Just how much of a risk is Microsoft taking with Windows 8?
The answer: a pretty big one.
If Windows 8 indeed arrives at the tail end of 2012, it will be exactly three years since the release of Windows 7. As Microsoft executives like to trumpet on the quarterly earnings calls, Windows 7 has sold hundreds of millions of copies since 2009. In the process, it also earned the critical success that largely eluded its predecessor, the much-maligned Windows Vista.
The answer: You tell them that Windows 8 is uniquely suited to handle the challenges of the tech landscape as it’s evolved over the past three years. That it’s equally suited for tablets and traditional PCs, and that the adjustments to the interface by Microsoft engineers—including significant tweaks to file systems and security—will make lives easier for everyone, from teenagers to power users.
However, that might not prove enough to convince everyone who’s purchased a Windows system within the past two years to shell out the money for Windows 8. Remember that a majority of PC users clung for quite some time to Windows XP, which (thanks to any number of software updates over the years) evolved into a solid workhorse of an operating system. According to Net Applications, it still occupies some 47 per cent of the desktop market, followed by 36 percent for Windows 7. In other words, people don’t easily give up their old OS. This is potentially bad news for Windows 8 if it wants to quickly eclipse its predecessors in overall sales.
Microsoft’s first big push behind Windows 8 might instead center on its usefulness as a tablet operating system—as easy-to-use as an iPad or Android tablet, at least in theory, while also providing the power required for productivity and high-end entertainment.
Indeed, Microsoft is already signaling that it will place Windows 8’s mobility front-and-center in any marketing campaign. Pundits and tech-watchers expect the company to unveil the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (a fancy term for “beta”) at this February’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And many of the postings on the official Building Windows 8 blog have centered on mobile-centric features such as Windows 8’s app store and support for ARM architecture.
But while the Windows franchise has enjoyed a relatively unimpeded competitive landscape in desktop and laptop operating systems, handily dominating that segment for many years, it’s the underdog in tablets. Apple’s iPad currently dominates the market, which is crowded with Google Android devices. Microsoft will need to make the case to consumers that its Windows 8 tablets offer something above and beyond those well-tested, deeply-entrenched offerings.
Microsoft executives have spent the past few months encouraging third-party developers to create apps for Windows 8, with the aim of scaling up a healthy ecosystem as quickly as possible. It is also leveraging other Microsoft franchises in the service of making Windows 8 tablets more attractive, at least to those users who want a lightweight productivity tool.
As part of the flurry of details surrounding Windows on ARM (the architecture that will power many of the upcoming tablets), Microsoft let slip that it will support a new version of Office software. “Within the Windows desktop, WOA includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, code-named ‘Office 15,’” Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live division, wrote in a posting on the corporate Building Windows 8 blog. “WOA will be a no-compromise product for people who want to have the full benefits of familiar Office productivity software and compatibility.”
Will the combination of a big apps ecosystem, Office, and WOA make Windows 8 an instant competitor to the iPad and other tablets? That’s a question that Microsoft wants answered in the affirmative. But it faces a potentially hard battle for adoption, not only on tablets, but traditional PCs as well.
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I use both Macs and Windows PCs. There is very little mainstream work you can do on a PC that you cannot do on a Mac these days, but occasionally there are some, so I do keep a Windows XP PC around.
Windows 7 runs on my son's laptop, so I am quite familiar with it - it is an improvement to Windows XP and Vista, but not truly a compelling one.
The same is true of most Apple OSX upgrades, usually little in the way of compelling upgrades, except that Lion 10.7.x runs fully 64-bit and can access my 8 GB of RAM, thus speeding significantly the practical running speed of the system.
What would be a compelling upgrade for Windows? Only one thing: Fully integrated and robust anti-virus and anti-malware protection. This is the only thing really needed for Windows, and makes Windows far inferior to Macs at this time.
