Windows 8 fails to revive world CPU biz
IHS iSuppli, a market watcher, has admitted that its expects world PC sales to fall this year even further than it previously thought they would. Whatever the degree of decline, it will mark the first time global personal computer shipments have fallen in 11 years. In a discussion of world chip sales posted yesterday, iSuppli …
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Re: Win 8 has no advantages
As you are making it personal, here is my response, - thus quoth an AC (aka one of the many astroturfing microsoft shills working the sites - Microsoft were caught red handed using them).
Why should one say good things about a poor product? With Win 8 I am struggling to find anything good to say about it whatsoever. Compared to other modern operating systems (OSX, Android, Linux), it is inferior in terms of user friendliness, security, performance, closed/openness. I struggle to find a single merit of this new operating system, even compared to win 7. It's entire existence seems to be to force acceptance of the Metro UI such that people are more likely to start buying win phones and MS Surfaces.
OK - I can think of an advantage - it's probably more touch friendly than Windows 7 (but less so than Android or iOS). But who's going to use touch when editing spreadsheets - which is what people do with MS kit these days?
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
Ahh, you're on form, first reply accusing someone of being an MS shill, it's what you always do when you've been called out. Oh and for the record, I'm not just not a shill, I work for one of MS' major competitors in the Server OS market.
If you can't see a single advantage in Windows 8 over other OSes on the market at the moment, you either haven't used it or don't understand it.
All OSes are better than the rest at some things, if you can't see what that thing is, you should investigate more. Just sticking to one OS and blindly slagging off the rest is merely avoiding learning and bettering yourself.
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
@AC you are a shill for all we know, you are AC, we cannot see your posting history.
Well, go on then, hit me with it, what can win 8 do better than other operating systems such as OSX or Linux? I am agog to learn. AC if you're going to attack me, then please realise that it's impolite to do so when posting as AC. You are playing dirty. Cheers.
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
@Eadon - Agreed.
Considering just the graphical aspects (which is what most people probably will) Win8 and Ubuntu (one of the main GNU/Linux distros) suffer from the same problem; a desktop/tablet schizophrenia. In Ubuntu a few workflows might have to change, but annoyances remain (two clicks to switch a workspace for example). In Win8 it is just freakin' gawd-awful. The whole schism as it switches to desktop mode just shows how badly thought out it is.
At least on vanilla Ubuntu I can install another DE (MATE or whatever) should Unity not be to my taste and I can't be pretty damned sure all the important stuff will work. And if it doesn't? Use another. Or configure that one to is does work how I want.
On Win8? Meh, I'm screwed. I must follow the dikats of their UI people and be-damned to my work flow or muscle memory.
"Oh, but switching to GNU/Linux needs sooooooo much training." Not it doesn't. Just have one person fiddle with it and make it look Windows-y enough and I can pretty much bet the team will hardly notice (there are other factors I agree).
As to our AC shill, they are either that or a troll. Never reply to an AC, those accounts only exist fro shills/trolls. It's not like this place has a "real name" policy or something.
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
@The Big Yin,
Linux Mint gets around the UI problems, as it uses a more classical UI by default (Mate, a fork of Gnome 2).
I sometimes respond to the @AC's so that others here who might be newbies, who do not understand the Shill industry, can see through the BS these AC shills come out with. So even though the response is to an AC, the real point of it is to make a point for others to see.
The Microsoft apologists have been rather grumpy of late.
Cheers
Re: Win 8 has no advantages @Eadon 17:36
One post or a complete history of 100 - won't tell you whether someone's a shill. just lets people like you and Vic use the shill crutch to write off any post you don't like and convince yourself that points they make are invalid by default. Your whole AC whinge thing is just an attempt at diversion, as far as I can see. "Playing dirty" - what a petulant child you are ...
Re: Win 8 has no advantages @The BigYin 18:52
"As to our AC shill, they are either that or a troll. Never reply to an AC, those accounts only exist fro shills/trolls."
Wrong. I'm neither. Dunno about other ACs. Are you a sock puppet for Eadon? By your and his logic, you must be! Nice try, Eadon!
