It has been announced by Microsoft that Windows 8 has reached the 200 million licence milestone. This figure includes licences for all new PCs & tablets shipped with Windows 8 on them as well as upgrades to 8.1.
Whilst this sounds all hunky dory for the worst operating system ever released by Microsoft, in my mind it's distorting the reality.
Why?
OK, isn't Windows 8.1 just an update on Windows 8. If I bought a PC with Windows 8 on it, that's 1 licence. If I then upgrade to 8.1, that's another licence being claimed but in reality, it isn't because I already bought it and the upgrade is a service pack.
Apply the same method of Enron calculating to XP and you'd have multi-billion licences issued as it went through SP1, 2 & 3.
Even taking that into account, if you then consider how many people have dumped Windows 8 because it's so counter-productive and the figures are even less rosey.
Windows 8 is sixteen months old and, without admitting it, Microsoft are already talking about dumping it themselves. This being the case, why should they expect us to keep buying it - because they know we will.
No, I'll re-phrase that. Because they know that YOU will. I won't install it on any of my machines. I'll stick with XP, 7 and Linux for the time being as, in my opinion, they're all far superior to 8.
Let's add something else to the mix. The life window of Win8 was to be 3 years, as it's sixteen months old now, it still has a further twenty months to go before being replaced with Win9. Our good friends at MS are now suggesting that the next 'upgrade' to Win8 will be Win9.
Reading between the lines, this confirms that Win8 is not worth wasting any further money for development effort on their part unless the 80 million users out there create a huge stink!
Hold on! Didn't you say 200 million earlier?
Yes I did. What you need to do is forget the SP1 upgrade and then factor in all those millions who downgraded from 8 to 7. 80% of my clients asked me to downgrade from 8 because it was so awful to work with.
Lets add another condemning figure into the mix. Win7 reached 240 million licences in just twelve months - Win8 hasn't got there yet after sixteen months even though its' release was carefully timed to take advantage of traditionally high volume sales periods.
I believe the figures speak for themselves, even after the careful massaging by Microsoft. My opinion is forget about Win8 and wait to see what Win9 brings us.
In the meantime, you could try Linux which is totally free. Download Linux here.
Consider this! The vast majority of Servers out there delivering all those pages you visit on the internet and the worlds super computers, all run on Linux. Why? Not because it's free but because it's a lot more stable, it's faster and uses far less resources than Windows.
In short, it works better! It'll breathe new life into that old laptop/tower lurking in the cupboard and allow you to stream the internet to your TV. That way you don't have to spend money on these over-priced IPTV boxes being bandied around all over the place.
Opinions in this article are those of the writer. All brand names and trade marks acknowledged.
Whilst this sounds all hunky dory for the worst operating system ever released by Microsoft, in my mind it's distorting the reality.
Why?
OK, isn't Windows 8.1 just an update on Windows 8. If I bought a PC with Windows 8 on it, that's 1 licence. If I then upgrade to 8.1, that's another licence being claimed but in reality, it isn't because I already bought it and the upgrade is a service pack.
Apply the same method of Enron calculating to XP and you'd have multi-billion licences issued as it went through SP1, 2 & 3.
Even taking that into account, if you then consider how many people have dumped Windows 8 because it's so counter-productive and the figures are even less rosey.
Windows 8 is sixteen months old and, without admitting it, Microsoft are already talking about dumping it themselves. This being the case, why should they expect us to keep buying it - because they know we will.
No, I'll re-phrase that. Because they know that YOU will. I won't install it on any of my machines. I'll stick with XP, 7 and Linux for the time being as, in my opinion, they're all far superior to 8.
Let's add something else to the mix. The life window of Win8 was to be 3 years, as it's sixteen months old now, it still has a further twenty months to go before being replaced with Win9. Our good friends at MS are now suggesting that the next 'upgrade' to Win8 will be Win9.
Reading between the lines, this confirms that Win8 is not worth wasting any further money for development effort on their part unless the 80 million users out there create a huge stink!
Hold on! Didn't you say 200 million earlier?
Yes I did. What you need to do is forget the SP1 upgrade and then factor in all those millions who downgraded from 8 to 7. 80% of my clients asked me to downgrade from 8 because it was so awful to work with.
Lets add another condemning figure into the mix. Win7 reached 240 million licences in just twelve months - Win8 hasn't got there yet after sixteen months even though its' release was carefully timed to take advantage of traditionally high volume sales periods.
I believe the figures speak for themselves, even after the careful massaging by Microsoft. My opinion is forget about Win8 and wait to see what Win9 brings us.
In the meantime, you could try Linux which is totally free. Download Linux here.
Consider this! The vast majority of Servers out there delivering all those pages you visit on the internet and the worlds super computers, all run on Linux. Why? Not because it's free but because it's a lot more stable, it's faster and uses far less resources than Windows.
In short, it works better! It'll breathe new life into that old laptop/tower lurking in the cupboard and allow you to stream the internet to your TV. That way you don't have to spend money on these over-priced IPTV boxes being bandied around all over the place.
Opinions in this article are those of the writer. All brand names and trade marks acknowledged.
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