Windows 8 Launch Did Little to Boost PC Sales

The slumping PC market was badly in need of a shot of adrenaline, and unfortunately,Microsoft’s Windows 8 may not have provided that boost. According to data compiled by The NPD Group, Windows device sales have actually fallen 21 percent year-over-year since Windows 8 launched on October 26. Notebook sales have struggled the most, dropping 24 percent, while desktops declined 9 percent.

“After just four weeks on the market, it’s still early to place blame on Windows 8 for the ongoing weakness in the PC market,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. “We still have the whole holiday selling season ahead of us, but clearly Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for.”

News of lackluster PC sales comes on the heels of Microsoft announcing that it sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses, up tenfold over the 4 million the company said it sold in the first four days of availability. To date, Windows 7 has sold over 600 million licenses, but sales of Windows 8 are said to be outpacing its predecessor when comparing time frames.

Nevertheless, NPD says Windows 8 has captured just over half (58 percent) of Windows computing device sales, well below the 83 percent Windows 7 accounted for during its first month on the market.

“Windows 8 tablet sales have been almost non-existent, with unit sales representing less than 1 percent of all Windows 8 device sales to date,” NPD says.

That’s not terribly surprising. Microsoft faces a steep uphill battle in the tablet space as it goes up against established contenders like the iPad and Nexus 7. Plus, you have to think that some potential buyers are holding out for Surface Pro (x86) tablets instead of pouncing on Surface RT (ARM).

It’s not all bad news. NPD says Windows 8-based notebooks with touchscreens have been performing well, which “offers some reason for optimism.” Such devices accounted for 6 percent of Windows 8 notebook sales selling at an average price of $867.

Windows 8 Sees ‘Slow Start,’ Analysts Say

Microsoft announced this week that it has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses since the OS launched on Oct. 26, but new stats from NPD claim that the updated operating system has not helped boost laptop or tablet sales just yet.

Since the launch of Windows 8, sales of Windows devices in the U.S. have dropped 21 percent compared to the same time period last year, NPD said today. Notebook sales dropped 24 percent, but desktop sales fared a bit better with a 9 percent decline.

“After just four weeks on the market, it’s still early to place blame on Windows 8 for the ongoing weakness in the PC market,” Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD, said in a statement. “We still have the whole holiday selling season ahead of us, but clearly Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for.”

About 58 percent of the Windows-based devices purchased in the last month were Windows 8 gadgets, NPD said. When Windows 7 launched in 2009, about 83 percent of gadgets purchased in the same time period were for the new OS. NPD described sales of Windows 8 tablets as “almost non-existent,” making up less than 1 percent of all Windows 8 devices to date. But NPD said that its stats do not include sales of the Microsoft Surface.

“The bad Back-to-School period left a lot of inventory in the channel, which had a real impact on the initial sell-through rates for Windows 8,” said Baker.

The touch-based Windows 8 laptops offer “some reason for optimism,” Baker said. “These products accounted for 6 percent of Windows 8 notebook sales at an average price of $867 helping to re-establish a premium segment to the Windows consumer notebook market.”

The average sale price of Windows-based devices has increased from $433 last year to $477 this year. Windows 8 notebooks are getting $80 more this year than their counterparts fetched in 2011, thanks in part to the touch screens.

For more, see PCMag’s review of Windows 8 and the slideshow above.

Windows 8 is a big hit … on budget PCs at Walmart

How did Microsoft’s new Windows 8 fare on its first big holiday shopping weekend? Here’s an encouraging picture, submitted by a GeekWire reader who took the photo at a Walmart in Indiana after the Black Friday mayhem had ended. The HP, Gateway and Toshiba notebooks ranged in price from $328 to $248.

However, the scene wasn’t so rosy for Microsoft at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, where analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray and team observed and tabulated traffic and sales at Microsoft and Apple stores. Microsoft saw 47 percent less foot traffic than the Apple Store did, and far fewer sales — 3.5 items per hour, compared with 17.2 items per hour at the Apple Store, as reported by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt.

Most of the items purchased from the Microsoft Store were Xbox 360 games. During the two hours that the Piper Jaffray team observed the Microsoft Store, they didn’t see any Microsoft Surface tablets being purchased.

Walmart doorbusters aside, it’s more evidence of a somewhat lackluster start. Prior to the big holiday weekend, longtime Windows watcher Paul Thurrott reported that initial sales of Windows 8 were falling “well below” Microsoft’s internal projections.

We probably won’t get a sense for the official numbers until Microsoft reports earnings early next year, and the big research firms come out with their PC sales numbers. However, there may be a clue or two at Microsoft’s annual meeting with shareholders later this week.

