Windows 8 users prefer Windows 7

[BladeVenom]

A recent survey of Windows 8 users has revealed that more than half still prefer the current version of the operating system, Windows 7.

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/windows-8-survey-microsoft-94170

So even the majority of early adopters who love Microsoft don't like it.

 

[Zeze]

lol.

There's ZERO incentive to upgrade. 7 is just solid as a rock. Why would you change? They did such a good job, I wouldn't be surprised if 7 outlives the longevity of XP.

 

[anikhtos]

lol.

There's ZERO incentive to upgrade. 7 is just solid as a rock. Why would you change? They did such a good job, I wouldn't be surprised if 7 outlives the longevity of XP.

well why xp stayed so long because vista sucked
and still xp and seven are very close in numbers.
as logn xp was sold many bought them instead of seven

so we see the story again
7 with 8
gee microsoft at last wants to give us a good operating system and throw us all to linux :whiste::whiste:
i can not explain elsewhere why vista and 8 will be that huge failure

 

[Anteaus]

Windows Vista in general was fine. It failed because it had a new driver architecture that developers were slow to act on. Windows Vista drivers for common things like printers and scanners were very slow in the coming; in some cases developers outright ignored it and people were held back from moving forward because they would have lost functionality. Microsoft basically dropped the gauntlet on direct access drivers that were making systems unstable. Today everyone benefits from it because the drivers are all ubiquitous now, but no one likes to think of where it started. It certainly was no Windows ME, and I've heard that said before. Just silliness.

Many of the things we love so much about Windows 7 were in Vista from the start, but people tend to have short memories. Obviously Windows 7 is a debugged leaner Vista, but Vista was not that bad. I know plenty of people today that are still using Vista because they don't seem to have a reason to go to Windows 7. Go figure.

As far as Windows 8, I've heard nothing but good things about the core design. In many cases its simply better than Windows 7. In fact, the only real problem people have is the stupid interface, which I myself wonder WTF MS is doing, dropping the standard interface for people without touch screens. All that said, as long as there is some sort of stigmata toward Metro, Ahem I mean Windows 8 Interface as it's be recently renamed, people are going to be slow to adopt.

I agree with what some have said about upgrading. I'm not going to Windows 8 right now because I don't really need to, but my failure to adopt on day one has absolutely nothing to do with it's interface. What intrigues me is that new touchscreen computers are starting to come out. My guess is that those types of computers are what is ultimately going to make Windows 8 successful.

 

[cl-scott]

I'd add a few things to Anteaus' comments, but ultimately it boils down to the fact that Vista wasn't anywhere near as bad as people try and make it out to be. It actually laid a lot of the very important groundwork that made Windows 7 possible, and future versions of Windows.

Not to mention, when XP came out, everyone lobbed the same complaints at it. It's slow, bloated, programs don't run, there are no drivers... Name a complaint people had about Vista, and you can probably find people saying the same thing about every version of Windows going back to 2.0.

 

[IamDavid]

Windows8 is a platform for the real benefit. MS Marketplace will be the driving force behind its success. Windows 7 won't have it or any other Windows OS. The IPHONE, IPAD and every Android device succeeded only due to the developers on the marketplace. Think anyone gives a sh#t about the cool icons?

I personally love Win8 and I couldn't go back now. I run it on a 3 display setup so it suits me very well. In a single display setup I can TOTALY understand all the gripes. Whatever idiot at MS decided to allow the start button change should've been fired the day he mentioned it.

 

[Mem]

well why xp stayed so long because vista sucked
and still xp and seven are very close in numbers.
as logn xp was sold many bought them instead of seven

so we see the story again
7 with 8
gee microsoft at last wants to give us a good operating system and throw us all to linux :whiste::whiste:
i can not explain elsewhere why vista and 8 will be that huge failure

Vista was released 6 years after XP,longest gap between any OS from Microsoft,Win7 is based on Vista anyway ,as to Win8 its not bad,I find its fine with Start8 menu,oh and I was one of the first Vista adopters that found it fine as well infact I ditched XP 5 years ago.


