OS and Software > Microsoft Help > [WIN8] Windows 8 --- What benifits over W7-64?

reply to Jan Janowski

Re: [WIN8] Windows 8 --- What benifits over W7-64?

reply to Jan Janowski
It's kind-of sad that the big seller on the list for me is that Microsoft promises to arbitrarily restart my computer "less often" when they decide to push Trojan patches out, and will offer a 72 hour notice rather than 20 minutes when they do it.

I have long suspected the MS also resets Windows Updates to automatic occasionally, but have never been able to prove it.

reply to Jan Janowski
It all reminds me of the "Detroit" syndrome. Companies make the bulk of their revenue by selling things, and when their products are relatively durable (in a longevity, usefulness sense), the most significant way to spur sales is the marketing of new "features" that differentiate the new product from the still-useful older products. Marketing focuses on convincing buyers that the new product posseses "must-have" features and a "trendy" appearance, as well as contains purported essential bells and whistles lacking in the old product. For a hundred years, automobiles have been sold this way - model year after model year. And, indeed at times, technological advances have eventually made older models "obsolete" in many ways, though a functional ancient car model will still get a driver to his destination sooner or later. What makes the old car 'obsolete' is very often only the evolution of driver expectations... and it's the job of a company's marketing department to increase those expectations each time a new version is developed. The more new versions successfully marketed, the more sales revenue - at least, until the point is reached where the market resists a new version because of the investment costs relative to buyers' economic conditions.

Some software developers issue new models of basic software mainly because their older designs, while still functional, are no longer compatible with growing numbers of current platforms or with essential emergent technology. Such companies' revenue growth comes primarily from developing new, innovative products for new arenas or finding significantly better ways for their existing products to perform their prior tasks. IMO, Microsoft (as well as many other "big boys" in the software/computer industry) makes their revenue by regularly marketing "new" versions every couple of years regardless of market demand, just as Detroit markets "new" car models each year. The marketing department is then tasked with developing all manner of tactics to somehow stimulate "demand" by convincing the prospective customers that the features added into the new version are "must-have" and "trendy".

When a new version genuinely reflects major technology shifts and presents powerful new features, it will be self-evident. When that is not the case, there will be all manner of puzzlement in the marketplace as many prospective customers ask themselves (and others) what possible genuine benefits the new product offers over the old. IMHO, this is exactly the latter situation... and Windows 8 is simply a product whose time-to-release has come up (in order to meet Microsoft's recurring revenue demands), rather than a product based on genuine, pre-existent market demand. While there's absolutely nothing 'wrong' in that, it's useful to keep it clearly in mind amidst the growing hype and spin.
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"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!" -- P.Henry, 1775

I see your point.

However, I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment, at least not completely anyway.

The upgrade cycle for Microsoft software in general may be arbitrary and the perceived value of the feature set of the upgrade(s) may vary. However, the cost of the product / product line often remains fairly static. A company that continually produces software may be perceived as improving incrementally, although, its not extraordinary if the product seems derivative at some point.

Microsoft could stagnate and likely would still make fairly good sales in OEM preinstalled systems (for a while). However, the competition such as Apple, Google and others wouldn’t stagnate and could increase market share during such a time. Which is not to say they wont gain in market share anyway.

Apple has presumably moved to an annual OS X upgrade cycle. That’s about three OS X full version upgrades for each Windows OS upgrade. Also look how well stagnation worked out for Microsoft in the tablet segment of the market.

The technology market is similar to a lot of species of sharks,….they better keep moving or they will die.

One of the interesting aspects of this, is that outside of the group of what I would call "enthusiasts" the typical OS consumer will likely no longer be interested in upgrading their OS. Times have changed from the 90's when we were begging for a new OS. Today, upgrade sales must be minimal because of driver issues and because hardware is cheap to replace. People will get the new OS when they buy a new box.

The other interesting issue is that Bill G. when he was designing Vista (code named Longhorn or whatever) envisioned all kinds of innovations for the new platform that, one by one, were dropped as Vista development dragged on. The interesting part of this is that I don't think any of those innovations (such as a DB based file system) have ever seen the light of day in Win7 or now, Win8.

And Bill G. got put out to pasture as a result of his failure with Vista.

reply to Glen T

How long was Vista delayed? What was the list of features that was dropped from Vista? Wasn't this the only MS project that Bill personally oversaw, since he wrote BASIC?

Yeah, I know, he retired with full honors to oversee his foundation.

Maybe I overstated. After Vista flopped, Bill put himself out to pasture.

I've got a million of them. Like MS ripping off IBM when they were supposed to be working on OS/2 by using the same team to develop NT.

Really, MS has not had an original idea since BASIC.

Ok, good talk.

reply to Glen T
Could be the first time anyone's ever expressed sympathy for poor ickle IBM.

reply to Jan Janowski
Windows 8 has significant and noticeable technical/performance improvements and enhancements over Windows 7; to claim "none exist" is just a display of not searching, looking, or worse: denying they exist. One of them is the noticeable speed and accuracy in rendering, such as "crisper colors" due to:

reply to Jan Janowski
IMHO, it would be a great OS if they had focused more on the cloud aspects (SkyDrive and live) and ditched the metro. It just looks and acts ugly/unrefined.

They could have left the tablet interface there and just not forced it to be used on a desktop. There is a reason I'm using a desktop and not a tablet.

I actually loved the new GUI and start menu when they first came out. I could see the personal benefits to the changes.

Windows 8 got worse for me after a clean install. That gave me the perspective of what most new users will experience. I'll get it fixed back up and be fine. But I know I'll have plenty of time to put in with friends and family when/if they upgrade.

It's just my opinion that MS should include the tablet interface as an optional shell on the desktop. They need to win the tablet market over, not force the desktop market to into a tablet paradigm.

I really do get what they are trying to do. I also get the desktop is sort of "dead". I just don't agree with the way it's being done or the lack polish and refinement.

Once this hits the general public and press it's going to go over poorly.

reply to plencnerb
You make some interesting points.

I will refer to what I said earlier about Apple presumably moving to an annual OS X update cycle. Ill also add that Apple has seemingly been moving towards merging OS X and iOS at least on a cosmetic UI level. If Microsoft had adopted an equally aggressive upgrade cycle they would have been able to make more subtle changes in a three year timeframe rather then a "like it or lump it" compulsory Metro interface within one OS revision.

However, if it weren’t compulsory many would simply sidestep it as you pointed out.

reply to plencnerb

reply to Jan Janowski
I suppose the question is whether or not I would of purchased Windows 8 had it come with the option to disable Metro and have a Start Menu.

That's when you'd know if the enhancements are worth the upgrade fee. I tried windows 8 for a while. It didn't seem faster than windows 7 (except on bootup, in which it shaved a few seconds off, but I use an SSD so the difference was minimal). There were a few tweaks I liked, but for the most part I was pretty indifferent.

So for me I didn't find too many things in Windows 8 I would of upgraded for even if I could of disabled metro.

That doesn't mean that future technology/software might not benefit more from the update OS. Maybe by that time they'll put in an update that does allow us to disable metro.

reply to dave