On a side note, it's good to see that your Linux pushing follows the often-used format. Windows is crap -> You can do that in Linux (then usually qualified with things like "I'm sure" or "can pretty much bet". Not exactly likely to inspire confidence in the people you want to convert, though it will go over well here, so it's a nice safe thing to do isn't it? Fair play - I suppose stand up comedians pick their venues if they want to get a good audience response. :)
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
"bettering yourself."
Fuck that's funny, as if knowing some random new UI for a computer is "bettering" oneself.
Sheesh, he was right, you are a shill!
Re: Win 8 has no advantages @The BigYin 18:52
"Wrong. I'm neither. Dunno about other ACs."
Right. There is no real name policy here. You could call yourself "Galactic Wombat" for all the difference it makes. AC accounts have no use on this site except for shills and trolls.
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
@Eadon and The Big Yin:
If someone doesn't agree with you, it doesn't mean that they're a shill. I'm one of the ACs from above, I've been posting here since April 2007, I have 150 pages of comments, I don't post with my handle since someone threatened me based on guessing that they knew who I was because of my handle and posting history.
Now, I don't know if you two are the same person, if you're different people, if you're also posting as AC, it doesn't matter, I have no way to verify your status so I just accept that. The thing is if you continue to think that anyone who disagrees with you is a shill (incidentally see the house rules about that) you're just going to alienate people, many of whom have genuine opinions that even if you don't agree with, you could learn from.
Re: Win 8 has no advantages
"The thing is if you continue to think that anyone who disagrees with you is a shill (incidentally see the house rules about that) you're just going to alienate people"
I don't. I think anyone who posts as AC is probably a shill or a troll (note: I haven't accused you of being a shill). It is so easy to create a new account/handle that there is no need for AC IMHO. And as evidence to that I cite you stating you can't tell if Eadon or I are one and the same (we're not, but then I would say that).
Re: Win 8 has no advantages @The BigYin 18:52
"Windows is crap"
It is. I use Windows every day and feel qualified to state that it is crap. And Win8 is more crap than Win7. If you want some balance - GNU/Linux isn't perfect either; nothing is.
"You can do that in Linux (then usually qualified with things like "I'm sure" or "can pretty much bet"."
It may surprise you, but I don't have time to go around and test every aspect of Windows emulation on every DE on every distribution. Also if I haven't tried something myself, I don't like stating it as a fact.
My current DE is similar, but not identical to, Windows. I am fairly sure, but have conducted no tests, that any Windows user could use it. There are, of course, differences out of necessity, e.g. workspace switcher, window controls in different place (I could move them, but I like them where they are), different Super-key behaviours (again, I could change these but I don't need to). And that's before we get into the differences caused by the filesystem, but again these could be dealt with, I just haven't bothered.
"Not exactly likely to inspire confidence in the people you want to convert, though it will go over well here, so it's a nice safe thing to do isn't it?"
So Eadon writes off posts they don't like as "shill", and you write off posts you don't like as "preaching to the choir"? A bit hypocritical, no?
Re: AC accounts have no use on this site
"AC accounts have no use on this site except for shills and trolls."
With the greatest respect: Rubbish. Hope you don't mind me saying so :)
It would be just as sensible for someone (me, for example) to claim that named accounts have no use on this site except for self-obsessed egos who want shiny badges (or some other ego-driven reason).
Obviously both claims are wrong in general. There are egos here (no names, no pack drill), and doubtless there are trolls and shills too. Shit happens, especially on the Interwebs.
It would help a great deal if people would generally focus on the message rather than the messenger. Posting as AC can be helpful in that respect. Posting as AC doesn't necessarily mean that the poster is a troll or a shill. Look at the message and draw your own conclusion based on the content, not based on who posted it (or on what colour the badge is).
Re: AC accounts have no use on this site
"Posting as AC can be helpful in that respect. Posting as AC doesn't necessarily mean that the poster is a troll or a shill."
This site does not run a real-name policy, no force you to use some global ID like G+, Facebook, OpenID or whatever. So the only reasons for posting AC are:
1) To troll - and one doesn't want the trolling to be linked to their actual handle; or
2) To shill - and one doesn't want that to be easily traced via post history.
