
Microsoft confirms Windows 7 sales have ended, but Windows 7 PCs can still sell - hackhackhack
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/12/09/microsoft-confirms-windows-7-sales-ended-october-30-pcs-windows-7-dont-yet-end-sales-date/
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brownbat
What happens if Microsoft never has another Windows 7?

Will everyone run 7 well past its support lifecycle? Will Linux win the
desktop? Will we get a new round of commercial OS competition? Will Windows 9
try to roll back to a more traditional desktop OS?

I think these questions will be determined by what businesses do, being the
intractable giant footprint of desktop usage (with apologies to SteamOS).

Microsoft is offering extended support for XP, but at discouragement prices. 7
will probably be similar, so "just stick on 7 forever" is out.

Commercial OS competition seems an unlikely possibility. It'd be hard to
attract new entrants when those currently best positioned to exploit the
market are either near monopolies or free. It's too bad, more competition in
the space would probably produce some really great ideas.

Big companies do learn from their mistakes, even after years of heading in the
wrong direction. There's just so much inertia in capital. IBM and Apple have
shown that you can coast for a long time on bad decisions then make a
startling recovery. Sometimes this takes a massive cultural shift though, or
visionary new leadership. It could happen, and probably will eventually. We're
on a tight timeframe though, so I put the chances of that happening before
Windows 9's release at only around 20%.

That only leaves the possibility that some Linux variant will take over, maybe
one designed to really cater to small to medium sized business owners. MS
Office probably keeps that from ever happening though. (And I can't feel that
comfortable about any line of analysis that ends with, "Linux will take over
the desktop.")

I've run out of options. Maybe 2015 will be the year of Android on the
desktop.

EDIT: Or Apple, sure.

~~~
davidgerard
The interesting thing is that Vista and 7 are substantially identical - same
interface, benchmark about the same ... but people typically tried out Vista
in 1GB and 7 in 2GB.

And businesses I saw moved from XP to 7 mostly so they could use more than 3GB
memory.

YMMV of course. But as a parallel, remember that the Edsel is famous as Ford's
greatest failure, and its followup the Comet as one of Ford's greatest hits
... but the Comet was a reskinned rebranding of what was going to be the next
Edsel.

~~~
codeflo
Vista also changed a lot with the service packs. People's impression of Vista
was Vista __SP0 __, which was slow (horrible file copy performance) and in my
opinion barely usable (UAC prompts every five seconds). SP1 /2 fixed a lot of
those, so the jump from Vista SP2 to Windows 7 was a lot less dramatic.

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zspade
Windows 7 met a much better response from the market, and at least the last
time I checked(August) was still selling faster than windows 8! The entire
windows 8 release has felt forced and unnatural. Personally I still cannot get
used to the awkward interface that can't decide whether it wants to be a
tablet or desktop OS. This is a poor decision on Microsoft's part.

~~~
ds9
"Did you buy that computer?" \- "No, I found another one that had Windows 7
instead of 8" \- "Oh good deal!" \-- overheard in line at a convenience store.
Nearby, computer shop advertising on a big sign that you could still get Win 7
instead of 8. Anecdotes aren't data, I know, but my experience has been
consistent with the consensus of rants online.

Now MS is "doubling down" on Win 8 instead of making concessions to those who
need an interface that works well with keyboard and passive monitor. One might
say, this proves it wasn't just Ballmer running the company into the ground!

Seriously, what is the chance that MS will come up with something better liked
in another version a year or two in future?

It may be a tired cliché now to talk of Linux for PCs becoming mass-market,
but things are looking better and better for this prospect. In particular, (a)
nice noob-friendly GUIs (b) hardware support better than ever and (c) games
finally coming along (thanks Valve/Steam).

~~~
sliverstorm
_instead of making concessions to those who need an interface that works well
with keyboard and passive monitor_

What concessions are they missing? It's still the exact same damn shell when
you drop down to Desktop mode. I use it all the time, on 3 different
mouse&keyboard machines.

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mariusmg
Good. Windows 8(.1) is a better OS (faster, nice UI improvements). Time to
move on.

It's a bit amazing that 4 Microsoft OSes have nice big chunks of the overall
market.

~~~
anonymoushn
Unfortunately, a bug introduced in Windows 8 causes about 60% of the Windows
apps I want to use (by time spent using them) to crash. The current workaround
is to not use Windows 8 or to disable one's sound device.

~~~
FireBeyond
What an odd metric. By that description, one singular app that you spend most
of your time in it would meet that criteria, but to read it, it sounds like
there's a whole slew of issues.

~~~
anonymoushn
It seems like a reasonable metric. If someone only uses Photoshop and
Photoshop doesn't work on a given OS, the OS is probably useless to that
person. It might still be fine for other people who don't care quite so much
about Photoshop.

In my case it's a large number of apps that all use the same broken API
because they are made from the same framework.

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mark-r
PC life cycles are lengthening as Moore's Law stops delivering improvements
that matter to everyday use. The OS must have matching life cycles or the
disconnect will be unpleasant to say the least. Microsoft is already losing
the consumer to tablets and such, they shouldn't piss off their corporate
clients too.

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winslow
I use Win7 and Win8 at work doing development/programming. Win8 isn't as bad
as I initially thought, though for development it is annoying because fully
disabling UAC for some dev stuff killed all metro apps. This past weekend I
used linux as my main OS and honestly kept forgetting I was on linux compared
to windows. Personally I think my next desktop will be pure Linux (Mint) and
maybe a Windows VirtualBox as everything I need Maya, Steam, Dev Tools except
Adobe CS is available on Linux.

Will this be the year of the Linux desktop? No probably not but if Microsoft
doesn't have another Win7 success it could be the opening Linux needs to get
more than your typical tech savvy person to give linux a try. SteamOS on Steam
Machines shows some promise as well to introduce people to linux.

~~~
tracker1
My last hardware upgrade, I put linux on it... which was great, but when I
added in my old hard drives, for some reason grub wouldn't boot to the "right"
drive after an update. (Ubuntu 13.04) ... grub would come up, but no idea how
to fix it after the fact. Generally speaking, if I could get to NTLDR on a
drive, it would boot windows installed on that same drive.

I am liking ubuntu+xbmc on my htpc... first time in a while I've tried linux
in that setting and it supported all my media without issue. Was finally
willing to try after getting a stand alone bluray player. Which isn't too much
of an issue, but was the biggest thing keeping my htpc in windows.

Have a cubox-i4pro coming, and will see how that works for the same chores in
the bedroom.

~~~
winslow
I had a problem once with a hardware raid setup and grub installing to the
wrong place. I figured that was just my lack of linux knowledge back then.

Oh yes, I absolutely love using Mint+xbmc with my HTPC(s). I'm also excited
for the valve steam machine controller with touch pads for both games but also
general browsing.

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greenyoda
For those who despise the Windows 8 user interface: you can make it behave
like Windows 7 by installing "Classic Shell" (it's free):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Shell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Shell)

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Mithaldu
It's like they _want_ people to pirate Windows.

