Windows 8 adoption rate falls way behind Windows Vista

I didn't say scared of technology

"This is different, I have to learn something new for once, I hate it"..

Also I didn't mean just this community, I mean the mass population. Sure there are plenty exceptions to the rule, but I am pretty sure my quote above is 80% of the Windows 8 haters.

Sure I'm probably over reacting, but I get tired every time something is released people hate it because of change.

 

As i said before i don't hate it because of the new look, i hate it because of performance. You would say: ok, give them some time to put things on the right way, well i say they had plenty of time to mature the product and it is unforgivable for them to come up with such a sluggish product. My notebook has Nvidia graphics (GT 620M) and (i3 ivy bridge)....well i suppose with my notebook windows 8 shall fly.....after 5 days of usage the boot went tooo slow but i have 8 Gb of RAM for gods sake. They promised good boot timings.
Hardware providers also are very slow on adapting their products with the new windows and i think that intel and microsoft shall comunicate more....but microsoft shall be the pusher in this relation because is in their interest that intel releases good performance drivers for win8.

 

LOL, not surprised in the slightest.

Microsoft made two major fails with this OS. First they almost tried to appease the Windows Previous users with a desktop and everything except a start menu.

Secondly they didn't make Windows 8 a coherent package.

It's a mess. The UI is confused and doesn't quite know what to do with itself. The whole time it's trying to steal the entire screen for something when it doesn't need to. This (as mentioned above) makes multi-tasking very difficult.

Then there's the Metro problem. It's a big problem too. It's a touch screen designed UI which they forcibly applied to a normal mouse and keyboard setup. This is kinda pointless, mainly because tile based setups are useful when you have inaccurate hardware like touchscreens and fingers, rather than mice and keyboards. I can't believe how companies can be so blind to UI design differences for both types. This is not just an MS failure but most software companies are still unable to provide a simple and logical UI.

Win 98/XP/Vista/7 all had the same basic UI, but even in those there were confusions. For instance 99% of the time all UI elements are sorted in a column format as for at least 60% of the world that's the taught way. Then the Control Panel is laid out in row format, which is hard to navigate when you aren't expecting it. One of the reasons the normal file format should be set to list rather than icon as it does the same thing. Any additions change positioning preventing memory location. Lists allow searching via key press very fast and in alphabetical/chronological order.

This is just a minor part of the whole, but in the end Win 8 ends up just being a contradiction to most users and less capable than Win 7. It's only real upside is the re-introduction of hardware audio, offloading that from the CPU to deal with other things. Something that disappeared with Vista and is now returning. It is the ONLY reason I would even consider Win 8. But with Blue and 9 not far off (especially due to the poor uptake of Win 8) I think I'll just wait

 

Could be your experience is a fluke?

I said it before, and here it goes again: Win 8 loves my old dualie, which is usually the one that limits my gameplay experience. On Nvidia side of things I had to wait for 270.xxx which finally optimized execution for socket 775, and on Win 8, I had great performance, no... great stutter-free game-play experience since day 1 from NV.

On Microsoft side of things, I am pretty sure Win 7 was never fully optimized and XP still to this day has lower CPU overhead.

For me, purely on performance side of things Win 8 >> all.

Regarding lower adoption rates - this is not exactly a fair comparison.
Vista had low adoption, and everyone wasted no to time to jump on Win 7.
In contrast - Win 8 had much-much harder competition, because Win 7 has been widely regarded as great.

There is also a thing called Internet-hate-machine, and ppl loving free rides on it's band-wagon, but I am not smart enough to judge it's impact on Win 8 sales.

 

Opinions are only wrong if they're based on lies or uneducated. Those are the opinions most of us denigrate... There are still quite a few posting their opinions, based on screenshots, having never tried Windows8. There are also those posting blatant lies such as "a Microsoft account is required"....or "you're required to use the start screen to launch applications".... There are also the ones stating their opinions claiming them as fact....

You're using an entry-level notebook that more than likely has a mechanical harddrive.... There's only so much an OS can do to overcome the drawbacks of a 4200rpm or 5400rpm harddrive...

Intel had drivers ready for Windows8. Intel is involved in Windows development at a very early stage. It's sound card, graphics card, network card, etc makers that have issues getting drivers out in a reasonable amount of time.

