PC Industry Concerned Over Lukewarm Windows 8 Interest
PC industry expected to experience decline for the first time in over ten years.
PC parts suppliers are reportedly concerned that consumers won't be interested with Microsoft's forthcoming operating system Windows 8 until next year.
Anonymous sources from several PC component suppliers have expressed their worry over the potentially low demand at launch, with Windows 8 sales seemingly not due to show considerable promise until at least the first quarter of 2013.
The PC parts suppliers said they were depending on Windows 8 to create the boost the PC industry wants right now. Projections from several firms have suggested that the industry as a whole will, for the first time in more than a decade, experience a decline.
While the industry moves towards tablets/tablet PCs, smartphones, as well as the predicted increase in popularity for ultrabooks, Microsoft is expected to invest upwards of $1.5 billion in advertising for Windows 8, which could generate enough interest to result in substantial sales.
Microsoft and its vendor partners will launch Windows 8-powered tablets, such as Surface, and PCs on October 26.

Try spending that $1.5 billion to "Get in Touch with Consumers"
Already bought several copies of 7 just in case. I strongly suspect that Microsoft will want everyone to switch over to 8 as quickly and as abruptly as possible.
I'm certain to get downvoted for saying this (again) but Microsoft wants everyone on Windows 8. As soon as possible. $15/$40 upgrades? Letting people go from 7 Home Premium to 8 Pro?
They. Want. You. Buying. Apps.
From 7 to 8, Windows is going from a fantastic, open operating system that lets you run whatever you want to a closed-off, iPad-esque walled garden that lets you run your "legacy" software in the "Desktop App". If you don't think the ultimate goal is for every Windows user to get all of their software through Microsoft's App Store, I don't know what else to say. Their endgame is to transform the computing experience from the traditional open model that's been with us since forever to, well, a f--king iPad!
Try spending that $1.5 billion to "Get in Touch with Consumers"
When you hire a costumer (tailor), the tailor is usually the one doing the listening.
In principle, Microsoft would be better off listening to cUstOmers than cOstUmers... but those who have the power and make the rules are too busy swapping their tailors' business cards for that.
^ +1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0AJM6HMYjM
How do you know that they didn't? As far as I can tell the people that have actually 'used' the software to do work and carry on doing work like the product. It's hardly a massive difference once you hit hte dektop.
P.s. Maybe the oems should make really good kit for once! Just a thought there
The customer really just want the same thing they had since they don't want change. People just like to bitch at companies for innovating and if they don't they bitch the same product gets released over and over.
There was nothing wrong with vista and its pretty much exactly like 7 yet people say 7 is great while vista is crap, the simple reason being people don't like to change. By the time 7 came out, people had enough time to appreciate something "new" when really it was just the same thing dressed slightly different.
Nobody is forcing you to buy windows 8. Go use w/e OS you want.
Change is one thing. You can do it slowly. Like 32bit to 64bit. 64bit XP was horrible due to lack of driver support but now it very uncommon to have 32bit 7. Or the change from FAT32 to NTFS. It took time, XP supported both at first and with SP3 was mainly NTFS.
What I don't like about 8 is the lack of the start menu, they can have Metro but give the choice, or the fact that you cannot bypass Metro to go straight to the desktop.
Iut feels as if 8 is more geasred towards tablets/touch interfaces with desktops being an afterthought.
Vista is to 7 as ME is to XP. Both the same in essence as ME was tthe doorway to XP and Vista to 7. Vista and ME share the same "hate" although both can be good OSes. But 7 is a much more optimized version of Vista. Even with the same hardware, Vista would be slower in some respects than 7 due to that.
Still 8 doesn't feel good. 7 felt good. Vista felt fine. But 8 feels like Microsoft is giving up on desktop PCs when thats still their major consumer base.
Why hate something that in no way affects you? I used the beta for a while and it was fine, everything felt the same once I got used to it. Not like I would pay to upgrade but why all the hate on it?
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about! Vista was extremely buggy and unstable when it came out, had poor driver support for anything but the most common hardware, and was much slower than XP.
When windows 7 came out, it supported most hardware natively, even if it was to at least offer basic functioning of that hardware until newer drivers were downloaded from windows update. It was extremely faster than Vista and even faster than XP when using new hardware! (And, for any wise asses out there, I do mean compared to running XP on the same new hardware!) And on top of all that, Windows 7 was Rock Solid Stable from day one! Vista achieved stability after the first service pack, but it still remains slower than XP and Windows 7.
All these reasons is why I only tried Vista and quickly returned to XP (and then only got to use Vista on client computers) but I didn't hesitate to switch over to Windows 7 as soon as it hit RTM and have never looked back! Vista was always frustrating with driver issues and bluescreens, Windows 7 was a dream to setup, configure and to use!
These are the real reasons so many people hated Vista and so many loved Windows 7. (Most of the people who don't hate Vista are people who didn't get to use it until it was already on it's first service pack a year later).
Agreed that Vista wasn't great. Windows Vista was basically one big Beta for Windows 7 which turned out for the better.
Vista's driver support was a bit lacking at the beginning but it ran perfectly fine as long as you didn't have a 5 year old computer after SP1. It ran much faster than XP in just about anything if you had decently enough hardware. 4 gb of ram was all you need for vista to feel perfectly smooth and it had much better hardware acceleration for multicore threading and disk caching. Everything feels much smoother than on XP so long as you are not hitting the ram wall.
I never did have a blue screen with vista using it for 3 years, on xp I had multiple blue screens due to simple memory errors from sleep mode. Switching to 7 I didn't feel it was any different than vista, the only real noticeable difference was the ram use was lower when you had nothing loaded but it didn't ever matter to me, unused ram is wasted ram.