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Product Management :: Product Marketing


03 October, 2012

Windows 8 - what's the driver for adoption


Last week, I read two articles about Windows 8, one article from Cambridge Network said:
Unless you are looking to take advantage of Windows 8 for some specific feature, we suggest that you wait until Windows 8 SP1 before looking at Windows 8 seriously. If you are switching from Windows XP and Office 2007, then your learning curve will be very steep. Windows 7 and Office 2010 users will have less of a learning curve.

The other, from the Register, takes a different perspective:
the software giant has apparently elected to take a much riskier, and gutsier, approach: turn Windows 8 into a serious gaming platform.
Not exactly compelling to the business user (and to a lesser extent the consumer), is it?

3 comments:

Bernie said...

Hi Arthur,

The uptake in for Windows 8 will be two fold I think. In the short term there will be a flurry of new installations as advanced users have a go and also those who purchased Windows 7 recently will be getting Windows 8 for a very cheap price.

After that we then get into the why bother upgrading mentality and I can't see it being huge until it is bundled with new laptops, especially for people on Windows 7 there is no compelling reason to upgrade. Moving from Windows XP would make sense but the jump will be huge for many people and will put some of.

As for businesses there has to be a very compelling reason or feature to upgrade and this will certainly take time.
Bernie

Arthur said...

Agreed, Bernie.

I have enjoyed Windows XP for years - I saw nothing in Vista or Windows 7 that mandated an upgrade. Indeed, when I have been forced to use Win7 have turned off or installed XP features on top of Win 7 to make it usable again.

If I was a CIO of company with 500 employees, all with WinXP + a couple of server rooms with the hodge podge of Operating Systems and applications, what compelling reason can Microsoft produce to necessitate an mass upgrade?

Is the expiry of XP Support in 2014 the only reason?

I'm becoming a big fan of Open Source desktops - I've used Linux Mint (see my posts) for a couple of years and, in general, it is an adequate substitute.

Bernie said...

Arthur,

Vista was a complete waste but win7 is fine I have a mix in use now, but from a business perspective there are very few reason to move from XP to 7. Yes support ends in 2014 but even then there will still be loads of installations around!

Not tired Mint will have to down load it and give it a try.

I think MS are taking a big gamble with Win8 on the laptop/desktop as it is a big mind shift for people, fine for mobile devices / tablets but not sold yet on the laptop.