Windows 8 Sales Disappoint in Shaky PC Market | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8 Sales Disappoint in Shaky PC Market

nytimes.com

62 pointsssclafani66 comments

I think folks are too quick to point to the iPad (& misc. tablets) as the cause of Win8's apparent downfall. PC vendors bungled this one on their own.

It's a shitty economy and Microsoft & Friends are offering tired form factors, severe usability regressions, bad word of mouth, a bifurcation of Windows into two conceptually incompatible product lines, a meaningless brand, useless marketing, and poor developer incentives to migrate to the App Store model.

Then consider how 'Microsoft Surface' is muddying every message with mixed reviews, poor availability, atrocious marketing, OEM alienation, and incoherent product segmentation.

Windows 8 was a flop on its own terms, and Microsoft doesn't have the luxury of working in a vacuum anymore.

You've left out things like bundled crapware, impossible-to-remove stickers that advertise Intel on the palm rest, horrible tech support, the need for antivirus, the sleazy way the software autorenews at much higher rates, and retail stores that bully you into protection plans that are a bad value.

I'm puzzled how PC vendors can be so oblivious to the reasons why people are unimpressed by their products. Most of them just ooze mediocrity. Microsoft is powerless to fix the problem because the OEM owns the customer and Windows is just a component.

Surface has none of that, but then it doesn't go through OEMs.

Windows seems like it's heading toward being an indistinct blur.

There's Windows Phone 7, which was an innovative break from its WinCE-looking predecessors. Now we have Windows Phone 8, an evolution. Looks good. We also have Windows 8, with that same new formerly-known-as-Metro UI, which looks like the phone UI, all of which grow from the UI ground tilled with WP7.

But Windows 8 also lets you get the old, familiar Windows Desktop -- although not on the cheaper Surface. Oh, right, Surface: a highly unscientific survey of the three people within shouting range reveals they have learned that the Surface is "Microsoft's cool-looking colorful iPad thing with the click-on keyboard". A high quality, very interesting, promising product, except, well, there's the laptop-priced one, the RT, which has the "old" Windows available, sort of, and the iPad-priced one, which is the pure touch one, although it has Office, albeit not fully re-imagined for touch. Is it only Microsoft that makes Surfaces? What about Dell and Acer? And what about the beautiful, fluid-looking Windows we see on the commercials, with a little girl swiping through tiles on a giant touch screen, using a painting app -- which one is that, exactly? How and where would one go about buying that computer with that OS? And how does that relate to the colorful clicky tablets?

Yes, I know how to get the answers to those questions, but it's a confusing mishmash from the consumer perspective. You don't have a strategy if you never say "no", and at some point Microsoft should have said "no" to calling both its touch and non-touch products "Windows". They're creating genuine interest in these new things, but there's great uncertainty among the kind of people who don't read YC -- which is to say, 100 percent of the people they seek as customers, to a close approximation. They have some good new forward-looking products, and they're suffocating them in a scattered go-to-market strategy, and a miasma of confused branding, marketing, and advertising.

Do you mean "Surface" the touch table, or "Surface Windows RT", or "Surface Pro"?

Whichever one comes with the touch cover... er, I mean the type cover. I mean the colorful one that is a keyboard but isn't a keyboard but I can type on it fast but just not as fast as a real keyboard but it's a real keyboard which makes this a laptop but it's not. It comes included, right?

Exactly.

Along those lines, what compelling innovations are there? I've even used a Surface before, and still have no idea what I should get excited about.

Yes.

I would have already upgraded to Win8 if it had a real desktop with a real start menu for my dual 27-inchers instead of a friggin touch interface designed for a tablet. Seriously, i don't know what they were smoking when they came up with that one. I still get moderately excited by new Windows stuff, after all the PC is not dead yet and i still enjoy building up a dream rig from scratch, even though i probably spend more time on my various Android devices.

The desktop is the same, and the start menu acts the same: Press the winkey, and start typing. Are you really saying as an advanced user, you spend a lot of time using the mouse and clicking around the start menu? Really?

The only time the new UI really sucks is when using remote servers via RDP. Someone should be sacked for the decision to metro-ize Windows Server. It just makes you do complicated mouse movements, as the winkey gets sent to the host box except in fullscreen.

