Are Windows 8 Convertibles Being Given a Fair Chance?

I think the problem with Windows 8 and the new generation of convertible laptops has to do with the fact that some people just don't grok the paradigm shift.

Windows 8 makes Windows much more tablet friendly. The thing is - Windows 8 functions pretty much the same as Windows 7 and even Vista before it. It just has a different start menu. The point of the Interface formerly known as Metro is NOT only to make it touch friendly - it's also designed to be an aggregator. You have things called live tiles - which connect and tell you when you go to the start menu that you've got 5 new emails, 4 new updates on Facebook, etc... All at a glance, without having to use gadgets which have issues unto themselves. Live tiles generally require less system resources than a buggy desktop gadget...

I think this also applies to hardware vendors. They don't grok all the possibilities that Windows 8 offers - yet. It's kind of like when Vista was released. There were a LOT of changes - most of them positive - like moving drivers from kernel mode to user mode. Vendors also went a little crazy with stuffing all the crapware they could onto Vista systems which made them run like a slideshow. (Thank the DOJ for that nonsense!) There is NO excuse for having 50+ icons in the system tray at boot up. NONE.

Thus, people got the mistaken impression that "Vista sucks"... Really, It wasn't all that bad. I ran a clean install of Vista for many moons. It wasn't quite as snappy as it could have been but it didn't "suck". Certainly NOT nearly as bad as many of the reviews made it out to be. Then 7 came along and I went with that - it built on Vista's strengths and improved things.

But then Windows 8 came along and there's a bunch of people having conniption fits - because it's different. Some people are just resistant to change. Some are happy to sit on their laurels and/or think there's nothing new that can come down the proverbial road. These people have built themselves into a box. The box is a place that is known. The box is comfortable. To venture outside of the box means potential discomfort.
Look at XP. It was around so long that people freaked and there was much gnashing of teeth when MS announced that support will end in 2014. I suspect there will be plenty more will have gran mal seizures a year from now when the final nail is hammered into XP's coffin.

Another issue with hardware - and this happened right about the time Vista came out. Drivers. Since Microsoft changed the driver paradigm from kernel to user mode, many hardware vendors suddenly got caught flatfooted. HP, for instance, took forever (or so it seemed) to get drivers for many of their printers published. It took 9 months from the time Vista went RTM until HP released drivers for my HP Color LaserJet 1600. 9 months is a very long time. That's 75% of a year. You can get lucky and make a baby in that time! But when it comes to hardware - it's NOT acceptable. 9 months - might as well have been 9 years.

HP's excuse: Vista's kernel during the beta cycle was changing too frequently for them to write proper printer drivers. They wanted to wait for RTM so they could use stable code to write their drivers. Uh... The drivers are supposed to go in USER mode, not attach themselves to the Kernel like they did previously. Oddly enough Nvidia and ATI (at the time, now AMD) were able to keep up with all the changes and produced beta drivers regularly. And I'd say video drivers are much more demanding and complicated than printer drivers.
So when it comes to hardware - there's likely to be a delay whenever there's a shift in the way things are done be it under the hood (as with Vista) or with the UI when it comes to Win 8...

Note: This post was edited by a forum moderator to insert line breaks on 05/03/2013 at 4:42 PM PT

A windows 8 convertible machines are not given a fair shake by reviewers because manufactures never publish what market segment they are going after with a machine - and they don't want to because they want every machine to appeal to as many people as possible. So a power user who wants to some light gaming and video editing is going to find the atom processor based convertibles underpowered. Whereas the ipad convert is going to find the battery life and thickness of the i5/i7 based convertibles pretty poor. While this clearly gives the consumer greater choice there is not a convertible that is right for everyone.

I just ordered a new (to me, actually refurbished) pc today. I could have purchased new, but the Windows computers that interested me all had Windows 8. What I've seen of Version 8 doesn't interest me and frankly, wouldn't be of any use to me. So, I ordered a refurbished with a bigger hard drive, faster processor, everything I need for work and home and it specifically had to include Windows 7. My current pc works great, but I didn't want to risk Win 8 being my only choice if waited.

Recently built a new Desktop. I decided to go with Win 8 because I see it as being the wave of the future. I expected it to be hard to use and buggy, (read the comments above). Instead I found it to be fast, stable and no more buggy than any other OS on the market. I now have it on both my desktop and my surface pro which my wife bought me to replace my ancient laptop. The two machines sync flawlessly and while there was a bit of a learning curve, its been pretty easy. For the people complaining about no desktop its exactly one click away which I really can't believe anybody would find onerous. As for the Surface Pro, I've been pleasantly surprised. I would like a couple more USB ports but a USB expander is cheap and easy and to be honest, unused so far at my house. The versatility has been great and while I usually use it like a laptop I do pull off the keyboard and use it as a tablet frequently. More battery life would be nice but thats the worst problem it has had to date and I can live with that.

I had a Toshiba Portege Convertible with a touch screen before all of this tablet nonsense came around. I want another one like it. I don't understand the idea of building a touch screen laptop that is not a convertible.

