Canadian news says Win 8 a flop

ampfixer

The news caster referred to this as Microsoft's "new Coke" moment.

How delightful (not to mention dead-on accurate)!
 
Yes, I was pleased to see that MS will be correcting their misstep with a W8 revision.  I'm not surprised.  In fact I'm only surprised it took them this long to make the announcement.  Business users constitute far too important a part of their customer base to be so rudely ignored with MS's recent tablet-centric mentality.  I'm confident that we who rely on full PCs for music production have little to worry about for quite some time.

I saw this in the news a couple of weeks ago as well.  It said that computer sales were at one of lowest ever and that computer companies were blaming it on Windows 8's new interface.  That article did not mention another more tradition version in the works.  I hope that is true.  My version of 8 is sitting boxed on a shelf.  I was avoiding installing it until I absolutely felt I had to.

I'm just switching to Win 7 in my office computer. To tell the truth - except for one feature ( preview - in Win Explorer ) the whole thing is a complete cluster compared to XP. I haven't found one so called update that gives better operations. I don't think we'll go Win 8 for another 6-7- years.

That's simply because not only Apple does it years before Microsoft, but they do get it right to begin with.


Nope. That's just what they want you to think rain. This video explains everything. Buy Samsung.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWnunavN4bQ

I have Win8 and I find the tile screen a pain in the ass BTW.

Rain

Zo

on the pc side only , apple guyz are just sheep ....falowing what ever stupid move apple do ....

If we're to take cheap shots, this Apple guy has just as much for you, mon ami. 

That's simply because not only Apple does it years before Microsoft, but they do get it right to begin with. 

Plus, over the years, Microsoft has left us expecting failures at regular intervals - Millenium, Vista, Windows 8.

nope my friend , windows make the world work , osx makes it have fun ....lol i'm talking pro's , i can choose what ever os i want to use on my computers .....and this alone is pricelless ...

Windows 8 was rather stupid to have a touch screen come up first - when most screens ain't today.  If they had simply made the older interface come up andswtich to tiles people wouldn't complain.  It is like X1 - nobody knew where anything was.

But touch is coming.  Just got a new windows phone today and it ain't bad.  Of course, I ahven't had time to do much but charge it and transfer my old numbers etc.  It seems to work pretty well but nobody has thought through the whole touch experience.  Windows phone imported my other accounts, including an ancient juno account from my wife.  YOu'd think it would be easy to delete one email from her page but I still ain't figured it out.  I guess it is time to watch the online demo....

@

It seems like the designers/programmers have not always realised, that not all computer users are novelty-seeking pioneers of new frontiers.
PCs have been around for so long that many (most?) users have already developed their familiar fluent routines and workflows, and they don't want to re-learn everything whenever a new version comes out. The ones to whom computer technology is also a hobby, are interested in totally new solutions, but the ones who just want to get their
daily jobs done get only frustrated.

I've had a touch phone for as long as you can have a touch phone.

While it is fun to pretend that it is fun to surf the internet on it... the reality is that the "touch" part about the experience sucks.

The Windows 8.1 update ("Blue") that is coming out will not remove the "tiles".  It restores the start button on the desktop but will not include everything that is in the "start" that older Windows versions had. 

Microsoft has reported selling over 100 Million Win 8 licenses.  How many of those are actually in use ????  

My Win 8 installation is primarily for support.  I do support and have a couple of clients with Windows 8 so I have it in case I get user questions.      

I have a dual boot, Win 7 and Win 8.  I have the $4.95 Stardock "Start8" that adds the full functionality start button to Win 8 (everything is there the same as Win 7).  With the Start8 addon, Win 8 boots to the desktop, just as Win 7 does.   Win 7 is what I use for Sonar, but I installed Sonar X2, my Roland Octa-Capture, BCF2000 and my add on software to see if it works.  All my recording software and hardware, except my Frontier Tranzport that had to be installed in a Win 7 compatibility mode, is Win 8 compatible and works just as well in Win 8 as it does in Win 7.   But, I don't have any current plays to migrate my recording production to Win 8.

Zo


nope my friend , windows make the world work , osx makes it have fun ....lol i'm talking pro's , i can choose what ever os i want to use on my computers .....and this alone is pricelless ... 

Ok, obviously this is going nowhere if you get down that road. I don't know how one could even suggest that. A pro uses whatever works, for what it's worth.

Anyway, I could have sworn that all the pro recording studios I've seen were using Mac. I'm not talking about little independent pro studio here whee DJ/Producers make "beatz", but big studios, you know, where people record and mix music for record labels - the Palms here in Vegas, or Avatar in NY and such... 

It's refreshing to see proof that push marketing can not effectively force people to adopt a bad idea.

+1 1/2

here is the BBC's take http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22439496

  I used Windows 8 first as the user preview version. While I was not that enthusiastic, it seems to me to be a reasonable, albeit small, progression to a new Windows version. 

Then came the shock of the completely tiled start interface of the final version. I could not believe they done that at first, but soon learned it was no joke but reality.

Sure - there where work-arounds like classic shell, and for most times that worked. However - the new interface is really hurting my eyes. Gone is transparency and smooth edges. It is replaces by sharp dull edges. It has a dossy Windows 3.11 look, and to be honest - I think it is ugly as hell (yeah - I kown that's personal). I like a interface that is smooth on the eyes. Do not forget you have to stare at it sometimes for long sessions. And Windows 8 is not giving me that because the whole "Air" is just ripped out of it.

