“A senior Samsung Electronics executive said Friday the launch of Windows 8 has failed to bolster demand for PCs and he does not expect the PC industry to rebound soon.” Of course, Samsung and other OEMs could’ve, you know, built better computers. Just a suggestion.
As someone who recently had the displeasure of configuring a newly purchased Windows 8 computer for a family member who could be described as less than tech savvy I have to wonder what Microsoft was thinking with Windows 8. The computer in question was a standard desktop tower. I had to do a Google search to figure out how to log in. It turns out one has to maneuver the mouse to “flick up” the lower half of the Welcome screen to reveal the login prompt. Once logged in, I discovered numerous non-intuitive designs, including elusive hot corners and border-less Metro apps that are not intuitively exited without knowing about the aforementioned hot corners. I can only imagine all of this will make life hell for users accustomed to previous Windows editions. While all this might be lovely on a touch-screen tablet or laptop device, it’s entirely inappropriate and even confusing for those using Windows 8 on a traditional desktop. Thankfully I found Classic Shell, a free tool that installed easily and allowed me to bypass many of Windows 8’s most annoying aspects to recreate a computing experience more akin to previous editions of Windows that most Windows users know and love. How long something like this will work only Microsoft knows…
Edited 2013-03-08 23:19 UTC
I’ve been running Windows 8 for a few weeks now. A few observations on what you’ve said:
I don’t know why this is happening. All I have to do is press a key or click the mouse to bring up the login prompt.
You can get out of a Metro application in two main ways: either kill the application using Alt-F4 or switch to another application using Alt-Tab or Win-Tab. Additionally, many Metro apps give you the ability to close them by right-clicking to bring up settings.
When you think about it, this really isn’t that different from previous versions of windows.
Going on all the negative press that I’d read about it prior to using it, I would have believed this. But having used it for a few weeks now, I actually prefer how Windows 8 does things. Give it some time.
I have no experience with Win8 so I can’t comment on it’s UI, but there’s something I’m curious about here. Has anyone ever done any sort of research/study on how many people actually use Alt-F4 or Alt/Super-Tab?
I’m sure the average teen or MS-Office user knows these bindings, but my mum never knew about it in all her time with Win 98 and XP. Also experienced my fair share of “how-u-do-dat?!!” reactions from people while I Alt-Tabbed to switch between apps whenever helping them out on their computers, and they came from all walks of life.
Right-clicking is probably more natural for someone raised on Windows, I figure.
Edited 2013-03-09 10:23 UTC
Bingo! I had to chuckle at that response. Sure, we geeks know the fancy key combos, but grandma and non-techies surely don’t. As a Linux guy myself, I scarcely remember what CTRL+ALT+DEL does anymore.
I hope you chuckled condescendingly!
Press it and find out. A little tip though, you might want to save first.
Under Linux it often does nothing. Under Windows 7 and 8 it brings you to a menu where you can select to log out, reboot, start task manager or such. Under OSX…well, I don’t know. Probably nothing.
Ie. no need to save first.
Ctrl+Alt+Del on Linux is a really handy way to reboot when you’re in a TTY, if somehow your resources are all tied up to the extent that even your console is unresponsive. It’s also useful if your graphical environment is stuck, Ctrl+Alt+Backspace isn’t configured correctly, and you find that after having done a Ctrl+Alt+F1 the whole system is unresponsive. If even Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn’t work there is always the REISUB-magic…
But yes, most graphical environments catch Ctrl+Alt+Del to not do anything.
The charms bar needed to be called “the secret bar that pops out of the side of the screen that you don’t really expect”.
Hm. I just pressed space button.
Same. To be fair to the OP though — this shouldn’t be the case.
I’ve also seen people who stare at the lock screen blankly and ask me how to get the thing to go to the login prompt.
If everyone used Windows Phone this wouldn’t be an issue
I have a Windows Phone, but I did stare a while at the screen wondering why people say Windows 8 boots so quick and it didn’t appear to be doing on my computer.
