With the countdown to the end of support for Windows XP well underway, surging towards the April 2014 deadline, time has come to consider whether to move to Windows 7 or Windows 8. According to research from IBRS, it looks like Windows 7 will rule the desktop with Windows 8 solving mobility woes.
However, the interesting nugget in this research is that the needs of IT admins and users don’t intersect. According to analyst Joseph Sweeney: “it is clear that the real differentiator for enterprise mobility from a user’s perspective is that the solution provides the same experience as their consumer devices. What is most notable there is that the concerns of desktop managers and users do not intersect”.
The other unknown is the question of what Windows Blue (more properly Windows 8.1) will deliver. If the key issues around Window 8’s usability are addressed, particularly the two-faced nature of the desktop and Windows 8 modes, then perhaps things will be different.
Are you seeing a mismatch between what users want and deployment teams are planning to deliver?
Windows 8 tablets may solve your mobility problems, but your users won’t care [IBRS]
Comments
14 responses to “Windows 8: Do Users Care?”
My money is on Windows 8: the operating system is much better suited to the kind of restriction and dumbing-down of software that people apparently want.
The IT guys at my work are very hopeful of taking advantage of decent syncing and app backups to just compartmentalize ‘work stuff’ into a separate username. Users can still play angry bird on their personal account and log in when they need access to entreprise apps and the like.
Given that 90% of the people at my work only ever use a browser, word and excel, this would not be a hard task using the current Win 8 ecosystem.
Call me crazy, but I think Win 8 is only a few decent apps and an Atom successor away from being the business tool everyone has been dreaming about for years.
Even now the sheer lack of Windows 8 apps is a serious problem for the platform. You’re constantly going back to the Windows 7-style desktop. It continues to make the “live tiles” part of Windows 8 into a novelty which you only barely use because you’re constantly thrown back into the old style.
I think the whole industry is waiting with baited breath for metro apps to start appearing and then the tidal wave will begin. A few enterprise apps with database integration and sales tools, and suddenly you’ll see RT tablets in the hands of every sales rep and mobile businessman in the country.
At the moment it’s not quite there, but everyone can see the potential.
You’re crazy…
if 8.1 brings the start button back its not even a competition
ill go with 7, after having a limited trial at my work on 8 and having to remove it the same week after people not being able to use it
unless 8.1 looks/feels like something our users are able to use comfortably we wont be using 8 again
I don’t see how the lack of an actual button makes this OS bad… If you actually spend some time using the OS its just like if not better then Windows 7….
There is still a start ‘button’ in the same spot as before, the start menu preforms the same functions as the original start menu.
No one has given a valid reason why Windows 8 is bad, theres a few things out of place and IMHO not correctly linked up but from what I have seen 8.1 has already fixed these and all it means is it may take 1 or 2 extra clicks to achieve the same goal
Do you even use Windows 8? There is no start button here..
If you click in the bottom left corner it brings up the start menu….
Windows 8 is great. It offers more simplicity for basic users and offers more powerful tools to power users both at home and work.
Lots of enterprises are embracing windows 8 and skipping windows 7 in their migration away from xp.
Testing and updating existing software is very time consuming before you even get to packaging it. This is something that many companies have been doing for the past few years and many will be rolling out win8 this year.
Definitely agree with the desktop/mobile divide unless there’s some big secrets with 8.1. I’ve got Win8 on a hybrid ultrabook/tablet and it’s quite handy for that but nothing I’ve used on it has encouraged me to install it on my desktop right now (I bought a $40 upgrade for playing with the Leap Motion on my desktop with it when they ship them).
If some good gesture interface devices become more common Win8 will have more relevance in the desktop space until then it doesn’t really offer much over Win7 (that being said I also don’t see it as worse just not really an upgrade). That being said it’s not really odd for skipping generations in windows, 95-xp-win7.
No we won’t care until Microsoft do something about the blurry text.
The appalling blurry grey-scale font rendering API introduced with Win 8 makes IE10, Office 2013 and Modern UI apps unusable on the average monitor.
That means reinstating the RGB sub-pixel font rendering API that works so well in Windows 7.
As Windows has jumped the shark, OSX has stagnated, and Linux has gotten relentlessly better and better, easier and more flexible, I’ve felt better and better about my decision to follow the path of the Penguin about five years ago.
REALLY fuckin’ happy in fact.
Glad you’re enjoying Linux, but I think it’s premature to say Windows has jumped the shark.
It’s hard to think of a major UI design in history that has been so widely and immediately reviled as Windows 8.
mmmm, neckbeards