The part I'm hesitant about is the ugly "flat" look. In Win7 and Vista, Aero was a premium feature you had to pay extra for. Now they just stripped that, and we're left with window chrome that looks like your palette just took a bit depth reduction.

It doesn't have a start menu at all from what I've seen, unless you are referring to that full screen abomination called metro.

I use the start menu fairly often, and the mouse constantly i guess. I'm not sure I've ever seen a windows user who doesn't do the same.

Honestly, the metro interface is a bad and the people who made it should probably not work in design any more. But from the typical power user perspective it offers identical functionality to Win+"program_prefix"+Enter. I haven't found it impedes me significantly.

The start menu has been essentially remapped to a metro layout. It still behaves just like the old start menu, it's just metro in layout and appearance.

(Yes, it does take over the screen when you call it, but it disappears once you launch something)

I've never used windows 8, but everything I hear about it makes me not want to. Is it true it covers the screen in tiles? My approach to windows 7 and osx is to have constantly changing screen backgrounds and as few icons as possible. Why would I want to cover that up?

Put another way, why would I want to go from this:

http://forums.unixhub.net/boards/b/src/1348934524725.jpg

To this:

http://www.superutils.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/3-win-e...

Think of Metro as a "mode", and Desktop as a "mode", similar to the same way that Linux has virtual terminals and X. You can generally use whichever you please, though Desktop applications don't run in Metro, and Metro applications don't run in Desktop- just like how X applications don't run on a terminal.

If you operate in Desktop mode, when you hit the Windows key, yes, you will see a full screen menu like your second link. That's the one place where, without extra software, Desktop defers to Metro. I'm undecided on how I feel about it. The transition back and forth is virtually seamless & instant, so it isn't a thorn, it's just different.

One upside- because it has much more screen real estate than the traditional Start Menu, you generally don't have to dig through submenus for programs other than your handful of pinned "most-used" list.

That's interesting. I think I need to go to a computer shop and play with it for myself. I'm not too fond of the way Apple are going at the moment, so if there's an alternative for when my imac dies I'm going to consider it seriously.

I've got Windows 8 running on dual-monitor setup and I predominantly used the traditional desktop interface. I have to say the experience is significantly better than Windows 7. Not only are the performance improvements for boot/resume/shutdown vastly faster, but the desktop UI now natively offers fine tune control of placing taskbars on each display. You now also get control configuring backgrounds independently on each screen, spanning across both, or having both be the same.

I don't use the new ui for work, but I do find it very useful to quickly check things like weather, read news, etc since its incredibly fast.

The biggest fundamental flaw I came across is the fact that you can't have metro apps open on multiple monitors simultaneously. Definitely an odd decision.

Sure, there's lots to like about Windows8 and as soon as they fix the "traditional" desktop (rumored to be in SP1) I will upgrade for sure. But not until metro is a completely optional interface i can fully ignore (or pray even uninstall).

Metro already is completely optional. The only difference you'll notice is the start screen which replaces the start menu. There's even third party software (like Classic Shell or Start8) that disables the start screen and replaces it with a menu.

Don't let the start screen be the only thing stopping you from upgrading to Windows 8. Give it a shot, and if you don't like it, use third party software to replace it.

I bought Start8 for about $5. Works brilliantly. It also disables most of the full-screening crap Windows 8 tries to shove down your throat.

I understand full screen on a tablet, but on a 27" monitor with no 'touch'? WTF?

> I would have already upgraded to Win8 if it had a real desktop with a real start menu for my dual 27-inchers instead of a friggin touch interface designed for a tablet.

Walking into Best Buy today, I noticed that almost all the computers had touchscreens. Even the few that also had keyboards in front of them lacked mice.

They're clearly betting on the hypothesis that computers in 2/5/10 years won't have mice, those having been replaced altogether by all-in-one monitors.

In other words, I don't think the intent is to get Windows 8 installed on existing hardware. I think the intent is to get Windows 8[1] to dominate (and perhaps even drive) new sales.

[1] Or, more likely, the successor to Windows 8 - Microsoft customers have always had a pattern of 'skip one, upgrade one', and even without the redesign, Windows 8 falls on one of the 'off' cycles as it is.

