Microsoft should just bring out Windows 9.

Torqay

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Just like Vista the best business strategy now would be to leave in behind and moved on to next OS.

According to German compumag Chip, Windows 9 Beta will be ready in January, RTM next summer. It will see the return to a conventional desktop OS. Back to Aero UI and good riddance to tiles, apps and other nonsense. They'll probably yank the fast sinking Windows RT in favour of Windows Phone which will run on smartphones and tablets alike. Microsoft's foray into the tablet world was totally for the birds, their "partners" have jumped ship long time ago and now the lawyers are coming after them.

Fysh

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

This is more than just anonymous bitching on the internet. Even OEM's are putting blame to lack of PC sales down to Window 8. You have to admit Windows 8 has failed and the meme that it sucks is very strong. I can't see it changing for the better. It's going to be very hard to turn this ship around. Just like Vista the best business strategy now would be to leave in behind and moved on to next OS.

Nah, I disagree.

Firstly, anyone who decides on the overall state of any Windows release in its first year/SP0 state is a twit. XP, that darling OS of all the Win8 haters, was an unusable turd for the entirety of its SP0 lifespan (and didn't even manage to bring native USB support to the table, which was one of its then-vaunted advantages over the by-then-rock-solid Win2K). SP1, released after a year, was ok and made it usable, and SP2 was when they actually brought in features like the native firewall that made it a genuine move forward from Win2k. So to dismiss Win8, which is as an OS an iterative improvement on Windows 7 - an already-pretty-solid OS- because learning how to use a new UI involves putting a miniscule amount of effort in for a couple of days, is to announce yourself as a prat. Yes, I know, classic mode should've been built in. However, in the time it takes you to write a post like the above you can already have downloaded and installed ClassicShell, Start8, or any other utility to solve that problem - and if the entirety of your problem is "I don't like the way the Start Page replaced the Start Menu" then you really don't actually have a problem with the OS. As I've written repeatedly elsewhere, spend a little bit of time once on customising the Start Page to feature software you actually use, grouped in a way that is useful to you, and suddenly it's not the eyeball-stabbing ugliness it initially appears.

Secondly, the elephant in the room about PC sales being down is that OEM partners are looking for an excuse (any excuse) to explain why sales of their crappy cheap Windows laptops are down that doesn't involve admitting that tablets are eating into the low-end laptop market. If you're going to spend ~£300 on a device that you mainly use for mucking about on the internet, using Skype or whatever other videochat, watching Youtube/Netflix/whatever, and maybe the odd bit of light office-type work - you can get a tablet with a shiny screen that's portable, or you can get a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop.

The WinRT Surface and equivalent tablets were meant to answer this issue, but as I wrote previously in this thread, Microsoft fumbled their handling of this area and as a result most OEMs dont want to bother because at best they can produce low-margin craptabs that won't sell in comparison to Android tablets (because people at least know the Android Marketplace is well-supported and full of stuff they might like). I don't understand why Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 RT both exist at the same time...a 10" WinPhone tablet would've been a more obvious and straightforward way to enter the tablet market, IMO, but equally this is all hindsight...

As for the "ditch it and move to Windows 9", I don't agree. Aside from anything else, MS have shown that they're struggling to keep up with a 3 year development cycle for a full OS even when they're catching up with the rest of the market in terms of tech. I think what they actually need to do is get win 8.1 out the door, address the usability concerns of Windows 8 on a non-touch device, and give serious consideration as to whether their approach of forcing one UI onto a bunch of devices with different HIDs has been successful.

uncle_sam_ie

Fysh wrote: »

Nah, I disagree.

Firstly, anyone who decides on the overall state of any Windows release in its first year/SP0 state is a twit. XP, that darling OS of all the Win8 haters, was an unusable turd for the entirety of its SP0 lifespan (and didn't even manage to bring native USB support to the table, which was one of its then-vaunted advantages over the by-then-rock-solid Win2K). SP1, released after a year, was ok and made it usable, and SP2 was when they actually brought in features like the native firewall that made it a genuine move forward from Win2k. So to dismiss Win8, which is as an OS an iterative improvement on Windows 7 - an already-pretty-solid OS- because learning how to use a new UI involves putting a miniscule amount of effort in for a couple of days, is to announce yourself as a prat. Yes, I know, classic mode should've been built in. However, in the time it takes you to write a post like the above you can already have downloaded and installed ClassicShell, Start8, or any other utility to solve that problem - and if the entirety of your problem is "I don't like the way the Start Page replaced the Start Menu" then you really don't actually have a problem with the OS. As I've written repeatedly elsewhere, spend a little bit of time once on customising the Start Page to feature software you actually use, grouped in a way that is useful to you, and suddenly it's not the eyeball-stabbing ugliness it initially appears.

