Microsoft lies about sales figures? *GASP* Say it ain't so!
If your Sarcasm-O-Meter didn't just die laughing, it needs to be replaced immediately.
"Never believe everything you read on the internet" is as True now as it was when first muttered by the famous P.T.Barnum so many millions of years ago.
*Cough*
Seriously, MS claimed 100M Win8 machines in use, or that many Win8 Licenses having been vomited forth upon the populace, and somehow we're supposed to believe them?
Just because they issue 100K Win8's to HP, that doesn't mean HP will *ship* that many Win8 computers.
And then there are the "DownGrades" that get used to put something *other* than Win8 on a Win8 machine, further lowering the number of copies of Win8 in the wild from HP.
(Repeat this across Dell, Lenovo, et alia, and you'll soon realize that the numbers Just Don't Add Up.)
So MS issues 10M Win8's to $GovernmentEntity, but does that mean that $GovernmentEntity will actually ever get around to *installing* any of them?
Given the Testing Cycle that any IT Department worth it's salt will put an new Operating System through before *ever* letting it anywhere *near* the Live Production or Customer Interfacing machines, it may be another few YEARS before Win8 ever sees any "serious" deployment numbers...
And that's assuming MS doesn't pull the rug out from under itself *AGAIN* like it did with Win7, by announcing that they'll no longer be supporting the O/S in favor of their Latest & Greatest.
(How many potential Win7 deployments did they torpedo with that announcement? What IT Department is going to waste even one more FemtoSecond of Testing on an O/S that won't be supported before it gets Approved, much less afterwards?)
As a Totally Blind Geek, I know that I myself, and most of the other Blind/Visually Impaired Geeks I know, have little or *no* interest in Win8.
Go read some of the forums WRT using Win8 in conjunction with a Screen Reader Environment (SRE), and you'll find them overflowing with people asking essentially the same two questions, over & over & over again:
"How the F$#* do I do $Action? They've hidden everything again, and nothing makes sense anymore!"
and
"How the F$@*# do I uninstall this pile of S$#&@ to put something else ((usually XP, but in some cases Win7)) back on?"
And those are just those Geeks whom take the time to ask for help.
Imagine the millions of them (~10M Blind/VI in the USA, ~300M World Wide) whom simply throw up their hands in frustration & disgust, hand the computer to a Geek friend, & say "Nuke that F$#@er & put XP back on it. I don't care, that Windows 8 thing is absolute *CRAP*."
Personally, I can't see (HA! A pun!) the point of a Touch Screen UI being foisted on a Non Touch Screen workspace, so why in the hell would I want to use Win8?
Even my Sighted friends, family, & coworkers find the thing distastefull, and the few that *have* resisted the urge to reformat the machines, have only done so by the grace of Classic Shell's reintroduction of the Start Menu ala Win7.
The sentiment seems to be a uniform "Win8 sucks schweaty meaty monkey bung", and nobody can use it with sufficient dexterity to be Productive.
Which is a Deal Breaker when the main use of your computer is your livelihood, and not being able to get stuff done is Not An Option.
So MS claims 100M Win8 machines in use, or at least Win8 Licenses having been issued.
I'm surprised that the "actual figures" reflect a ~60M potential In Use level, as I'd have thought the "give up in frustration" & "Downgrade" users would be a MUCH higher quotient than a mere ~40%.
But even so, think about that: Nearly Forty Percent of the Windows 8 licenses that Microsoft claims to have issued, Are Not Being Used.
What's that say about a product when nearly *40%* of your claimed user base, *isn't*?
Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got to order another gross of Sarcasm-O-Meters.
I hear there's another Microsoft Press Confference being announced...
=-)p
Biting the hand that feeds IT
