Installed the Windows 8 RTM last night

[shmokes]

I love it. The tutorial you're presented with immediately upon logging in for the first time is awful. It literally seems like a joke. I can't emphasize how literal I'm being when I say that. I can't see how the people involved with making that tutorial don't actually think it is absurd and hilarious in every way.

With that said, after a slightly longer than necessary learning curve (thanks tutorial), I absolutely love it. Huge advance over previous Windows. Can't wait to see what the Surface brings to the table, and I seriously hope this spurs Windows Phone development and adoption, cos I plan to get one of those this fall.

[wp34]

I'm anxious to see what Windows 8 does for tablets.  I've been using a Windows tablet at work for years and am not completely satisfied with how Windows 7 runs on it.  I end up having to use it as a glorified laptop most of the time. It is great that they seemed to have designed Windows 8 with touch in mind.  This should be beneficial for both phone and tablets. 

I'd love to see another worthy competitor to the iOS as well.  That's good for everybody.

[Yenome]

i had read that microsoft plans on putting windows 8 on everything they make since it is such a simple interface. me personally ill wait for windows 9 i tend to skip every other OS. that and i dont like windows 8 metro. id rather be able to turn that off completely and have my regular desktop. if i could do that id jump to 8 as even with mame on my rig it was beating out windows 7

[trekking95]

I'd love to see another worthy competitor to the iOS as well.

Yeah, and RIM will be the one who does it!  Seriously though I don't think anyone can touch Apple. Not for long anyway.

[Howard_Casto]

I'd love to see another worthy competitor to the iOS as well.

Yeah, and RIM will be the one who does it!  Seriously though I don't think anyone can touch Apple. Not for long anyway.

Goggle will, actually they already do.  There are far more android devices out there than iOS devices.  If you should have learned anything from the pc vs mac wars it's that market saturation is far more important than the features or quality of your OS.  Ironically Microsoft seems to have forgetten this lesson in the portable market.  The Zune is a superior player to the ipod in a lot of ways (not the new phone one, that wasn't out at the time).  But they charged a little too much and they didn't get out to the masses and thus it never caught on. 

Anyway, google did something very smart in the release of the nexus 7.  They are essentially selling the things at cost to up their market share.  IMHO the thing needs a hdmi out (although that might be possible via software with the mini usb) but other than that it blows the competition away in terms of specs for that price range. 

I'll reserve judgment on windows 8 until I've gotten a real chance to install and play with it.  Honestly it worries me a little.  I want a desktop interface on my desktop, not some watered-down appleish "noob" interface you'd normally see on a phone.

[ark_ader]

I get it for free at college, but I will take the downgrade opportunity and have it revert to Windows 7.

I had Win8 on the laptop and it sucked.  I guess it would be perfect for tablets, but laptop touch pads, a definite no.....

Glad you like it Shmokes! 

[shmokes]

Anyway, google did something very smart in the release of the nexus 7. . . .

Google's already lost the tablet wars. Amazon's the only company to do any substantial numbers with an Android tablet, and that was by hiding Android and focusing on the Amazon ecosystem. Microsoft will take a greater marketshare than Google in the Tablet space within its first month on the market. That's my view anyway. The phone, of course, is another beast altogether. I absolutely love Windows Phone, but Microsoft has its work cut out for it against Google in the phone space.

I'll reserve judgment on windows 8 until I've gotten a real chance to install and play with it.  Honestly it worries me a little.  I want a desktop interface on my desktop, not some watered-down appleish "noob" interface you'd normally see on a phone.

It took me a few minutes to figure out, but that watered down interface doesn't replace the Desktop. The Desktop is there, and more powerful than ever. The watered down interface you're speaking of replaces the Start Menu. And it is a million billion kajillion times better than the Start Menu could ever hope to be. Once you make that connection (and realize that keyboard shortcuts--especially the Windows key--aren't shortcuts anymore, but are now the standard way of navigating) I think you will see how fantastic and powerful the new system is.

