Windows 7 Still Out Growing Windows 8!

Not surprising. Even though you can't even find a PC preloaded with Windows 7 in stores anymore, people at large just do not like Metro.
 
It's not surprising for 3 reasons:

1) consumer Windows system sales, where virtually all Win8.x installations in use exist, is an alarmingly shrinking market.

2) business/corporate system/license sales are becoming a larger part of total Windows sales and the imminent death of XP is finally pushing part of that large base of XP users onto something newer.

3) because Win8.x is a total non-starter for productivity users in business/corporate segments, Windows 7 wins by default for the vast majority of business/corporate sites which choose to remain primarily on Windows.

The funny thing is that Win8.x could be gaining adoption in Windows' largest segments simply by having the option to turn off the tablet interface which is entirely unnecessary for most of those users.
 
pxc said:
The funny thing is that Win8.x could be gaining adoption in Windows' largest segments simply by having the option to turn off the tablet interface which is entirely unnecessary for most of those users.
Click to expand...

This is what I'll never understand. They could've simply made an inexpensive or free SKU of Windows 8 where Metro was forced, then Professional and Enterprise SKU's which were higher priced but had the ability to disable Metro and restore the Start Menu. Done.

And then they should've put all their focus on actually making a case for Metro apps on the desktop by making compelling apps that businesses and end users would actually want to use. Not sluggish, functionally crippled tablet apps with 1/10 the features of the desktop equivalent.

But they did none of those things and here we are with businesses switching to Windows 7 en masse and planning on riding that for the next decade while Microsoft sits with a thumb parked wondering why marketing initiatives and PR campaigns didn't help Metro take the world by storm.
 
I set up four people with Windows 8 this past week due to laptop/desktop purchases from Black Friday. All of them hated Metro and couldn't understand why they did that. Their words not mine just to be clear. After taking a few hours with each and upgrading to Win 8.1 then teaching them mostly how to get out of Metro when they get stuck there and back to the desktop, its a bit better. Especially now that you can boot right to desktop. I just don't understand why MS would continue to make such stupid decisions even with Win 8.1?
 
This is really sad when you think about all new home PC's ship with 8 which counts towards this total. People are upgrading old boxes to 7 + backloading 8 to 7 at a rate which exceeds 8's sales.

I really hope Microsoft takes notice that other than a small amount of people, most do not like Modern UI and the usage of a touch UI on PC.

I don't care what kind of improvements to modern UI they make, it's still a jarring experience. Going back and forth between the desktop and Modern UI for applications and control panel settings is frustrating and irritating. So even installing a Start Menu replacement, you still get the back and forth crap that you can't get away from.

I think Sinofsky getting shit canned right after it released tells you everything you need to know about 8. No one gets fired or steps down immediately after they release a truly great product that the company believes in.
 
If 8 didn't have metro, I'd upgrade. I purchased a Gateway machine last week for $169 to install in a local veterinary office, and it was so confusing to find the correct area were the device and hardware settings are. If you go to Settings on that pop up side menu, you just have basic settings, which I wasn't looking for.
 
LOLing at all these stubborn people mad about a Start screen.

RATHER EAT MY OWN FOOT THAN DEAL WITH METRO ROARRRR
 
History has shown that adoption of any new Windows OS is initially slow due to app compatibility, driver availability, having to relearn the differences, cost and hassle of upgrading.

With that said, Windows 8.1 actually looks nice (minus the metro start screen) and responsive. Just completed testing 7, 8 and 8.1 side-by-side and decided to go with 8.1 now that Nvidia has released less crappy video drivers that runs BF3 stably (hopefully BF4 soon). And, they fixed the useless start/metro screen mess with these configurable options:

- sign in to desktop instead of start
- show the apps menu when clicking on start or pressing windows key
- show desktop apps first on apps menu since it can be lengthy (just wish they would collapse all the categories by default and only show items you last opened)

Now, if they unclutter control panel, pc info and change pc settings under one hierarchy I'll be very happy because I can never remember under which of the three I need to go to when I need to do something. Or, just copy Android's settings layout.
 
SuperSubZero said:
LOLing at all these stubborn people mad about a Start screen.

RATHER EAT MY OWN FOOT THAN DEAL WITH METRO ROARRRR
Click to expand...

As a a person who's helped a lot of non-techie people deal with the new OS, yes they are mad and very confused about the Metro start screen. I don't relish late night calls from friends, etc., because they are stuck and can't get back to the desktop. I know the truth may seem really funny to you but there it is anyway.
 
SuperSubZero said:
LOLing at all these stubborn people mad about a Start screen.

RATHER EAT MY OWN FOOT THAN DEAL WITH METRO ROARRRR
Click to expand...

LOLing at kool-aid suckers that deal with Metro even though it does nothing BETTER than the system its attempting to replace on a desktop PC, all for the sole purpose of doing their minion part to fulfill Microsoft's financial ambitions of cashing out the built up goodwill of a productivity platform by attempting to manipulate it slowly into an app delivery platform and not much else.

Here's what it really boils down to: Microsoft was too busy asking themselves "what's in it for us" that they forgot to ask themselves "what's in it for the end user"
 
Wow, this is such nonsense. How the hell is Windows 7 outgrowing Windows 8.x when using the same data that this is based on, Windows 8.x went from 0 to almost 10 percent while Windows 7 went up from like 44 to 46 percent since the launch of Windows 8?

