Mick Huxley

Will Windows 8 Be A Flop??

It seems about the right time to write a follow up piece.  The previous post in this series, “Why Windows 8 Will Be A Flop!!”, invoked a variety of follow up posts. 

Firstly from Ashley Knowles with “Windows 8 – to be or not to be?”, which, from where I sat, was a very similar article to mine, however where I focused on the negatives, I think Ashley offered a more balanced approach. 

Secondly from Alan Burchill, an MVP, who penned “Why Windows 8 is NOT going to be another Vista”. His was an article which I found particularly peculiar because of one sentence: Alan opens and mentions both Ashley and My post along with a ZD Net article by Steve J. Vaughan-Nichols entitled “Five Reasons why Windows 8 will be dead on arrival” and then goes on to say “What is totally perplexing to me is that people seem to have made up their minds about the new OS before they have even used the final product.” The article then continues, along the lines of the title, to defend Windows 8.  Sorry Alan, but looks like you made up your mind on this product as well, you just have a different opinion to the rest of us.

Along with these posts, I think I can say that I did open up a technical debate amongst IT Pros on twitter that is probably the biggest I’ve seen.  I managed to annoy a lot of people, battle lines were drawn and at the time I decided it best to let sleeping dogs lie, rather than write a further reply, get people onto Coal Face Tech to discuss or further fuel the debate too much.  I thought this was important mostly because I tend to agree somewhat with Alan’s statement quoted above: It’s pre-release and there was (and still is) plenty of time for things to change. 

So why post again now?? Well, a few things have changed since my last post.  I began to use the Consumer Preview on my everyday work machine, and then last week Release Candidate arrived.  To start I want to look back at the 5 failures I identified previously and see what’s changed.

Failure #1 – Device Support

I stated that, somewhat like Vista which required us to update hardware, Windows 8 will work best with new hardware.  Whilst, Windows 8 runs perfectly well on the same hardware I was running Windows 7, it begs for a touch device.  The ability to open the charms menu with the mouse (especially on a multi monitor setup) is difficult.  Trying to power the OS down is even harder.

Yet device support, whilst a way off, does look to be coming.  In a CNET article recently by Seamus Byrne, titled “Dozens of touch Ultrabook designs for Windows 8”, it looks as if already touch enabled Ultrabooks are coming, albeit slowly.

Whilst this is good news, is this OS still ahead of its time?  Are too many people, myself included, going to run it on a traditional device and suffer our way through this?  Keep this in mind when watching the YouTube video I’ll mention later.

Failure #2 – Ease at home

I see no real difference in what I wrote here previously to my current views so let’s leave this one.

Failure #3 – The Big One – The Anti-Trust Case

Again this still hasn’t changed a great deal.  I stated that whilst Apple are including more and more apps in OSX, Microsoft are failing to provide any apps of much use by default.  Calendar, Mail, People, Sports, Store, Video, Travel, Weather these apps aren’t anything special and certainly not anything like some of the apps we are seeing included in OSX, Time Machine, Twitter, Facetime to name a few. 

I stand by what I wrote previously; find a way to give users a full Office experience in the OS bundled with photo and video editing software.  Not a live download, there ready to go.  I can’t see this happening but it should.

Possible Failure #4 – 1 OS

Notwithstanding the WOA vs Windows platform debate, let’s look at this whole 1 experience.  Today I can purchase a Samsung Series 7 Slate for ~$1300 AUD or an Acer W501 for ~$1000 which will run Windows but are either as slick as the top of the line iPad which is ~$900 and does as much as I want in a device of that form?

This 1 OS failure, which I listed as a possible failure for a good reason, given time, could be the best move Microsoft has made in this space.  App portability could be a big point in the future, unless HTML 5.0 takes over the world.  

One point worth making here, as mentioned above is.. look at what can happen when the tablet and desktop OS is combined.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4boTbv9_nU

I will concede that this video is very targeted and possibly slightly biased, however, having worked in organisations with a diverse workforce from tradesmen in the bush who rarely sit at a computer to highly technical folk, such as the people who read this blog.  I can state that people will be heavily confused by these changes.  In the coming weeks I plan to undertake a similar exercise and introduce my parents, whom had no issues with Windows 95, Office 2007, Windows 7 or even my iPad to Windows 8 and see if they are the same.  I’ll keep you updated on how this goes.

Failure #5 – The Enterprise

I still need to find a good reason for an Enterprise to move to Windows 8.  Much like Windows XP is still embedded in many organisations, I can see Windows 7 hanging around for some time yet.  Will BYOD impact the uptake of Windows 8 in the enterprise?  I cannot answer this question.  What I can say, having used it for a while at work, I can’t see any real benefit to moving from Windows 7.

Final Thoughts.

At this point, having used the OS for a few months, what can I say?  Firstly; Hyper-V on Windows 8 is great, but is a client OS.  Microsoft need to add the option for a NAT’d network connection.

I spend the majority of my day in the desktop and not in Metro, so I don’t see a lot of the features of Windows 8. 

The search is massively improved, hitting start and typing to find an app is lightning quick, compared to Windows 7 or Spotlight search in iOS. 

Metro has a downfall too: whilst the concept of a Chromeless window is great for full screen apps, and a PDF reader in the OS is awesome, the snap left and right are so limited if you want to spend any time looking at a PDF and a document both half screen, forget it. 

Live tiles are great, but how much time are you going to spend looking at them?  I’d prefer to have my weather forecasts in Outlook somewhere; I spend time there.  Whereas tiles on the phone are great: you often grab the phone in meetings and sneak a peek, on the start screen I rarely look at them.

I like that Flash is included in Metro IE

But the question sure to be on everyone’s lips… Will Windows 8 Be A Flop?  I still say yes.  I can’t see this OS grabbing the home or the enterprise with any aggression, and if it’s not selling it’s a flop, regardless of whether it’s actually any good or not.