Sure, there are many usability enhancements which could make Windows as easy, or almost as easy as a Mac to use. And those enhancements would save lots of practical time during use - I find the Mac to be so much more smoothly integrated and well-thought-out, and not tied to old bad PC user habits. MS should offer a "new" interface as an option, which is far more Mac-like in integration.
William Donelson, sorry but you must understand the way virus creators work to comment like that, and it is ridiculous to think that Windows PCs are inferior to Macs because of its virus protection which is actually very good.
Virus creators only make viruses for systems that will most likely receive it, and PCs still own like 90% of the market so they would most definitely make a virus for a PC rather than a Mac.
Myth. Windows autoruns everything it can see with admin priveleges, it is abysmal by design in terms of security. Even if the market was 50/50... Its easy to make a virus for windows, and excruciatingly difficult to make one for Unix based systems.
Microsoft are slipping backwards. Rather than move with a market of people who are technology literate, they are increasingly aiming their OS at kids who can do little more than hit the big button.
Not a fan - I'd rather swap to another OS than use 8.
"What would be a compelling upgrade for Windows? Only one thing: Fully integrated and robust anti-virus and anti-malware protection. This is the only thing really needed for Windows, and makes Windows far inferior to Macs at this time"
That was off. Windows 64-bit is considered the most hardened consumer O/S by the people that actually build AV. Certainly, this has been Symantec's view since Vista 64-bit.
Further I also use both platforms. There is plenty software you can't run all out on the Mac - Project & Visio to start. Omnigraffle is no Visio replacement, and Ominplan is no Project replacement, just to start.
In my opinion Microsoft have a number of really serious problems with the up & coming launch of windows 8. These are as I see it:
No.1 Microsoft Windows 8 will have to compete directly in the market with an already hugely successful OS in Windows 7 and to a lesser degree Windows XP.
No.2 All the signals from Microsoft show the focus of Windows 8 will be on the Tablet Smartphone laptop arena but this leaves the traditional desktop PC OS out in the cold. The danger here is that Microsoft could end up completely alienating there consumer desktop users.
No.3 Given what I've already read about Windows 8 I cannot see a very compelling reason for anyone using Windows 7 to upgrade to windows 8.
No.4 The new Metro GUI is more of a turn off than a draw for most desktop users.
No.5 My guess is that most desktop PC users don't want or need a touch orientated OS and even if someone makes a touch screen display for the desktop I cannot see many people wanting or using it.
No.6 Finally the UK, the EU and a large segment of the world are in a down turn or recession. Meaning consumers don't have a large amount of free disposable income to spend on luxuries like windows 8 upgrades or new windows 8 PC's.
So windows 8 faces extremely tough launch conditions in an already crowded mobile OS market.
I am one of those people who bought Windows 7 for a new computer which I built. I am more than happy with it as it's a lot more stable than XP. I paid quite a bit for this and bought two books about using Windows 7. There is always the lure of the new but I'm fully aware that Windows 8 is really about bringing Microsoft up to date with mobile computing, if they don't, they die. I am not buying the hype and I will not pay for their new stake in mobile computing whether it's support for tablets or phones.
I might consider upgrading if Microsoft make it affordable. I would pay £20-£30 for an upgrade, any more and I'll quite happily wait for Windows 9. I own too much software to jump to another OS, thank you very much, Apple.
In short, Microsoft will die even if they have a superb OS but don't price it correctly.
The major consideration Microsoft need to address is cost, with a new Mac OS (Mountain Lion) announced for this summer just one year after Lion, not 3 yrs as is the windows case, and probably at a cost under $30 not $200+ if you are in the market for a new machine this alone could be very tempting. Microsoft needs to react much quicker and much much cheaper each year to maintain that 90/10 advantage especially in the consumer market where they have no phone or pad presence, consumers will want all their devices to look and operate the same way.
MS is as dead as a dodo in terms of making lots money of Operating System sales.
Why pay when
1) your Smart phone O/S is free
2) your tablet O/S is free.
3) your server O/S is free.
4) Your Cloud server O/S is free.
