Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one

Forumswindows8.com, the self-proclaimed largest Windows 8 help and support forum on the Internet, is filled with posts on such subjects as how to try to terminate a process in the Windows 8 task manager when access is denied and the state of Winodws 8 HP printer drivers. These hard-core Windows 8 early adopters group recently polled their users. And, 50,000 votes later, they found that their memberships' favorite Windows operating system was overwhemling Windows 7.

The breakdown for favorite version of Windows, from top to bottom, was Windows 7: 53%; Windows 8: 25%, XP: 20% and Other: 2%. Research house Gartner wouldn't argue. In a Webinar, Gartner analysts Steve Kleynhans and Michael Silver argue that if your company is still using XP you want to upgrade to Windows 7 and not be distracted by Windows 8.

Kleynhans said, "Get Windows 7 done, and then you can start to experiment and dabble with Windows 8, but don't let Windows 8 derail your Windows 7 upgrade project." He continued, “"We really don't think Windows 8 will get significant traction as a PC OS in a corporate environment." Gartner's clients are certainly following that course. Those who plan on upgrading are moving to Windows 7 and plan to skip Windows 8 for PCs entirely.

According to Kleynhans, “Windows 8 will get 20% to 25% of the corporate user base, at most, before it's replaced with whatever comes next.” In short Windows 8 adoption "will look more like Vista, [and] it won't have the installed base that we've seen with Windows 7 or XP." Why? Because Windows 8 is a “plumbing" upgrade. This is an upgrade that drastically changes the technology without adding significant improvements. In particular, he thinks most users and IT departments will find the interface formerly known as Metro to be too different to find favor and Windows 8's use of two different interfaces to be too confusing for most users.

That's not what the Windows 8 forum survey found though. Their list of weaknesses in Windows 8 started with price: 35% followed by system requirements: 26%; incompatibility 25%; Windows freezes 20%; and only then does the interface show up with 18%.. A close reading of the forum's messages find that their members really do feel that Windows 8 will be over-priced and they're finding lots of hardware driver and software incompatibility problems.

These results aren't surprising. These are users who've already committed to Windows 8. From the start, they've accepted that Metro is not going to be anything like the Windows 7 Aero interface. Gartner's users have no such commitment.

That said, the Windows 8 fans don't love the Metro user interface either. In their ranking of favorite Windows 8 features, Metro came in the lower-end of the pack. In order, their top favorite features were: Fast boot and shutdown, 55%; Easy installation, 50%; Internet Explorer 10, 35%; Restart/Restore capabilities, 28%; Built-in application integration, 26%; Windows Explorer, 25%; App Store, 23%; and then Metro at 22%.

Forumswindows8.com also asked their membership which mobile operating system they'd rather buy. The winner? Android with 42%, followed by Windows Phone 8, 29% and iPhone, 22%. This does not bode well for Microsoft making any progress in the smartphone market.

On the other hand, Microsoft did at least have the support of this Windows 8 fan group when it came to tablets. 35% of them would rather have a Microsoft Surface than an Android tablet, 33%, or the hated Apple rival iPad with 26%.

Windows 8 will arrive for the general public on October 25th. As I predicted before, and I'll predict again, Windows 8 is going to be dead on arrival. Leave aside Gartner's predictions, if even people who are passionate about Windows 8 prefer Windows 7 by two to one, well, what more need be said?

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Five reasons why Windows 8 has failed

Summary: The numbers are in and they don't lie. Windows 8 market adoption numbers are well behind Microsoft's greatest previous operating system failure, Vista.

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 season sales to boost its numbers. Tablets--and not Surface RT tablets--were what people bought last December, not Windows 8 PCs.

Windows 8, and its relatives Windows Phone 8 and RT, make no impression at all in the smartphone and tablet markets. (Credit: Net Applications)

Windows 8's failure is actually greater than it appears. The tablet and phone markets in 2007 were next to non-existent. Now, in a market where NPD expects tablets to out sell notebooks by year's end, neither Windows 8 nor its cousins Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 even appear on NetApplication's mobile and tablet reports for February 2013. How bad is that? Android 1.6, with is tiny 0.02% of the market, does make the list.

I predicted that Windows 8 would be dead on arrival last year, but it's flopping even more  than I thought it would be. So, why has Windows 8 been such a failure? Here's my list:

1. Metro, aka Modern: An ugly, useless interface.

I said it before, I'll say it again: Metro, or whatever you want to call it, may make an OK tablet interface, but it's ugly and useless on the desktop. It requires users to forget everything they ever learned about Windows and learn an entirely new way of doing things for no real reason. To quote a popularly held opinion, Metro is "awful."

True, you can use a more traditional Windows interface, but you know what would have been a lot better? If Microsoft had just kept  the Windows 7 Aero interface for the desktop version of Windows 8 and give up this idea that the Metro touch-friendly interface is for every device.

2. Windows 8 brought nothing innovative to the desktop.

Can you tell me one new thing that Windows 8 brought to the desktop that was truly innovative? Exciting? Engaging? I can't. Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7, but that's about it -- and that dual interface mess makes it slower for practical purposes.

3. Developers hate it.

I said all along programmers wouldn't like throwing out their hard-won .NET, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) expertise to work natively on Windows 8. I was right. Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of video game company Valve, said it best: "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space." He then started moving his Steam game empire to Linux.

4. Legacy Windows 7 users aren't moving.

We saw this happen before with Vista and XP. Then, as now, the new operating system -- Vista -- was not  better than the old operating system -- XP -- so very few people moved to it. We're seeing it again now.

In addition, in an economy that's still not moving forward quickly, who really wants to move from tried-and-true Windows 7 to new, expensive Windows 8 PCs? As Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu observed, the $500 to $1200 price tags slapped on Windows 8 hardware makes it "uncompetitive" in a world where people want iPads and Android tablets.

5. Tablet, smartphone, and desktop competition.

If you are going to buy a new computing device in 2013, chances are it's going to be an Apple iPad, an inexpensive Android tablet, or a Chromebook. The PC desktop isn't dead, but it's not very profitable either -- and Windows 8 isn't helping PC sales.

Microsoft has to know this. If Microsoft does indeed start selling, or rather renting, Microsoft Office for iPad, you'll know they've seen the light. Microsoft's future then will not lie in operating system and application sales, but in services.

And Windows 8? Like Vista before it, Microsoft will re-release an older version of Windows, Windows 7 this time instead of XP, and start talking about wonderful Windows Blue, the next version of Windows, will be.

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