Back at the Walmart, you may be wondering what you can get in a sub-$250 Windows 8 laptop. The Toshiba on the right (which normally retails for more than $300) has a 15.6-inch screen with 4GB of RAM, a 1.3 GHz AMD dual-core processor, a 320 GB hard drive, around 5.5 pounds. Here are the full specs.

That wasn’t the cheapest Windows 8 notebook available on Black Friday. Best Buy offered a 15.6-inch Lenovo with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive for $187.99, which quickly sold out, as well.

Overclockers UK Primo GTX 660 Windows 8 Edition review

It’s a delicious irony that our first Gaming PC from Overclockers UK isn’t overclocked and, moreover, isn’t overclockable in any way due to its multiplier-locked 3.1GHz Intel Core i5-3450 processor and budget Intel H61 Express chipset. See Group test: What’s the best gaming PC?

It is however, by far the least expensive PC in our round-up. It’s supplied as a base system only, without a monitor, keyboard or mouse, but even so at around half the price of its nearest rival it’s worthy of serious consideration. Take a look at Yoyotech Warbird 3570XTA too.

Do you get around half the performance? No, you most certainly do not. The CPU may be considerably slower than the competition and the nVidia GeForce GTX 660 is a much slower card than the much more expensive GTX 680 found in other high-end systems. See all PC reviews.

But, the Primo GTX 660 still turns in a very respectable score of 5507 points in PCMark 7 and gaming frame rates are still high enough to play most games at 1920×1080 pixels, albeit it at somewhat lower quality settings. See also Arbico 5300-HD Media Centre.

You do however miss out on some important features. A small and not particularly quick 60GB Intel 330 SSD is included and the hard drive offers a relatively lowly 500GB capacity. You are therefore quite likely to run into disk space issues with this system and should expect to have to manage your use of the SSD quite carefully.

The Gigabyte H61MA-D2V motherboard is not only less powerful than the Z77-Express-based boards found in every other system. It also lacks many functions, not just in the realm of overclocking but also in the terms of upgradability and built-in features. It’s a micro-ATX board with precious-little room for expansion and no support for the 6Gb/s SATA speeds offered by both of the installed drives, although USB 3.0 is included.

Blu-ray has been eschewed in favour of a DVD writer and the Xigmatek Asgard II midi tower case is small and comparatively basic. It’s somewhat unimpressive when stood next to its competition but appropriate for a system that doesn’t require any special cooling to operate at full speed.

Usability expert tears apart Windows 8

Yet another critic has stepped up to call Microsoft’s still-fresh Windows 8 operating system a usability nightmare, saying it is “a monster that terrorizes poor office workers and strangles their productivity.”

Jakob Nielsen, one of the world’s foremost web usability experts, slammed Windows 8 in a lengthy blog post today. He calls out the OS for hiding features, reducing discoverability, low information density in “Modern” apps, overly active live tiles, and overall reduced power using a single-window interface.

One of the biggest problems Nielsen addresses is Windows 8′s two distinctly different interfaces — the desktop and the “Modern” Start screen merged into one.

Unfortunately, having two environments on a single device is a prescription for usability problems for several reasons:

• Users have to learn and remember where to go for which features.
• When running web browsers in both device areas, users will only see (and be reminded of) a subset of their open web pages at any given time.
• Switching between environments increases the interaction cost of using multiple features.
• The two environments work differently, making for an inconsistent user experience.

Another major problem for Nielsen is how much the OS gives preference to tablets over desktops, something we’ve also noted before.

Windows 8 on mobile devices and tablets is akin to Dr. Jekyll: a tortured soul hoping for redemption. On a regular PC, Windows 8 is Mr. Hyde: a monster that terrorizes poor office workers and strangles their productivity.

This used to be Microsoft’s core audience, and it has now thrown the old customer base under the bus by designing an operating system that removes a powerful PC’s benefits in order to work better on smaller devices.

While Nielsen is down about Windows 8, he at least thinks that Windows 9 could fix these mistakes, just like Windows 7 fixed Vista’s problems.

I have great hopes for Windows 9 on mobile and tablets. Just as Windows 7 was “Vista Done Right,” it’s quite likely that the touchscreen version of Windows 9 will be “Windows 8 Done Right.”

I’ll stay with Win7 the next few years and hope for better times with Windows 9. One great thing about Microsoft is that they do have a history of correcting their mistakes.

While I agree with Nielsen that there are several problems with Windows 8, the OS is an important step for Microsoft to make Windows usable on tablets. I would add one major caveat to Nielson’s criticisms — Windows 8′s desktop environment works extremely well, and using that primarily instead of the Start Screen makes for a mostly good experience with the software.

Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Beats Samsung Galaxy S3 At Retail: What Does This Mean For Nokia?

Despite the problems faced by the Nokia Lumia 920, it appears the handset is doing relatively well so far, and could continue down this path well into 2013 if demand increases during the Holiday season.