 

8 is first OS since DOS

The first, as in, time I didn't upgrade my OS when a new one came out. Win8 is a failure. The sad thing is plenty of people predicted this over the past couple of years. Microsoft didn't listen to its users, instead trying to force the change on us, and it didn't work. I would never put Win8 on my machine because I hate the interface (imagine the button size on a 30 inch Dell) and the idea that you can't have more than 2 windows open is absurd. I hope they lose allot of money and wake up.

 

You CAN have more than 2 windows open (this goes back to my previous statement about blatant lies).... You can only have 1 "Metro" app Window at a time....but there is no limit in "desktop mode".

 

The problem is not the product as it is right now, we have the traditional desktop running behind, well kind of. The problem is what future versions gonna be, I can imagine what goes in they're heads, no desktop at all, just "touch with your fingers UI", well something like Windows RT, and that for Workstation/Office doesn't work at all.

Sure the Windows 8 is well programmed, is fast, we get hardware audio (as mentioned above, didn't confirmed myself) but this doesn't make a good OS, the true is MS sees tablets as a threat to their business model a tries to address this with a 90º turn in the formula that as been great since Windows 95, but completely messed up.

They developed Windows RT, great, should exist for x86 capable processors too, period.
They develop a new OS for replacing Windows 7 capable of running Windows RT apps, period.

Now the joke time

Should be called Window 8, not Windows (plural).
And I bet Steve Jobs is Laughing out loud in is coffin.

 

And there we go - because of such "reports" people are scared, and clearly the writer did not even bother to look at Win8 not to mention trying it out.
You can have tons of windows open at the same time, lots of them. However you can have only one full-screen New UI app visible, and the rest are in background, but that's obvious, right? Well, no - some of them support being shrinked, so you can have 2 open at once - one as primary, one as secondary. And I'm suuure many of the haters have lots of windows visible at the same time, and that they don't use their web browsers in a maximized windows, but have tons of tiny windows open for each page, along with multiple movies, text and media editors and drag&drop content from one to another in a peaceful way. Deal with it - people use media-consuming apps in a fullscreen / maximized mode, and so are New UI apps - media-consuming and fullscreen. The productivity apps use the regular windows and it's not going to change anytime soon.
New UI apps also support standardized content and search providers and consumers, so apps can give or take the data content in a reasonable way.
Stability? I have a micro-server on a lappy running a preview version of Win8 that hasn't been restarted in months.

And regarding touch-only and tablet-only system with no desktops etc:
1. Win8 has many more keyboard shortcuts than Win7
2. With Win8 you can use mouse less in favor of keyboard, compared to Win7
3. You need less key clicks to achieve quite a few things in Win8 compared to Win7

Win8 is not just for touch. Of course it's much more usable by touch in contrast to Win7, but it's also better for keyboard users. And I'm glad that Start Button is gone (perhaps some will object) - I haven't clicked it with my mouse in a few years.

So what's the problem? Problem is lack of good presentation of the new features and improvements, dual (schizophrenic) interface, and ignorants who comment it without knowing the subject.

 

I'm actually surprised that nobody has pointed out the simple fact that Windows has supported touch interfaces since Win98 and each release has had improved support for touch displays.... So, "touch" support is nothing even remotely new for Windows.

 

But it is more touch focused this time around and feels like it was setup to use touch and not a mouse. Previous OS's had touch but was more like a after thought its the theme in 8.

 

Touch on previous Os's sucked. You apparently never used it. I used to have an HP Tablet Laptop...back when they were just called Tablet PC's. Touch was terrible, mostly cause it was slow. Touch an icon and there was a delay, it also was far from pixel perfect and sometimes not even registering. It came with Vista and 7 was no better on it.
I also modded a Netbook with a Touchscreen, for like $50 you could buy a touch screen kit for Netbooks, of course likely the touch screen itself wasn't of high quality but it turned out to be useless really.

 

I've used touch screen with Win98 - Win7.....but, I guess I never used it (according to you). No offense, but you assume far too much and come off looking like an idiot. Some of us have actually made a living using devices that rely on touch screens and Windows.