Many, including myself have long said that Windows 7 would grow some due to business migrations from XP to 7, many that started long before Windows 8 was even released. November generally is a good month for the consumer side of PCs because of this thing called Christmas with other things called holiday sales. There are some crazy ass prices going with Windows 8 devices this year. If 7 outpaces 8 in December then there's a story.
 
It's frightening how many people will buy into these stupid articles without even making an attempt to think for themselves.

Windows 7 is still growing in market share because companies are still finishing Windows 7 rollouts that have been in the pipeline for years. This should be obvious. This should have been obvious to people before Windows 8 was even announced to have a new UI. People aren't buy Windows 8 computers and downgrading them. They're decommissioning XP machines and finally deploying Windows 7.
 
DPI said:
LOLing at kool-aid suckers that deal with Metro even though it does nothing BETTER than the system its attempting to replace on a desktop PC, all for the sole purpose of doing their minion part to fulfill Microsoft's financial ambitions of cashing out the built up goodwill of a productivity platform by attempting to manipulate it slowly into an app delivery platform and not much else.

Here's what it really boils down to: Microsoft was too busy asking themselves "what's in it for us" that they forgot to ask themselves "what's in it for the end user"
Click to expand...

svlUtCn.png
 
pxc said:
The funny thing is that Win8.x could be gaining adoption in Windows' largest segments simply by having the option to turn off the tablet interface which is entirely unnecessary for most of those users.
Click to expand...

That's what I really don't understand about this whole mess. All they've managed to do is piss off users and destroy the Windows 8 brand. It should have been obvious from the start that Metro needed a lot of work. They knew from Vista that they can't fix a brand once the public makes it's judgement no matter how good the product ends up being. Why not have launched 8 as a desktop OS with 'cool new hybrid UI features for touch devices'?

Look at the PR success they had from advertising the 7 beta and pretending to listen to user feedback while actually removing Vista features. If they had launched Metro as an optional 'beta' feature Windows 8 sales would have been better. People complain less when they feel like they're participating.
 
SuperSubZero said:
LOLing at all these stubborn people mad about a Start screen.

RATHER EAT MY OWN FOOT THAN DEAL WITH METRO ROARRRR
Click to expand...

I only have one foot left.... :/


anyways

Windows 8 is great on a tablet and I am going to get the Dell Venu 8 pro.... on my dekstop, it sucked a giant donkey nut especially when it came to old programs....
 
DeathFromBelow, you can't make side-by-side parallel between Vista->7 and 7->8 like this.
Vista pioneered many new cool features that consumers liked (apart from some options that got their new positions, some of which were controversial to some degree), and virtually the only issue Vista had was the hardware wasn't particularly ready for it. 7 is just a kind of visual extension and I didn't find any significant differences between the two for the desktop, even performance-wise. I don't quite get it how Vista was the total disaster and 7 is the total winner, but that's me.
Ok, 8.1 should've been to 8.0 what 7 was to Vista... well it turns out not quite :) .
I hate 8 to the bones. It's clear MS' only goal is to use its large desktop base of users to forcefully promote the modern UI and to grow the sales of its mobile devices! What was the outcome - I think it had a counter-productive effect. If 8 got its numbers, it was thanks to many other factors but not to the damage they inflicted on their desktop users.
 
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Windows 8.1 starts up and shuts down very quickly: 11 seconds or so from pressing the power button to on/usable and 15 - 20 seconds to shut down with my SSD. With the same hardware Windows 7 was around 25 - 30 seconds to start and 30 - 45 seconds to shut down. New software seems to run just fine, though I find little to no use for the App versions of things since I am not on a tablet with limited resources.

I personally like the Windows 7 Aero Theme a lot more than the Windows 8 Theme and thought that they had finally made a GUI that was just plain beautiful with 7 (not that this does much from a usability standpoint, but I thought it was a very nice touch). Making everything blocky again just doesn't seem like innovation to me on that front...

I have had some issues with older software and games, but that is why I keep my Windows 7 installation around on a spare drive now. I did the same thing with Windows XP when I moved to Windows 7 (having mostly skipped Vista until after the fact, when I had a bug to prove that with the right hardware and some tweaks, Vista was a perfectly stable/capable OS).

I generally prefer not to have a lot of icons on my desktop or quick launch bar, but I have changed that stance with 8. I have loaded as much as possible to the desktop and quick launch bar, then set the option to load right to the desktop that they added in 8.1. Aside from having to remember to right-click the Start button to do most of what I want and accidentally setting off the Charms Bar whenever I try to close a program, I think I can get used to the OS in time. I've already started by limiting myself to about 3/4 of the screen with open windows so that the close button is not in the right corner any more...

The hideous Lock Screen image is gone now. I wish I could replace it with an image of my choosing, but apparently that functionality is still broken on desktops, so I settled for just making it a flat color. I can live with that.

Lastly, the resource footprint seems much better from a CPU/RAM/HDD standpoint than my Windows 7 Professional installation, but my GPU is now always running at 10 - 12% when I'm idle on the desktop. I guess they must have off-loaded some aspects of the GUI to the video card. I can live with that too.

With all of that having been said, if they decide to migrate to Windows 8 at work, I'm jumping off the building...
 
MrCaffeineX said:
The hideous Lock Screen image is gone now. I wish I could replace it with an image of my choosing, but apparently that functionality is still broken on desktops, so I settled for just making it a flat color. I can live with that.
Click to expand...

Screenshot%20(10).png


Not sure what your problem is with the Look Screen picture but it is easily changed and can even be setup to display multiple images like a digital picture frame by setting a directory path to whatever images one wants to display.
 
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