Why would I want Windows 8

[whs]

I am not yet convinced. But I keep an open mind. Maybe they still pull some surprises out of the hat.

 

[Coke Robot]

The mere fact that we have to ask the question in this forum as to why we would want Windows 8 is an indictment of this development program.

I still sometimes have to convince people to switch from vista to 7....it's kind of a tough sell. Now, convincing people from vista to 8, that is easy.

How do you figure that ??

It's simply because some perceive it as vista 2.0, but with a larger taskbar.

 

[Coke Robot]

-built in STD protection, Windows Defender
-better disk defragmenter
-if I haven't said it, new Task Manager

 

[ADRz]

-built in STD protection, Windows Defender
-better disk defragmenter
-if I haven't said it, new Task Manager

None of which compensates for the loss in usability and the silly Start Screen. My guess is that Win8 would be the worst flop in Microsoft's history, much worse than Vista.

The problem is, of course, that such a flop would simply open the gates for the march of OSX into the enterprise. OSX is approaching the whole thing in a much more measured way, enhancing the desktop with some touch features rather that banning it outright. On the other hand, Apple does not need OSX to sell apps, does it?

 

[vrosa]

Because I cant resist to a new M$ OS... and because of the facts that Coke Robot said and because I will buy my first small device (tablet) in 2012.

 

[whs]

-built in STD protection, Windows Defender
-better disk defragmenter
-if I haven't said it, new Task Manager

None of which compensates for the loss in usability and the silly Start Screen. My guess is that Win8 would be the worst flop in Microsoft's history, much worse than Vista.

The problem is, of course, that such a flop would simply open the gates for the march of OSX into the enterprise. OSX is approaching the whole thing in a much more measured way, enhancing the desktop with some touch features rather that banning it outright. On the other hand, Apple does not need OSX to sell apps, does it?

I kind of agree with you. Protection from MS is not what I am looking forward to. I caught enough nasties with MSE. And defrag I do not need for mz SSD. The new task manager is OK, but I get the same info from Resource Monitor.

If those are the only highlights, I am really unimpressed.

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

ADRz said

None of which compensates for the loss in usability and the silly Start Screen. My guess is that Win8 would be the worst flop in Microsoft's history, much worse than Vista.

WHAT? Vista was no way near the worst flop in Microsoft's history. It was Windows ME!!!!!

 

[ADRz]

ADRz said

None of which compensates for the loss in usability and the silly Start Screen. My guess is that Win8 would be the worst flop in Microsoft's history, much worse than Vista.

WHAT? Vista was no way near the worst flop in Microsoft's history. It was Windows ME!!!!!

We can agree to disagree. Although Vista sold dozens of millions of copies to new buyers, what cost Microsoft was not the absence of upgrade sales but the loss of mind share to Apple. Apple took the opportunity of the bungled release of Vista to run a very effective campaign against Windows. I calculate that because of Vista, MS lost approximately 3% of world wide market share. This may not appear as much, but it dramatically increased the volume of OSX, especially in the US.

Now, Win8 is shaping to become a much worse disaster. If that happens, Microsoft would become progressively irrelevant. Unless it has a kind of Plan B (a "second edition for Win7"), it would lose much more to OSX and likely to Linux. If Linux devises a way to run seamlessly all my Windows applications (Wine does not cut it), I will definitely abandon Windows and stop worrying about Microsoft gyrations and flirtations with consumer electronics.

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

ADRz wrote:

We can agree to disagree. Although Vista sold dozens of millions of copies to new buyers, what cost Microsoft was not the absence of upgrade sales but the loss of mind share to Apple. Apple took the opportunity of the bungled release of Vista to run a very effective campaign against Windows. I calculate that because of Vista, MS lost approximately 3% of world wide market share. This may not appear as much, but it dramatically increased the volume of OSX, especially in the US.[/end quote]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh Then why is Apple NOW making Windows ONLY Macs?

 

[ADRz]

ADRz wrote:

We can agree to disagree. Although Vista sold dozens of millions of copies to new buyers, what cost Microsoft was not the absence of upgrade sales but the loss of mind share to Apple. Apple took the opportunity of the bungled release of Vista to run a very effective campaign against Windows. I calculate that because of Vista, MS lost approximately 3% of world wide market share. This may not appear as much, but it dramatically increased the volume of OSX, especially in the US.[/end quote]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh Then why is Apple NOW making Windows ONLY Macs?

