Gartner’s one-word review of Windows 8 on the desktop: ‘Bad’

“Analyst firm Gartner has chosen just one word to describe Windows 8 for desktop users: ‘Bad,'” Simon Sharwood reports for The Register.

“Research Director Gunnar Berger put the imminent OS through its paces in a five-part review… [In which he] drops this little bomb: ‘We recently did a large field research study and specifically asked all of our interviewees if they were looking at Windows 8, most laughed. The fact is most enterprises are still trying to get to Windows 7 and few enterprises are ready for Windows 8,'” Sharwood reports. “There’s another nasty lurking in the third chapter, wherein Berger asks ‘What is the experience like on Windows 8 when the end point isn’t touch enabled?’ His answer: ‘In a word: Bad.'”

Sharwood reports, “Overall, Berger says Windows 8 is very fine on a touch device and gives Microsoft a real crack at the tablet market. But as a desktop guy, he feels the OS will have a hard time on the business desktop. ‘Unfortunately, my area of expertise is enterprise desktops, and those desktops have a keyboard and a mouse; and as much as this doesn’t make any sense, it seems to me that Microsoft forgot about this when they designed Windows 8.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Welcome to the Post-Windows era.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Cubert” for the heads up.]

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42 Comments

    1. LOL is not a word. Just saying.

      I’d imagine if Apple plugged a mouse into an iPad to be used as a desktop computer is not much better/different.

      MS is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

    1. Excactly! Who is this guy and wo cares about his opinion. Mac OS also gets a lot of bad press but always consider the source. No one should own Apple stock and comment on the company in any open forum…. Know what I mean. Same holds true for MSFT and Google of course.

      1. You said it yourself: consider the source.

        Window 8 is getting awful press from people and groups that have traditionally cheerleaded Microsoft. That is significant.

  1. Microscum, you had an incredibly lucky break followed by decades of ruthlessly holding back the progress of technology so you could squeeze untold billions out of your victims (often known as customers). But now your ineptitude is becoming more and more obvious and many of your former victims are realizing that there are better choices.

    It’s incredibly sad that so many people are starving to death and suffering from so many things that money could, to a large extent, fix while you just keep blowing billions on your bullshit.

    Why don’t you do something useful for once and give the money to charity instead of pissing it away?

  2. I installed Server 2012 RC yesterday, thinking, “Surely, there will be a normal start menu on Server or, at least, a way to enable it.” Nope, there was nothing but more Metro misery. The new start screen does look nice, but it has no features, complicates searches, and — more than anything else — no one is buying it!

    I do wish Apple would make actual rack-mount OS X servers, but that’s not their strong-point. I’m going to push for Linux servers a lot harder now, leaving Windows behind at work…

  3. Keep in mind that Gartner focuses on the enterprise and businesses – not so much the consumer. It’s conclusion is based in that context and customers pay for that insight.

    Gartner’s conclusion that few businesses have any plans for Windows 8 is spot on. In our mid size company, NO ONE is talking about it. What they are talking about are allowing more Macs and iPads.

    Go figure.

  4. Ever since leaving Winfows behind a year and a half ago I’ve not missed it, not even once. Bear in mind I was using Windows 7 before I switched to the Mac so it was supposed to be the latest and greatest. But to me, it was more convoluted shit in the tradition of Windows Vista. I expect Windows 8 to carry on this tradition of shittiness. Although I’ve not had any hands on time on it, I do not harbor any intention of touching it with a 10 foot barge pole.

  5. “Unfortunately, my area of expertise is enterprise desktops, and those desktops have a keyboard and a mouse; and as much as this doesn’t make any sense, it seems to me that Microsoft forgot about this when they designed Windows 8.”

    This is exactly what I fear the future of OS X will look like.

  6. Our small online business has used mostly Macs for half a decade. Unfortunately, since we provide services to large organizations, we need a couple of copies of Windows to ensure compatibility with IE/Windows. This week, had to swallow an even more painful bullet–bought MS Office for Mac for those times we have to exchange Word files with clients; if only iWork had better compatibility with tables and formatting in Word files. Oh well…

      1. @MightyMouth,
        My experience has also been pretty good using iWork with MS Offie files in most cases. One of our largest clients, however, has a particular template in Word that we’re forced to use and it gets scrambled in Pages. Hopefully the new edition of iWork coming out after Mountain Lion (knock on wood) will also address these minor issues.

  7. In light of enterprise and esp. public institutional conservatism AND economic recession/supertight budgets I cannot see other than catastrophy awaiting M$. How are they goin to sell this to their fidel customers??? I guess most are still at XP?

  8. ballmer: “our long time business clients are used to Pain. It’s our signature trademark. If we elimated pain and frustration they will feel lost and wonder if they are using Mac OS instead. EVERYTHING in Win 8 has been carefully planned out, the confusing controls.. everything! I like our strategy, I like it a lot.”

  9. Actually, I can come up with a more descriptive one-word review of Windows 8, a word that is the new contemporary meme equivalent of the word ‘Bad’. That word is:

    METRO

    Watch the fun unfold when Windows L8 finally hits the streets.

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