There is a lot to be said for Windows 8. Some good, a lot of it bad.
I have been reading articles which are suggesting that the most resent OS from Microsoft has the slowest uptake rate than any other OS they have released.
Lets just take a think about that for a moment. I have used most, if not all, OS that Microsoft have produced. The ones that I didn’t like come down to the following. Windows ME, Windows Vista and Windows CE (version 1).
Excluding Windows CE for the moment (given its a mobile OS), lets concentrate on the main OS’s and give them a quick overview.
Vista was touted as the one that would revolutionise OSs and use of an OS. Lets be straight – it was terrible. Hardware step-up from XP to Vista was huge. It didn’t come with a lot of things it originally promised, and came with a lot of things that it didn’t promise such as hardware issues, poor performance, luke warm functionality upgrades. It was all pretty poor.
Lets go back even further in time, back to Windows ME. I was one of the very few people who purchased Windows ME. It was an upgrade from the Windows 98 that my machine was running at the time. I had seen the roll out of the Windows 2000 machines and read that it was based on that technology. Windows 2000 was an excellent OS – however, what I had read (or probably misunderstood) was that it was based on the Windows 2000 kernel. It wasn’t. It was another Windows 9x OS – and with it came a whole heap of trouble. I haven’t had as many “Blue Screens Of Death” as I did with that OS. It was worse than terrible.
IS WINDOWS 8 WORSE THAN THOSE? – NO!
Windows 8 is no where near as bad as either of those two operating systems. The big issue with Windows 8, and I know this from personal use, is that there is a steep learning curve and that you MUST have a touch screen for it to make sense.
Running Windows 8 on a machine that doesn’t have touchscreen is not advised. The experience is terrible. I use Windows 8 on a MBA. I wanted it due to development needs, but that said its not great to use. Only just “ok”.
I also have a tablet device running Windows 8 (full version not RT). This is a much much better experience. Windows 8 makes sense on a tablet. Complete sense.
Now – in my view, the hardware is / was not ready for Windows 8. Its not until hardware such as the Transformer by Asus start to run the Windows 8 OS, the OS will continue to flounder. It will start to make sense for people to migrate when hardware is ready. I honestly feel that the handy way you can move from a Office / Work machine to a tablet interface is without a doubt one of the best feature I have ever seen. Windows 8 is perfect for that.
With Windows 7 being such a good (stable) OS and Windows 8 being a hybrid that requires touch screen – I can see that Windows 8 will continue to perform badly. But for those who want to get the use of a PC, a laptop and a tablet device all in one then it’s perfect.
Windows 8 isn’t the best OS they have produce. But its by no means the worst.
[Typos corrected]