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Microsoft's Windows 8 software appears to be driving buyers away from PCs and toward smartphones and tablets, research firm IDC said Wednesday. That's leading to the fastest drop in PC sales the firm has ever seen. Global shipments of PCs fell 14 percent in the first three months this year, IDC said. That's the sharpest plunge since the firm started tracking the industry in 1994. ...

We already know a fair bit about Windows Blue. Last month's leaked build gave us a good glimpse of the operating system, and word out on the web is that the first (and only) public preview will show up in late June. Well, ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley has now added another tidbit to the growing pile: the OS's official name. "Microsoft officials supposedly have decided on the final name for Windows Blue," she writes. "The final decision, one of my sources told me, is that it will be Windows 8.1."Foley says we can expect a branding strategy similar to what Microsoft...

I need some computer advice. I have 4 computers at home. Two laptops and two desktops. One laptop has Windows 7 and is used by my wife for genealogy research and net surfing. The others are mine and they have XP (desktop currently needs new MB) Windows 7 (desktop) and Vista (laptop used in my traveling and some of my work. I absolutely hate the Vista machine. It is slow and even slower when running multiple pages. I have run every correction and restoration program available on it and I still hate using it. When I use it at work,...

Survey - Redmond so busy pushing Win 8, some IT directors didn't get the memo***************************************** A large number of Microsoft customers are in for a rude awakening on 8 April 2014. With less than 400 days to go, 15 per cent of those running Windows XP are still unaware that that’s the date Microsoft finally turns off all support for its legacy PC operating system, according to a recent survey. After 8 April next year, Microsoft will no longer make bug fixes or security updates for Windows XP, meaning customers will be naked and vulnerable to hackers and viruses and...

Windows fans will whine, but Net Applications' desktop operating systems numbers don't lie. Windows 8's pathetic user adoption numbers can't even keep up with Vista's lousy numbers. Windows 8 usage can't even keep up with Vista/s poor numbers. (Data from Net Applications) The numbers speak for themselves. Vista, universally acknowledged as a failure, actually had significantly better adoption numbers than Windows 8. At similar points in their roll-outs, Vista had a desktop market share of 4.52% compared to Windows 8's share of 2.67%. Underlining just how poorly Windows 8's adoption has gone, Vista didn't even have the advantage of holiday...

PC makers may not be satisfied with Windows 8 hardware sales, but at least they needn't worry about Microsoft's Surface tablets swallowing the industry whole. According to AdDuplex, Microsoft's Surface RT only accounts for 6.8 percent of Windows 8/RT devices, at least among those that accessed the firm's cross-promotion ad network. That's still good for the top slot, however, with the HP Pavilion G6 proving to be the second most-popular device with a 4.2 percent share. The Intel Core i5-packing Surface Pro was barely a blip, ranking as the 52nd-most common Windows 8 device. Keep in mind that AdDuplex's stats...

Windows 8 pro review (upgrade XP to Windows 8 with Classic Shell)I am writing this hasty and imperfect review of Windows 8 for fellow Freepers (etc.) in case someone is looking into buying it, and as the 39.99 (about 42.00 with taxes) upgrade ends tonight. Better late then never i suppose. And the the media center upgrade is only fre till then ($10.00 afterward) which should be standard. And no, I have no affiliation with MS. My review is on how W/8 runs this old PC (used mainly for Christian ministry). This is a 2005 Sony VGC-RA840G (Asus P5LP-VX 64...

A lot has changed since 1995. Our best candidate for President was only the First Lady. O.J. Simpson was not in jail. No one was using DVDs. Saddam Hussein was in power. “Friends” and “ER” ruled the airwaves. Seinfeld was funny. The NHL was in the middle of a full season. Hootie and the Blowfish had the best-selling album. People were still buying albums. And Windows 95 was released. Back then Windows mattered, both to consumers and small business people. We relied on it heavily to run our computers. So each release of Windows was a big event. And the...

PC industry slumps as Windows 8 fails to drive upgrades Manufacturers in the computer industry were optimistic for the launch of Windows 8. Computer manufacturers and Microsoft hoped that the launch of Microsoft's latest version of its Windows operating system would spur consumers and businesses to upgrade and buy new PCs. However, IDC reports that Windows 8 did not have the impact expected for the computer market. The research has offered up its numbers for Q4 2012 for the computer industry, and the results are far from positive. IDC reports that worldwide PC shipments totaled 89.8 million units in Q4 2012,...

Notably, more than half of gamers who DO pick the embattled OS downgrade within weeks Arguably the most important, but relatively underdiscussed single story at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show can be expressed in a single word -- "solidarity".  Whether it was Intel Corp. (INTC) pushing customers towards touch-friendly devices or companies like Hewlett-Packard Comp. (HPQ) and Lenovo Group, Ltd. (HKG:0992) pushing Windows 8 hybrids/laptop designs, everyone was standing firmly behind Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) embattled Windows 8 operating system. With past releases Microsoft was blasted for not being innovative enough compared to Linux and OS X, in terms of user interface design.  Windows...