Win8 is more tablet based then any previous Microsoft OS,however its very workable as a desktop OS (excellent stability and speed)with Start8 installed IMHO,I will be replacing Win7 on my laptop with Win8 in a few weeks time.

I'll keep my main gaming PC with Win7,mainly due to no real reason to upgrade to 8 for gaming purposes at this time.

Btw one of my old backup PCs is using Win8 Pro RTM its been running fine,no issues with drivers or anything .

 

[cboath]

Windows Vista in general was fine. It failed because it had a new driver architecture that developers were slow to act on. Windows Vista drivers for common things like printers and scanners were very slow in the coming; in some cases developers outright ignored it and people were held back from moving forward because they would have lost functionality. Microsoft basically dropped the gauntlet on direct access drivers that were making systems unstable. Today everyone benefits from it because the drivers are all ubiquitous now, but no one likes to think of where it started. It certainly was no Windows ME, and I've heard that said before. Just silliness.

Many of the things we love so much about Windows 7 were in Vista from the start, but people tend to have short memories. Obviously Windows 7 is a debugged leaner Vista, but Vista was not that bad. I know plenty of people today that are still using Vista because they don't seem to have a reason to go to Windows 7. Go figure.

As far as Windows 8, I've heard nothing but good things about the core design. In many cases its simply better than Windows 7. In fact, the only real problem people have is the stupid interface, which I myself wonder WTF MS is doing, dropping the standard interface for people without touch screens. All that said, as long as there is some sort of stigmata toward Metro, Ahem I mean Windows 8 Interface as it's be recently renamed, people are going to be slow to adopt.

I agree with what some have said about upgrading. I'm not going to Windows 8 right now because I don't really need to, but my failure to adopt on day one has absolutely nothing to do with it's interface. What intrigues me is that new touchscreen computers are starting to come out. My guess is that those types of computers are what is ultimately going to make Windows 8 successful.

Quoted for totally hitting the nail on the head

Another thing that pissed people off about vista was microsoft having the sheer gall to actually tell people the truth nearly a year out - that being that a lot of older hardware would be obsoleted. People said fine, then pitched a holy fit when some of their hardware became unsupported. It wasn't like they were warned a year out or anything :roll

The problem, as you said, was the vendors. Quite a lot refused to begin driver development until they had an RTM copy in hand. Creative Labs had ALWAYS been a PITA that way, but it spread way too far with Vista. This begat the new driver system where vendors were required to participate and develop drivers during the beta's which has worked out pretty damned well.

I was surprised that I had to track down a grand total of ZERO drivers for my win 8 install. Granted my machine's barely over 3 years old - but still. It has a video card less than a year old and a brand new SSD. But it found everything. I DID put an updated video driver on it, but that's it.

I challenged people elsewhere to list what they find convuluted or annoying and i've not seen a response yet.

I'm not saying 8 should or will be a huge hit, it's going to suffer from negative feedback on the beta's no question. But seriously, the only thing that seems to really be missing is the all-programs list on the start menu. Everything else is readily accessible.

 

[Mem]

I'm not saying 8 should or will be a huge hit, it's going to suffer from negative feedback on the beta's no question. But seriously, the only thing that seems to really be missing is the all-programs list on the start menu. Everything else is readily accessible.

Negative feedback will probably be from desktop users plus you always get a few people that don't like changes and Win8 probably has the biggest learning curve of any new Mircrosoft OS over last decade or so,however saying that its not a hard OS to learn IMHO and I have already stated desktop users can install something like classic or Start8 menu to make it more desktop user friendly,drivers/stability wise its very polished IMHO.


