Despite something of a rough start critically, Microsoft says that sales of Windows 8 licenses are selling faster than Windows 7's did.
According to a company blog post, 40 million Windows 8 licenses have sold in just over a month of availability.
As Reuters notes, this doesn't mean that 40 million people are actually using Windows 8: that 40 million figure includes license sales to PC manufacturers. Research firm StatCounter says the actual user count is more like 15 million - about 1 percent of the 1.5 billion PC users in the world.
Windows 8 has come under fire from game developers for adding a required certification for third-party applications to access certain functions, including its touchscreen interface.
MS propaganda about licenses sold is pretty meaningless.
More telling will be, what percentage of vistors to (whatever web site) two months from now, are reaching it from a Windows 8 machine vs. a Vista machine, Windows 7 machine, linux machine or whatever else. A significant number of adopters are probably just buying a new machine and getting whatever version of Windows that comes with. Even more are "licenses" sold with machines which will be wiped and have a corporate image of Windows 7 (or whatever) deployed onto them.
So 40 million includes licenses sold direct to manufactures + end users? given that manufactures must be a large portion of that maybe most of that it doesn't bode well for end user adoption. Win 8 was built for touch and as long as desktop PC are mostly mouse / keyboard I don't expect the apoption on that platform to be very high, other than the aesthetics what does it really offer the consumer level user? The only reason I can see anyone getting Win 8 would be for the touch devices and only that because win 7 on those devices suck..
Regardless of how the actual users measure up, the numbers being compared are the same numbers across the two operating systems. I don't think there's any way to spin that negatively imo.
After having used windows 8, it takes getting used to but it isn't that bad. I haven't used it extensively enough to say whether I prefer it to Windows 7, but I don't find many of the criticisms to be that terrible after an hour or so of use. The biggest issue I have is that the bezel on my Fujitsu T900 is fairly high, so accessing the charm bar and menus can be a little fidgety, but that's more a hardware issue than a software issue.
What isn't clear (to me) is whether this is PC only, or tablets as well. Since Windows 7 was PC only, and Windows 8 is 3 different platforms, it would be expected to be picked up in greater numbers.
Not sure about the Surface (which I assume you are talking about), but I was at BestBuy last week and saw a couple of Windows 8 (or RT?) tablets on display already, so some Windows tablets are definitely being sold. Not sure if those are being counted, though.
Windows 7 was released on tablets (I own one). The important question is whether they are including RT, as that is a separate entity.
I don't see why they wouldn't include tablet numbers, why shouldn't they? A windows 8 (not RT) tablet is just a windows 8 laptop with a touch interface for most intents and purposes; why count it differently than a laptop?
I've noticed a lot of the negative comments have been channelled down the development media sites, rather than mainstream newspapers and magazines that seem to like it. Developers don't really like change *dodges bullet from a dark corner*. Doesn't hitting Win-button-D bring up the old desktop anyway?
No, the stock 'desktop' is an impoverished, feature stripped and butt ugly shell that will kick you back to Metro repeatedly.
Install Classic Shell, change file bindings to desktop versions, install replacements for Metro only app bindings and tweak, tweak, tweak and eventually Win-D will bring up something passably similar to the 'old desktop'. It takes work.
...then you can move on to find working drivers for all that legacy hardware you're likely to have as a game dev. Not the slightest sign Microsoft actually tested any of the 64 bit drivers they've offer me and too many of them crash Win8 on 4Gb+ machines.
Feature stripped shell?
All I need is a decent copy/paste and software dev packages to run, that's it. I'm not bothered if it's a different style of desktop as long as I can use the software I want on it.
For 64 bit drivers to not use 64 bit memory pointers is a bit crappy, and weird to say the least.
Are win7 release numbers the high-water mark? I suppose there were a lot of people looking to escape Vista, but I was under the impression that win7 (like every MS OS release) didn't have huge purchase numbers.
:( We're all going to move forward with this eventually. no point fighting it.
I welcome change, but I simply don't get a warm fuzzy feeling from this release.
Lot of people didn't move on to Vista. I guess devs will have to support 8, but gamers, so far as I can tell, are not embracing it. Personally, I'm going to skip it, just as I did Vista.
More telling will be, what percentage of vistors to (whatever web site) two months from now, are reaching it from a Windows 8 machine vs. a Vista machine, Windows 7 machine, linux machine or whatever else. A significant number of adopters are probably just buying a new machine and getting whatever version of Windows that comes with. Even more are "licenses" sold with machines which will be wiped and have a corporate image of Windows 7 (or whatever) deployed onto them.
After having used windows 8, it takes getting used to but it isn't that bad. I haven't used it extensively enough to say whether I prefer it to Windows 7, but I don't find many of the criticisms to be that terrible after an hour or so of use. The biggest issue I have is that the bezel on my Fujitsu T900 is fairly high, so accessing the charm bar and menus can be a little fidgety, but that's more a hardware issue than a software issue.
Not sure about the Surface (which I assume you are talking about), but I was at BestBuy last week and saw a couple of Windows 8 (or RT?) tablets on display already, so some Windows tablets are definitely being sold. Not sure if those are being counted, though.
I don't see why they wouldn't include tablet numbers, why shouldn't they? A windows 8 (not RT) tablet is just a windows 8 laptop with a touch interface for most intents and purposes; why count it differently than a laptop?
Install Classic Shell, change file bindings to desktop versions, install replacements for Metro only app bindings and tweak, tweak, tweak and eventually Win-D will bring up something passably similar to the 'old desktop'. It takes work.
...then you can move on to find working drivers for all that legacy hardware you're likely to have as a game dev. Not the slightest sign Microsoft actually tested any of the 64 bit drivers they've offer me and too many of them crash Win8 on 4Gb+ machines.
All I need is a decent copy/paste and software dev packages to run, that's it. I'm not bothered if it's a different style of desktop as long as I can use the software I want on it.
For 64 bit drivers to not use 64 bit memory pointers is a bit crappy, and weird to say the least.
I welcome change, but I simply don't get a warm fuzzy feeling from this release.