It’s a desktop OS that is the only one that has 2 levels of lock screen.(even iOS and Android give you the option to enter your password immediately after you physically unlock)
It’s the “Press Ctrl+Salt+Del to unlock” of unlock screens. While sometimes useful, should be an optional thing.
When I hear stories like this one, I’m always curious of whether low sales figures can differentiate between a genuine decline in conventional computer users, versus merely a market which has reached saturation.
Does anyone have the data that differentiates between these cases? It’s a significant difference between one points to computer usage in decline, but the other points to computer sales in decline while usage remains stable.
Edit: I know this is extremely complicated because sales data has many facets, like the (un)popularity of windows 8, so I’m really more interested in long term research that proves the market is truly shrinking and not just new computer sales… seems like someone would have done this study, but I haven’t seen it.
Edited 2013-03-08 23:35 UTC
I don’t think it really matters, because Microsoft sells through OEMs, and the OEMs are revolting en masse. Microsoft burned all their bridges in the OEM community with their secret Surface project and its associated industrial espionage campaign.
Samsung, HP, Acer, and friends are furious with Microsoft. Microsoft had no choice but to take a large equity stake in Dell. At this point, Microsoft doesn’t have any friends in the channel unless they buy them.
The only company that burned their bridges worse than Microsoft is NVIDIA. These two companies have pulled the rug out from under their partners so badly that they may never do business again. Microsoft did it with malicious intent to subsume their partners’ business models. NVIDIA did it by repeatedly lying to cover up their inability to deliver on promises. Either way, nobody wants to deal with either of them.
Who would have predicted that NVIDIA would announce a new Tegra SoC and not even attempt to identify any launch partners? They’ve got no customers for their new part, and they’ve *somehow* managed to lose all three of the major console designs to a competitor which was supposed to be near-death. It’s an unmitigated disaster. Microsoft is facing the same kind of backlash in the channel. Everybody is headed for the nearest exit.
My parents are in texas for the winter volunteering their services and their laptop died. They ran to costco and could only get a windows8 system. My uncle is there and does some IT stuff for people, he’s helped them with it. My mother complains that the system is wierd and obscure, especially the gestures. She just doesn’t get them.
On the hardware side, I really believe that a plateau has been hit for what’s require for every day processing. To just get on the web even a machine 4-5 years old still works just fine. 15 year ago the rate of innovation on both the hardware and bloat on the software side obsoleted computers a lot faster. Of late the software bloat rate has decreased giving older hardware more life.
Edited 2013-03-08 23:28 UTC
I always find it funny when people say “bloat” and what they really mean is features and/or reliability.
recall the Javascript wars of the late 2000s. how many versions of office mostly changed file formats and added corner features. people say win7 and win8 re faster than their predecessors. that wasn’t true of previous windows releases that were successively noticeably slower.
I think it is easy to make bold statements. I think there has been a big architecture change in recent years and some change in thinking.
I think Vista being late was because they re-wrote and mvoed a lot of stuff, which paved the way to improvements in 7 & 8.
Also Windows XP just doesn’t run well on modern hardware even with specifications as good as my machine (I have a partition for .NET 1.1 dev). It just doesn’t know how to take advantage of the hardware.
Edited 2013-03-09 20:12 UTC
And even 10 year old PC is still quite good for browsing. It helps how, during the last few years, browsers became faster on the same hardware.
This bodes very badly for Windows 8, and the situation is quickly running off of the rails.
Microsoft has slashed the prices of the Windows 8 licenses to create an incentive for lower prices across the product range.
They also made a comparison to Windows Vista, which I think is fair. Vista launched with problems (different problems, mind you, but problems) which hindered its reception (relative to Windows sales, it still sold a ton) but what happened with Vista was quite peculiar, and I think maybe be repeated by Windows 8 (but maybe not, see below)
Vista launched with performance, stability, and architectural deficiencies that took forever to get fixed. By the time the kinks in Vista were ironed out, Windows 7 was already being whispered about in tech circles.
It just never caught on because 7 came out and fixed all the problems, had the shiny object effect, and as a result had a great reception.