Secondly, the elephant in the room about PC sales being down is that OEM partners are looking for an excuse (any excuse) to explain why sales of their crappy cheap Windows laptops are down that doesn't involve admitting that tablets are eating into the low-end laptop market. If you're going to spend ~£300 on a device that you mainly use for mucking about on the internet, using Skype or whatever other videochat, watching Youtube/Netflix/whatever, and maybe the odd bit of light office-type work - you can get a tablet with a shiny screen that's portable, or you can get a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop.

The WinRT Surface and equivalent tablets were meant to answer this issue, but as I wrote previously in this thread, Microsoft fumbled their handling of this area and as a result most OEMs dont want to bother because at best they can produce low-margin craptabs that won't sell in comparison to Android tablets (because people at least know the Android Marketplace is well-supported and full of stuff they might like). I don't understand why Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 RT both exist at the same time...a 10" WinPhone tablet would've been a more obvious and straightforward way to enter the tablet market, IMO, but equally this is all hindsight...

.

Yes I understand and agree with all that, but what I'm saying is the meme that it sucks is the same as it was for Vista if not worse. It's getting a lot for bad press and even I am getting relatives and friends coming up me asking what to do because they're hearing it sucks. I just think it's going to be hard for MS to turn this negativity around. Also, when XP came out there was less competition in the market it was easier to turn that around.

Torqay

Fysh wrote: »

XP, that darling OS of all the Win8 haters, was an unusable turd for the entirety of its SP0 lifespan

Those who came from Win2K loathed that Fisher Price OS with a vengeance.

Fysh

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

Yes I understand and agree with all that, but what I'm saying is the meme that it sucks is the same as it was for Vista if not worse. It's getting a lot for bad press and even I am getting relatives and friends coming up me asking what to do because they're hearing it sucks. I just think it's going to be hard for MS to turn this negativity around. Also, when XP came out there was less competition in the market it was easier to turn that around.

What I don't think you're getting, though, is that the meme is based entirely (or almost entirely) on ignorance, which makes it completely different to the meme about Vista.

Vista had a number of genuine and substantial problems in its first 18 months - a combination of the Vista Home Basic fiasco (the result of Intel manufacturing a load of boards with integrated graphics that couldn't adequately run any of the Aero functionality, which led to them pressuring MS to come up with a low-end version of Vista that could still use these boards so that OEMs would buy them and Intel wouldn't be stuck with a load of now-useless inventory) which compounded the problem caused by MS lowballing the minimum specifications required to run it, poorly-tuned disk indexing that would frequently cause the system to grind to a halt, poorly tuned services like ReadyBoost and Superfetch that are best disabled, and issues intermittently/arbitrarily affecting update installation like the Infinite Reboot Loop of Death.

By the time SP1 landed, most of those issues could be solved without too much hassle, but even with the solutions applied Vista was still only really feasible for machines built or released after Vista (unless you had a very good machine). SP2 improved performance and reliability as well, but people had decided that it wasn't worth the hassle because Windows 7 was on the horizon.

Windows 8, on the other hand, has not had any comparable issues. The complaints about it are almost entirely surrounding the Modern UI - and I understand where they originate, since I was one of the people who complained about the UI back in the Release Preview Days. However, since Windows support is my dayjob I bought and installed a copy of Win 8 Pro on my home workstation, and quickly realised that once I accepted the new UI wasn't going away, there were some new keyboard shortcuts that would make dealing with it far easier than I had feared (I gravitate towards keyboard shortcuts anyway and have done for years). As soon as I realised this and put together my 1-page keyboard shortcut cheatsheet, I found that the Modern UI got out of my way and I was pretty much back in business as if I were running Windows 7 - except that the underlying OS is a bit better.

That is why the meme about Windows 8 annoys me - because it's predicated on not using the damn OS, but just looking at the new Start Page and going "EEEEEEEEEEEEEW!". I refuse to take commentary at that level of ignorance seriously, because a decade of experience working in support has taught me that if you worry about that sort of commentary instead of making people learn how to use the tools they're given, you'll go mad. And still have to deal with people being butthurt about how their new OS doesn't look identical to that one they used to like from way back in the Stone AGE.

uncle_sam_ie

Fysh wrote: »

What I don't think you're getting, though, is that the meme is based entirely (or almost entirely) on ignorance, which makes it completely different to the meme about Vista.

