'Not even Santa could save Microsoft's Windows 8'

First Impressions

Perhaps . like many others around me . the feeling that win 8 is a media consumption system and not an operating system for serious work is what turned so many away. It looks cheap Feeling i had was written cheap all over . I don't need a media consumption device. I need a computer with serious oomph to do serious work. XP fills that need when i have windows only programs that i need. XP remains a stable os. If they were to sell licenses for it they'd still sell it. Nice to have new products.but having GOOD products that look and feel professional is even better.

( yes im a linux user .. and ill refrain making smart remarks about trying linux bla bla crunchbang !# bla bla for serious work and great performance and a professional feeling bla bla lol )

Cheers , Have a great computing year

No, the vast majority of us are sick of buying new

It’s alright for a few gadget addicts, with plenty of cash to burn. But I suspect schools who have just shelled out a couple of grand on desktops, just can’t jump on the band waggon and throw them away for tablets. There is an uneasiness that starts to become obvious to us punters, that MS and the rest, are taking the mick; having a laugh at our expenses as they rip open our dwindling wallets.

I’m just sick of being told my PC is now 6 month old, time for a new one. Sick to death; sc****w you MS. I’m not playing or paying anymore.

There's a Good OS in there Somewhere

I installed it on my small, low powered laptop (mostly to test) and tbh - it's not an awful OS, it's just crippled with awful, arbitrary design choices. The biggest one of which for me is that apps won't run in a lower (netbook) res and this is impossible to change, even though all of those apps have vast amounts of white space. There are a number of other issues as well but that's the one that winds me up the most.

There are a lot of low powered laptops (mostly people who don't give a toss about whether something looks good or not), which could have generated quite a number of upgrades if nothing else. If only they hadn't totally ignored their Beta and RTM feedback.

And I think this res issue is going to bite them even more in the coming months / years because surely you could produce a much cheaper tablet with a low res screen, which would be ideal for the netbook market (i.e. those who want to pay <= £200).

Ah well - at least coding Android apps is pretty easy.

How it should be

I never really got OS's launching to fanfare. A good OS should be slipping by unnoticed, doing its job. And that job is to protect us from the complexities of the machine, and allow us to run the tools we need on it.

In one way Windows 8 achieves this really well with its more streamlined and modular (alright not Linux modular yet but getting better) code base.

It then fails miserable with a slap in the face when you press the start button.

I hope all releases of Windows from now on are low key, iterative updates that try to be nothing more than it needs to be. No movie makers, social networking apps, UI rehashes or attempts to build a foundation for a walled garden (thanks for that Apple)..

Linux or Windows 7

I am on the verge of buying myself a new laptop. As most of the ones that I am interested in these days is Winblows 8 only, I can see myself buying a copy of Windows 7 to install on the thing or downloading a copy of Linux and then I may consider running Winblows 8 in a virtual machine. And as I usually build my own home PC's I would seriously consider dumping Windows 7 on the home machine and going full Linux and run Windows 7 in virtual machines for those times when I have to do something in Windows...

Santa?

I think you've misspelled the name of the one character with whom Microsoft could contract to turn their prospects around.

Holy crap...

Nothing riles the populous more than Microsoft....(mind you, I can see their angle)...!

I want to go back to Win XP

At least Win XP could remember where you closed the last window for each program you use. Ever since Vista, all the windows for every program open on top of each other, and there is no way to stop it short of registry brain surgery - and I'm not a Windows brain surgeon.

Microsoft's mission: If you have something that works, fix it until it doesn't work, then call it a "feature", not a programming bug. Too bad MS is the only game in town. Linux isn't really a player in the game.