MS is incompatible with the rest of the worlds software. They are trying to etract $100's from the poor people across the world who earn a few $100 a month.
The only people who buy MS are wealthy people in The West, people and businesses who are trapped into MS incompatibilty i.e. only use MS Office and can't change, won't change.
This includes the UK govt and NHS who waste £billions on MS as "the TCO is less", i.e. re-training their staff would cost more, better to stay locked-in to MS.
Short-termism, polital cowardice-this is how MS is parasitical on humanity. To confound things it tries to Patent everything (that was invented by others) and bury the patent in a vault for fear it will free their customers from entrapment.
MS must cease charging more than a few $s for it's O/Ss and then it will survive. MS, like Apple, should re-join the human race.
"MS is incompatible with the rest of the worlds software"....Um yeah if you say so.
One of MS's problems is that on avergae only every other O/S release is worthwhile. XP was what 2000 should have been, Win7 is what Vista should have been. Looking back at earlier products shows a simliar pattern. They tend to take two O/S generations to get things right.
I'll wait for Win 9.
I use windows 7 on my laptop and it runs like a dream... my specs are not that powerful... the laptop initially came with a copy of Vista... but right from day one my (brand new) laptop was almost unusable and was unable to cope with the simplest of tasks... with low RAM memory warnings popping up every 5 minutes.... and plenty of crashes, freezes and blue screens of death!
Vista was a total fail... and I feel very conned and cheated... my laptop was a hefty price because it was top of the range when I bought it several years ago...
And personally I think that Microsoft should be offering free upgrades from vista to windows 7...
I paid over £600 for a brand new laptop... that couldn't even handle more than one Internet explorer window without my machine going totally crazy on me.
So I am hoping that the new windows 8 is even faster, leaner and meaner that windows 7... that would be great.
If they can get it running as fast as WindowsME did... but on newer machines that would be fantastic.
Being very old and having started with log tables and slide rules, I thought calculators were brilliant. For simple repetitive work, programmable calculators were good. Sorry people, but no one NEEDS a computer. My first one, a net book, had Windows XP. I thought it had been around long enough to have the bugs ironed out. I needed a bigger screen, and keyboard, so I got a laptop. That had Windows 7.
Boy was I lucky. I got in just in time before hard drives went mad. I haven't used all my RAM yet. I like Email (when anyone bothers to look at it.). I don't need Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and all these other things. Nor cloud.
A computer is supposed to be a working machine,, not a toy. Not an MP3 player nor games nor video machine. In the real world where we make things, like fast jet transport, safe enough for Granny to travel in, chips have their uses. Boeing are making 50 737's A MONTH plus all the rest. XP is good, 7 is good. They will see me out. You have all made your money. The word greed springs to mind. People like to get used to something, not have it changed every 5 minutes.
There is a finite number of people in the world, and they don't all need computers. They need bacon and eggs and porridge. Computers don't do everything. On their own they don't do anything. I like Windows XP and 7. And IE8 and Google. I don't need Chrome. 10 Mbytes/sec download would be nice. I get 8 now. I don't need 100's. It still takes an hour, or even a week to read or study something. I don't understand the lust for speed. Nor why we have to pay for a phone line. how much i That will do me.
I can't do it all again. People like to get used to something. Not have it changed every 5 minutes. We don't need computers. We need bacon and eggs and porridge. The word greed springs to mind. I like Windows XP and Windows 7. And IE8 and Google. I don't need Chrome. 10 mbytes/sec download would be nice. I get 8 now. I don't need 100's. Why do we have to pay for a telephone line? And why am I getting BT Infinity? I'm just getting old. But they do beat log tables and slide rules. Enough.
I want it to cost £40 for the Pro version, a discount for multiple home installations and I want it to be smaller and faster.
Why isn't a 30GB partition big enough for Windows and Office? Where in Gods name does it all go?
Fix this and don't fleece me and I'll buy it. Otherwise I'm not interested, Windows 7 is just fine. Until they stop supporting it of course...