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Poor old Windows 8. It's not had the easiest time of things since it's launch back in 2012, getting slammed from all sides by gamers and pretty much anyone that wasn't using a tablet. Since then it's regained some momentum, especially with its 8.1 release, but continued to remain the underdog in the OS rankings. Now it's received a further blow, as China's ruling party has banned government computers from using the operating system.
The announcement came from the Central Government Procurement Center as part of an upgrade announcement for many government systems still using Windows XP. It said that along with changing to a more contemporary OS for security reasons, no government machine should run Windows 8.
Chinese government employees are rabid fans of the start button
“We were surprised to learn about the reference to Windows 8 in this notice,” Microsoft said in a statement (via Reuters). “Microsoft has been working pro-actively with the Central Government Procurement Center and other government agencies through the evaluation process to ensure that our products and services meet all government procurement requirements.”
The software giant said that moving forward, it would work with the Chinese government to encourage it to reverse its stance on the OS, as well as helping it support Windows 7 on any machines that needed upgrading.
KitGuru Says: The number of PCs still using XP in the country is thought to represent nearly half of all desktop and laptop systems, which is a stupendous number. If Microsoft can reverse this ban and sell Windows 8 copies to a good number of those users, it'll make a tidy profit. Windows 7 sales will generate a nice bundle of cash too, but not to the same extent.
I wonder that any chinese government machine even runs a legal windows copy… but that bigotry put aside:
Windows 8 has recieved a beating, yes, but personally I would never ever choose to install Windows 7 on a machine again. I’ve run Windows 8 almost since release, and it has proven extremely fast, stable and way more compatible with games, even older titles, than any previous version of Windows.
The beating recieved seems in all honesty to me, more a case of the collective media having a bash at the OS, than it being something you can truly substantiate it on.
It’s sort of when a huge company shares news in 2014 that they got a new updated graphics card to their Hackintosh, and the card is an AMD 7950 …. uhm right… exactly where did the “new” factor come in there, when the technology is already severely outdated when compared to recent cards released on the PC market?
That China, a country known for constant and repeated abuse and illegal copying of especially media, software and hardware, choose to not have Windows 8 on any government machine is a bit of a no-brainer to me. No government employee there would have a copy of Windows 8 anyway, at least not legally. So the ban is a ban on pirated software only, and I just don’t think the secretary working on a PC would even dare installing something not government authorised, on a government owned computer, in the first place.
It’s like telling your 3 year old kid “No, you may not install a watercooled graphics card in your Nintendo DS” – They have no clue what you’re on about anyway.
Neither does the chinese functionary sitting in an office getting this news.