[stripe4]

I installed Windows 8 RTM on my work PC last week. Wish I could say that the move from 7 to 8 was as pleasant as from Vista to 7.
Some of the things I noticed:

• RTM version of RSAT for Windows 8 is not released yet
• Remote Desktops mmc snapin is gone (I managed to install Release Preview version of RSAT)
• Windows 8 Hyper-V Manager cannot manage Hyper-V versions older than Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 (hey, at least you can still run Visual Basic 6 applications!)
• it could not connect to WSUS 3.0 SP2 (good thing Microsoft released a WSUS patch fixing this yesterday)

At least it boots faster.

[kahlid74]

My interactions with Win8 for the past few months has been good but it's also been in the vacuum of a test VM lab, so we'll see how much I like it on my desktop proper.

[Howard_Casto]

....(hey, at least you can still run Visual Basic 6 applications!)[/li][/list]

You know, I would sure like to quit making vb6 apps, but they keep supporting the damn thing! 

[ChadTower]

XP for life

And by that he really means "I can't run Win7 or 8 on the PCs I pull from dumpsters."




(I still run XP on my main server at home too)

[drventure]

I absolutely love Windows Phone, but Microsoft has its work cut out for it against Google in the phone space.

Yeah, MS has a real uphill battle with the phone, but I personally like my winphone much more than my wife's android.

I haven't bit into the tablet thing yet, but I've played with my dad's Kindle Fire and various iPads. I can see them being extremely handy around the house.

[Hoopz]

Yeah, MS has a real uphill battle with the phone, but I personally like my winphone much more than my wife's android.

Interesting.  Which Win phone and which Android phones are you two using?  I've had the Incredible and Galaxy Nexus and love it.  I've used BB and a few years ago had a Windows Mobile 6 phone.  I'd like to play with a Windows phone for more than a few minutes to see what it offers.  But I'm sticking with Android for a while.

[drventure]

Interesting.  Which Win phone and which Android phones are you two using?  I've had the Incredible and Galaxy Nexus and love it.  I've used BB and a few years ago had a Windows Mobile 6 phone.  I'd like to play with a Windows phone for more than a few minutes to see what it offers.  But I'm sticking with Android for a while.

Ack, I should have clarified.

Anything WinMO before 7 was utter crap (I had one of those phones too). WinPhone 7 and 7.5 (I have an HTC that originally ran 7 and is now on 7.5) is what I'm talking about.

As for andriod, I really can't speak to them too much. My wife chose the TMobile MyTouch. It's ok, I guess. Haven't played with it much.

[shmokes]

My wife's running a Nokia Lumia 900, which is without a doubt the best Windows Phone on the market today. It's by far my favorite phone ever. I'd have got one too last spring, but I was worried it wouldn't be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8 (a fear that proved warranted). I'm glad I waited, though. Nokia revealed the successor to the 900 today, and it looks pretty great.

Admittedly, I haven't used Android for any meaningful amount of time. But Windows 8 is light-years beyond iOS as a UI. It's funny, actually, because the beautiful, typographical Metro interface looks like something that would have come from Apple, and iOS's generic, random scattering of icons on a desktop background looks like something that should have come from Microsoft. But the tables are flipped. Both in terms of beauty and usability, Windows Phone just runs circles around iPhone. And Android is basically just iOS, near as I can tell. Windows Phone, though, doesn't have nearly as many apps available. MS has grown their app store impressively in a short period of time, and most of the important apps are there, but there are still plenty of very glaring gaps in their app portfolio.

[Howard_Casto]

That's why android is better, again it's the pc vs mac war all over again.

Android just has so many damn apps it doesn't really matter that the os itself is kind of lack-luster.  Tons of FREE apps to, which makes all the difference.  I've had my tablet for 6 months now, and I've found an app for nearly every task I've needed it to do.  I've yet to pay a dime for said apps.