Are you saying there were desktop PCs without keyboards? How does that even work?

You'd be surprised how little most non-geeks use the keyboard for much of what they do. Heck, even geeks use tablets for a lot of daily work.

In any case, I think this was just for display purposes. The touchscreen is intended more to replace the mouse than to replace the keyboard - at least for now.

I've been evaluating Win8 on behalf of an old client I still sometimes help out.

It's nowhere near as bad as the press has been making out. It's certainly different but I can point out a larger volume of improvements than the measly 3 obvious regressions.

Compare Windows 8 to OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows 7. Where would you say it ranks?

It's a brand new OS, it wouldn't matter if it was the best thing since sliced bread, I wouldn't be able to recommend full scale deployment at this point in the product's life.

It'll continue to rank behind Win7 for some time yet, but my point was its not massively behind Win7 as has been the storyline in the press.

The scope of this evaluation is to determine whether to avoid Win8 like the plague, or to tolerate its introduction (typically through new hardware acquisition).

Unfortunately in this instance, as if I hadn't backtracked enough from my initial statement, I won't be recommending the integration of Win8, however this has less to do with Win8 as a product than it does a whole slew of complex requirements around that company's IT needs.

In order of my preference:

Windows 7 Ubuntu 12.04 OS X Windows 8

Windows 7 earns my bread, it works, and most of the time works well for clients and friends. Ubuntu is my goto "Unix/Linux" for OSS development, friends and resolving Windows issues.* OS X, use it part-time at work and friends, couldn't justify the cost of the hardware and some other quibbles. Windows 8 is a UI failure for the power user and admin.

>> failure for the ... and admin

Coupled with server 2012, it's actually a huge leap forward for the admin.

But I agree that for power users (who are one of the rarer user types in your typical office environment and notoriously hard to accomodate) it is not an improvement at this time.

In my experience: worse than OS X and Windows 7. On par with "Unity/Ubuntu". (and that should not be misconstrued as praise of either Unity or Windows 8).

Better than all of them.

I find it hard to imagine someone in the hacker news crowd rating 8 over 7 on developer hardware. From my limited experience, the only major improvement I noticed was the improved task manager (which is really nifty). What other substantial improvements over 7 do you think Win8 provides?

(I am not the original poster)

  * improved file copy dialog, including pausing    
  * much faster boot    
  * improved task manager (as you said)
  * better multi-monitor support (I have 2 monitors)

It's not much but was worth the $30 upgrade. I don't mind the new start screen but I understand that is subjective.

Isn't the faster booting thing just exactly the same as only using hibernate on Windows 7?

Granted I haven't looked into it fully but I doubt the actual cold boot speeds vary wildly between the two.

The hibernate is only for ring 0: user space still gets wiped out.

That's correct.

I think Win8 is a downgrade in almost every aspect, but it does boot faster. Granted, I think that it's doing something akin to hibernating in Windows 7 and not actually shutting down.

I wonder if people are comparing the boot time of year-old Windows 7 installations to brand new Windows 8 installations.

I know my SSD-based Windows 7 system could boot to the desktop in less than 10 seconds when it was new, but now that it's over a year old with dozens of additional installed programs and drivers, I'm lucky to see the desktop in less than 30 seconds.

As a developer, I care about some of the under the hood changes, new features and improvements:

    - lighter memory usage
    - better power management
    - address space randomization (forcible) 
    - full hardware (direct-x) rendered UI
    - storage spaces
    - hyper-v 
    - incremental file histories
    - mandatory DEP
    - system refresh

Of course, at the UI level, there are various changes that are a mix of good and bad IMHO, but overall, I would say more parts of the UI suck a little less than before.

The most telling sentence of the whole article:

"The trickle of shopping bags leaving the store with merchandise was nothing like the steady stream at a bustling Apple store upstairs."

Well, DUH. Apple is deeply rooted in several younger generations. MS is trying to crack this same market and get people to switch to their newly created walled garden. Kind of tough to do when you're fighting uphill against an existing, entrenched market.

Not surprisingly, the sales have been slow.

It's not even just that. Apple Stores have the unique draw of being the only retail outlet you can buy Apple's full selection of products. Given the popularity of those products, it's no wonder they have lots of foot traffic.