With just a week left in the month, Windows 8’s usage uptake has slipped behind Vista’s at the same point in its release, data from a Web measurement company showed. According to Net Applications, Windows 8’s online usage share through Dec. 22 was 1.6% of all Windows PCs, an uptick from 1.2% of November. Windows 8 publicly launched on Oct. 26. At the same two-month mark in Vista’s release timetable, that OS accounted for 2.2% of all Windows systems, double the month prior. … The slowdown in uptake of Windows 8 and its poor performance compared to Vista is a...

Quick Take * Microsoft, Windows CFO says, Windows 8 has sold 40 million licenses in the first month of its launch. * This beats Windows 7 which sold 60 million licenses in the first two months. * The news should ease some worries about Windows 8′s slow sales figures. * Notebook and desktop sales was around 353 million in 2011, expected to grow to 450 million by 2019. * Bing is default search engine on Windows 8 and can gain market share, which stood at 4% globally in 2011 The newly appointed Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer of...

Supply of Nokia's Lumia 920 was getting scarce in the past few weeks due mainly to solid demands and apparently the Finnish mobile phone maker was caught off guard by the overwhelming reception generated by its new flagship smartphone. In a research note published Monday by market research firm Canaccord Genuity, it appeared that the Lumia 920 started on a rock-solid footing in the U.S. market, its sales numbers decent enough to come behind the bestselling smartphones in America as of November this year - Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S3. "Our checks indicated the Lumia 920 was the...

Thanks to Mary Jo Foley, we now know that in the name of "security," Microsoft will be trying to use UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) to block Linux, older versions of Windows, and other alternative operating systems from booting on Windows 8 PCs. Thanks Microsoft we appreciate it. In a new Microsoft blog, Building Windows 8, by Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's president of the Windows division, Linux isn't mentioned, and he tries to place the blame on the UEFI security protocol. Behind all his dodging, the facts are that Microsoft UEFI secure boot is requirement for Windows 8 certification and that,...

Sales of the Windows 8 operating system, which was launched on October 26, were driven by upgrades rather than users purchasing the software on new machines, according to Reuters. Microsoft sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses in two months, compare to 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in one month. Tami Reller, finance and marketing head of Microsoft's Windows division, said yesterday: "Windows 8 upgrade momentum is outpacing that of Windows 7," speaking at an investor conference held by Credit Suisse. Previous versions of Microsoft operating systems sold considerably fewer licenses than Windows 8 in a comparable period, with XP...

NPD research published some horrible news for Microsoft yesterday. * Despite releasing an entirely new operating system on October 22 of this year, Windows PC sales shrank 21% between 10/21 and 11/17 versus the same period last year. * Windows 8 tablet sales during that period were "almost nonexsistent" – just 1% of all Windows 8 sales. “It hasn’t made the market any worse, but it hasn’t stimulated things either,” Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD, told the New York Times. “It hasn’t provided the impetus to sales everybody hoped for.” No kidding. Yesterday, we reported other bad news: Asus...

(Photo : Reuters) The Lumia 920 may give Nokia the push it needs when Black Friday comes around. Nokia's Lumia 920 may not be as disappointing as some critics said it would be. Actually, the Windows 8 smartphone is flying off shelves as we speak, which is a good sign for Nokia's Black Friday sales.The Lumia 920 has already made it on the Amazon Best Sellers list. It is already in high demand in Germany.Like Us on FacebookAccording to AllThingsD, a number of Nokia Deutschland's German retail partners experienced "stock-outs" since the device first became available earlier November."Because of the high demand, we are aware of the reports the Lumia 920 is sold out in...

Initial sales of the Windows 8 operating system are said to be "well below" Microsoft's internal projections. Citing a "trusted" source, Paul Thurott of Supersite for Windows said Windows 8 is off to a weak start, but Microsoft doesn't believe sales have been affected by the software itself. Instead, the thinking in Redmond, Wash., is said to be that PC makers have offered "lackluster" designs, along with limited availability. That disappointment with Microsoft's PC partners is said to have further reaffirmed the company's strategy with the new Surface tablet, which is the first computer designed and manufactured by the company...

Enterprise IT decision makers are about half as enthusiastic about the new Windows 8 as they were three years ago about the then-just-released Windows 7, an analyst said today. Employees, however, have a higher-than-expected interest in the revamped operating system when it powers a tablet, second only to Apple's iOS, which runs the iPad. According to David Johnson of Forrester Research, 24% of the more than 1,200 North American and European IT hardware purchasers the firm interviewed in the third quarter said that while they had no plans in place to migrate to Windows 8, they expect to at some...

Microsoft is largely irrelevant to computing of late, the only markets they still play in are evaporating with stunning rapidity. Their long history of circling the wagons tighter and tighter works decently as long as there is not a credible alternative, and that strategy has been the entirety of the Microsoft playbook for so long that there is nothing else now. It works, and as the walls grow higher, customer enmity builds while the value of an alternative grows. This cycle repeats as long as there is no alternative. If there is, everything unravels with frightening rapidity.A company that plays...