Duh: By Abandoning the PC, Microsoft Windows 8 Fails to Save the PC
The personal computer is in crisis, and getting little help from Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 8 software once seen as a possible savior.
Research firm IDC issued an alarming report Wednesday for PC makers such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., saying world-wide shipments of laptops and desktops fell 14% in the first quarter from a year earlier. That is the sharpest drop since IDC began tracking this data in 1994 and marks the fourth straight quarter of declines.
Gartner Inc., a rival research firm, estimated global shipments sank 11.2%, which it called the worst drop since the first quarter of 2001. Gartner blamed the rise of tablets and smartphones, which are sapping demand for personal computers.
Windows 8 was never, ever going to save the PC, because Windows 8 represents an abandonment of the traditional PC. It is essentially a touchscreen tablet OS forced onto the desktop. Like Windows Vista, it is an absolutely awful OS that our company has banned any employee from using on a company machine. Fortunately, we can still buy a few Dell computers with Windows 7, and when that is no longer possible, I will go back to building our company machines and putting Windows 7 on myself, the same thing I did to survive the Vista nightmare (hanging on to XP until Windows 7 came out).
Later in the article, the author recognizes that Windows 8 is killing the PC rather than saving it
But there is little sign that buyers are responding. In a surprisingly harsh assessment, IDC said Windows 8 hasn't only failed to spur more PC demand but has actually exacerbated the slowdown—confusing consumers with features that don't excel in a tablet mode and compromise the traditional PC experience.
Mr. Chou said not only has Windows 8 failed to attract consumers, but businesses are keeping their distance as well. Chief information officers at several companies echoed his opinion Wednesday.
Ricoh Americas Corp., which replaces about a third of its 17,000 PCs every three years and upgrades to the most current operating system available, said this year it is sticking with Windows 7, released in 2009. Tracey Rothenberger, the company's chief operating officer, said the benefits of switching to the new software aren't worth the effort of training employees to use it.
I am sympathetic to Microsoft's goals, if not their tactics. Certainly market share in OS is shifting to handheld devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and Microsoft has largely missed this market. To stay relevant, they need to gain share in these markets -- and trying to gain a foothold by somehow leveraging their market share in desktops makes sense. It would be great to have an OS for tablets that allowed more access to the file system and customization options, as a competitor to Apple's walled garden, though Google is way ahead in that particular niche.
But the imposition of tablet aesthetics, user interface, and apps framework on desktop PC's is just frustrating as hell for those of us who still like using a mouse and prefer our traditional desktop interface. The training issue for employees is not a trivial one -- when Microsoft completely abandoned the menu structure and user interface of their Office products several years ago, we decided not to upgrade any of our PC's and, when necessary, to use the OpenOffice alternative, as much because it retains the old Office interface as for its being free.
I still use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint 2002 on this computer, because I have never really been happy with the new Office interface. I use no other software even remotely that old. I routinely upgrade everything I have. I dutifully upgrade Quickbooks and Norton Security and a dozen other programs every year. So to go a decade without upgrading shows how little I think of Microsoft's upgrade strategies.
I'm running the Apple Bluetooth touch pad on both of my Mac's. It's not quite as good as a mouse, but certainly not an order of magnitude worse, and it helps with limited desk space. My favorite pointing device is track-ball, but they are fading, especially the really big ones where you can get precision.
BTW, I was using track balls a couple of years before the mouse appeared. In fact, when I went to Englebart's original presentation (SF 1968) I wasn't awed by the mouse, but the rest of it blew me away.
Ha, ha silly you, I love to lift my old tired arms up and over my desktop 500 times a day. I especially like to do it at the end of the working day, 4 forking times, to shut down windows forking 8.
4 clicks to shut down? Really?
GORILLA ARM (gor-il'uh arm) n. The side-effect that destroyed
touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising
start in the early eighties. It seems the designers of all those
SPIFFY touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't
designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small
motions. After more than a very few selects the arm begins to feel
sore, cramped, and oversized, hence "gorilla arm". This is now
considered a classic Horrible Example and cautionary tale to
human-factors designers; "remember the gorilla arm" is shorthand
for "how's this gonna fly in *real* use?"