You always get some FUD from users/websites or even members in forums when any new OS is going to be released(Vista for example had a lot of unjustified bad FUD IMHO),however Win8 is not as bad as some people say and is actually pretty decent OS,sure its more tablet oriented in some ways but you can get round that as a desktop user.

It'll be very interesting to see how well it does down the road with more mature drivers and even SP1 etc..

I would of like to have seen something new for gamers in Win8 ie maybe DX12 or throw gamers a new bone in Win8.

I was surprised that I had to track down a grand total of ZERO drivers for my win 8 install. Granted my machine's barely over 3 years old - but still. It has a video card less than a year old and a brand new SSD. But it found everything. I DID put an updated video driver on it, but that's it.

I've Win8 Pro RTM (64 bit version) on my 6 to 7 year old PC,it found every driver including my USB wireless NIC I brought from ebay,again like you I had zero issues with drivers.

 

[Mem]

lol.

There's ZERO incentive to upgrade. 7 is just solid as a rock. Why would you change? They did such a good job, I wouldn't be surprised if 7 outlives the longevity of XP.

Laptop/notebook users benefit from better battery life http://www.tomsguide.com/us/win8-speed-performance,review-1760-3.html speed in booting up,new features Win8 has,tablet users obviously get benefits as well.
Win7 is a great OS and I use both 7 and 8,Win8 still has some advantages over 7, Win8 is solid as a rock too in my experience.


This is a good read with benchmarks (Windows8-vs-Windows7)http://www.techspot.com/review/561-windows8-vs-windows7/ ,as a gamer I can't wait until we see more polished mature drivers for Win8,does a decent showing against 7 especially when its not even officially out yet.

From a performance standpoint Windows 8 appears to offer a solid foundation from the get-go. Although there are only a few select areas where it is faster than Windows 7, we are pleased that it's able to match it everywhere else.

Looking beyond benchmarks, Windows 8 appears more polished than Windows 7, even if you plan to live on the desktop and aren't too fond of the Start screen, general usage is smoother and appears to be faster on Windows 8, which I found most noticeable on our somewhat underpowered Athlon II X4 system. If anything, it's a great start, now the Metro/Modern style will have to prove itself as a cross-platform OS that marries desktop, laptop and tablet PCs.

 

[Rio Rebel]

There are a lot of people who assume that an OS that can be used on a mobile device must automatically be a step back for desktop users. Microsoft was going to lose those folks no matter what.

 

[Evander]

Windows Vista in general was fine. It failed because it had a new driver architecture that developers were slow to act on.

The other problem I think Vista had was RAM usage compared to XP, and underpowered hardware that was released bundled with Vista. You could get by OK in XP with 256 ~ 512 MB of RAM, with Vista you're barely scraping by with 512 MB. Vendors were shipping out 1.3 ghz single core celeron Vista laptops w/ 512 MB RAM & weak video cards. Performance was underwhelming on such hardware and not so unlikely to be slower than a consumer's older XP system. That didn't help users' perception of Vista.

 

[BladeVenom]

There are a lot of people who assume that an OS that can be used on a mobile device must automatically be a step back for desktop users.

Turns out they were right.

Microsoft was going to lose those folks no matter what.

Unless it was actually a better desktop experience. Of course it wasn't.

 

[Anteaus]

There are a lot of people who assume that an OS that can be used on a mobile device must automatically be a step back for desktop users. Microsoft was going to lose those folks no matter what.

Yes, but this is more due to poor marketing than anything else. Other than Metro, some of most worrying issues with Windows 8 are due to software restrictions and specifically the new App Store, but virtually all of those fall to the ARM version and not the PC version. In MS's genius they marketed Windows 8 as common to PC and ARM and in the process confused many people.

I think once the dust settles and people have seen Windows 8 in practical use people will become more open to it. MS can really help the process by actually showing people the common elements between Windows 8 and Windows 7 and less the differences. There are parts of Metro that work very similar to our Windows 7 desktops, minus the start menu.

