A closer look at just how badly Windows 8.x is failing

Note I said "WHERE", but you highlight 'Who Cares', very subtle mind trick that is pretty obvious.

quote: you wrote - Also - who cares WHERE the BSoD results FROM.

See what I did there? My point was, Windows 8.1x has far less BSoD's regardless of the source of those BSoD's. You claim it's improperly configured Win7 machines, bad software, drivers, or whatever else magically causes them. I'm saying it doesn't matter - Windows 8.1x has far far fewer, and that's because it's a more stable platform and less prone to BSoD REGARDLESS of the source of those BSoDs. That's expected on a platform that is - by every account - more stable. Again, the facts support everything I'm saying here so it's not like I need to even try to defrock you, it's happening of its own accord. ;-)

 

I'd still like to know why an OS, fresh out of the box, should need to be fixed. I've only had to mess with Win 8 once, at a friends whose wireless network is locked down. After seeing and having to deal with that interface, I'm almost positive that it was designed in a grade school classroom. I don't recall any other version of Windows that needed to be fixed to this degree the moment it's installed.

If I was one who felt that staying current was important, the direction Windows is headed would greatly concern me. Everything I see says Windows is heading towards pay per use, controlling what a user can and can't install and where their data has to be stored (One Drive). I expect to see a kill switch soon where end of support really means end of life. Several of the other arguments being used here to show its "superiority" are equally pointless, starting with boot time. Mine is only a few seconds slower and that's on a single P4. I don't see why one would need to reboot often enough for boot time to even be a factor. Oh, I forgot, the BSODs. I see a few of them per year on my 15 year old OS, usually when I start pushing the limits of the hardware or one of my VPC experiments goes bad. During more "normal" usage, never. I don't recall the older operating systems having nearly as many issues with drivers. When vendors who have been making drivers for 10 or 20 years start having problems making them for an OS, that tells me that Microsofts requirements for those drivers are the real problem.

My biggest gripe with Windows isn't specific to Win 8. It's a complete disagreement with what an OS is and should be. IMO, an OS should be a platform that runs the users applications and an interface between the user and the hardware, able to put everything where the user wants it. Beyond that, it should stay out of the way. When an OS does its job properly, it should be almost unnoticeable. People seldom use the OS itself for anything. They use the applications installed on it. An OS that keeps changing and requires the user to keep relearning it is a hindrance, not an asset. IMO, an OS that keeps getting in your face is not acceptable.

Fortunately staying current is of no importance to me. For me, the "death" of XP is proving to be great news. With so many users buying into their "end of the world if you don't upgrade" rhetoric, I'm getting perfectly good XP units given to me. I've wanted to upgrade the hardware I'm using for Smoothwall, have it take over the Tor exit duties, and free up my primary PC. Thanks to MS, their doomsday rhetoric, and their planned obsolescence policies, that hardware was all free.

 

Since this thread started with sales statistics, here is the reason why the sales of Microsoft Windows grew this quarter ...

Fortunately, businesses still love Windows 7 and are buying it like mad now that they have been forced to finally abandon old Windows XP machines. Windows revenue to companies was up 19%.

Well at least revenues are growing which means somebody's job is safe. Wonder how and where they got W7 corporate licenses.

 

This idea that sales numbers don't matter in regards to Windows 8 is simply bad logic.
Microsoft knows sales numbers matter and Windows 8 or upcoming 9 will need to be revamped
in such a way to improve their market share and overall customer satisfaction. Microsoft had
to revamp Vista and the result was Windows 7.


Here is a older article that explains some of the issues with Windows 8.1. with screen shots.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Windows81_1.html (3-part article)


TGTC for Windows 8 [Version 2.1]
This is an update resulting from the changes introduced as of Windows 8.1 Update 1. Minor
changes are not listed below, and include general improvements to descriptions.

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

 

IIRC 9 should be here before 2016. Hopefully beta-testing of windows 8 will be finished and we'll get a nice product.

 

Win 8.1 is a good OS, but it does have some problems. IMO, you should be able to turn this whole Metro stuff off, the integration is not working. And compared to Win XP, it´s too bloated with all kind of processes, services and drivers running in the background. The Task Scheduler is also ridiculously complicated.

On my new machine, which I had to return, booting was quite slow (maybe related to my hardware), not all apps would auto-start (very annoying!) and the hybrid shutdown feature didn´t work correctly, my system wouldn´t power off. I never had these problems with Win XP.