Vista had a number of genuine and substantial problems in its first 18 months - a combination of the Vista Home Basic fiasco (the result of Intel manufacturing a load of boards with integrated graphics that couldn't adequately run any of the Aero functionality, which led to them pressuring MS to come up with a low-end version of Vista that could still use these boards so that OEMs would buy them and Intel wouldn't be stuck with a load of now-useless inventory) which compounded the problem caused by MS lowballing the minimum specifications required to run it, poorly-tuned disk indexing that would frequently cause the system to grind to a halt, poorly tuned services like ReadyBoost and Superfetch that are best disabled, and issues intermittently/arbitrarily affecting update installation like the Infinite Reboot Loop of Death.

By the time SP1 landed, most of those issues could be solved without too much hassle, but even with the solutions applied Vista was still only really feasible for machines built or released after Vista (unless you had a very good machine). SP2 improved performance and reliability as well, but people had decided that it wasn't worth the hassle because Windows 7 was on the horizon.

Windows 8, on the other hand, has not had any comparable issues. The complaints about it are almost entirely surrounding the Modern UI - and I understand where they originate, since I was one of the people who complained about the UI back in the Release Preview Days. However, since Windows support is my dayjob I bought and installed a copy of Win 8 Pro on my home workstation, and quickly realised that once I accepted the new UI wasn't going away, there were some new keyboard shortcuts that would make dealing with it far easier than I had feared (I gravitate towards keyboard shortcuts anyway and have done for years). As soon as I realised this and put together my 1-page keyboard shortcut cheatsheet, I found that the Modern UI got out of my way and I was pretty much back in business as if I were running Windows 7 - except that the underlying OS is a bit better.

That is why the meme about Windows 8 annoys me - because it's predicated on not using the damn OS, but just looking at the new Start Page and going "EEEEEEEEEEEEEW!". I refuse to take commentary at that level of ignorance seriously, because a decade of experience working in support has taught me that if you worry about that sort of commentary instead of making people learn how to use the tools they're given, you'll go mad. And still have to deal with people being butthurt about how their new OS doesn't look identical to that one they used to like from way back in the Stone AGE.

Were actually on the same page. I do get that all this negativity is unfounded and annoying. All I'm saying is that all this negativity is hurting MS and at this point wouldn't it just be better to move on to Windows 9. I'm mean couldn't they do like the car industry by putting a racing stripe down the middle and calling it next years model.

Torqay

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

I'm mean couldn't they do like the car industry by putting a racing stripe down the middle and calling it next years model.

They have tried that stunt before and got a heavy beating (Mojave).

uncle_sam_ie

Torqay wrote: »

They have tried that stunt before and got a heavy beating (Mojave).

But, didn't that show rebranding works,

"The participants in the experiment were asked about their perceptions of Windows Vista and then were shown a ten minute demo of Microsoft's "next OS," codenamed "Mojave". After the experiment was over, it was revealed that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.[1] As a result, the average rating of "Vista" was 4.4 out of 10, but the average rating for the "Mojave" OS was 8.5 out of 10"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment

Torqay

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

But, didn't that show rebranding works

Only if it doesn't blow up in their face.

Windows 7 is basically a revamped and streamlined version of Windows Vista. It is no coincidence that 99% of Vista device drivers work so well with Windows 7. They only called it 7 because Mojave 2.0 wouldn't have gone down so well.

_Kaiser_

Torqay wrote: »

According to German compumag Chip, Windows 9 Beta will be ready in January, RTM next summer. It will see the return to a conventional desktop OS. Back to Aero UI and good riddance to tiles, apps and other nonsense.

Just read that article now - link here (use Chrome and it'll automatically translate it).

Be nice if it happens, and I'd agree that just having a Windows Desktop and Windows Phone & Tablet would be a good move after the tablet/RT foray.

Overheal

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

But, didn't that show rebranding works,

"The participants in the experiment were asked about their perceptions of Windows Vista and then were shown a ten minute demo of Microsoft's "next OS," codenamed "Mojave". After the experiment was over, it was revealed that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.[1] As a result, the average rating of "Vista" was 4.4 out of 10, but the average rating for the "Mojave" OS was 8.5 out of 10"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Experiment

I had forgotten about project mojave.

The more I think about it the same thinking is being applied to the hype ahead of 8.1. Customers are themselves getting wound up and excited about it, because they perceive 8 to be so terrible and flawed and broken and sure enough just like pretending for your cat that you just put out fresh kibble for him suddenly that same bowl of stale meow mix is instantly more palatable

uncle_sam_ie

This is just a rumor so take it with grain of salt.

"According to WZOR, Windows 9 will be similar to the desktop OS we know today. He claims that Microsoft is planning to bring the old Aero interface back, but not as we all know it. That's all he teases regarding the Aero interface, but he also claims that Windows 9 will make an appearance in a years time, Much sooner than expected."

http://www.winbeta.org/news/alleged-windows-9-windows-10-windows-rt-and-windows-phone-details-emerge-rumor