 

[cl-scott]

Unless it was actually a better desktop experience. Of course it wasn't.

I'm not so sure... When you really think about it, as long as you can launch and switch between programs, does it really matter if it's the Win95-7 style desktop or something like a revamped Windows 1.0-3.11 Program Manager?

Now don't get me wrong, I've been annoyed as anyone with the tabletization of Mac OS X and Windows, which makes me think Linux will be the last refuge. I've long been saying that Apple and Microsoft shouldn't be trying to converge their desktop and mobile operating systems (though from a programming and business standpoint I can understand some of the desires for doing so), they should be trying to DIVERGE them as much as possible. Tablets and desktops have very different strengths and weaknesses, and so I would like to see customized products aimed at exploiting the respective strengths of each platform rather than turning desktops into vastly overpowered tablets.

However, I think a lot of the resistance to Windows 8 stems from people's general dislike of change. NotMetro is a pretty radical departure from everything we've come to know and expect from Windows over the past 17 or so years. You listen to a lot of people who complain about say WinMe or even Vista, and a lot of the complaints basically boil down to "Things are in different places." There are a lot of people who just flat out hate change; just look at all the uproar over the removal of the Start button even though the Start menu is still there. NotMetro isn't just a relatively minor change such as the rearranging of certain elements in WinME and Vista, this is a BIG change. I think that, more than probably anything else, is behind people's stated dislike of Windows 8.

By the time Windows 9 comes along, which might not be all that long if some of the things I've heard are true, it very well could be that they've refined NotMetro to work a bit better on the desktop. It could also be that they screw it up somehow in the way that only Microsoft seems capable of doing. Time will tell, but I still have yet to see that many people list off much in the way of reasons they don't like Windows 8 which you can't basically classify as "It looks different." I'm sure there are some, but how many of those do you see compared to the "It looks different" variety?

 

[Rio Rebel]

Turns out they were right.


Unless it was actually a better desktop experience. Of course it wasn't.

No, you are either missing my point or ignoring it. For those people who believe that ANY OS which is used on both a mobile device and a desktop is inherently going to shortchange the desktop, they were never going to accept Windows 8 no matter how good the experience was...because they assumed that if it works on a tablet, it must be dumbed down.

Whether Windows 8 is a good OS or not, these people were never going to accept it.

 

[BladeVenom]

No, you are either missing my point or ignoring it.

No, I just think you're wrong.

Whether Windows 8 is a good OS or not, these people were never going to accept it.

You really think most would boycott it? You know how internet boycotts work. People complain a lot and say they are going to boycott it, and then buy it anyways.

So even though what was formerly known as Metro is stupid for a desktop, most people here will still probably end up getting Windows 8, even if they don't like the start screen.

 

[lxskllr]

No, you are either missing my point or ignoring it. For those people who believe that ANY OS which is used on both a mobile device and a desktop is inherently going to shortchange the desktop, they were never going to accept Windows 8 no matter how good the experience was...because they assumed that if it works on a tablet, it must be dumbed down.

Whether Windows 8 is a good OS or not, these people were never going to accept it.

I don't think any DE can provide a perfect experience on desktops, AND tablets. Arguments can be made regarding how well they implemented compromises, but they are compromises nonetheless.

 

[dagamer34]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

If we are going to say that Vista pre-SP1 sucked because of performance, then we also have to say that XP pre-SP2 sucked because of security. Heck, it was so bad, they stopped development of Longhorn for a year to finish SP2 and actually added features (a rarity in Windows). And XP RTM shipped with the darn firewall turned off! That was a time when you could easily get viruses just by being an average user.

It'll be interesting to see how the market will respond to Windows 8 because I can't think of a single product where people thought the performance was great but the UI was crap as many seem to perceive Windows 8. Usually the two are tied together by bad management.

I'd counter that because average people would definitely upgrade if you removed the new Start Screen and enjoyed the other new features and faster performance, they'll just put up with it. As long as there is a Facebook and Netflix app, most people won't care anyway.

