Hardly Anyone Using Windows 8 Preview

Developer Preview - By admin on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 10:25

Way back in January 2009 Microsoft launched the Windows 7 Developer Preview and within three weeks Windows 7 was being actively used by 0.13% of PCs as their operating system of choice. Windows 8 Developer Preview was launched on September 13, yet now over two months later, only 0.03% of PCs are using Windows 8 as their operating system, according to figures from Net Applications and reported on Computerworld.com.

What is more disappointing for Microsoft is that over 3 million copies of the Preview were downloaded by users between September 13 and December 7, so what is happening to these downloads?

Hanging On for Beta?

It could be that many of us just downloaded it to have a look at it. To see what all the fuss was about and decided not to use it as our operating system until all the bugs had been ironed out. Plus, we know that there's a better, beta version coming out in February 2012 which will give us a much better idea of what Windows 8 will be like.

In the developer version we can't change the start screen settings, can't access the web store, can't use picture passwords, but we should be able to do all of this in the beta version.

The Developer Preview was for Developers

Plus, many of those who downloaded the Developer Preview were, well, developers, who needed to download the preview so that they could start to work on developing apps for the new OS. Apps we should be able to start to access in the app store in the Beta version in February.

Just because the developer preview isn't being used to power that many PCs doesn't mean that Windows 8 itself will flop. It just means people are waiting to get their hands on a more realistic, more accurate version of the OS before they start to use it to run their machines.

That's our opinion anyway, but what do you think?