Windows 8 is a true paradigm change in that the way computers are sold is changing, the experiences people expect, the hardware people want. The market is different.
Windows 8 suffers from a serial lack of seriousness from OEMs. If there ever was a case for Microsoft to go (slightly more) vertical it’s the terrible showing OEMs have had with their gear.
It is egregious the shortage of touch screen Windows 8 devices that were available at launch. I walked into Best Buy and saw devices that basically looked like they took the Windows 7 sticker off of them, slapped a Windows 8 sticker on, and sold it with Windows 8.
However, not all the blame is to go on OEMs. Microsoft royally f–ked up here too:
1. They completely screwed up the trackpad experience. Why isn’t there a reference implementation of this? Why does every OEM have to implement gestures in the trackpad on their own?
Some laptops scroll by swiping side to side, some up and down (wtf?) and some scroll in opposite directions. Its madness. Who the hell wants that?
2. They seriously f–ked up the Windows RT messaging. Its useless. Kill Windows RT for 10 inch devices. Bring it back for Windows Blue when you hit the rumored 7 inch screens.
At the screen size, people don’t care about running desktop apps anyway so RT is a natural fit. Plus it gives SoC vendors more time to get their firmwares up to snuff.
Intel is more than good enough for Microsoft’s entire range (GPUs are lacking, yeah, but its really not that big of a deal. I’m ignorant on how well AMD fares here, so if someone knows, feel free to comment)
3. They position Windows 8 as a transitional release, but don’t really do transitional things. Why can’t I pin Metro apps to my taskbar?
Why can’t Win32 apps take advantage of the new XAML stack? Why are some parts of XAML very rough when it comes to Mouse and Keyboard support?
And, why the hell can’t people compile their own ARM based ports on Windows RT? What’s the reasoning behind it, other than purposely creating friction?
If it kills battery life then make it a toggle. Android hides non-Market apps behind a toggle. It works fine for them.
4. Boneheaded decisions in Metro.
A 30 second intro video to the f–king charms bar isn’t going to cut it. Hot corners are a stupid idea. I’m not sure why they’re even visible on the desktop. They don’t do anything.
And for f–ks sake, just allow boot to desktop behind a toggle. Get people to shut up about this already.
5. If you’re going to alienate and piss off OEMs by launching Surface, then make it more than a half hearted effort.
Either rapidly ramp up your retail footprint with Microsoft Stores, sell them in every place traditional OEMs are sold at, or a combination of both.
Get serious about Surface, or kill it. Don’t try to play both sides of the coin.
How Windows 8 might not be like Vista
If Microsoft can in the short term fix their messaging and point of sale issues AND implement sensible improvements to Windows Blue and get it out by October, they could avoid a lot of the stigma associated with Vista.
Edited 2013-03-08 23:30 UTC
I’m not going to comment on Windows 8 here, but I am curious as to, even had Windows 8 been a smashing success, how anybody thought this was going to drive the demand for new PCs? Most PCs that can run Windows XP can also run Win7, and by extension, Win8. There’s no reason for most people to run out and buy a new PC just for the upgrade.
Windows 8 suffers from a serial lack of seriousness from OEMs. If there ever was a case for Microsoft to go (slightly more) vertical it’s the terrible showing OEMs have had with their gear.
I think they should stop waiting for OEMS and create a tablet. They should call it Surface and spend hundreds of millions on dance commercials during prime time in an attempt to convince people it is cool. That sounds like a good plan.
Or they could listen to customers and fix the stupid thing overnight. We’ll see if Microsoft continues to delve deeper into stupid and if you’ll continue to defend them and this inane plan.
Only in your fanatical pea brain could my entire scathing commentary be construed as a defense.
I quite significantly disagree with them on things, have conceded other things in light of discussion, and defend them for other things.
I’m not consistently for or consistently against them in every position they take, across everything that they do.
I’m however waiting for the day when you can have a rational discussion without your man crush for Sinofsky or Ballmer showing.
