Ready for some more Windows 8 hate? Here it comes!

Bob O’Donnell, Program VP of Clients and Displays and “responsible for tracking the latest and most important hardware developments that impact PCs, notebooks, thin clients and other computing devices” at International Data Corporation (IDC), recently told Brooke Crothers of CNET that Windows 8 sales have stalled because Microsoft made a couple of flaws, namely lack of ‘Start’ button (aka Start Menu) and inability to boot directly to desktop mode:

There were certain decisions that Microsoft made that were in retrospect flawed. Notably not allowing people to boot into desktop mode and taking away the start button. Those two things have come up consistently. We’ve done some research and people miss that.

And there are a lot of people that as soon as they boot into Windows 8, they go to desktop mode and do most their work there and occasionally back to Metro. But the point being they’re much more comfortable with desktop mode.

There are ways to get Start Menu back on Windows 8 and a way to boot directly to Windows 8 desktop mode. However, these aren’t native to Windows 8 so most people are unlikely to use them, which is O’Donnell’s point.

It is important to note that O’Donnell is not just another potshot analyst shooting from the hip. He works at IDC, a well respected analytics company “whose business it is to get input from PC makers” as Crothers puts it, and is basing his comments upon at least some research and analysis. Of course it is up for debate if O’Donnell is reflecting the viewpoint of end-users, of computer manufacturers, of end-users are reported to computer manufacturers, or all three. However, the sentiment across the board seems to be fairly clear: Microsoft pushed too much change on people too quickly.

[via CNET]