get close to what the CPU can do. Even 10 years ago when someone asked me what kind of PC they should buy, I would tell them to buy the oldest machine they can find with twice as much memory as they think they need -- because in my experience, lots of RAM contributes more to the longevity of a machine than loads of CPU.
This is probably true, but I don't think most people have realised this. Recently, when a colleague's Win 7 laptop started to run slowly she announced that it was time to get a new computer. Most people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer starts running slowly that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change. It either doesn't occur them that a reinstall of Windows can fix the problem or they don't have the skills/confidence/motivation to perform the operation.
Re:meanwhile.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer starts running slowly that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
Actually, many people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer doesn't do what they expect it should that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
"My email doesn't work anymore! Should I upgrade?" (saved wrong password)
"I can't find the buttons I used to have! Do I need to upgrade?" (accidentally hid toolbar)
"I can't hear any sounds on my computer anymore! Do I need a new one?" (volume on mute)
This is particularly true of older people, who don't really understand anything about how a computer functions. I've heard of someone recently who thought a new computer was necessary just because she wanted to change her email address.
So, yeah, when you have folks like this, there definitely is a much larger pool of people who would have no idea how to attempt an OS reinstall or how to "clean" their system to speed it up again.
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Except for RAM, the vast majority of PC users will never fully max out their machine. They won't even get close to what the CPU can do. Even 10 years ago when someone asked me what kind of PC they should buy, I would tell them to buy the oldest machine they can find with twice as much memory as they think they need -- because in my experience, lots of RAM contributes more to the longevity of a machine than loads of CPU.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but I figured I'd lend a me-too to support what you're saying --
I have a gaming system. It's 2 years old. Core i5 2500k, overclocked at 4.8GHz, with 16GB of RAM. I bought it for $1000, 2 years ago, and haven't needed to upgrade anything. Not even the video card. It's currently connected to the TV via HDMI, with an xbox controller connected to it, and I play Steam games on the big screen with it. It'll be a while before it needs any kind of upgrade, in part because I've go
Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 8 is designed around a touch-screen interface; one that is a struggle to operate via a keyboard and mouse.
For entertainment, a touch-screen interface is fine. But, believe it or not, people *still* do *real work* on desktop PCs. And for that use case, Windows 8 is a massive productivity downgrade.
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Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:5, Interesting)
What I genuinely don't understand is - why break backward compatibility?
Why not just layer touch on top of the existing UI?
Then everybody wins.
For example, there could be two ways to reboot your PC:
1) Pull the side-window thing over, go to Settings, then Power, then Reboot
or
2) Click Start, click the Arrow beside Shutdown, then click Reboot
One is better for touch (supposedly) and the other is what you're already used to doing.
Does anyone know why this wasn't the method they went with?
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Why are you forced to say "Siri" or "O.K. Google" to activate voice recognition?
O.K. - maybe you're not forced, but it is certainly not easy to get past the default configurations...
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Well, you're also not forced to use voice recognition.
And, as to why, I assume they spent a lot of time making sure the voice engine could be certain to know when you are talking to it and tested the recognition under lots of situations for those specific phrases. That, and marketing wants to be sure the brand is out there in the wild.
Presumably if you wanted to train it to respond to "Hey Asshole", it might take a little longer to be sure it's actually going to know you meant it, and the company might not
Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:5, Insightful)
What I genuinely don't understand is - why break backward compatibility? Why not just layer touch on top of the existing UI?
Microsoft are desperate to get into mobile.
No-one wants a smart phone with no apps.
No-one wants to write apps for a smart phone OS with no users.
Hence Microsoft had to push the smart phone OS onto the desktop so developers might think they'd have a market for their apps.
Except no-one wants to buy a desktop PC with a smart phone OS.
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Microsoft are desperate to get into mobile.
WinCE.
Zune.
(. . . and Surface. . . )
I think that there is some kind of deep, genetic predisposition for failure in the mobile market for Microsoft.
And they're trying desperately to let that infect their successful desktop market. Good riddance, anyway.
Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:4, Insightful)
3) Right click in the bottom left corner, click Shut down or sign out, click Restart
Translated:
1. Do arbitrary action in some completely unmarked area of screen to pull up a magic set of options.
2. No, not that area. Try again.
3. Gah, you fucking retard, are you even TRYING?
4. *sigh* It's like you don't even know how to use a computer. What part of "some completely unmarked area of screen" do you NOT understand?
5. Great. Yeah, nice try, GRANDPA, but that big area marked "Start" isn't going to help you any more like it has for the past nearly two decades. It's like I'm talking to a Neanderthal here...
6. Oh, hey, here we go again with completely unmarked area C. HELLO??? ANYBODY IN THERE? THAT DIDN'T WORK THE FIRST TIME, DIPSHIT, IT AIN'T GONNA W-
7. Screw it and either install OS and GUI from people who have taken advantage of this chance to catch up, or purchase tablet whose interface was designed by a company that understands how this is supposed to work.
Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:5, Insightful)
1. While earlier Windows versions somehow managed to make the user feel like it was their fault if they couldn't figure out something, Windows 8 makes it look like it is Windows 8's fault. And vehemently so. That's why people hate it.
2. If you are an experienced Windows 7 user, learning how to use a computer with MacOS X is _easier_ than learning how to use a computer with Windows 8.
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It's left click like the other stuff "normal folk" click on. No need for right click which "normal folk" have problems with.
So why the change to right click?
Is shutting down or logging off easier for newbies? Is there a built-in method for faster shutting down or restarting for the pros?
Many of the other Windo
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Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:4, Insightful)
If Right-Click turns the mouse pointer to a "Hand" grabber: now moving the mouse left/right is the same as "touching the screen and dragging in a given direction".
There is absolutely nothing that "touch" brings to the table that can't already be done with the tools we have: mouse, keyboard, and touch-pads/touch-pad mice. It's also only about 3 clicks to change the "Start-Screen" to an Apps-Screen... except its an either/or proposition. All-in-all it makes very little sense that we cannot set hotkeys or toolbar-buttons to actions like bringing up "normal-start-screen" or "apps-only" or "a folder with modern-layout/view."
After all this time how is it that Microsoft doesn't "get" that customization of the interface is what makes MS different from everyone else.
Instead we wind up with Windows 8, and Aero -- which many consider as the logical upgrade from the Win2K/98 look, as opposed to the Fisher-Price look of XP -- ripped out by its roots, instead of an option to the flat bland crap appearance of Win8.
Not only does Win8 go off on it's on tangent in a number of respects, but it does away with concrete tangible concepts that Microsoft has iterated over since Windows 3.
I'm sure everyone recalls the basic theming ability to choose 2 colors for the title bar, and have it blend. Win 8 takes that concept and shits on it. Text is flat, Title-bar background are bland, flat, shapeless non-dimensional pastel colours. I think if the dev's had of tripped out on acid we would of wound up with something better than the utter-disregard for users in Windows 8.
Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score:4, Funny)
Try using it for once in your life.
We have. That's why we hate it.
No I won't get used to it (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's call a spade a spade: the touch-screen interface SUCKS on a traditional desktop or laptop PC. It's not a matter of "trying something new". It's a matter of using the right tool for the job, and the touch-screen interface is the WRONG tool for this job. To be fair, the linux touch-screen interfaces don't belong on a PC any more than windows 8. They belong on phones and tablets.
Interface also sucks on a touch screen (Score:3)
What is the difference? (Score:2)
'Look at the business model difference between Intel and ARM
TFA didn't clarify what he meant by this. Maybe he meant the business models in the different realms, rather than the companies themselves?
Upgrade path? (Score:5, Funny)
Is HP providing an easy upgrade path from 8 to 7?
Smart Choice. (Score:4, Interesting)
My daughter is going to College in the fall. She is by no means tech savvy. But she was choosing a Cromebook with local storage instead of anything win8. And she likes a windows phone.