Windows only Macs? where did you hear this fishwives's tale?? In fact, it is quite tough to have Windows as you sole OS on a Mac. There are a number of utilities that allow you to run Windows on a Mac, but neither Apple, nor any other commercial unit produces "Windows-only Macs". Since Apple utilizes the same technologies as Windows machine vendors, what would be the advantage ina Windows-only Mac????

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

Meaning it will run the Windows O/S, not that it will actually be Windows only.
Sorry for the confusion.

 

[ADRz]

Meaning it will run the Windows O/S, not that it will actually be Windows only.
Sorry for the confusion.

No problem. In fact, it is very difficult to convert Macs to Windows-only PCs because the BIOS and the driver support is not there. There have been attempts with rather disappointing results. On the other hand, there are excellent ways to run Windows under OSX and vice-versa through virtualization.

 

[Coke Robot]

ADRz said

None of which compensates for the loss in usability and the silly Start Screen. My guess is that Win8 would be the worst flop in Microsoft's history, much worse than Vista.

WHAT? Vista was no way near the worst flop in Microsoft's history. It was Windows ME!!!!!

Both were. vista was ME of the last decade. It never got to over 10% of OS market share I believe. That's bad.

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

Coke Robot, Nonsense! I'm talking on a physical standpoint of the usability of the 2.
Win ME was just GOOFY in it's initial concept. To prove this JUST Google Win ME Easter Eggs.
With Vista it was actually useable as a main O/S. To date Windows Vista was the fastest released
O/S to cover MS's problems (Security) with XP. And I believe the SLOW sales of it is because of
the WinXP camp they JUST didn't want to update to Vista. Personality I was SUPER HAPPY to be on
the Vista beta team, and updated the second that it was on store shelves. So lets not look at
sales records, they don't show nor prove usability as an O/S.

 

[ADRz]

Coke Robot, Nonsense! I'm talking on a physical standpoint of the usability of the 2.
Win ME was just GOOFY in it's initial concept. To prove this JUST Google Win ME Easter Eggs.
With Vista it was actually useable as a main O/S. To date Windows Vista was the fastest released
O/S to cover MS's problems (Security) with XP. And I believe the SLOW sales of it is because of
the WinXP camp they JUST didn't want to update to Vista. Personality I was SUPER HAPPY to be on
the Vista beta team, and updated the second that it was on store shelves. So lets not look at
sales records, they don't show nor prove usability as an O/S.

I did also upgrade to Vista as soon as it came out because it offered substantial advantages over Win XP. However, the reason that businesses did not upgrade to Vista were not because of any loyalty to WinXP. Vista did run much more slowly on the same hardware and, in the first year of its release, there were substantial problems with driver support. These problems were fixed later but the bad wrap stuck. In fact, Win7 is little more than a streamlined version of Vista. Those who had used Vista SP2 would have easily noted the virtual identity of these OSes.

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

I agree.

 

[JMH]

Vista supported by adequate hardware is / was a gem.
I still prefer {& do use} Vista to Win 7.

 

[The Howling Wolves]

I came from OEM Vista on Desktop and did the upgrade to 7 long after it was released.
Was thankful that my laptop came with OEM 7 on it but wished I would have kept Vista around as it did a nice job.

Will maybe do the same after the dust settles and the comments are favorable to upgrade to 8.
Not interested on padding MS pockets just for having the newest and latest OS.
Just my humble opinion.
THW

 

[whs]

I like Vista too. But that is water under the bridge. But Win8 really has to shape up to cut it - on the desktop.

 

[ADRz]

I like Vista too. But that is water under the bridge. But Win8 really has to shape up to cut it - on the desktop.

It is unlikely that it will do so. Microsoft is not targeting this OS for desktop/laptop users. It is targeting the tablet crowd where I believe that it would fail miserably because, let's be honest about it, Metro-style is not nearly as attractive as ICS. If a user has a choice between a Win8 tablet and one running ICS, my guess is that ICS will win most of the comparisons. In addition, Intel-based tablets (that would access to Windows desktop applications) are going to be far more expensive than ICS (Android 4.0) tablets. So, I think that Win8 will be a failure on all fronts.

If you want to buy a tablet, why would you want Win8 and not ICS??? I think that this is the basic question!