101 reasons to love Windows Phone

[Duce]

With Android and iOS out there isn't WM sort of late to the party?

Very.  While it's a tolerable mobile OS to use, and it's gaining ground in emerging markets like China, no one in first world markets really has a use for it.  I got my Mother a W7 phone, she loves it - but it's also her first smartphone, and she's about 15 years behind in the tech department, heh.  She found my iPhone a bit too complex, in fact. They have been trying to market them to existing smartphone (ios and android) owners, and it's failed badly.

Sadly, the poor sales of W7 devices is really dragging Nokia down.  They had a loss of over 2 billion euros in the last 5 quarters and recently announced they are laying off 10,000 staff.

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/362236/nokia-cuts-10000-more-jobs-losses-deepen

Nokia always made a great handset, hardware wise - but I can't help but feel they drove the nails in their own coffin by going with the MS mobile OS rather than Android.  At this rate, both them and RIM (Blackberry) will be at single digit market share in a matter of years.  Nokia still does well in feature phone markets, but that market is going away in a huge way.

Nokia smartphones have always been next to non existant in North America due to the fact they were rarely ever subsidized by the carriers.  No one was willing to pay $800 for an N9 when a new model iphone could be had for $300 with a 3 year contract.

[Duce]

You cannot simply install any old Windows program onto the ARM version of Windows 8 (W8 RT) - the Win 8 RT platform (RT being the ARM based version of Win is locked down in a fashion that compares to the Apple devices.

You cannot simply buy Photoshop and install it on the W8 ARM version, even if it did work.  You're stuck with the Windows store model, though I'm sure it won't take users long to figure out how to sideload apps.

W8 RT also does not support many of the Windows enterprise offerings, like Active Directory.  It'll be a complete bust in regards to the professional market, and the x86 W8 tablets will have terrible (in comparison to other tablets like the ipad) battery life just like the current W7 ones do.  

I tried a friends Samsung tablet today, which he's running W8 on.  It shipped initially with Win 7, and putting W8 on it made the experience better for usability, but the thing is still a complete pig weight and battery power wise.

Keep your eyes open, it's rumored MS is debuting a W8 RT tablet or two at their press event on Monday.

[Duce]

People also called the Zune, the Kin, and various other MS hardware devices "fantastic" and "revolutionary", lol.  Listening to tech bloggers give praise to devices and actually putting stock into it is absolutely insane.  I lost interest in the MS press event today when the words "also can use a touch pen/stylus!".  These are the same people that claimed the Newton would revolutionize the free world.

We'll have to wait and see if the new windows tablets gains any foothold in the modern market - I suspect it's simply too little, too late.  The x86 ones will cost as much as an Ultrabook, the Win 8 RT ones will be crippled for enterprise use (no AD support, among other things).

Windows tablets have not gained any ground at all, even pre iPad days they were entirely shunned by people.  I simply cannot see them gaining much ground in this age where everyone has a tablet out - the price point on the ones that can actually do "full" computing tasks is simply too high.  Windows XP tablet edition was released TEN years ago, and people rejected it in a major way.

I do have to admit though, that keyboard/cover deal is a pretty unique idea, but in the same breath, if I'm using something that is best used with a keyboard, I'll get an ultrabook or Air to start with.  If I had to add a bluetooth keyboard to my iPad to get best usage out of it, I would have just bought a full fledged laptop.  

I simply don't see what the MS tablets are offering that's terribly new, or otherwise worth considering changing over from another current tablet offering.  Have been able to buy Windows tablets at any best buy for 10 years and people avoided them like grim death.  And yes, I have used Windows 8 on a modern x86 tablet.  It sucked.  Bad.

Curious to see what the real world battery life is on the Ivybridge tablets - if it's crappy they are dead in the water already.  The tablet market is dominated by tablets that have no probs getting 10+ hours per full charge, so hopefully the MS ones will compare.

[Duce]

Curious how many of the people that are excited about these things, how many have actually used Windows 8, either on a traditional machine or on a x86 tablet?  You can download the RC now and try it, absolutely free, right?  Takes a few minutes to setup, and works just fine on any VM out there.  The release version won't be much different than the current version.

It's an unmitigated disaster, a complete hybrid bastard child of an OS that has you flopping between desktop and tile mode, doing neither particularly well in the combination it's presented to the user in.  In the current incarnation it's a complete hybrid, you cannot even really force it to solely run in traditional desktop GUI form.  Yes, they actually removed the registry hacks and other ways that people had found to force it into Desktop mode in the public beta version, in the latest release.

