Microsoft pats self on back over Windows 8 sales Think Windows 8 isn't performing as well as Microsoft expected? Think again! The software giant says sales of its new OS are chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much, in much the same fashion as Windows 7 before it. Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Tech Forum at CES 2013 on Tuesday, Tami Reller, one of the two newly minted …
Your dumb troll comments just keep on coming, somewhere between the open source bs about how windows 8 sucks so badly and the MSFT at least partial bs on how Win 8 is the best thing since sliced bread lies the truth. Now, no matter how you look at it 60 million licenses sold in 3 months since the release date is pretty nice and whether those are installed right now or not the fact is that windows runs on more computers than anything else so....if you were a developer (I am guessing you are not because you seem to be just a troll) and you could get in early on something that is pretty close to surely having a very large audience why would you not do that......
BTW liked the Bootnote, if you actually try Win 8 with an open mind and continue to use it for an extended period of time it really is pretty darn good.
probably not performing, however, in terms of usability, it works for me, running it on a 4 year old laptop (dual core lenovo ideapad) and a 5 year old desktop (quad core Q6600 home build) faultlessly. The upgrade process was also the smoothest I've experienced. Mind you perhaps it bloody should be it is Windows EIGHT after all!
Ah well, you reinforced the belief out there that it's not possible to live life without Windows.
I've heard & seen people saying such rot as "Oh, you need it for banking", "Can't edit HD video without", "3G dongles only work with Windows", "How do you manage RAW camera files ?" and countless others.
The one that amuses me most is "How do you manage as a scientist without Excel?) - well I managed for 20 years before Excel and most of the time Excel was available the data sets I handled were FAR bigger than Excel could handle. Even now I get people to send me data as CSV files and crunch the data with purpose-written C. That's the way to handle 7 million lines of data.
f-cking awful in every respect
Yeah, that improved task manager, that's fucking awful.
The optimised boot, that's fucking awful, too.
The multi-desktop enhancements, those are fucking awful.
The JBOD implementation (I forget the name), that's fucking awful.
The build in antivirus, that's fucking awful.
All the other improvements are fucking awful too.
"Every respect". "Every". "Respect". "In every respect"
Liar.
I've deployed Windows 8 at a small workplace and customized it for a few home computers. I've found that once all the file associations with the Metro Windows Store apps are changed, using it with the classic desktop isn't really any more cumbersome.
The only real problems I've really encountered have been with a few drivers and Server Message Block. Introducing a Windows 8 PC to the network caused SMB 1.0 support to stop working from a Windows 7 machine for some inexplicable reason, which somewhat expedited the situation in regards to upgrading away from XP. Furthermore, a few drivers were preventing certain updates from applying. That's since been remedied through Windows Update though.
Overall, the performance enhancements have been nice. I'm still not a fan of Metro, but you can work around it if you have to. It still feels like two separate desktop environments ironed together, but perhaps that's best since you can still revert for the most part. As it stands, after a bit of configuration, less training has been required for my coworkers than I had previously expected.
That said, I've just provided one anecdote. Only time will tell how it will be ultimately received, but my own experience has shown that it won't be the nightmare most have feared. I admit I still do have a bit more to learn with regards to Windows 8 management though.
Hmm. Let's see...
SAN FRANCISCO—September 9, 2008—Apple® today announced that iPhone™ and iPod® touch users have downloaded more than 100 million applications from its groundbreaking new App Store since its launch on July 11, 2008. More than 3,000 applications are currently available on the App Store
CUPERTINO, California—December 12, 2011—Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year... “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”
As a long time MS user since the DOS days I've found Windows 8 and MS increasingly irrelevant. The horse has bolted, and they still don't get it.
Most users outside corporations simply have no need for MS any longer since their iPad/Phone or Android device can do everything that most users need to do at home. Those users then bring those devices to work and can cover a large range of tasks. For all those tasks where MS Office and Windows remain essential we'll keep with Windows 7 thank you very much, it's highly competent and no need to change.
If we are forced to consider upgrading due to new machines and if Win 7 is no longer available then we might as well at the same time evaluate other option such as Mac and Linux since the learning curve and unfamiliarity issues are so big, we might as well consider a new Roadmap with a new OS.
Sure, MS is banking on organisations being locked in and consumers getting familiar with their Win 8 mobile devices but this is an increasingly small set of Windows enthusiasts who are the opposite of the critical mass and upward thrust that is needed to continue the WIndows ecosystem.
Having said that, Office and Outlook will remain highly relevant and would not be surprised if MS is forced to port fully to Linux / Android given that it now has more than 75% of the market. I have 2 MS Exchange / 365 business email accounts plus one similar for personal email and could not believe the ease and lack of any issues in connecting and synching a Galaxy Tab to them, then working on docs with Polaris. Stunningly easy.