Edit: and M$ is also phoning home for no good reason, I don´t like this stuff.

 

@Rasheed187 Did you return the HP ENVY desktop? If so what's next?

 

They've been doing that since at least as far back as the XP days, although I don't know to what extent it's happening in 8.x because I don't use it.

 

and we should make a distinction between "basic users" (aka Average Joe) and the "geeks/nerds/etc..."

for the basic users: interface, usability and design matters. They don't have a clue about Windows features , they just want "i click my apps , it should works"
for the geeks: the performance and security matters, we can still find some workaround if the interface doesn't please us.

don't mix tea with coffee

 

I agree. That's why I still install Windows 7 on computers of my family and friends. For me there is no way back to 7, though.

 

"As noted in the introduction, I've been using Microsoft operating systems since the MS-DOS days way back in 1988, and this is honestly the first time I've seen Microsoft so blatantly disregard its customers' welfare through options that border on outright deception, or by removing or hiding features, just to push the Metro interface which they hope will create a better revenue source for them." ~ op cit

Kinda says it all really ...

 

Indeed, MS said to users, you do not need start, you have metro. Then MS added an icon of start, kind of ironic, now it plans to add a real start again.
MS never likes to admit a failure. Sometimes, if something is not broken, there is no need to fix it. Start button worked flawlessly since Windows 95.
I even find funny, how MS tries to avoid using a word service pack, since people are accustomed to use Windows since SP1. 8.1, then 8.1 Update 1.

 

It's the usual corporate BS - same everywhere.
Mrk

 

Yep...

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

Yeah, but it wasn´t that bad, in Win 8 you will constantly see outbound connections to the M$ servers. Perhaps it´s related to the Metro apps, not sure.

Let´s discuss that in the other thread.

 

I haven't used Win 7 or 8, but if what I've read is true, several measures that blocked most calling home on XP don't work on 7 and 8. On XP, you could stop most of the calling home with blocking entries in the hosts file. I've read that this doesn't work on 7 and 8. If I read correctly, the Windows firewall won't stop a lot of it either. On XP, most of the call home functions can be disabled or removed. On 7 and 8, this doesn't seem possible. With specific updates for Win 8 being made mandatory for continued support, blocking all calling home could effectively kill support for the OS. With XP, you could obtain offline installers for the updates. Is this even possible on Win 8?

 

Windows 8.1 finally passes Windows 8 in market share, Windows 7 climbs back over 50%

Windows XP still has more than 25 percent of the pie, despite support for the ancient
OS finally ending in April.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/201...dows-8-market-share-windows-7-climbs-back-50/

 

Several major IT support sourcing companies I deal with are refusing support and/or service XP based machines after this year. Also I have been told by legal that insurance/liability issues will become a very real issue with further support/service XP systems, and some bonding firms won't bond you. So with this data, I would expect XP penetration to drop by 30-50% within the next year or so.

 

Do these numbers include the 900+ million XP installs from China?

 

Lol.. I don't think the pirated copies count.

 

I gave windows 8.1 update 1 a run for a couple days - the metro interface etc wasn't a big deal, I just installed classic shell after installing windows,and in windows chose the option to go to desktop instead of start, metro wasn't that intrusive really. it worked fine and was light on resources, but i'd get some type of strange screen glitch when sifting through windows, as if though the metro interface was trying to bleed through or something (i'd sometimes get quick glimpses of metro) so in the end I went back to win 7

truth be told, if it werent for the fact that i'd have to start from scratch and reconfigure all my programs and settings, I probably would've changed over to opensuse or somethin

 

Microsoft reveals impressive user numbers for everything (except Windows 8.x)

According to Prophet, ( corporate vice president of Windows Marketing) there are now 4.4 million
Office 365 Home subscribers, 250 million OneDrive users, 400 million active Outlook.com users,
and 48 million Xbox Live members.

In addition, he revealed Skype is handling 2 billion minutes per day, and Bing now has 18 percent
share of the US search market.

One thing he didn’t reveal was the number of Windows 8.x users.

http://betanews.com/2014/06/04/micr...s-for-everything-except-windows-8-x/#comments

 

I'd say that the adoption rate of W8 has been slow due to multiple reasons.
As some people said, i think the main reason the adoption has been slow is because PC sales have been slowing down quite significantly compared to a couple years ago when these previous Windows OS were released.

 

One might also speculate that Windows 8 has further slowed down PC sales....