You’re still defending the overall plan and you’re pushing their lame excuse of blaming the OEMs for not making enough touch devices when Microsoft’s own Surface RT is a dud.
Look I predicted this disaster the moment Sinofsky started censoring technical questions while you’ve been the Windows 8 p.r. defense here.
Surface and OEM Laptops are completely separate segments. The sales of the Laptops are almost a given to be Windows 8.
The key is to make Laptops as attractive to the consumer as their shiny new tablets, because once they’ve been brought into the form factor their choices are limited to Windows.
The consumer hasn’t actually been even formally introduced to touchscreen laptops as a whole.
Had this been in place, OEMs could’ve pulled in a lot more sales, because it is not only shininess of touch, but it also highlights the Windows 8 experience.
Whereas the Surface competes with Android and iOS, Laptops compete with Windows and Windows.
This is why less than stellar touchscreen tablet sales doesn’t necessarily imply that there would be a poor reception to touch screen laptops.
That’s something that bothers me: I have an ALPS touchpad on my laptop and, well, there is no way of disabling the gestures for bringing up the charms bar or switching between apps or anything, yet Synaptics-users can atleast disable those via registry. It’s extremely frustrating to have the charms bar pop up when you’re in the middle of doing something.
Similarly, most touchpads these days offer multi-finger gestures like e.g. scrolling by placing two fingers on it and then swiping in one or another direction. However, with my ALPS it either scrolls really, really, REALLY slow, or it immediately scrolls all the way to the other end, and there is no way of configuring this behaviour in either the ALPS – configuration utility or Windows 8 itself.
Basically, if Microsoft wants such gestures to become common-place they really need to make sure that they work the same on all touchpads and are actually configurable the same way on them all.
Changing the way computers are sold, the experiences people expect and the hardware people want has nothing to do with the OS. You only need an OS that gives you the freedom to make it into what you want(android/linux) and OEMs go nuts with innovation. Give them a stale platform with useless features forced upon you and they’ll just yawn.
What people want: 1. no maintenance 2. freedom to make it do what you want 3. provide choices on low, medium and high prices
You call it “innovation” what the netbook OEMs did with Linux, do you? You’ve a strange definition for that word. Keep the OEMs out of it. They’re only interested in implementing a little bling and flash, then never touching that product line again. Case in point: HTC and Samsung. When’s the last time you got a major Android update for a phone that’s not the very latest from those two? Meanwhile you have to deal with stupid crap like Touchwiz or Sense, and run an outdated and insecure version of Android unlesss you want to flash a custom ROM. You want these OEMs to continue to have a say? They have botched every opportunity they’ve ever had to improve our computing experience.
a wild OEM defender appears
I bought a runout model Windows 7 Acer laptop last December. It was totally identical to the Windows 8 model only $250 cheaper.
PC (Personal Computers)are shifting from desktops to things like tablets because most normal people out there are information consumers, not producers. Consumers can get by with mobile apps and a web browser. Producers need a more powerful computer for things like Office, Photohsop, etc.. In addition, mobile devices (phone, tablets) are more likely to be purchased more often because they are locked down (not upgradable), break (get dropped), and are cheaper overall. So of course sales of mobile devices is going to increase for the majority of the consumers, while producers will continue to buy desktops.
Windows 8 biggest mistake was forcing the default Windows 8 interface to be Metro on a desktop environment, and having multiple OS types. I think Ubuntu had the right idea, you have the same core OS, but the GUI changes according to the device. Instead Microsoft created separate cores and API’s (Windows Phone 8 OS, Windows 8 RT, Windows 8), and then force Metro on all those devices. Very stupid mistake, and that will cost them. If they are smart with the next version of Windows they will do what Ubuntu is planning, have one core Windows 8, and have the GUI change according to the device environment. Heck by that time I bet we will see X86 in phones (give it a few years, don’t count Intel out, they will catch up to ARM battery and performance because they have a head start in manufacturing skills). Only good for Microsoft is people moving from Windows XP will probably go to Windows 7.
boing,
“PC (Personal Computers)are shifting from desktops to things like tablets because most normal people out there are information consumers, not producers.”