Windows seems to be the middle ground in that dept and I'm pretty sure apple would charge you to use the single button on their phone if they could figure out a way.

[shmokes]

That's why android is better . . .

Android just has so many damn apps . . .

It depends whether you're talking about Android the phone or Android the tablet. Android the tablet does not have so many apps. It has a dearth of apps. I get that the tablet can run the phone apps, but that's not very satisfying. They aren't developed for the platform, and thus don't take advantage of, well, its advantages. It's not a compelling alternative to the iPad.

In the tablet space Microsoft will overshadow Android almost instantly where apps are concerned. This time next year there will be way way more tablet apps for Windows 8 than Android. Again, it's a totally different thing with the phone. Windows Phone 8 will have a much more difficult time unseating Android. If they ever do it, it will take years. But Android tablets failed long before Microsoft ever got around to getting in the game. It ain't hard to beat a competitor that already lost.

[Howard_Casto]

It sounds like you haven't used a lot of android tablets. 

The difference between iOS and android is a iphone game looks and plays like crap on an ipad, but this isn't the case on your typical android app. Android apps are more like pc apps, they have scaleable resolutions and features ect.  I've yet to play an app on an android tablet that looked pixelated or "phone-like"  And seeing as how the only difference between a tablet and a phone is a higher resolution I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at.  If you can give me an example maybe I could understand your point a little better.

I'm still not getting where you are saying that android tablets have failed... they outsell the ipad by leaps and bounds.  You can't look at one specific tablet and say "well android tablets sell worse because toshiba's tablet doesn't outsell the ipad and it's the highest selling android tablet"  again pc vs mac.   You've got the ipad, a singular product vs literally everything else, COMBINED, because if it isn't running iOS, it's running android.  I think you are forgetting, you can go down to your local big lots or pharmacy and pick up a 80 dollar tablet.  Mind you it's crap, but it's running android.  Windows 8 will probably change that but right now, android is the OS to beat, if not the hardware.

IMHO pretty much any tablet is a compelling alternative to the ipad because the current ipad is frikkin 500 bucks like any typical over-priced apple stuff.  It doesn't matter that it's the best, because for your average user it isn't worth the cost.  It's the same reason the ps3 sold horribly during it's first few years.  Why would you buy a 600 dollar system that's only slightly better than a 300 dollar system?

[shmokes]

I'm still not getting where you are saying that android tablets have failed... they outsell the ipad by leaps and bounds.

I don't know where you live, but based on everywhere I've been in the past few years, I don't know how you could think this was true even without seeing the numbers. You see iPads everywhere--I've literally seen dozens upon dozens of them while out and about. On he other hand, I think I've seen Android tablets in the wild three times, total. In history.

Nevertheless, here are the numbers:

Washington Post

Boy Genius Reports

Business Insider

CNET

As for the software, I can't speak first hand about it. I only know the general sentiment I gather from reading tech blogs. Look at the results from doing the following, seemingly neutral Google search: number of android tablet apps.

[Howard_Casto]

Maybe you live in a richer area.  I've seen two ipads out in the wild, count em two.  One was being used by a doctor for his practice.  I see android tablets daily.  Now iphones on the other hand, I see those all the time.

I'm not sure how accurate those links you sent are either.  Mind you it's hard to refute what they say when there isn't any other data out there, but if you look at the ones you linked to that are from the same time period (one is from early 2011 and can be thrown out) they each give a noticably different sales number for both apple and it's competators.  I'm wondering how they count, because google is notoriously bad about not releasing sales numbers.  I can see them keeping track of samsung and toshiba and the big ones easily and they aren't winning the race at all, it's the amount of "others" that I question.  Google's os is essentially free.  You can compile via the sdk, pop it on your hardware and don't have to inform anyone about it.  I mean when I can get a unbranded android tablet from China as easily as you'd get a bag of 1,000 leds how exactly do you track that?