It was never going to be easy for Nokia launching the Lumia 920 after the Apple iPhone 5 went on sale, and with the huge momentum the Samsung Galaxy S3 is having up to this day. Not to mention, Windows Phone 8 is not a popular smartphone operating system by any means, which means there aren’t many fans to sell the device to, and bringing in new users would be the order of the day.

Luckily for Nokia, the Lumia 920 is doing well at retail. The AT&T exclusive device is a bestseller on Amazon.com, beating out the Samsung Galaxy S3. The interesting part is, there are 4 different colored Nokia Lumia 920 that are on the Amazon bestsellers list – Black, White, Yellow, and Red.

Amazon is not the only retailer where the Nokia Lumia 920 is doing well. Retailers across Europe have experienced a sellout of inventory, and they are expecting to have more devices before Thanksgiving and before the end of November.

All this is good news for Nokia’s slow comeback in the smartphone arena. The company will have to keep up this early winning streak if it wants to regain the pole position in the smartphone market. It won’t be easy with all the competition Nokia is facing at the moment, but the task is possible to accomplish with regular solid products that are priced competitively.

Furthermore, what if Nokia fails with Windows Phone 8? The company in no way can revive Symbian, and Android won’t be an option. So there is only one thing left to do. That thing would be dropping its hardware ventures and become a software company. It is possible to pull it off. Nokia applications are well known and popular in almost every market, and it shouldn’t be too difficult for the company to make a living off software alone.

Though if Nokia should retreat to software, Stephen Elop could be out of a job.

Windows Phone 8 users now report poor battery life and random reboots

Windows Phone 8 based device are yet to launch in the Indian market, although HTC has announced the pricing and also said that they will arrive sometime this month. We have still not got an official word as to when they will arrive in the market. On the other hand, Nokia recently disclosed that its flagship Windows phone 8 device will not be coming to India this month.

If you are interested in purchasing these devices then keep in mind that various users from around the globe are reporting battery issues and random reboots with these  flagship Windows Phone 8 devices.

At the WPCentral forums a huge number of HTC 8X users have reported random reboots and there is a similar thread on Microsoft’s support forums which has gained 60 replies by now regarding the same issue. I have used the HTC 8X which is a not a resale unit and has some testing tools, I have faced the similar issue along with others.

Nokia Lumia 920 users have also reported random reboots and freezes, along with poor battery life problems. There is a thread on the same on Nokia’s support forums regarding the reboots and freezes. In hopes of fixing the battery life issue users tried wiping their devices which has left some units stuck at the Nokia splash screen as reported by users on a thread over at WPCentral.

All the three companies are yet to respond to these issues and once the official word is out we will update you on the same. One should note that these are early Windows Phone 8 issues, and a fix for these may soon be available as a small update.

e-SignLive Anticipates Windows 8 Capabilities and the Microsoft Surface Tablet to Push Adoption of Electronic Signing to New Level

Few businesses have had the chance to migrate to Microsoft’s new Windows 8. Even so, e-SignLive™, the SaaS electronic signature service powered by Silanis, the established leader and innovator of e-signature technology, predicts the new operating system’s touch capabilities and the Surface tablet will positively influence those who have not yet embraced e-signatures.

Montreal, QC (PRWEB) November 15, 2012

Few businesses have had the chance to migrate to Microsoft’s new Windows 8. Even so, e-SignLive™, the SaaS electronic signature service powered by Silanis, the established leader and innovator of e-signature technology, predicts the new operating system’s touch capabilities and the Surface tablet will positively influence those who have not yet embraced e-signatures.

While the methods to e-sign a document with e-SignLive are the same as before the Microsoft announcement, users could not use their finger or a stylus to hand script a signature. This capability was available primarily only to iPad users. Now the 1.3 billion Windows users around the world will have the same option with Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface tablet.

“Although the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) was signed into law over a decade ago, there are some people who are still reluctant to make the change from a leaky pen to a clean and secure electronic signature,” said Robert Al-Jaar, executive vice president of Silanis Online e-Signature Services. “For those who are uncomfortable with the click to sign method, they can continue to use their own unique signature with the Microsoft Surface tablet. The only difference is that they will no longer be breaking the electronic chain to do it.”

With e-SignLive, documents that are born digital stay online, to better serve customers and businesses. Because the paperwork never exits out of the electronic chain, steps to completion do not include the time and cost associated with printing, scanning, delivering, or filing contracts, applications, or other documents. In addition, e-SignLive’s workflow process minimizes inefficiencies, errors and lost, damaged or incorrectly completed paperwork.

