Windows 8

If you want to understand why Windows 8 has been a failure so far, the following quote from IDC analyst Jay Chou explains it all: “The chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system.” This is a big problem for Microsoft because the entire point of Windows 8 was to ignite demand within the PC market and make people want to replace their older systems with new touch-enabled PCs that would slow the growth of iOS and Android as rival mobile computing platforms. But as IDC’s latest research shows, that simply isn’t happening. More →

Microsoft’s big hope with Windows 8 was that it would spawn a new wave of demand for touch-enabled PCs that would revitalize a declining industry. Needless to say that hasn’t happened so far and new data from NPD DisplaySearch estimates that touch-enabled notebooks will account for just 11% of all notebooks shipped in 2013, which is a pretty low number given that the entire premise of Microsoft’s new operating system is to bring tablet-style touch capabilities to personal computers. More →

Although Windows 8 has been steadily increasing its share of the market over the past few months, a recent surge by Windows 7 has put the old OS back on top, at least temporarily. The most recent data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 is up 0.61% from last month, which means Microsoft’s new operating system is on 8.02% of machines hitting the company’s network, but the Windows 7 adoption rate increased at a rate of 0.80%, bringing it up to 46.43% of the market. Windows XP continues to fall off the charts, dropping from 33.66% to 31.41%, though it is worth noting this is a slightly less precipitous drop than last month’s. Perhaps the release of Windows 8.1 and the retooled Start button will bring users around to the new OS as the year ends.

The “blue screen of death” that signifies a system failure has historically characterized Microsoft’s Windows operating system as much as the windows-based user interface itself. Seeing the dreaded “BSOD” meant you had undoubtedly just lost whatever work was being done at the time, and a reboot was the only way out. Catastrophic failures that brought on the BSOD used to be fairly regular occurrences in Windows, however the dreaded blue screen has made itself much more scarce in recent years. According to a recent report from ZDNet, this is a direct result of Microsoft’s hard work to identify the various causes of these system crashes and stamp them out. More →