Linux Format forums

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

Ram — Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:46 pm

Author: Ram

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:46 pm

I have 2 Laptops for work. One on Win7, skipped Vista on that, but Win7 give enough issues with connecting to remote sites that I had to install the virtual XP from MS to run some programs.

The 2nd laptop is account specific still on XP, hopefully that'll only move to Win7.

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

wyliecoyoteuk — Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:16 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:16 pm

My company is moving to win7 simply because we do not want 8, and XP will lose support in April next year.
We are Microsoft partners, so we will have to move before October, when all of our available free win7 licenses will move to win8.
I expect that a lot of businesses will be doing the same, or if they buy PCs with 8, they will "downgrade" them to 7, much as we did with Vista and XP.
In a way, its a shame, as the Win8 OS itself is good, it's just the metro nonsense that will cause problems.

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

guy — Sat Jul 28, 2012 11:47 am

Author: guy

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 11:47 am

Ram wrote:

johnhudson wrote:

They will take the risk of upsetting desktop users to get the tablet and mobile 'phone users.

Will the enterprise user put up with it though.

We won't know for a while. Enterprises can take a long time between updates. Many are still on 2004/XP desktops, in the middle of migrating to Windows 7.

My crystal ball says that early adopters of Win 8 will scream blue murder and revert to 7 until 9 comes along. MS secretly know this perfectly well. But it is bad marketing to diss your shiny new product, so MS will not admit to the long 7 life span until after the screaming starts. That's 'cos this is just a carbon-copy replay of the Vista fiasco.

At this point my crystal ball swerves over to a rumour that the Surface will have a four-figure price tag, even the cut-down ARM version. So no expectations of pile-em-high-and-sell-em-cheap sales volumes there, then.

In other words, the Win 8 market appears dependent on OEM sales to the failing Nokia and the squeezed netbook/wannabee tablet vendors trapped in the MS ecosystem.

The ball sees Nokia crashing in flames, the netbook/tablets fighting a gallant rearguard action - in steady retreat unless and until Metro and MS Office-in-the-cloud can play cleanly and cheaply with legacy Office-in-my-network business systems.

Could Win 8 be just a marketing ploy - spinning the "win 9 aplha" as a product launch in order to put people off iPads and Galaxies, buying time for that to happen? I don't know, the crystal ball's battery has just died.

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

Ram — Fri Jul 27, 2012 11:43 pm

Author: Ram

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 11:43 pm

johnhudson wrote:

They will take the risk of upsetting desktop users to get the tablet and mobile 'phone users.

Will the enterprise user put up with it though.

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

johnhudson — Fri Jul 27, 2012 11:00 pm

Author: johnhudson

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 11:00 pm

Windows 8 is a sludge; it consists of Windows Metro and Windows Legacy Desktop; if you have an x86 you can have both; if you have an ARM, you only get Metro.

Metro is browser based like Google's Chromebook. My guess is that they aim to add functionality over time and drop desktop Windows in a couple of versions.

They make their money from OEM sales on new hardware and the global trend is for those to be tablets and 4G mobile 'phones, not desktops. So focusing on these markets is the only way of ensuring a decent OS revenue stream.

They will take the risk of upsetting desktop users to get the tablet and mobile 'phone users.

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

wyliecoyoteuk — Fri Jul 27, 2012 3:54 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 3:54 pm

MS seem determined to annoy all of their customers.
The ribbon is apparently still despised by about 60% of office users, now they're going to screw the desktop up as well.
The desktop/Metro kludge makes Canonical's Unity look like genius.

Re: Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

MartyBartfast — Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:21 pm

Author: MartyBartfast

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:21 pm

He's not the only one : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/23/gartner_windows_8_review/

Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

Ram — Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:39 pm

Author: Ram

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:39 pm

Valve boss Gabe Newell calls Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'

Quote ' "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well," said Mr Newell. '