We know that it has not RTM’ed yet, but the pre-RTM usage figures are still not looking good.. see here..

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228896/Windows_8_falls_further_behind_Windows_7_in_pre_launch_stats?taxonomyId=125&pageNumber=1

I have tried to be enthusiastic but with Windows 8 being centered on touch and me having nothing touch capable, I am still torn between installing it as soon as I get it or just leaving well alone. The trouble is that Windows 7 works very well and it is a fully fledged desktop OS, not a ‘trying to appease all’ hybrid.

The improved ‘system admin’ tools are hardly killer apps for all but the geekiest, and companies will be in no raging hurry to adopt Windows 8, having maybe only recently converted to 7. I would imagine that most will wait to see what Windows 9 and 10 brings, and they have the time because Windows 7 support doesn’t drop off until 2020.

If companies did take Windows 8 on board, how many corporate images would include more than the desktop app? Probably not a lot, maybe even just one hand’s worth.

Re the cheap Windows 8 upgrade.. it is undeniably a good price, but who will install a touch OS on a non-touch machine? The base machine would have t be running Vista or Windows 7, and there aren’t too many Vista machines in the wild. Windows 7 users will be happy with what they have got already.Even users relatively new to PC’s will wonder why there is no native Start Menu.

Re tablets.. most of the tablets in use already can’t be upgraded to Windows 8 because they have no qualifying OS and the platforms wouldn’t allow Windows 8 to run anyway.

Some companies are allowing people to use their own machines at work, but you can bet that they connect to a domain all of their own. Would you risk connecting them to the full company network?

Re the MS Answers forum, more than a few have installed Windows 8 and within minutes, want it removed. The only users who really like the Metro UI seem to be the ones who have hugely powerful machines that are just played around on.

From a user standpoint, the only thing that Windows 8 has over Windows 7 on existing desktops and laptops is that it is way more frustrating to use, and that feature is not worth $40. It wouldn’t work out any better if the Metro UI was a freemium product. Instead of producing a killer app which would make Windows 8 indispensible, Microsoft have produced a killer interface which could see ‘8’ sink like Vista.

We were originally told that Windows 8 would span multiple platforms, but that has changed. Microsoft go to great pains to tell us that Windows for ARM machines is NOT Windows 8. So why don’t Microsoft produce Windows TE (Tablet Edition) for tablets, and let the rest of us have what we need for existing machines, that being a fully fledged desktop OS? Because they have left it too late? At this point, were they to backtrack and supply the Metro interface as an optional add-on, it would take time, and the development would start to go the same way as the first attempt at an XP replacement did.

Well, if the rumours are true, Windows 8 will RTM very soon. If Microsoft do not release IE 10 for Windows 7, it will be painfully easy for the ‘stats’ people to see what is being used.

Will you be one of them?