Microsoft has jumped the shark.

[Lil' ˝ Dead]

Surprising Number Of People Don't Even Know What Windows 8 Is..

Most Show Little Interest In Surface Tablet

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft bills Windows 8 as a "re-imagining" of the personal computer market's dominant operating system, but the company still has a lot of work to do before the makeover captures the imagination of most consumers, based on the results of a recent poll by The Associated Press and GfK.

The phone survey of nearly 1,200 adults in the U.S. found 52 percent hadn't even heard of Windows 8 leading up to Friday's release of the redesigned software.

Among the people who knew something about the new operating system, 61 percent had little or no interest in buying a new laptop or desktop computer running on Windows 8, according to the poll. And only about a third of people who've heard about the new system believe it will be an improvement (35 percent).

Chris Dionne of Waterbury, Conn., falls into that camp. The 43-year-old engineer had already seen Windows 8 and it didn't persuade him to abandon or upgrade his Hewlett-Packard laptop running on Windows 7, the previous version of the operating system released in 2009.

"I am not real thrilled they are changing things around," Dionne said. "Windows 7 does everything I want it to. Where is the return on my investment to learn a new OS?"

Full Article: http://www.huffingto..._ref=technology

[PoLoMoTo]

I'm holding out for windows 9, odd numbers = better

[Lil' ˝ Dead]

Ballmer is driving Microsoft off the cliff:

http://www.forbes.co...-off-the-cliff/

Excellent article.

[kewlbreze77]

Nice find, definitely staying with Windows 7 even with my new build when I get back.

[aryan51]

I'm holding out for windows 9, odd numbers = better

me to lol

[Doctor_Death]

Dont be surprised if they stop updating Win 7 within the next 6-10 months, so they can force people to buy Win 8, it wouldn't be the first time that they have done this.

[xelosia]

Thanks for the post but i'll stick with windows 7

[realneil]

Dont be surprised if they stop updating Win 7 within the next 6-10 months, so they can force people to buy Win 8, it wouldn't be the first time that they have done this.

There would suddenly be a groundswell of people releasing homegrown updates for Win-7 at the point that MS stops supporting it.
They would most likely band together and become one of the most trusted & popular go-to sites on the web.

(I hope this would happen)

If Microsoft stops supporting Win-7 too soon, I hope to see a class action lawsuit happen that reams them out.

[MattyMatt]

I bought win 8 pro. seventy versus the 180 or so I saw on 7 pro, why not. modern ui is easy to hide.

[PoLoMoTo]

Dont be surprised if they stop updating Win 7 within the next 6-10 months, so they can force people to buy Win 8, it wouldn't be the first time that they have done this.

If as many people are still using XP as this article claims then I don't think stopping 7 updates will force anyone to get anything.

[Deliverance]

My biggest problems with Win8 as I see it are:
- It's bloatware. A bunch of pointless garbage aimed at mobility and mobile devices I don't own or care about.
- Very little advancement for the potential of my preferred platform, the PC. What, faster boots? Get past the log in and it just seems like more unnecessary clutter to jump through on my way to actually accomplishing a desired task.

They want to push this crap as a package instead of separate releases. No thanks. I'll wait for the Windows 8 Stripped-Down Edition, which will likely weigh in at about 100megs after trimming all the fat.

[Skyguy]

Actually, Microsoft very quietly confirmed they will support Win 7 until 2020. So no worries about that.

Problem is this UI is essentially for touch devices--phones, tablets, that sort of thing. As a desktop UI, it's pretty crap. There's a chance they may fix it, but not until Windows 9. Agreed.....odd versions of Windows are far better, even versions suck.

And now everything is called an app. Adobe Creative Suite, which takes up many Gigabytes of space, is integrated heavily into the background system, and is an app? Seriously?!?! Microsoft is trying to take a page out of Apple and Google's playbook by instituting their own MS Store. Just like EA copied Steam's store and carries only their own games. And like Ubisoft is trying to do. And everyone else. Microsoft is trying to control what they still have, and tie people right into the Microsoft ecosystem, just like Apple. At least Google's is more open to everyone else. But MS is worried, they're behind the competition, and so now you gotta even get Minesweeper from their App Store. Seriously? I expect that on a phone, but on a desktop? There's so much fluff and unnecessary crap. Hey look, I can stream my [insert useless garbage app/media/distraction here] on my desktop! But it's not really a desktop. And it's not like everyone needs Facebook to actually surf the Net but we wanna integrate it so companies can mine info from you since nothing is truly free anymore and they don't actually care about you!

Ya, that's my rant for the evening.

I'm passing on Win 8, no question.

[Dark Angel]

I moved to Linux in late 2005 due to privacy and security concerns with Windows as well as not being able to keep up buying licences for the many systems I was building from spare parts for my crunching projects. I have kept an eye on Windows ever since but only willingly run it in a VM for those few proprietary document format that MS makes as awkward and inconsistent as possible for everyone else to use (ppsx for example). With the introduction of the Unity desktop in Ubuntu I moved to Slackware and the XFCE desktop environment. Given that I consider Unity to be an unmitigated disaster of a user interface, what are the chances that I would part with good money to inflict the interface formally known as "Metro" (the illegitimate child of AOL and Windows 1.0) on myself let alone recommend it for others to use? Not good. Not good at all. Somewhere between sierra foxtrot alpha and none, in fact.