Hate to say it, Google have done a great job here, and I really hate their Gapps etc but on Android it's a spectacular effort.
Ha! Good luck with your Mac rollout. With your centralised authentication and policy management etc. Unless it's for a negligable number of users, or each and every one is savvy enough not to get temselves in to trouble, it's a gargantuan task to get that all working as smoothly as AD & Group Policy et al.
It can be done but, cripes, that's a *lot* of difficult work just to be bone headed! You'll need a beer when you're done!
Pure FUD. Both Linux and Mac can authenticate just fine against AD.
And if you want further control over Macs you can use either Managed Preferences (by extending your AD schema to include the missing fields required or by using an Open Directory/Acitve Directory Magic Triangle). This is all well used and documented. Or use the Profile Manager (which will manage your iOS devices as well).
What they need to publish ss the number of "activations" and also to split those activatiosn into Upgrades and New Installs in order that we can determine the trend.
In relation to large corporate deployment strategies, we don't even have one. XP will be around for quite some time yet, it's not because of the OS though, it's because of ActiveX and IE....... ( I'm not the Architect, don't blame me).....
They'll never publish those.
I don't think they ever have, and the whole point of these kinds of press release is to spin whatever internal data they have the best possible way by cherry-picking and other techniques that would make an honest statistician have a fit!
That's why the Santa article is probably right - if this is the best spin they can manage, Win 8 is pretty much dead in the water.
Microsoft, like any corporation, only need to publish information required by law or demanded by their shareholders. They may choose to provide other information but as always this needs to be interpreted and de-spinned, for instance activations don't say much about actual usage or the health of an application market.
Having recently bought a new laptop, delivered with W8, I'm no doubt showing as a W8 user. But since I'm using Mint, and don't even have W8 on the boot menu, it's for damn sure I'm *not* a W8 user...
My objection is the same as I had with other OS changes: it's change for changes sake and it gets in the way of my work. There's absolutely no sense in learning new keystrokes, new shortcuts, whatever - I have thirty years of muscle memory telling me how windows should work and while they may not be the ultimately most efficient, they're what I know...
As far as I can see, the main purpose of W8 is to provide a gateway to allow me to purchase things. In essence, TIFKAM is an advertising hoarding. When the adverts are removed (do I *really* need an animated display of the weather in Paris, not actually living there and all?) the desktop is much cleaner. Still unpleasant to look at, but hey, that's just my taste.
That's not how I use a computer. I appreciate that many obviously do, but it's not for me. And I wish I'd been able to specify a different OS when I bought this laptop; I might have kept it.
That's exactly my point. I didn't want it, but there was no choice. You buy a new laptop, and particularly at the budget end, there is no choice. It comes with Windows, like it or not.
Yes, you can go through the palaver of not accepting the licence terms and returning it to the maker, but that leaves you with nothing... I want the laptop, but I don't want windows... but I can't get it without windows. And in most cases, you don't even get a choice as to which version you get - assuming you know the difference.
I think the technical term is 'all sewn up'.
Wrote :- "Wow, what a great business opportunity for someone to start a business building and selling laptops with no OS, so that you can install whatever you want instead! I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before"
They have, but they lose the chance to bundle the Windows-oriented adware and crapware with it, for which they are paid. The payments they receive more than offset the cost of the OEM Windows licence, so the PC ends up costing more.
See Michael Meeks' comments here :-
www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/11/michael_meeks_linux_desktop/
Go back, research about secure boot requirements for Win8 and check your facts.
1. Secure boot is not needed for x86 or x64 machines
2. It's only a requirement for Win8 RT machines.
3. You can override the secure boot to allow other OS to run (but RT won't), by simply turning it off.
4. You can use a secure boot compliant version of "Linux"
Tell you what I'll start the process:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/10/linux-foundation-uefi-secure-boot-system-open-source
But if you turn off the secure boot (and you have to boot into windows to get to the bios - don't even get me started on that) windows then won't boot because it was installed with secure bios enabled. So I'm going to reinstall. (Or maybe there is something else but I lost the will to live finding my way around that mess of a os.) As a Linux /Mac / android user windows is just seeming a bit clunky these days. (Fisher price toys)
@HollyHopDrive
you have to boot into windows to get to the bios
Er, no you don't. I use a Win8 box for development. The ASUS motherboard was already UEFI enabled (just as it was when the same machine ran win7) and in order to get to the secure boot switches in UEFI, you just have to, er, press DELETE during the UEFI boot.
Same as you would with a BIOS boot.
....
You haven't actually tried this, have you? Why are you criticizing something you haven't tried?
