Why Windows 8 may not be for your PC

By Preston Gralla

Recent data shows that the Windows 8 developer preview is rarely being used --- less than a quarter of the uptake of the Windows 7 beta in a longer period of time. That's just one more piece of evidence that in its present form Windows 8 isn't really for your PC. It's designed mainly for tablets.

Computerworld reports that Net Applications found that the Windows 8 Developer Preview powered 0.03% of computers connected to the Internet in November. By comparison, the first beta of Windows 7, in a shorter time frame, "accounted for 0.13% of all operating systems, or more than four times what Windows 8 has accrued in two-and-a-half months," according to Computerworld.

Clearly, a beta will be more likely to be used than a Developer Preview. But more than four times as likely, given that the number of downloads of each were similar? I think not.

The issue is that Windows 8, in its present form, is designed for tablets rather than PCs. The Metro touchscreen interface, with tiles piping in live, changing data, will work very well for tablets and smartphones, and no so well for PCs. In fact, there's very little new in Windows 8 for PCs, at least in the Developer Preview. The Desktop is very much the same as the Windows 7 Desktop. All in all, Windows 8 in its current form is more awkward to use than Windows 7 on a PC.

Because of that, IDC predicts that Windows 8 will be an upgrade failure, with very few Windows 7 users upgrading to Windows 8. Users of new PCs, naturally, will use Windows 8 because that's what will ship with their machines.

Does this mean that Windows 8 will be a failure? Not necessarily. Microsoft seems to have targeted Windows 8 directly at tablets, not at PCs. And there's evidence that Windows 8 may bridge the gap with the Windows Phone, going at least partway toward unifying the entire Windows ecosystem.

If that's the case, Microsoft is using Windows 8 as a way to get a better foothold in the mobile market, and present a unified OS to the world. That would mean it wasn't expecting much PC upgrading. And it would also mean that Windows 9 would be the OS where it expects to show off PC breakthroughs.

Of course, Microsoft may have some tricks up its sleeve for the Windows 8 beta, which would make all this moot. But if the beta looks like the Developer Preview, it'll mean that Microsoft doesn't care that much whether you upgrade to Windows 8.