I know this is a common claim: A shift from computers towards tablets is a plausible hypothesis for the drop in conventional computer sales, but on the other hand it’s equally plausible that the conventional computer market is just saturated on it’s own. Hypothetically even without any tablet market, my inkling is that computer sales would slow down anyways simply because everyone has already bought one and the replacement cycle is longer than needed to keep computer sales going up.
I’d like to know if anyone has concrete data to support one hypothesis over the other.
Edited 2013-03-09 01:13 UTC
I tend to think its likely a combination of both. I’m uncomfortable with explaining away Windows 8’s mixed response with a saturated market, but I think it does play somewhat of a role.
I think it will take something to fundamentally change up the form factor before PC sales come back. I think eventually as tablets move up the rung (Become more powerful, longer battery life, and more interesting form factors a’la Surface) then the lines will blur a bit and it could usher in a rebound.
Also, the elongated upgrade cycles are likely to create a short boom in sales eventually if it goes on for long enough — people need to upgrade sometime.
If they move to to tablets so be it, which will probably boost Windows 8.
The public is largely rejecting Windows 8. Just look at the 250 comments — mostly negative — attached an article on Windows 8 in The Week —
http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/240726/how-microsoft-is-failing-w…
Never mind that the PC market was already slowing, or the explosive growth in smartphone and tablet sales, or consoles not only becoming the dominant game platforms, but also core media hubs for movies and music.
These factors have nothing to do with slowing computer sales: It’s all, solely the fault of Microsoft and Windows 8.
Poor reviews are poor reviews. Did you know that Windows 8 has poor reviews compared to Windows 7? This has been true ever since the first preview.
And how do you explain increased sales of non-touch Chromebook and Mac sales the post-pc era?
http://www.techbroil.com/2013/03/non-touch-chromebook-and-mac-sales…
The excuses are really getting old. The critics were right, next time pay attention when the majority of Microsoft “partners” like myself think their new OS is a joke. Windows 8 is crap, Office 13 is crap, VS 2012 is crap, they’re all crap that emanates from letting a Steve Jobs wanna-be run the place. Ballmer doubled-down on Sinofsky and this is what we get. Well we warned you.
Explain what, blind fanboy speculation? Google doesn’t release Chromebook sales numbers and Mac sales are 20% over the past year.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/apples-mac-problem/
Edited 2013-03-09 19:06 UTC
Google doesn’t have to release sales data, we get plenty from OEMs.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026528/acer-reports-brisk-chromeboo…
I mean it seems like it’s less windows 8 and more no reason to really buy a new laptop. I mean smartphones and tablets are still getting serious upgrades every year that make them more functional but laptops and desktops really have had all the casual functions and they work pretty well even if you’re just on a vanilla AM3… on linux.
I just don’t see the new thing that EVERYONE has to do that involves buying a brand new desktop/laptop.
I’ve got Windows 8 on my laptop and while I spend most of my time under regular desktop I’ve tried a few Metro – apps just for the sake of satisfying curiosity. My experience with them can be summed up quite neatly with “Jesus effing christ at the amount of wasted space” and “Discoverability? Flow of actions? Coherency? Pfft, you don’t need any of that!”
I’ve now said plenty of times in the past that the Windows Store is a good idea and it’s great that it’s so prominently visible and available for all the Average Joes to take advantage of, but that’s hardly enough to make the rest of the experience of using Windows 8 any way pleasant. Microsoft would’ve done well to allow also desktop applications on there and made it prominently visible on the desktop, too. Obviously they also need to work on reducing the wasted amount of space on Metro apps and making the UI a LOT more discoverable and defining clear, well-thought-out UI conventions for developers to try and follow.
Desktop apps are already available on the Windows Store. A lot of developers publish Desktop apps actually.
Granted, it’s more like a deep link to the actual publisher site (maybe its good, they don’t get 30%), but it exists.
Do you think the space is wasted because they’re full screen or because there is gratuitous use of margins around elements?