 

[cboath]

The other problem I think Vista had was RAM usage compared to XP, and underpowered hardware that was released bundled with Vista. You could get by OK in XP with 256 ~ 512 MB of RAM, with Vista you're barely scraping by with 512 MB. Vendors were shipping out 1.3 ghz single core celeron Vista laptops w/ 512 MB RAM & weak video cards. Performance was underwhelming on such hardware and not so unlikely to be slower than a consumer's older XP system. That didn't help users' perception of Vista.

That's part of what I was saying though. Microsoft told people that before launch, but they still complained big time. The flat out told people it will require a pretty new machine (less than a year old) and have much higher memory requirements (i think they recommended a gig, not sure).

I remember the testing for 7. A guy in the official beta posted he got it working on an old 486.

In the end though, the incessant whining may have turned out to be a good thing because they bent over backwards to perfect 7 and change the way betas were run to ensure a solid product on launch.

 

[cboath]

No, I just think you're wrong.




You really think most would boycott it? You know how internet boycotts work. People complain a lot and say they are going to boycott it, and then buy it anyways.

So even though what was formerly known as Metro is stupid for a desktop, most people here will still probably end up getting Windows 8, even if they don't like the start screen.

I've heard people around the office say EXACTLY that. "I have no desire to update because it's really designed just for tablets/phones." I ask where they heard that and 99% of the time the answer is 'the internet'.

I hear people complain, but I also never hear anything that's a valid reason. No start button? So what? The only thing missing from the start button you can't get by right clicking the lower left corner is the All Programs list. That's now just the Start Screen. Not really a hindrance to working on the desktop. That, and no gadgets are about all that changes from the desktop experience. If something didn't work or was much more difficult to do, that might be one thing.

Like with Vista, they've come out ahead of the game and said it's a big change. From a desktop standpoint, I don't honestly see that big of a change. Just all programs to start screen really.

I'll admit, I didn't like a lot of what I saw in the customer preview. What bothered me most was it was missing little things that would make life much easier for desktop users - no scroll bar on the start screen, no indication you're supposed to click the corners of the screen to access stuff, or the right side of the screen for charms. Power off was buried 3-4 levels deep in the charms bar. Closing apps wasn't explained anywhere. There was no clock on the start screen.

All of that was address for RTM - except clock on the start screen and how to close apps, but someone has made an app for that. Though i find it immensely ironic that every win8 phone ad/article i've seen has a photo with a live tile clock at the top of the screen. I've since figured out how to close apps, but while that's nice to know now - on the desktop I realize i won't ever use any most likely.

I'm interested to see, to be honest, how it functions on a tablet. I think sharing desktops, programs, and apps between desktop and tablet could be quite cool. We've only seen half the show so far. I think how it all ties together is a big part of the plan, but we've not been able to see that yet.

 

[HeXen]

Here, this eliminates 99% of W8 complaints.

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/features.asp

Boot directly to the Windows 8 desktop
One click access to shut down, devices, music, documents, and videos
Optionally disable the desktop Windows 8 "hot spots"
Windows 7-style Start menu with Windows 8 enhancements

 

[Anteaus]

Here, this eliminates 99% of W8 complaints.

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/features.asp

I don't know why but that is so fantastic lol.

 

[BladeVenom]

Any good old quotes from Ballmer or MS about how the Aero interface was the way of the future? Or that a flat look was outdated?

 

[tweakboy]

They should have named their new cheap os. Window 8 Phone Edition.

WIndows 8 is Windows phone when you have a touch screen. Only true idiots use Window 8 phone plus windows 8 phone OS ........I dont need big ugly banners.... thats pointlesss. I think 99 percent of Anands Gurus will stick to Windows 7. IMO the best OS ever made.

I will use for another 6 years at least. whens SP2 coming out lol,... gl