I don't want some lame tablet limited in power, memory and space, I want a power house convertible laptop that is a desktop replacement that I can actually be productive on.

Somebody help me please!

I'm pretty certain that a device bigger than 7 inches is too big to be a carry it everywhere mobile role that tablets need to fit into. And under 13 inches a device is too small to be useful as a primary computing device. So these convertables are right in the dead zone of computing. The iPad is just too big to see people take it with them to lunch to read while waiting for their order to be ready, but a 7 inch tablet is not. An 11 inch tablet is also too small to really do any work on.

Reality is, I'd rather have a 7 inch tablet that is a great portable device I can pull from a pocket or purse on a whim, as well as a 13 inch ultrabook that I can open up and resume from suspend and within 10 seconds be doing actual work.

And I'm not without experience, I owned an 11 inch touch screen convertable notebook, it was an unmitigated disaster, too small to work with, too big to wave around like a clipboard. And I got issued an iPad from the office and it ended up staying at the office because it was too big and too limited in it's capability to be a useful replacement for my ultrabook.

I am a user of a Win8Pro tablet from Samsung - the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro. It has been 2 months I have been using the tablet/convertible and glad to say, I've dropped one device. I now only carry my mobile phone, an android HTC phone and the Samsung tablet both for work as well as casual use. Before I jumped on the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, I bought VMware Fusion and ran Windows 8 Pro as a VM on my MacBook Air.

I personally have two iPads and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. The iPads has since been removed of my email accounts and calendar and given to my kids to use as an eReader. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is my gym device that I carry for use in the gym as it allows me to put it on the treadmill. Since the ATIV, I've hardly used my Dell Latitude and my MacBook Air.

So, the answer is NO, the Windows 8 Convertible are not being given a fair chance. They are unique in the sense that they try to be both a tablet as well as a PC. They function very well as both. While as a tablet, I find the Metro UI as well as the native apps like email, Reader (for PDFs), calendar and other "tablet" apps very useful on the go. However, when I get down to serious work, the Desktop is perfect, I get a lot of work done on the Office 2013 and other legacy apps I am so used to.

My only advice is that try to use it as it is.

This is a re-post of my comments in the original article, Playing the PC Sales Blame Game.

What do customers want? I've been at this game for 31 years, and the answer has never changed. Customers want devices that are faster, easy to use, and easy to understand and learn. It was true with the IBM PC XT in the early 1980's and it's true today with the multitude of players out there fighting for their share of the IT market. It's my opinion that Microsoft's timing of Windows 8 (especially without a conventional desktop and START button) was grossly miscalculated. I realize that Tablets are gaining in popularity, but my computer is not a Tablet. I don't want it to be a Tablet. I don't want it to have a Touchscreen (constantly cleaning fingerprints). My computer should be fast, easy to operate on a fully functional operating system, and support the applications I need to do my work. Windows 8 was an attempt by Microsoft to get their foot in the door in the computer hardware market. Specifically with the Surface Pro. Next time you watch the commercial for the Surface Pro, I challenge anyone to point out to me one single thing that is actually DONE on the device. No applications are opened. We get no sense of how fast or slow the device is. All we see is that it works like a Tablet, and has different configurations regarding how we want to view it. And perhaps if we're 20 years old and have 5 years of gymnastics/dance training, we can hop around with it. No START button??? REALLY????

It seems to me like the decline in PC sales would more likely be attributed to the fact that there are so many other devices out there that are not considered PCs, that are doing what the PC used to do. Tablets are the ideal solution for mobility and communications combined with media accessibility. Smartphones have assumed a huge share of the need for email on a conventional computer. Televisions now have built-in internet capabilities eliminating the need to use a computer to stream media. The bottom line is that there is still a need for computers, just not all of the things we used to use them for. And Tablets, Smartphones, and TVs can't efficiently type a letter to Aunt Mary with anything that could be compared to the solid, reliable feel and functionality of a keyboard and a computer.

I remember the 80's when people used to ask me, "What would I do with a computer?" They had no sense of the possibilities of how computers could simplify their lives. But then, computers were relatively price prohibitive. Today, compared to the 80's, computers are capable of holding exponentially higher amounts of data, and running thousands of times faster than their older counterparts. My first computer had 2KB of RAM and data had to be stored on a cassette tape drive, using an adapter to view data on a Black & White TV. Okay, so computers are imminently more capable than they used to be. That's the hardware side, and with the advent of SSDs, computers are wicked fast and able to do mostly anything we need them to do. And let's not forget that everything else aside, computers are still eons beyond the speed of other mobile and media devices. The question today has changed from what one would do with a computer to something like, "Do I really need a computer?" If you only browse the internet, check emails, and listen to music or watch videos, maybe you don't need a computer. On the other hand, if you're under the gun to get a quarterly earnings report out, with 50 copies on the board's desk in the next 2 hours, I hope you're not depending on the Surface Pro and Windows 8 to get the job done.

