Private pain: Dell layoff bloodbath to hit over 15,000 staffers – insiders

[PSPS]

38. You're right. And Dell has never stopped selling Windows 7 machines.

I've procured about 50 PC's for client offices since Windows 8 came out, some as recently as last week. All of Dell's machines in their business channel still come with Windows 7. At first, you had the option of either Windows 7 or 8 but, now, they usually don't offer the Windows 8 option because it just isn't suitable for a business environment and nobody wants it. Why stock something nobody wants?

On those occasions that a client got their own off-the-shelf machine (which all come with Windows 8,) I've had to tweak them to get them to work properly. Besides the routine installation of the excellent and free Classic Shell to return a semblance of rationality to the desktop (including a normal start button,) one has to change settings in the broken network stack as well as manually correct the broken VPN and Wi-Fi functions. Speaking of Wi-Fi, its operation in Windows 8 is reminiscent of the joke that was Vista.

Fan boyz will harp on about how "everyone is going to tablets," but that just isn't true. Many of my clients have and enjoy their tablets, but they don't use them as a substitute for a real computer. They get a tablet as an additional device to do other things when they're on vacation or otherwise mobile, not a replacement for their primary computer.

Even Microsoft's own Surface tablet reflects the general disfavor for Windows 8 -- the "pro" model, which comes with full Windows and can be "corrected" just like a Windows 8 desktop as I've described above, far outsells their cheaper Surface which is app-based and runs Windows RT.

Windows 8 is, indeed, the modern Vista.