Yes, one could use sock-puppet accounts etc.; I completely agree. So until someone can give me an actual good reason for AC (and I don't buy anything I've read so far) I shall continue to dismiss ACs as troll/shill.
And if I wanted to karma-whore, I'd align my handle here with what I use elsewhere; but I can't be arsed.
Just to add a bit of balance...
...to all these shed-dwelling corruptors of capitalism who are stealing the bread from the land-fill owner's children's mouths...
PC sales were up by one this April thanks to my good self. Built to a Quality, rather than a price (an advantage of being self-employed is you can be your own finance department). Yes, thankyou, I WILL take all the Ghz and Gb that you can stuff into one little box.
I should declare that whilst I'm very enthusiastic about my PC, it's not for Gaming (well, not primarily....)
Just to add a bit of balance...part 2
LOL @ all the Win8 hate. So M$ change some of the interface and no-one can use it anymore? Or maybe it's slow, clunky and not woth the £40 upgrade?
Grow up guys, some people like Windows, some like Macs and some like Linux. Some can *gasp* even learn to use them all!
Re: Just to add a bit of balance...part 2
Welcome Tim, I admire your spirit but come on, you have to get yourself a camp and stick to it if you want to be a regular comentard, unless you hate at least two out of the three main OS's / hardware manufacturers then you are going to be real lonely here.
Speaking as someone with an android phone, an iPad, home windows 7 PC and using many disparate versions of unix / Linux at work I confuse the hell out of the average commenter on here myself!
See that, it's a joke alert but I guarantee I'll get down voted for my "joke"
Re: Just to add a bit of balance...part 2
@Tim - Yeah, but learning more than one OS is hard, much easier to slag off the ones that you don't know. I was that person, then I bothered to knuckle down and learn other OSes because, as a storage guy, you need to know everything you'd provision storage to or backup, if you're going to make it.
Worth considering...
If you're going to link Windows 8 to this trend, it's worth considering that Windows 8 doesn't need more resources that Windows 7. Also, Windows 8 is dirt cheap to buy at the moment. In the olden days (well, pre Windows 7), you needed new hardware to run a new OS and it was so expensive, many people would have figured they'd may as well just buy a new PC with the new OS on it.
Re: Worth considering...
On the other hand, in the olden days I could go to the mall and buy and upgrade but, at least here in Spain, they are none to be found.
MS want to keep all the upgrade money for themselves or something?
Re: Worth considering...
I did. The demo completely failed to install on the PC I tried. (It now has mint on it.) And I tried it in a VM on another PC, and found it so awful to use, I'm not prepared to pay the £30 or whatever.
It is dreadful, I thought we'd left that sort of stuff behind with the demise of windows 3.11
The x86 tablet/ultrabooks being advertised seem to be a flop waiting to happen.
They won't be as good as a W8 tablet, because they are heavier. They won't be much good as a laptop because of windows 8. Their battery life and available applications won't compare well to iPads and Android devices.
And RT seems like it will be another non-starter, and given Microsoft's history of abandoning ARM based systems when they falter and lack of compatibility/upgradibility between generations (WM6, Kin, and WP7) who would take the risk? And what happens when someone sticks a Raspberry Pi in a tablet or netbook form for a quarter the price?
Re: what happens when someone sticks [ARM] in a tablet for a quarter the price?
Pretty much here already, for well under £100. With a rather more upmarket processor than the Pi, which is aimed at a slightly different market.
You probably won't have heard the brand names, and you probably won't be buying them from well known dealers, and they'll be based not on Tegra but maybe Allwinner A10 and Rokchip, and they will be 1024x600 or worse (etc).
But for around £60-80 quid, will anyone care?
If you want one from a dealer with relatively well known name, with a spec somewhat behind the curve, they do exist, e.g.
http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/product_detail/13426/Jazz-C725-7-Android-4-0-Tablet-PC-1-0GHz-ARM11-4GB-WiFi-b-g-n/ for £70 (caution: 800x400 screen - look around for better screens at the same price, but you'll have to trade off against something else e.g. noname dealer).