It could also be the case that if you have a high resolution monitor the developer doesn’t pay mind to ensuring that he’s not doing something boneheaded to throw off scaling.
I know my own app recently had this type of issue that I had to fix. You’d be surprised how little people actually use anything super-high resolution, at least, people that download and use my app.
I’ve set up a Windows 8 PC for testing, both at work and at home and I try to leave my iMac alone and do as much as possible on the Windows 8 PC.
There are some things to dislike, but also to like. A number of things are counter intuitive like having to scroll up/down to move left/right. But you quickly get used to them and then Windows 8 is quick ‘n’ easy to use.
What does bother me is that the whole Metro thing is like Windows running a tablet emulator. Imagine having Windows 7, installing a Microsoft Surface simulator and running apps in it. And worse, figure out how to make Windows 7 start the Surface simulator at boot time.
All Metro apps look clean ‘n’ simple, but they ARE simple. The ones I’ve tried only have a few options while “classic desktop’ had many many MANY more.
Once you start running all the serious applications you’ll notice you’ll spend most time in the classic desktop screen.
I hope this is a warning for Apple to never turn OS X in to iOS.
No doubt Microsoft will listen ‘n’ improve, but for me it’s hard to imagine how they can fix this unless they do something really radical.
Personally I would put the Start button back, boot in to classic desktop by default and have these Metro applications optional/launchable from the Start menu.
Lack of good designs is myth.
Also if one need PC nowadays choosing’s and offerings are simply bigger. Smartphone/tablet sure are computers and for some they are more personal too. (And true and original meaning of Personal Computer was computer that you can own in your house
as opposed to bad ass mainframe that took 200m^2 in your company campus 
)
Lets start Smartphones and Tablets and growth is there. People just pick devices more tailored to their needs. And its nothing strange, before S/T people choose netbooks/notebooks over desktops.
Normal shift to factors more fitting people demands.
I hardly can see how Win8 can change that..
BIG form factor that is exclusive of “old” PC’s do not pair so well with touch, so can hardly imagine people choosing “old” PC’s over S/T just because they are touch enabled.
(Oh, and “old” PCs should be called IBM PC’s cause that is proper name. We have dropped “IBM” because for some time there whose no other type of “PC’s”. Now its time to reintroduce that full name.)
I think that some bigger Renaissance of IBM PC (and ARM PC
) when Valve will push for “PC” near TV as multimedia/entertainment/gameing center of the house.
This will ADD NEW FUNCTIONALITY for the users, not just new input method.
(Oh and industry consensus is that Handsets will settle on 2bln of sold anually, most -> smartphones. IBM PC’s just do not have chance here
)
Start producing good, affordable high-res screens. Mobile has been pushing screen technology for a couple of years now, currently jumping to 1920×1080 on 5″, whereas we have to suffer with grainy 1366×768 on most affordable laptops, 1920×1080 on more pricey ones from Asus, and only Apple and Google are willing to deliver great screens, but at really high cost. On the desktop, I can’t find better than 1920×1200 on a reasonable size, and even the more reasonably priced 27″ are a crap, crap 1080p.
I mean, if you’ve already got a somewhat recent mid-range PC, there’s no compelling reason for a CPU upgrade: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=551
Newer CPUs are faster, but not all that much. GPUs are a different matter, especially if you want to play games on higher resolutions than 1920×1080. Current higher mid range cards have more RAM and are able to push more pixels than older cards. They also use a newer generation of PCI Express, which means I want a new mainboard, and then a new system. Sell me a great screen, and the computer will follow.
When was the last time you checked the latest designs for all-in-one and ultrabooks from Samsung??! or others, they are great looking and performing machines! sucky OS does affect sales, not everybody is savvy enough to remove Windows and install something less virus or broke prone.
Microsoft? Windows? oh … [yawn].
The link to the article is incorrect.
Given the discontent with Windows 8, I have a feeling that if Apple were to officially open its Mac OS X platform to non-Apple hardware in response, there would be a mass-migration and it would deliver a crippling blow to Microsoft.