 

The funny thing is people saying that Win8 is a total failure citing some "facts" and in the same sentence telling that would not never install it in any machine. So how did you get the conclusion it's a total failure? Did you guess it?
The truth is that Win8, as told above, is pretty optimized for almost any kind of input...
If you want to use it just with keyboard, it'll better than almost any other modern OS, including Win7.
Just mouse? Great!!! Mouse+Keyboard? Even better.
Touch? No problem...
It even has a better experience using the annoying touchpad in a notebook! I always had a lot of problems using touchpad, but now I can use it without calling it of some big and ugly names...

The metro UI is actually a great and necessary addiction to this date, it compromises nothing, just adds. It's much faster than the old start menu and it has a really well thought and innovative UIX.

If you're just too stubborn to embrace any change, just keep the good old Win7, but please try to not judge what you don't know.

 

Err the figures above show it's not as much of a success as Win 7, which if it was going to be as "revolutionary" as MS wanted it to be they would be hoping it would attain similar numbers in adoption rate. Vista was a dog of an OS compared to 7 and had numbers that showed that. Some people like Vista, others don't. Unfortunately for those who do like it, the majority don't. Win 8 is seeing the same kind of reaction.

Nope. It's just had a more Touch friendly UI put into it that makes it slightly more optimised than it used to be for touch input. It's also had basic functionality removed to force users to learn a new method of control which is related to shortcut keys when there is no touch input. How is that optimising input over previous instances of Windows? It's forcing a design decision upon it's users which are used to a way to do things already. Not the most intelligent of plans.

That's because you have bigger buttons to hit. Touchpads have gotten higher in resolution as well as screens and now the buttons are massive so you can't miss them.

I think you meant addition, but anyway, it's only necessary in certain limited circumstances. It should be kept to those circumstances. It should have the option to be disabled when those circumstances are not present. The fact they chose to remove that option from the final release (which is a verified fact) highlights their inability to comprehend the changing face of computing and how customers are viewing and buying things.

Change for the sake of change is not always a change for the better. I'm not resistant to change, just resistant to stupidity.

 

Like some people already said in this thread, it's a different time and situation, there's no way to compare. Also just the time will tell if it's really a good selling OS or not...

Please, tell me what have been removed - besides the obvious start menu. I always hear people telling this phrase, but never a fact. I use it and it is easier to use with just keyboard - on desktop - than Win7. It's not only a touch optimized UI, it just looks like. As a said before, you gotta use it to judge these things...

Nope. In desktop it has a lot of shortcuts for touchpad, out of the box. Again, like I said before, it's a really well thought UI. It got a really nice design and is really functional.

Sorry for the typo... It can be or no be useful, like any other thing in the universe. There's a lot of apps that are of no use, but there's some really great. Don't forget that Win8 is not made only for power users, it's also made for people that uses PC for something else besides work and serious gaming. It's great to have a option to those - previously - forgotten people.

Agreed. But you gotta understand that things are really changing fast, and that a move like that would have been needed sooner or later, and as I see it, it's the perfect time, not too soon and not too late.

 

I wouldn't even call it removed but improved. I wasn't using Win7 Start Menu because it was way too slow - required lots of clicking. The search added in Vista was a great improvement over XP menu, but it wasn't still enough, so I used Launchy, which was capable of prioritizing apps according to usage. In Win8 the new Start Screen/Menu does it by itself and I didn't have to install Launchy.

Well, it depends on if one wants learn. My mom for example who is not a power user, had some issues at first with full-screen apps, but once she got used to them, she appreciated more organized Start Screen and the bundled apps, especially PDF reader utilizing whole screen surface, it's readability and aesthetics. It required around half an hour of just sitting calm and experimenting with system. The new touchpad drivers with added Win8-specific gestures helped a bit too. She also stopped putting files on desktop, and instead the documents land in Documents Library, and shortcuts on Start Screen, mostly for better searching. After observing me at work, she was willing to learn keyboard shortcuts, so I printed her a cheat sheet with search- and utility-related shortcuts (seeing a doctor using Win+E to save time makes my heart warm). I believe that such paper should be bundled with Win8 as there are so many features that make using it easier and faster and aren't described well enough.

 

When people buy PC, because they want freedom of choosing, so is no wonder people dont like win8 because they are forced use what they don't like.

 

You can always install Linux, nobody is forcing anyone to stay with Win8. Or choose freedom by getting Win7... or... well I don't get that logic.

 

This what i wanted to say, people simple choose other os.