Regardless of the way a signature is added to a document, e-SignLive goes beyond the minimum requirements of the ESIGN law. Unlike any other technology, e-SignLive delivers ironclad tamper-evident protection of signed documents, by providing secure Electronic Evidence™ with visual proof if the e-SignLive document is altered. e-SignLive offers the most comprehensive legal Electronic Evidence through a unique and patented e-Witness™ capability whose audit trail ensure the reliability and authenticity of the e-signed documents. The e-Witness™ provides you what you need if ever your contracts are challenged in court. Documents signed through e-SignLive are legal, trusted, secure and irrefutable.

Microsoft Certifies Auslogics’ Main Products as Windows 8 Compatible

Microsoft’s Windows App Certification Program is designed to help ensure that third-party applications carrying the Windows brand are both easy to install and reliable on PCs running Windows. The requirements that applications have to meet in order to qualify to display the Windows 8 Compatible logo include:

• Being compatible and resilient
• Adhering to Windows Security Best Practices
• Supporting Windows security features
• Supporting clean, reversible installation
• Other strict technical specifications

The goal of this program is to provide the value that users expect from their Windows-based systems, which includes requirements of stability, compatibility, reliability, performance, and quality.

The three Auslogics products that received Windows 8 compatibility certification had gone through extensive in-house testing prior to being tested by Microsoft. The tests confirmed their solid architecture and reliability, their full adherence to strict security requirements and ability to provide a smooth user experience on Windows 8 platforms.

“We are very excited about receiving this certification from Microsoft,” says Anna Lind, Auslogics PR representative. “This achievement is significant for us as a company, as it means our developers have done a fantastic job, which has been acknowledged; and it is also significant for our customers, as they receive the ultimate confirmation that Auslogics products can be trusted for use on platforms running the newest Windows version. Not much changed in Windows 8 in terms of maintenance and optimization needs, and we are happy to provide the feature-rich tools Windows users look for to replace and supplement the minimalistic built-in utilities.”

Company Background:

Founded in 2008, Auslogics Software develops a wide range of computer optimization and security tools for personal and business use, including virus and spyware protection, disk cleanup and defragmentation, registry maintenance, Internet speed-up and emergency file recovery.

Software from Auslogics is used by over 10,000,000 people worldwide and is the tool of choice of many IT and computer manufacturing companies, like Sony VAIO or AVG, in the US and other countries. Auslogics is an Intel Premier Elite Software Partner and a Microsoft Gold ISV Partner.

Auslogics Disk Defrag was named the best disk defragmentation tool on CNET and other resources.

Sony Vaio Duo 11 Video Review – Windows 8 Slider Tablet

The Sony Vaio Duo 11 is one of the more interesting Windows 8 tablets to hit the market with the launch of Microsoft’s new operating system. Like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, Asus Taichi and Toshiba Satellite U925t, the Vaio Duo 11 has a gimmick. In the Duo’s case it’s a touchscreen tablet with a slider keyboard design that sets it apart from traditional notebook designs that simply have touchscreens.

The 2.87 pound computer can be used as a slate or in a nearly standard laptop position. It has an 11.6″ full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS display with Gorilla Glass that’s simply stunning. It’s also bright at 400 nits. Typical of Sony, build quality and materials are excellent with liberal use of metal and a slider that’s firm and solid, though the slider bits are accessible if you reach behind the metal baffle plate on the rear that protects them (keep it away from small children and curious cats).

We’ve seen quite a few touchscreen Windows 8 machines at launch, but few have the active digitizer with digital pen that used to be standard issue with Windows tablet PCs. The Vaio Duo 11 has a 10 point capacitive multi-touch display and an active N-Trig digitizer with a lovely pen included (alas, there’s no place to stow the pen in the computer unless you add on the $149 battery slide with pen silo). The digital pen has two buttons (generally assigned to right click and erase) and it’s far more precise than a capacitive stylus. It also supports pressure sensitivity in apps like the included Art Rage Pro, though we’ve yet to find drivers for apps that use WinTab drivers like Photoshop.

Unlike the MS Surface RT tablet we recently reviewed, this is full Windows 8 running on an Intel Core i5 CPU (a Core i7 is also available) with Intel HD 4000 graphics. That means you can run Windows 7 apps and all .exe programs. The i5 ships with 6 gigs of DDR3 RAM and 8 gigs is max. You can get it with a 128 or 256 gig SSD drive. Ports are relatively abundant for an Ultrabook class machine, and these include two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, VGA and gigabit Ethernet. The Sony Vaio Duo 11 has dual band Intel WiFi with WiDi, Bluetooth 4.0 +HS and NFC. The price starts at $1,099, and that’s not bad considering what you get vs. a standard Ultrabook and touchscreen tablets that lack a full HD display and active digitizer.

The convertible tablet has a backlit island style keyboard and an optical navigation device. The keyboard is small given the 11.6″ size, but I find it quite usable. When the slider is closed, the keyboard is tucked safely under the display section. The Vaio Duo 11 is fast, portable, great looking and we love the 1080p display, not to mention the pen. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite Windows 8 machines.