There are some very valid improvements to the Win 8 *desktop* portion of the OS, but it's essentially (the desktop portion) Windows 7 and even MS will tell you that.  The Metro UI is the thing they are really trying to hype people up for on this one, and it's simply awful to use for a desktop system.  Does it work ok on a tablet?  Sure, it does - but it's (Win 8 x86) not being marketed as solely a tablet OS.  It stinks on desktops, just like iOS would stink on a Mac desktop, but you have the added insult of knowing W8 does have a full Desktop experience in there somewhere, but it's one you can't either pick or choose to run wholly, it's just offered to you in hybrid ways.  I hope they clue in and make the Metro stuff entirely optional, but indications at the moment are that they won't.  I find that staggering, and I also believe Win 8 will go down in history as the worst/least popular MS OS since Windows ME, lol.

This is not a matter of people not accepting that computers are progressing to more and more simple interfaces, similar to tablet OS's.  They are going more and more to tablet UI types all the time, and I don't deny that.  But MS thinking people are going to be productive on a traditional desktop mouse and keyboard system with this Metro UI is just absolutely laughable if you even spend a brief amount of time using Win 8.

I hope they improve it before release, but as it sits now it comes off as a complete bodge job, completely unwieldy to use as a desktop OS.  The tablet, or Metro side of the OS is usable - but we're also in a world of the iPad and decent ICS Android tablets.  I've used a modern x86 tablet with Windows 8 recently, and found no compelling reason why ANYONE would want one, even if it was half the price (Samsung Slate, 64GB, with W8 RC on it - a $1300 tablet).  Who is going to spend that kind of money on a tablet that offers a third of the battery life that a competing product does?  Heck, even the best of the current Windows tablets (IMHO), the Asus Eee Slate gets under *TWO* hours battery life under load, when an iPad gets near *NINE* hours under the same circumstances.  It's a portable device, battery life is a major factor here.  When a laptop can offer more battery life than these things, why on earth would you even consider a tablet?

I'm sure some people will gobble up the Windows 8 tablets.  For some, assuming they get the battery life better on them, they might be an ideal solution, at least in the x86 models, but it'll all come down to cost, IMHO.
Win 8 RT is simply too gimped for any serious, professional enterprise use.
Unless they are significantly cheaper than a low end Ultrabook, I simply don't see them flying off the shelves, and I found the experience of using one to be completely useless and frustrating.  But hey, they are offering an add on touch pen for it, just like your Palm Pilot had!  :laugh1:

[Duce]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228247/Microsoft_s_Surface_tablet_no_threat_to_Apple_s_iPad?taxonomyId=12

Bear in mind Office for the iPad is also on the way.  If I am buying a tablet to run Office on, and the iPad (10 hours battery life) gets Office, why in God's name would one buy one of the heavier, hotter, louder Win 8 (3-4 hours battery life for x86 models) ones, lol?

Monday's press release was a complete mind bender from MS, and I fail to see how the "Well, it will run Office!" is a selling point when it's already a well known fact MS has working versions of Office for iPad.  They are currently sitting on the release of it, and if my gut is right on this one, have it as a back up plan if adoption of these new Surface tablet machines is low.  MS can, and will - make a small fortune on Office for iPad.  To NOT release Office for iPad would be one of the biggest fumbles MS could ever do.

Many people have moral objections to Apple products like the iPad, and that's entirely fair and valid.  But MS is now entering the market to take on the iPad head on, and the two products simply aren't comparable.  MS is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

MS, other than in regards to input devices (mice/keyboards) and consoles, has traditionally tanked every single time they have tried hardware.  Zune.  Kin.  UMPC.  Mira.  Surface table.  Etc...

[Duce]

Phil - they have told the media, told developers to expect very few changes in the RTM version from what it is now.  They have said it repeatedly.  Authors writing books and articles on Windows 8 have been told they will be fairly safe to finish up their writing now, as the end retail product isn't far off, as not many significant changes will be coming.

I'm not telling anyone what to think, if you like it, I'm glad for you.  For every one person that can make any sense of it, there's a heck of a lot of the rest of the population that find it to be a jumbled ball of nonsensical mess.  If you like it, great - in the end, it's just a preference thing.  

The concerns about W8 on tablets go a little deeper - they are trying to sell Windows 8 RT tablets as enterprise devices, knowing full well they do *not* support many things that would be required of them in a MS enterprise network (like AD).  I find that to be shady as hell.  But hey, they offer something called "Management Lite", which gives the end user the ability to add their own apps to their devices, taking the point out of AD networks entirely.  Active Directory is ubiquitous in large networks - support should be mandatory.  Full support, not just SSP and RSD.  If it's a Windows device, admins need to be able to do their jobs via methods already existing.

If I may ask though - is it a good enough product, a fresh enough concept that you are willing to shell out money to buy, say the retail boxed versions to put on your own personal machines?  Is it that good of an OS that you will pay $100+ to put Windows 8 your current machines?

That's always been my question, whether people love or hate it, MS *are* going to be shipping it on all new OEM machines soon.  It *will* be in widespread usage not far down the road.  Are users going to be howling at MS, demanding downgrades to Win 7 from Win 8, just like they did with Vista to Windows XP?  Are retail customers going to be compelled to go out and purchase W8 to install on their current Windows 7 rigs?