11 years ago?
2012 minus 11 equals 2001
Wasn't that when the West knew it was in crisis and took the "Oh b*gg*r it! If we spend enough it will go away" solution to financial woes?
What we want ...
Could be that the world is not in love with Win 8? That the "Death of the Desktop" mantra is wrong? That people want mobile AND desktop as well? I wonder what the popularity of Win 8 workarounds is...
I love PC's
and have done for a long time. But its serious crunch time. PC's today are in general at the low medium and ultrabook ends - just rehashed, warmed up shit. Its little wonder that people have tired of buying the same rehashed, reheated garbage ever x years. Some people say a PC is enough, but brutally I personally have not found it to be thus. Today if you wish to work on or study on the enterprise software levels (example, 16GB for exchange) then you start to reach a point where you need fantastic monster machines. And who provides these - not many options, and very little in the medium range. So, people more and more find tablets equal to rdiculous ultrabooks. And who can blame them. And on the server side, given the vast cost and nightmarish levels required for working on serious server level stuff (Hi Microsoft, welcome server 2012, powershell, windows 8, and..) its little wonder there is a run taking place to move cloudwards. And not to azure either.
AMD could save itself. It could simply up the spec on its motherboards and oem's (LAPTOPS). Why not put 4 dimm/simm slots on every laptop chipset. Guess what, I'd like a machine I can put a lot of ram in without a nightmare price?? Oh look, you've just created a bioundary layer where a PC is again bigger, badder and better than tablets.
I'll say this to every single PC vendor out there. You are not going to out tablet the ARM platform at tablet level, and certainly not on rediculous over priced garbage ultrabooks. If I want a thin mobile device with mobility at its core, I am not going to pay your price. End of. However, I still want the PC of tommorow. Something powerful - capable beyond the tablet or cloud. And I'm willing to pay good money for it. But its graphics, and its cpu and its storage and its memory must not just be another reheated hash of the last gen over and over and over. Yes, I want a 1TB drive, yes I want 16GB, yes, I actually want a decent GPU not just rehashed junk intel gfx. And if you don't want to build that machine, thats ok, I don't have to buy the crap you're shipping today thats junk. And by the figures no one else wants that stuff either.
The PC isn't going to win the war in mobility. And its not going to survive in the areas like battery life, convenience or light usage that the tablets rightly dominate in. The bulk of its software library isn't even built for that paradigm. Built the powerful PCs of tommorow and start doing it today. You will in either case have lower sales figures, but the powerful PC will always hav e its place, and the junk models won't.
People are dropping the PC - because the last 2-4 machines they bought were junk and they are reaching a tipping point where they don't want to have that complexity + junk again when simnplistic tablet platforms answer more of their desires.
Lastly - ultrabook - a huge nail in the coffin of PCs. Intel lost the plot on this. Its taken its quite marvellous Ivy bridge and sandy bridge lines, and crippled them in the worst chassis. With limited connectivity (Its a PC - PC's soul is plugging things into it, not removing the connectors) and heat induced crippled perf - one can only marvel at this dirge. At huge price as well.
In the meantime, PC gaming is screaming for a vendor to step in and bring it. The games are at a surperior level to consoles or tables - assuming the right hardware is applied. And the window to catch it right is now.
This failure is going to result in the death of a very large part of the PC industry. Thats going to bite all affected. Would be much better to attack the issues in a unified way. That way is not the ultrabooks.
No problems with win 8
Well I installed win8 on an old Athlon64 x2 running at 2ghz. With 4gb ram. It runs perfectly. Think of thee new UI as a big start button and no problems with usability. The kids like the MS store.
If anything it has fewer problems in terms of stability than Win7.
Ok I do hate IE10 lots of compatibility problems with lots of sites, but a quick chrome install fixed the issue.
Not need to buy a new PC at all though. Run faster than XP or Win7.
Not an MS fanboy also run an iMac and a Solaris workstation at home.
