We’ve long said that it’s unfair to slap Windows 8 with the dreaded Vista comparison and now we have some data to back it up. ZDNet’s Ed Bott this week took a look at Amazon (AMZN) customer ratings for several versions of Microsoft’s (MSFT) operating system and found that while Windows 8 has its share of haters, it also has even more people who enthusiastically support the platform. Overall, 50% of Windows 8 users gave the platform four or five-star reviews while 40% gave it a one or two-star rating. This contrasts very favorably with Vista, which received one and two-star ratings from 50% of users while receiving four and five-star ratings from just 37% of users. The ratings also show that dislike of Vista was remarkably intense, with 42% of users giving it a one-star rating that Bott describes as a “middle finger” to the platform.
“Windows Vista is a world-class villain, an object of scorn and ridicule, with 42 percent of all reviewers giving it the lowest possible rating,” Bott notes. “In fact, as a measure of how deeply despised Vista was, note that the number of 1-star ratings was higher than the total of 4- and 5-star ratings. That’s not the case at all with the more recent versions.”
In conclusion, Bott writes that Microsoft is probably not all that surprised by the polarized reaction to Windows 8 since it represents such a dramatic shift from older versions of the platform. He thinks that this means Windows 8 is a “product that needs some attention” and that “Microsoft’s announced plan to release more frequent updates like Windows Blue, due later this year, gives it an opportunity to deal with some of the criticisms.”
