Yeah Nah

It's here but do I care?

Windows Phone is readily available to anyone who wants one.  Nokia, former darling of the phone market but now struggling to keep up the pace, is staking much of its future on the Windows platform.

Windows Phone has certainly grabbed some market share in sales volumes.  It's overtaken Blackberry - another blast from the recent past.

Yes, it's sold some units, but when a whopping 92% of all smartphones sold are Android or iOS, are we really going to notice the Microsoft offering?

Nobody has yet tried to sell me a Windows phone but plenty of times I'm encouraged to buy a Droid.  No doubt if I stopped by the Apple counter, they would be keen to see me, too.

An also ran - IBM's doomed OS

With Windows Phone I feel like I'm watching IBM's OS/2 Warp all over again.  IBM tried hard to convince the market to give them a go, try something new - they virtually gave OS/2 away for a while but it was really a foregone conclusion.  It could never gain traction and sadly disappeared without a trace and everyone went back to what they knew best.

It's not that OS/2 wasn't a competent OS.  It was just that it was chasing a giant that was just too strong.   I don't know enough about the Windows Phone offering to even know if it's any good.  Sure, it has the might of Microsoft behind it but it's going up against Google and Apple at a time when they have already grabbed the lion's share of this market.

With Windows I think it may be the horse that was laid up for most of these season and missed the race of its life.  The smartphone race is now at full gallop and only the strongest will survive.  People may already have placed their bets and not be keen on a rank outsider.

You may be an Apple fan - no doubt then you'll go with that.  Or else you may be an Android adopter - so much to choose from, it's bewildering.  Who couldn't find a suitable option in this huge stable?

You could instead plump for the new kid on the block and take a chance on a Windows Phone.  It may be great.  Maybe you don't need the zillion apps that are available from the other platforms.  Maybe you are happy to buy effectively the first generation of a new Windows machine.   Are you game?

Yeah Nah.

Putting the pedal down on Windows Phone (Mashable)

Some Windows Phone offerings

XP exit

Comedy of errors with XP exit

Windows XP has less than 12 months before it it’s officially dead, unsupported, consigned to the history books.  Really, is that important?  Well, for the half million XP computers (yes 500,000) here in lil’ ol’ New Zealand that is important.  (What can the world population be if we still have half a million of the critters?)

How is it that an operating system removed from sale over 4 years ago still has such a large user base?  How can a computer last that long and still be worth booting up each day?  That’s the thing about the maturing computer market.  Step back 10 years and that wouldn’t have been the case.  Technology was changing so quickly and you really needed to keep upgrading just to stay in the game.  But for the last few years a Pentium 4 or above, partnered with a reasonable amount of RAM, a decent sized hard drive and just a budget graphics card is really all you need to surf the web in some style.  Sure, if you like blitzing aliens or want to run the latest first person shooter that spec is going to be wholly inadequate, but for many people, a reasonable web experience and the ability to process some words from time to time is really all that’s required from your workhorse.

A 3 or 4 year PC running Windows XP will tick those boxes.  There’s the rub.  It’s enough.  It represents a $1000+ that I don’t need to spend now because it’s enough.

So what are these XP users going to do come April next year when the evil empire stops supplying patches

All or nothing - I've given up on MSIE on all my machines

and security fixes?  Well, I guess they’ll do what they’ve already been forced to do regarding their web browser – since Microsoft stopped allowing XP users to run their latest IE browsers people have been looking elsewhere.  I tried Firefox and Chrome and was pleased with what I found so the loss of IE for me on my XP machine was no great trauma.  Actually, Microsoft lost me as surfing customer as I no longer run IE on any of my Windows 7 machines either as I'm now a born-again Chromer.

Microsoft are trying to tell the XP user base that they can, subject to some hardware constraints, purchase a copy of Windows 7 for the bargain basement price of $249.  Really?  Does that make any sense at all?

If I’m going to invest $250 in technology I’m not going to squander it on an OS that was never intended for my aging but dependable hardware.  By the time XP's imminent death rolls by I’ll be ready to put that money to good use on a new web surfing device.  And guess what, Microsoft, it may not necessarily be running your operating system.  If you want to lock me in as customer, make it worth my while but don’t wait too long.

Clock ticking for XP users (Stuff)

No more IE upgrades for Windows XP users (Cnet)

Window rot

PC sales are sinking fast

They were staking so much on Windows 8.  It was going to turn Microsoft around but sales figures for Q1 2013 tell a different story.

Less people are buying PCs and laptops.  Instead they're turning to their tablets and their smartphones for the services they use most often - social media, email, texts, anything that keeps them in touch with their community.  You don't need a PC for that kind of activity.  In fact a PC is a hindrance to the always-on, always-connected generation since you can't lug it around everywhere you go.

It doesn't look the same

It's hardly surprising then that people are buying less traditional hardware.  What's exacerbating the decline is that Microsoft, the dominant supplier of operating systems for this gear, has radically changed its user interface.  Windows 8 looks very different to Windows 7 and the XP, 98, 95 interface that every knows and loves (kind of).  At a time when the Windows device is losing popularity, the need to learn a new interface was a bit of a disaster.

Some of the falls are staggering where ever upwards is the name of the game.  PC/laptop sales are down 11-14% compared to Q1 2012.  The world's biggest PC manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard, has seen a 24% drop - that's serious stuff.  Of course, it's not all down to Windows 8 - the PC as the dominant computing device has had its day.

You don't need a PC for Temple Run

Now I don't think everyone is going to be taking their PC hardware to the landfill just yet but it does show that user patterns are shifting markedly to small, handheld devices.   If you are into graphic design, if you build web sites, if you dwell in dark basements crunching large volumes of digital data then this change is not going to persuade you to dump the PC.  But, if you are primarily interested in staying in touch, taking snapshots of your day and playing Temple Run, then you really have little use for the PC or it's operating system.

Time for an industry to survey the market and make some serious adjustments.

World PC sales down as Windows 8 flops (NZ Herald)

PC slaes plunge (Stuff)

PC sales down 14% - biggest drop on record (NDTV)

Don't just blame Windows 8 (Mashable)

Windows 8 fails to excite (Telegraph UK)

Q1 2013 14% drop (IDC)

Worst ever PC shipment quarter (TthinkDigit)