Microsoft Store has no such unique draw to get people in the door, or to get them to buy anything once they're there. It's a showcase of products you can buy in other stores you've known much longer, and hundreds of websites. Even the unpopular Surface RT is no longer a MS store exclusive with Best Buy carrying it along with the full range of accessories.

I don't think that's the main draw for most people, though...most people care about iPads, iPhones, and iPods, which you can get at most major retailers now. Perhaps the service stations at the Apple Stores make it more appealing to go there, but exclusivity doesn't seem to be a main reason to go.

I think why Apple has traffic and Microsoft doesn't is because Apple has thoroughly owned the entertainment and luxury image. Microsoft dominated the office, but I think the side effect of that domination is that when you go shopping for PCs, I think it's hard to escape the mentality of "these boxes are similar to those I do my spreadsheets on, 40 hours a week, in that dreary cubicle".

Shopping at Apple store feels like a luxury escape: I go frequently even for accessories that are cheaper on Amazon. Shopping at a Microsoft store will unfortunately have some of the same appeal as shopping for ink cartridges at Staples.

You are correct to describe Apple retail as a shopping "escape".

There are interesting window displays, inviting and modern interiors, generally unobnoxious staff, and screechingly fast unlocked and unfiltered wi-fi. That's enough to be the best thing in any mall for most people, and enough to thoroughly trash any competing American electronics experience.

That you can trial, buy, return, swap, service, and get help with anything in the Apple universe is almost besides the point.

I dread going to an Apple store. I live within walking distance of 3 and avoid them all.

They are busy full of people trying to get service at the Genius bar (which is pretty poor experience a lot of the time), the demo units are taken by people just killing time, they have a lack of products in stock, and the accessories are generally overpriced.

The last couple of Apple devices I bought elsewhere: Amazon for the new MacBook Air as they had it in stock, and Best Buy for an iPod because it was cheaper.

I agree, the crowds can be punishing and that's certainly an alienating experience for many. But the stores remain at maximum capacity, they're the #1 retail draw anywhere they exist, and you're still sending Apple money. :)

Apple is deeply rooted in several younger generations. MS is trying to crack this same market and get people to switch to their newly created walled garden. Kind of tough to do when you're fighting uphill against an existing, entrenched market.

Shows just how badly MS has bungled the personal computing market that somebody on HN could write this, and have it make sense.

I think a turning point will be a combination of great Windows 8 apps and nice hardware.

Concerning the hardware I am surprised to see very attractive stuffs here in Japan. The Fujitsu Arrows tab here is an example: http://www.fmworld.net/arrows/tab_wifi/qh/

It is featuring an Atom CPU so it's running the full Windows 8 (not the RT version) so it means you can really use whatever Windows software you've been using before on this machine.

I believe the idea of having a single device replacing the desktop and the tablet is still attractive to many users. It will take some time for PC-makers to propose compelling offers but 2013 may be that time

I really wonder about this:

> Only 15 percent of Acer’s current Windows 8 products in North America have touch screens

Microsoft made an OS that tries to shove a touch based interface down user's throats. They've gone all in and really committed 100% to it, which is admirable in it's own way: they know a large section of their users will hate this, but they also know their long term survival depends on getting a touch paradigm into their products, so this release is "taking one for the team", and it's not too surprising that sales are poor. But given all of this, why oh why, are ANY products shipping without touch interfaces? This part I don't understand and, I think, points to a major failure on Microsoft's part.

When I bought my new laptop, the store was 95% Window 8. And ZERO had a touch screen. I don't get why laptops don't come with a touch screen by default these days.

Hold your arm straight out in front of you.

Slowly count to 20.

Now you know why.

Its winter remove your glove and try to use your touch screen phone. Now do it for 20 more seconds.

I can't relate to that one at all actually, I don't think I've ever been so cold that gloves have impeded my touchscreen use.

I spent two hours today trying to buy Nexus 7 at a popular mall with many electronic stores. Not possible. Not even close.

There were about 30 different Windows 8 computers I could have bought instead, with lots of stock. But no thank you!

I recently started using a Nexus 7. It's such an incredible little device. I think Apple and Microsoft should be worried about the potent mix of Android software and great hardware.