It will never go away (Score:5, Interesting)
adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft
People make now these revolutionary statements, but they will forget fast. Behind the scenes, Microsoft is likely already fixing what sucks about Windows 8, including bringing the Start Menu back. After the release of next Windows, this little (extremely expensive) Win8 mistake can be swept under the rug just like ME and Vista. But something which Microsoft knows best is keeping their foothold of running Windows on every PC. I bet Ballmer and Myerson are just spinning around in their office chairs laughing and saying "no, Mr. HP, you will be running Windows".
Re:It will never go away (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree that Microsoft will likely never "go away", to a large degree the statement that "the next generation .. will not be dominated by Microsoft" has already come true. The vast majority of new "screens" that people are viewing content on, surfing the Internet on, and generally "using" in their day-to-day life are smartphones and tablets. And Microsoft is being pummeled by Android and Apple. People are looking at what they used to buy laptops for and deciding "hey, I can do 90% of this with an iPad/GalaxyTab, and the 10% that I need to use a keyboard for my old laptop works just fine."
Behind the scenes HP (and the other manufacturers) would respond to Microsoft by saying "look, Samsung is killing us. Apple is killing us. Let us sell Windows 7 or our next new product is a laptop that runs Android."
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The current slow take up of Win8 has more to do with Moores Law running out.
No,. it's due to Joe Sixpack going to their local computer store, looking at the screen of a Window 8 PC and going 'WTF is this crap? Where's Windows?' and going home.
Business is far less impacted because they can just install Windows 7 instead. And they probably upgrade once the old PCs have been written off against their taxes, not when they wear out.
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Behind the scenes, Microsoft is likely already fixing what sucks about Windows 8, including bringing the Start Menu back. After the release of next Windows, this little (extremely expensive) Win8 mistake can be swept under the rug just like ME and Vista.
Microsoft has already spent 2 years working on fixing W8 - you got W8.1.... not much of an improvement. It's not just about the start button. The random reorganization of menu structures forcing new training on users and admins is not considered worthwhile and is probably MS's biggest obstacle to overcome. Had the menu structures stayed the same, upgrading would have been a minor concern (both OS and applications such as Office). Office's changes were so great it was easier to move to another application th
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you should be able to sledgehammer Win8 into shape by
1 installing Classic Shell and setting up the start menu (win7 style)
2 create a GodMode folder to uncover all the "hidden" control panels
Dell still offers Windows 7 (Score:5, Informative)
You can still buy pre-installed Windows 7 on a Dell (business section).
If Microsoft are determined to shoot themselves in the foot, by failing to let people have what they want then so be it.
Philip
Re:Dell still offers Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
No they won't. They want Windows 7 for two reasons:
1. It's easier to use on a desktop.
2. It's always expensive and troublesome to upgrade operating systems and always results in some applications that just don't work right or don't work at all under the new OS. Continuing to use Windows 7 as long as possible defers that expense, or in some cases eliminates it.
This is also the reason why few businesses switch from Windows to Linux even though Linux is free and less troublesome for malware. A Windows upgrade is very expensive, but going to Linux company-wide is a major retooling. (As opposed to putting in Linux machines in a few places where they are highly confident that they will work, which just makes sense from a business POV.) My company has Windows, OS X, at least two brands of Linux and FreeBSD systems all working different tasks.
Hmmm ... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Why would you buy a PC from HP? The amount of crapware on the laptop we got for my wife several years ago was downright pathetic -- what should have been a fast machine was dog slow because HP has embedded dozens of things little more useful than Clippy ("I see you are near a wireless network, the HP Network assistant is here to help"). The sheer amount of garbage rendered the machine unusable without hours of disabling stuff. (In fairness, the mother in law's Toshiba had the same problems, because vendor builds suck.)
2) Will Microsoft even allow this? I should think they'd be saying "nope, you can't sell those any more".
3) Wow, Windows 8 much be a turd if people are going back to a four-year old OS. Someone missed the mark by a long shot.
4) "adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft." From the numbers, it would appear that Android is well on its way to dominating the next generation of computers, even if people here don't think tablets are actually computers. Microsoft is no longer competing with Apple and Linux, they're competing with Google.
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Wow, Windows 8 must be a turd
. . . and it's a turd with a "touch" interface . . . so you have to "touch" that turd.to use it.