"Windows 8 is dirt cheap to buy at the moment"
Windows 8 may be dirt cheap (relative to MS usual end user prices) but
Why bother at all if the benefits aren't visible in comparison with today's setup
Why bother at all if the upgrade assistant says "you need to upgrade x dozen apps"
As for VMs:
1) My former favourite, VMware Player, is no longer zero cost afaict. Does Player 4 support Win 8 (it doesn't sound like they work well together, from a quick look around)?
2) Do the cheap Win 8 prices apply to fresh installs, or just upgrades? If just upgrades, can I move from Win 7 on a real PC to Win8 in a VM on that and still only pay upgrade prices?
Re: "Windows 8 is dirt cheap to buy at the moment"
VMWare player is free (or was when I downloaded it recently) and it has way better facilities than previously.
VirtualBox is still free and it's definitely in the "good enough" bucket
VMware Player 5 not free for commercial use
"VMWare player is free (or was when I downloaded it recently)"
It's still free to download. Player 4 was free to use, for personal or commercial use. For Player 5, when my copy starts up, the startup screen window title says "VMware Player (Non-commercial use only)" and the window body text includes "This product is not licenced and is authorised for non-commercial use only. For commercial use, purchase a licence. Buy now.". "Buy now" goes to a web page which includes the text "VMware Player is free for personal use. VMware Player is now available for commercial use with support offerings as a component of VMware Fusion Professional."
Nice, eh?
Or you could have a look at Section 8 of the EULA:
"VMware Player is intended for your own personal non-commercial use only. Player may only be used commercially or be re-distributed with written agreement from VMware."
And from the Player 5 Release Notes:
"VMware Player is also now available for commercial use. A commercial license for VMware Player 5 is included with VMware Fusion 5 Professional to enable customers to run virtual machines on Windows or Linux PCs and on Macs using a single license key! "
The way I read that is that commercial use of Player was free with V4 and isn't free with V5 (you need a paid-for licence, bundled with Fusion 5 Pro). Correction most welcome.
VirtualBox GPL Edition it shall be then, at least at work.
[minor changes from deleted version, e.g. more quotes]
Re: "Windows 8 is dirt cheap to buy at the moment"
Ignoring Win 8 is free.
Re: VMware Player 5 not free for commercial use
Nah, I got the agreement. You can use VMPlayer commercially for free, as long as I do not distribute it. In other words I can virtualise to my hearts content internally as long as it's all inward facing. The latest VMPlayer is limited to 4 virtual CPUs and it has all the necessary bits to define and set up the VMs. Works a treat.
Gaming no longer driving the upgrade cycle
There are many factors contributing to decline of PC sales, of course, but one I have not seen mentioned yet is the longevity of the current console generation. Since most PC games are not PC-exclusive but are designed for consoles as well, and since the leading consoles have been around for such a long time, games no longer require anything more than a cheap midrange computer. I bought a fairly cheap video card nearly three years ago and I have still been unable to find anything I cannot run at maximum settings.
Microsoft = IBM
This is like hoping a new set of Alloy wheels will fix an old car that is past it best working life. Microsoft is turning into another IBM (of old).
The gravy train is a-mouldering...
Yes, yes, yes. SO many people are posting here saying that they have machines that are easily good enough to support what they need. I can say the same. I upgraded to a Phenom II x6 a while back and, while this is easily powerful enough for W7 and anything I'm likely to need to run, it does raise one point.
Windows 8 is, at least in the traditional PC world, an "upgrade" to W7. It consumes no more than W7 did, and therefore needs no hardware change for those of us that have W7, if we actually decide that we really want to go in that direction. The only realistic target there is for remaining Windows XP users (I doubt that any Vista users will have any more problems than do W7 users) who will likely be using older hardware.
However the problem there is that WXP users won't necessarily switch to W7/8. With the expiry of WXP coverage getting closer, the people still using WXP will increasingly be either hard core users who do not like the idea of shifting, people who can ill afford the shift for whatever reason, and corporate users who are likely to go to W7 only when the existing machines are getting near to their end of life.
I'm not convinced that the tablet is going to replace the PC everywhere, but it does have an advantage in the home market at least, not least because a cheap tablet running a reasonably recent version of Android can undercut anything in the Windows market, and W8 has yet to really catch on with the great unwashed. If it every does.
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