The cheap device that rocks at web, email & facebook is a solid solution.

I really do think that Microsoft miscalculated by going for the high-end tablet market rather than the budget device market.

It used to be that a new version of the Windows operating system was enough to get people excited about buying a new computer, giving sales a nice pop.

Vague statements like above make me wish papers like NYT published detailed sources. My entire family has been on Windows for around 15 years and not once do I remember getting excited about the upgrade...and yet, we've done the upgrade. My family could be atypical but that is why I wish I had the source behind the article lead.

Windows 95 which is 17 years ago. I remember people camping out for it.

I remember "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones licensed by Microsoft as the center of their advertising campaign. That is really a catchy riff and it worked very well to generate buzz about the launch. (Windows 95 introduced the Start button.) The common television ads for Windows 8 seemed built around synchronized opening and closing of tablets/laptops. My, how the mighty have fallen.

Lots of theories, but it's only a month 'till MSFT Q4 results on Jan 24. Will be interesting what the numbers look like and how Microsoft explains them.

I don't know if Windows 8 induced PC sales can be compared to previous versions. The upgrade from 98/2000/ME/(whatever) to XP seemed, at least to the consumer, like a monumental shift. People expected the same for Vista, and 7 was definitely a revolutionary improvement.

But that's it. Windows 7 is a great product, and I don't think anyone is approaching Windows 8 with the mindset that it's going to fix anything with Windows 7. If you buy it, you're probably buying it for the features or the hype. Add that to the hardware stagnation, and there's not much incentive to buy a new machine.

Lastly, we have more electronics than we did several years ago, so we've artificially extended the useful life of each machine. Naturally, we're going to renew our PCs less. So, the article got one thing right: tablets, just like phones, are going to play a big part in future sales.

Or because you have no choice. Many consumer class laptops now are shipping Windows 8 already, and in a year, it might be impossible to get one with Windows 7. You can downgrade, but only if you have the Pro version, and that won't appear on consumer class laptop.

I have bought two windows 8 laptops in the past month and have returned both of them. Windows 8 works nicely, is quick and once you get over the hump of figuring out the unintuitive UI is mostly nice to use. The hardware simply was not up to the task of everyday use as a student. Trackpad, screen quality, keyboard, and battery life were the deal breakers for me.

I returned my first (Toshiba) Win8 laptop less than 1 month ago after (a) the (Synaptics Multi-touch) trackpad stopped working entirely (after Win Update pushed Synaptics 16.2.10.3, the version Toshiba authorizes), and (b) even after recovering and switching to 16.2.21 (the newest release from Synaptics' website), it worked very unreliably and the simplest feature (which I require), single-finger scrolling, would not work at all.

Just because people aren't shopping in the Windows/Microsoft store doesn't mean nobody is buying Windows 8. 40 million sales in a month is nothing to sneeze at. I haven't tried the tablet version yet, but I have it dual booting on my iMac and it runs just fine.

Also, FWIW, I just got a Windows 8 phone (HTC 8x) and have been porting a few of my iPhone apps just as a test of the market. I switched from my iPhone 5 for a week just to test it out and I really liked it. There are still a few apps missing, but for the most part everything I wanted was there. Overall I think I like Windows 8 better than Android though it's close. I'm sticking with my iPhone as I like it just a bit better than both, but they are all pretty close, (and so freaking awesome compared to just a few years ago). To someone who doesn't already have a lock in to one of the platforms I think Windows 8 could be a good competitor.

If only Microsoft would make it easy to buy!

I installed VMware Fusion yesterday and decided I'd like to have Windows 8 for it. So I looked for a download to buy and Microsoft has one.. an "upgrade" that costs about $40. Except I need something that's from scratch.

Long story short, I either have to pay $700 for an MSDN membership or buy and wait for an "OEM" version to come from my favorite PC parts vendor. Let me buy an ISO and a license key fer chrissakes!

I am wondering if it's viable to download a pirated ISO and then buy a license key only somehow, but if not, I'll have to buy a disc and rip it on another machine after the holidays.

not a direct way, but try this [1].

[1] http://slickdeals.net/f/5275360-UPDATE-10-21-EIGHT-LICENSE-K...?

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