Sadly on the asus laptop i bought which comes with win8 pre-installed this isn't the case. Trust me, I've been doing this shit a lot longer than most. And no you can't, the option only appears #after# you disable the secure boot in the bios. (It is available on my Asus desktop motherboard though)
My point is after spending so much time on the other side of the fence (5 years since I had a windows PC) I was genuinely interested to see windows 8. And in *my* opinion its a mess. It may not be yours but it is mine!
"My objection is the same as I had with other OS changes: it's change for changes sake and it gets in the way of my work. There's absolutely no sense in learning new keystrokes, new shortcuts, whatever - I have thirty years of muscle memory telling me how windows should work and while they may not be the ultimately most efficient, they're what I know..."
You just sound like an old dog not willing to learn new tricks. 30 years you say - would you like your OS to be the same as it was 30 years ago?
I am old dog; hear me bark.
I don't want what we (almost) had thirty years ago; I want a consistent interface that doesn't get in the way of me working. I fail to see - for me - what improvements W8 offers in other than glitz, glamour, and user lock in.
My argument is not that W8 is bad - it's simply not to my taste in the same way that Gnome 3 or Unity aren't - but that I don't have a choice about it. I get it, want it or not, and MS claim this as a sale.
30 years telling you how Windows should work? That's quite impressive, not least because the interface that everyone complains they want to keep is only 17 years old (introduced with Windows 95 in, errr, 1995).
30 years ago the interface was completely different from what has been the norm for the last 17 years, it was also at a time when we tended to only have, errr, 98 key (i think) keyboards - so none of the Win key shortcuts that I assume your muscles now know.
If we're talking muscle memory of Win key shortcuts, errr, they're all still there in Win 8, extended even too add mroe options.
tl;dr I call bullshit on your 30 years of Windows usage being the reason you wont shift to a new OS
N.B. Yes, I use Windows 8, on a system that dual boots between Win 8 and Ubuntu, on 5 year old hardware. It was the most painless dual boot i've ever done.
Pretty much all the keyboard shortcuts in Windows 8 are exactly as they are in Windows 7 and XP. That's one of the things that made the transition so painless, for me.
Not that I have a problem with you choosing a Linux distro over Windows, more power to you.
GJC
For a touch centric OS it's very telling that people keep saying that ;)
I'm having some trouble in understanding your point here - although a brief perusal of your post history indicates strongly partisan anti-Win8 views so it might be an attempt at a snide comment - so let me walk you through why it's important.
Most PCs don't have touchscreens. Win8 expands on Win7s keyboard shortcuts - you know, those things professionals use, you might have heard of them - making Win7s shortcuts a subset of the new larger collection. Because the desktop is still there and the launcher is still just a launcher regardless of how much people try to insist that it's a whole OS by itself, these shortcuts have no learning curve and make for a painless transition.
Not so hard, was it?
I needed to help my mother in law buy a pc last week.
Microsoft have done a good job of manipulating the sales channel. Its getting quite difficult to buy a machine with windows 7 and that is how they have created these windows 8 numbers. Similar to how as a pc skyrim player you cant buy the current DLC yet, as MS have paid bethesda to make the download exclusive to the 360 for the first month. And you would assume they paid quite a lot for the privelage. I assume money has also put win 8 on all the new machines. They know how to play it.
Most of the puchasers at the local department store dont know or care about the OS. They just hear "latest windows" and "new and shiney" and buy it. But what do they think after they use it? Thats the real test. Yes windows 8 is shipping out in volume on OEM systems, but now what?
I bought one of the last low end old windows 7 machines in the shop, put a 27" screen and some good speakers on it, and my mother in law loves it. But if people dont even know what they are buying, and MS is getting win8 on the machines, what does that even mean? and who even cares? haha.
Well I upgraded to Windows 8 as a test on my Desktop because its only £25 at the moment. I find the lack of a back button in the 'Modern UI' or whatever they call it now most annoying, this is probably because I am using a mouse not a touch screen. It also feels half done, the full control panel and all MS applets should have been migrated to the new interface rather than having half on the 'old' desktop and half on the new, its annoying and messy. The last thing I don't like is its close tie-in with Windows live, for one thing I dont like using the same password to login to my PC as I do for my email - but perhaps I am just paranoid. Will I go back? Well at the moment I dual boot but am trying hard to not use Win 7, as it takes my Win 7 installation an age to get going though this might be the motivation I need to stay with Windows 8 and keep 7 on for emergencies.
As for their celebrations? Have they realised its doing a Vista?
That paragraph almost, but not quite, gives the impression that MS should be within handshake distance of matching Apple's download figures already. As a matter of interest how quickly do you think that MS should be able to catch up? Just so that we can see what your bench-mark of "success" would be.
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