The problem for me is this. I'm one of those guys who doesn't buy a new computer every year. My current desktop, where I do most of my work, is still running on a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 single core chip with 3GB of RAM. I'm running Windows 7 and it does everything I need, and it does it quickly and efficiently. Why on earth would I go out and spend another $700.00 or more for a new system that's only going to do exactly what I'm doing with the system I have now?

As far as laptops go, I go through 10-12 laptops a year. I buy them, upgrade them to their maximum capabilities (RAM, SSD, Windows 7, and other Productivity Software), and resell them for a small profit before I move on to my next patient. I've been refurbishing/Upgrading laptops for 10 years. I can state this with qualified authority. There is no qualitative justification for purchasing a Tablet over a Laptop. Dollar for dollar the laptop wins. Function for function the laptop wins. Speed to speed, the laptop wins. The list goes on.

Now I guess I'll answer the original question here about why PC sales have dropped off. Software or Hardware? Is it software? If we're talking about Windows 8 - I would respond with a RESOUNDING YES. People don't understand it, they're having trouble using it, and all in all they don't like it. Windows 7 was a HUGE WINNER. If Microsoft wanted to move us into the next inevitable step of all computing being wireless and operating systems and applications running in the "Cloud", they should have released their product differently. I was able to buy a bunch of laptops from Walmart at half price because when they changed over from Windows 7 - 8, they took all of the Windows 7 laptops off the shelf. Consumers like choices, and ramming Windows 8 down their throat was a huge mistake. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when executives at Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Sony were all told that they had to switch their operating systems to a new product that no one understood or accepted. Understand of course, that behind this is the great concept that the consumer will one day never need to install a program. All media will be in the cloud, and you'll have little choice regarding what applications you'll need to use that media. In the corporate minds, if the media is available on a disk or other portable media (not the cloud), then it's subject to piracy. By putting everything in the cloud, you can't get your hands on it, you can't illegally install it, and if you screw it up you'll just have to purchase it again. Welcome to the future.

I can't believe Windows 8 was ever beta tested by "just plain folks." Ever. Or maybe their comments were just disregarded.

I was able to purchase a used Surface because the seller hated Windows 8--that's the one good thing about Win8 I can mention.

A friend refused to purchase a laptop from Best Buy because all "the good ones" were running Windows 8.

I dislike Windows 8 and find it less intuitive than Android and even IOS. I do love the Surface's hardware though and hope that a more user friendly software update is in the offing soon.

Being an old fogie*, I don't change out computers often, but I am impressed with what I've seen in Windows 8 tablets and convertibles. My demands are simple (to say, if not to meet): it must run the Windows programs that I already use in Windows 7; it must be very portable; and it must have touch screen. I have not locked in on a brand or model yet, but am generally pleased with the features of Surface Pro.
*(I was doing computers back in the sixties -- analog first, then punch cards for Fortran, then eventually assembly language to model microcomputers on a mini.)

I honestly do not understand the big deal about no start button. When you turn the computer on, you are looking at an enormous start menu with intelligently grouped live tiles that are much more useful than a static menu that you previously had to click on to see. And if you don't like the grouping, you can change it however you want to change it. Everything the start button did for you is right in front of your face as soon as the computer boots up. Why do people think there is something missing?

I can only agree with Wolfie2k5 that people aren't comprehending the paradigm shift in how to approach their device. They see a live tile and don't recognize that it is also the gateway to using the software, or maybe when they see the start screen they think they are stuck in a menu they can't get out of. But a short time of familiarity with the device will overcome that if well meaning people would just stop rushing in to "fix" the new computer.

The real discussion should be along the lines of SeanBlader and Leonard_jay's comments on how useful these smaller, convertible devices are when it comes to content creation rather than content consumption. Their convertible nature is supposed to make the creation aspect easier. The question is, can people stop huffing about the start button long enough to answer that question for multiple-use cases? SeanBlader says for him no, but Leonard_jay's positive comments on the Samsung ATIV are also common. Unfortunately, this type of commentary is too infrequent to help people decide on whether to buy.

Windows 8 Convertibles fall into two category's; Tablets, and Computers. The tablets are meant to go head to head with the likes of the iPad. The computers are meant to go head to head with the lap tops. The tablets can only get there programs from the Windows store, and only those that are meant for them. The computers can download any program from the Internet, use big boy software (like MS Office), and communicate with the world around them (printers, DVD burners, external hard drives, USB ports,the works).

If you except them for what they are, you can judge them fairly. If you try to see something that's not there, and was never intended to be there, you will be disappointed. But the disappointment should not be leveled at the Convertibles, they are only devices, they are what they are. Any disappointment should be leveled at yourself for expecting something from the device that was never there, was never intended.

Even in the Apple world, you ether want an iPad, or a computer. It's really that simple. You don't buy the device by how it looks, and how easy it is to use. You buy a device for what you want to do with it, what software you want to run on it. Is it going to meet your needs of the problems your looking to solve?

If people use that criteria to choose there device, then the convertibles will be given a fair chance, even if the answer is no.

Since I have a vision problem which requires I use a LARGE screen for computing, those 13 inch or less in size devices are a total waste for me. Even my cellphone requires the use of a magnifier to be abel to use new numbers.