Don't misunderstand me, the ipad has a dominant chunk of the market, mainly because prior to late 2011 the cost of high end android tablets were pretty high and the low end ones hadn't been out yet.  But by now, I would guestimate that the market is about 40-45% apple and 55-60% everything else and as the cost of other high-end tablets fall, I would expect this number to nudge over even more.

[CheffoJeffo]

Howard has several good points, but his notions of market share are off.

As of Q2 2012, Apple still has about 55% of new sales while Android tabs run about 35%.

[ChadTower]

I haven't seen many iPads either.  Not even really many tablets in general.  Granted, I have seen a single SUV where all three kids had their own iPad because god forbid the child not be individually entertained at all times.  I don't know that I would always recognize a smaller tablet as a tablet or just a big phone.  I'm not savvy on all of the individual models.


The place I have seen iPads at best use is in the Aurcade Tournament scoring system.  I have competed in three tournaments using Aurcade now and it's fantastic.  They're using a typical remote relational db with a web services front end.  The scores are entered in by refs using iPads.  The interface has great big buttons with marquee images on them to make it quick to find your game.  They enter your badge number, press the game button, and then enter your score.  The player then is asked to eyeball the score and press OK.  It really is a fantastic way to manage the tournament.  I've seen them enter as many as 2500 scores in a single day and 7000+ over the course of a tournament.    It should be noted that the Funspot/ACAM tourney uses the Aurcade system now.  It is working so well that we are seeing a dramatic increase in the amount of locations that are offering arcade tournaments across the country. 


That's a serious tangent, I know, but I figured I'd toss in a couple of cents on how the iPad is indirectly impacting the arcade hobby in a very positive way.  I'm sure an Android tablet could do the same thing since I'm pretty sure what they're using is a maximized browser with web services and not any sort of compiled client.

[shmokes]

if you look at the ones you linked to that are from the same time period (one is from early 2011 and can be thrown out) they each give a noticably different sales number for both apple and it's competators.

Shrug . . . as near as I can tell none of those articles is more than three weeks old. I deliberately chose recent articles specifically to avoid claims of outdated data. Now, I didn't read all of them, obviously (I'm no going to read the same thing over and over just to prove a point), but they seem to be in pretty damned general agreement to me, i.e., Apple has 60-70% market share.

As for those little no-name Android tablets that are potentially not being picked up by the statistics, who cares? They're more-or-less irrelevant. Their sales numbers are incredibly low (I live in a major metropolitan area and ride the metro to and from work  every day . . . I see iPads every single day, never Android tablets), the user experience is poor, often using crappy resistive touch screens and slow processors. They have poor app compatibility. They're just . . . not relevant in any way, least of all developer support.

Look at it like this, if Android tablets ruled the market why aren't developers making tablet optimized apps, like they do for the iPad?

[Gray_Area]

What does lackluster Android OS mean?

I think it, like most things, have too much to keep track of, and you have to root your phone and play around a little bit to get rid of/obviate those things. Which I have done. My Epic 4G came with 2.1, which I didn't really explore to see whether I needed 2.2 . So I got the bootleg release, and it was sometimes problematic. Gingerbread seemed like a good idea, but I didn't like it, so went back some to Froyo.EC05 .  The only issue I have with my phone is the video camera fails. (But other cameras have WAY too much ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- - see above - and I didn't like their interfaces.) Elsewise, I have everything I'll ever want or need in a Com device. (Well, except an HD out....which I haven't needed.)

Then it's just down to apps, and I use maybe ten non-included ones. (Like Ad-Free! See above.)


As for PC OS, I still use XP because it suits my needs. However, for simple security's sake, I'll probably have to upgrade my main rig when they stop supporting it.

[shmokes]

. . . your phone . . .

Again, don't mistake me. Android for phones is unmistakably in the lead and there's no shortage of apps. It's just in the tablet space that Android is irrelevant. Even what small market share they have is dominated by the Kindle Fire and even the Nook, which are only technically Android tablets.