Intel CEO on Windows 8 woes: Pesky 'adoption curve'

Intel CEO Paul Otellini had a parting message for Microsoft: Windows 8 requires "training" and faces an "adoption curve," he said.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

April 16, 2013 7:34 p.m. PT

In what might be considered a parting critique of Windows 8, Intel's outgoing CEO admitted that Windows 8 takes getting used to.

"I've recently converted personally to Windows 8 with touch. It is a better Windows than Windows 7 in the desktop mode when you implement touch," Paul Otellini said during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call today.

But it can be a challenge, he added.

"There is an adoption curve. And once you get over that adoption curve I don't think you go back. We didn't quite have that same kind of adoption curve in Windows 7...[Windows 8] requires a little bit of training," he said.

And what about Windows 8 touch device pricing?

"I think people are attracted to touch [but] the touch price points today are still fairly high and they're coming down very rapidly over the next couple of quarters," he said.

Coming down may be an understatement. Otellini said in the conference call that Windows 8 'notebooks' based on its redesigned Bay Trail Atom chip will hit price points as low as $200.