Then there are things like applications that just "disappear". As an example: I used VLC to play some music and made the mistake to switch to the tiles screen for a short moment. When going back to the main screen the complete VLC interface was gone. It was playing music on the background, but I could not find a simple(!) way to stop that application, because the interface was nowhere to be found. That is just one of the irritating little things that spoils the experience. And there are more.

Those where my first impressions for the final version of Windows 8. Do not forget those first impressions are really important, so Windows 8 did not made a good start with me.

To make things clear, I am no beginner with computers. I started in the gray old days with the Super Elf Micro Computing Board, programming in machine code. Then used the Acorn Atom, BBC computer, Acorn Archimedes, Risc PC, Sun workstations and servers, IBM-compatibles etc. I used several operating systems like Micosoft Windows (server and workstations), Linux, OSX, RISC OS, UNIX, Novell Netware and servers etc (I have been trained and certified as administrator on most of them). I certainly have nothing against Windows and, as you can see, I certainly have experience with a lot of desktop environments, and am a "easy adapter" to them.    

I Liked Windows 98SE, NT, 2000, XP. Did not liked Visa that much, but did not hated it either. I really like Windows 7, but for some reason I cannot seem to like Windows 8. I tried several times and it is still on my computer (as dual boot with several other types of OS). But every time I do another try run I just cannot seem to feel "at home", and do not enjoy the experience. Yes I know it's a personal thing, but using a desktop environment must be something to enjoy or been neutral about, not something you get the feeling it has been forced upon you - if you like it or not.  

For now Windows 7 stays firmly on my music computer. If "blue" is going to be any better remains to be seen. For now I remain slightly optimistic, but cannot get rid of that drowning feeling it is going to be a disappointment. I can only hope Microsoft will listen to their users. 

As I understand it, PC sales are down.  Laptops are down.  Tablets sales are up.  Draw your own conclusions

For the casual general-purpose user (surfing the Net, Facebook, Email), a tablet is small/inexpensive/convenient.

JClosed


  I used Windows 8 first as the user preview version. While I was not that enthusiastic, it seems to me to be a reasonable, albeit small, progression to a new Windows version. 

Then came the shock of the completely tiled start interface of the final version. I could not believe they done that at first, but soon learned it was no joke but reality.

Sure - there where work-arounds like classic shell, and for most times that worked. However - the new interface is really hurting my eyes. Gone is transparency and smooth edges. It is replaces by sharp dull edges. It has a dossy Windows 3.11 look, and to be honest - I think it is ugly as hell (yeah - I kown that's personal). I like a interface that is smooth on the eyes. Do not forget you have to stare at it sometimes for long sessions. And Windows 8 is not giving me that because the whole "Air" is just ripped out of it.

Then there are things like applications that just "disappear". As an example: I used VLC to play some music and made the mistake to switch to the tiles screen for a short moment. When going back to the main screen the complete VLC interface was gone. It was playing music on the background, but I could not find a simple(!) way to stop that application, because the interface was nowhere to be found. That is just one of the irritating little things that spoils the experience. And there are more.

Those where my first impressions for the final version of Windows 8. Do not forget those first impressions are really important, so Windows 8 did not made a good start with me.

To make things clear, I am no beginner with computers. I started in the gray old days with the Super Elf Micro Computing Board, programming in machine code. Then used the Acorn Atom, BBC computer, Acorn Archimedes, Risc PC, Sun workstations and servers, IBM-compatibles etc. I used several operating systems like Micosoft Windows (server and workstations), Linux, OSX, RISC OS, UNIX, Novell Netware and servers etc (I have been trained and certified as administrator on most of them). I certainly have nothing against Windows and, as you can see, I certainly have experience with a lot of desktop environments, and am a "easy adapter" to them.    

I Liked Windows 98SE, NT, 2000, XP. Did not liked Visa that much, but did not hated it either. I really like Windows 7, but for some reason I cannot seem to like Windows 8. I tried several times and it is still on my computer (as dual boot with several other types of OS). But every time I do another try run I just cannot seem to feel "at home", and do not enjoy the experience. Yes I know it's a personal thing, but using a desktop environment must be something to enjoy or been neutral about, not something you get the feeling it has been forced upon you - if you like it or not.  

For now Windows 7 stays firmly on my music computer. If "blue" is going to be any better remains to be seen. For now I remain slightly optimistic, but cannot get rid of that drowning feeling it is going to be a disappointment. I can only hope Microsoft will listen to their users. 

Maybe I'm missing something here, but the desktop is still there just as it always was if you prefer to work that way. Mine still looks identical my previous one, as my intial reaction was to try and make evrything like it used to be, though I find myself hardly using it now . I also don't understand why amyone would be staring at the metro screen for long periods - it's just a big start button so that you can navigate to what you really want to do isn't it ?  I don't know how toggling between open apps works on a desktop mouse, but on my laptop it's a simple swipe of the mouse and to close and open app is just a question of pointing the mouse anywhere along the top of the screen and click/dragging it down to the taskbar and it closes. Seems quite simple to me.
 
I'm not trying to be antagonostic or anything here, just don't understand some of your issues.