- 'The Hacker's Dictionary' -
Obviously, it's less of an issue with something sitting in your lap or on a table in front of you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XapHeG5yyls
touch screens work well at small sizes or with larger horizontal surfaces. They don't work so well with vertical surfaces for the reasons you note.
The comments make me feel strange. I actually like Windows 8 on my laptop and ice cream sandwich on my Samsung tablet..
You should root your tablet and put on Win 8 RT.
The really big ones were ergonomic nightmares. Caused a lot of damage to wrists, mine included. Took almost 10 years to heal the damage from my Kensington track ball.
You could probably use a pointing device to get better precision on the touch screen. I prefer using the mouse pad on the laptop rather than a side mouse, or touch screen myself.
Microsoft already tried this win Windows CE. They wanted to make all tablets (called PDA's in the bad old days) look like a windows desktop. It failed miserably because people want different things from the desktop and their PDA (now tablet).
So I don't understand after 10 years of fail with Win CE and its variants (Microsoft thought for awhile if they just rename the thing over and over, they will eventually get a trendy name and it will catch on) why they think the reverse is so much better.
I used the big Kensington for many years with no problem. Also, decades earlier when I was in the Navy, I used even larger track balls. Perhaps they are a problem just for some people.
That is pretty annoying, but there's one-click shutdown apps you can pin to the desktop. Or you could--if you're not using a laptop--just learn to let the machine sleep instead. I have all my machines set to sleep after 10-15 minutes so I usually don't bother shutting them down. At work, I lock my PC when I leave for the day--I reboot when I have to.
I've seen some recent figures suggesting that MS has recently moved from ~2 to ~4% market share with Windows Phone 8. There may well turn out to be a LOT more smartphones and tablets than PCs in a few years, and if they can bring their share up, they'll be doing pretty well.
Having said all that, the fuss about W8 is really overblown. If you hate the start screen so much, you rarely need to go into it as long as you avoid Windows RT machines--I've been using it for quite a while now.
I eventually found a one click shutdown app, but I bitterly resent being sold a product where I am responsible for such things. When I buy a car I expect door handles and a steering wheel. A selection of simple shut down sequences is not 'optional equipment' like a turbocharger or a ski-rack.
:-D
LOLZ.
}}} I reboot when I have to.
If the history of M$ OSes is any guide, this is roughly every other day, then...
:-D
Ah, you're missing the third market, which is the gamer. There are lots of PC gamers out there. They need all the raw power -- both graphics and cpu -- the market has. Since they often also do home video they usually need lots of HD space.
There is no reason whatsoever why anyone in those markets should buy w8 -- other than because the surface LOOKS cool and has some snazzy commercials.
Yes, there are people like that but, when it comes down to it, most of THOSE people get help from others in selecting what to buy... someone with tech competence.
And people with tech competence all too often despise M$ for everything they are, and are happy to see them finally losing their iron grip on the market (debatable if Google will be better, but so far, they have been, no question).
So MOST people who are getting new machines WON'T be getting anything with w8.
And unless M$ manages to expand their market share well beyond Apple's, and in the next year or two, then there is no chance of anyone bothering with a Windows phone or tablet in the long run.
Win 7 is pretty good on this front. I only have to reboot my home pc (Win7 64bit professional) once every couple of weeks. :)
As a person who supports a large infrastructure, you most certainly do NOT want to leave PCs wide open for people to mess with. That was the great thing about win2k with its increased granularity in assigning out permissions. In NT you needed admin rights to do so many simple things.
Keeping people from having the ability to break stuff and cause more support headaches is important no matter what size business you run - fact of the matter is most people cant tell sh from shinola when it comes to something that may or may not break the main work app you use.
You made it sound like a new thing. Just pointing out experts have been talking about this for years.
windows mobile