Windows 8 sparking little more search interest than Vista

Monday, April 15th, 2013

There’s a lot of debate over the popularity of Windows 8. Microsoft claims Windows 8 is outselling Windows 7; British desktop PC makers have told us that up to 93% of new PC buyers still want Windows 7.

Google provides us with another means of divining the popularity of different products. The Google Trends website allows you to compare the search volumes of different terms, and it doesn’t make particularly pleasant reading for Microsoft when you start comparing recent versions of Windows.

We compared the search volumes for the past four editions of Windows, from 2004 until the present day, and this is the result (click graph to enlarge):

As you can see, Windows 8 is following a very similar trend line to Windows Vista, briefly bursting past the incumbent version of Windows at the time of launch, before settling down at a level that’s well below its predecessor. While the post-launch drop-off isn’t quite as severe for Windows 8 as it was for Vista, it’s still pretty grim viewing for Microsoft.

If there are crumbs of comfort for Microsoft, searches for OS X appear to be in long-term decline — although we suspect more people search for the particular version number than “OS X”:

Indeed, when you throw the search term “Mac” into the comparison, it paints an entirely different picture:

Major retailers mis-selling Windows RT as Windows 8

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

There are only five Windows RT tablets or hybrids on store shelves and they’re not selling well, as one analyst has pointed out this week.

There’s many reasons devices such as the Asus VivoTab RT TF600T and Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 haven’t challenged the iPad’s dominance — high prices, poor availability, failure to invest in marketing, dislike of Windows RT, incredibly silly names — but I can add one further excuse to the list: confusion among retailers.

The Samsung Ativ Tab RT, for example, is listed over on Argos’ website. It won’t be tough for PC Pro readers to name what’s wrong with this picture:

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Windows 8: a touch of madness

Monday, February 18th, 2013

For the last week or so I’ve been using Windows 8 and, for the most part it hasn’t been the least bit horrid.

Yes, it forced me to restart this morning just as I sat down to get some work done and, yes, the procedure to actually turn off the computer is like a putative storyline scribbled on a napkin by Franz Kafka but later rejected for being too complicated. And yes, the way PDFs, JPEGs and a few other file types insist on opening full-screen (how many PDFs are that important?) is jarring, but still, most of my work is done in a browser these days, making the operating system in the background irrelevant most of the time.

It is, as operating systems go, perfectly fine.

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How to add Media Center – and DVD playback – to Windows 8 Pro for free

Friday, January 25th, 2013

If you own Windows 8 Pro, you have precisely six days to claim your free Media Center upgrade – the main advantage of this is that it allows you to watch DVDs on your PC, because a DVD codec is part of the package.

Plus, if you have a TV tuner already installed or fancy buying one in the future, you can also watch and record live TV.

But – and it’s a big but – this free upgrade offer expires as of 31 January 2013.

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Lenovo ThinkPad Helix review: first look

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

Manufacturers the world over are trying to solve the problem of how to build the perfect convertible Ultrabook, and Lenovo believes it has the answer with the ThinkPad Helix. I spent some time with a pre-production model at CES 2013, and in the main I’m impressed.

While I’ll come to its foibles later, let’s first take a look at the number of problems it solves.

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Samsung Series 7 Ultra review: first look

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Have no doubt: the Samsung Series 7 Ultra is a premium laptop. Indeed, Samsung slam-dunks this point by including the phrase “Samsung Premium” on the Ultrabook sticker here at CES 2013. It needn’t have bothered: the feeling of quality is obvious as soon as you pick up the solid aluminium body, with no plastic underside to spoil the effect.

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Panasonic 20in 4K tablet review: first look and video

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

It takes something a little special to make us go wow as we wander the halls of CES, but this product is it. Not that it’s even formally a product: Panasonic’s 20in 4K tablet is still a prototype and may never see the light of commercial day.

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Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC review: first look and videos

Monday, January 7th, 2013

The Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC (and yes, we do mean Table PC rather than tablet PC) is yet another innovative product to come out of Lenovo’s Labs – and who knows, perhaps this really is a device of the future.

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Does the Windows 8 hybrid overcomplicate a simple problem?

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

I’m not sure exactly when I lost patience with Microsoft and Windows 8 — most likely when using the Surface for the first time. It’s always been an OS with a split personality, but from the start we were promised the hardware would make it all seem natural. It would innovate, the OS ushering in a new era of mobile computing.

With a few exceptions – touchscreen Ultrabooks are undoubtedly cool – the new era hasn’t started well. (more…)

Acer Aspire S7-391 review: first look

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

At today’s Build 2012 opening keynote, Steve Ballmer used several devices to show off Windows 8, but there was one that stood out. The Acer Aspire S7, said Ballmer, was the one device that was turning all the heads within Microsoft – but even from the second row of the auditorium it was tough to make out what was so special about this little laptop.

It took no more than three seconds with the device in the demo hall to work it out. (more…)