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HP Business PCs come with FreeDOS as an OS option (i.e. Windows-tax free).
Yes, their Consumer lines are garbage.
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Why would you buy a PC from HP?
Great question. Even if you format the drive and load a clean copy of Windows, you still can't get the HP crapware out of the firmware. You know, the one that blocks you from putting any wireless card you want in a laptop... The truly evil part is that they RSA sign the firmware so you can't modify the hardware whitelist away. Seriously, stay away from HP.
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LOL ... I've also learned to stay the hell out of purchasing decisions for the wife when it comes to technology.
If I try to tell her what she needs, I get grumpy scowls. And, unfortunately, the BlackBerry Playbook I bought her also gets me grumpy scowls (because it's a useless piece of crap).
So, she is free to buy what she wants, I will do minimal tech support only if really needed, but for the most part I leave her
Serves Microsoft Right (Score:2)
Windows 8 showed total disregard for the installed Windows 7 user base and is a travesty just like the stupid ribbon that was forced on upgrading Office users. Microsoft (ie Balmer) should have its nuts crushed. What a bunch of idiots.
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Even more idiotic are all the people that continue to buy MS products after all this. Yeah, it's pretty dumb when a company pisses off its customers by trying to force something on them they don't want. But it's much more stupid when customers keep buying their crap. This is what you get for making yourself reliant on a single source.
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too bad it's HP (Score:4, Informative)
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Low quality laptops? What the hell are you talking about? We send people all over the world with HP laptops. The EliteBook series is a freaking trooper.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/R... [notebookcheck.net]
I don't know what low end you are buying but don't put all their laptops in one basket. We order these with 16GB RAM and 240GB SSDs. I've never had to have one returned for service that is under 3 years old. Like I said, these are traveling all over the world and used by on-site aerospace engineers.
As far as support, I'
Will MS listen to OEMs and users? (Score:3)
The real question is whether this kind of push-back from OEMs will convince Microsoft to let Windows 9 users fully opt-out of Metro in favor of a classic desktop experience. Individual users are easy to ignore, but when OEMs (not to mention large businesses with volume licenses) are telling MS that Metro just isn't happening on the desktop, maybe they will have no choice but to listen.
Now is your chance to try Linux... (Score:5, Interesting)
Before you label this as another "year of linux on the desktop!" post, hear me out
I have a retired neighbor that knows nothing of computers, but being retired he needs something to do all day. So with Vista, he uses the internet to connect to his car club and use email with his car club friends. He also uses websites with a fair degree of competency. He is so unsure of himself though, that he asks me hoe for help on a fairly regular basis with questions like "What happened to the little man?" (MSN sys tray icon, discontinued in 2013, replaced with Skype, and yes, that was another question) and "Where'd my icon go?" and plenty of other questions regarding the changing behavior of websites. He's got a very static view of things.A friend of his was also a victim of a virus that stole his banking into, so he was very concerned about that.
So when he asked me what laptop to get, and being on fixed income, his needs were simple, and I didn't want to have to field questions about Windows 8, which would have been a nightmare. Dual mode? Charms Bar? Yeah right.
So I set him up with Linux Mint 15 (Cinnamon) on a bargain laptop from Newegg that came with W8 on it. I pre-configured automatic updates for everything except applications (security and stability) and set the theme to the XP theme (He had previously used XP) very literally and let him have it. I got one question from him since. How to install solitaire. Stupid me, I forgot to show him the Software Center. Its installed now. I check in with him from time to time and he got a MyFi for it, and his girlfriend (also not very computer savvy, but better than him) configured the MyFi, and I never heard a peep. He's had it about 4 months now and only that one question. Not a complaint and no little men have disappeared.
Year of Linux on the desktop? No, but for him it is.
But still crappy 1366x768 resolution screens (Score:5, Insightful)
This promotion actually made me go over and check HPs website out, only to be disappointed that the two laptops offered both had 1366x768 resolution screens. Come on HP. You outfit this Envy laptop with the latest i7 and 12GB of RAM, and then hobble it with such a lousy screen? I don't care what the operating system is, no sale.
Despite Metro (Score:5, Insightful)
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