NewEgg's Win8.1 Notebooks: Dec 2013

[ChristineBCW]

Here it is, Dec 6th, and NewEgg only has 10 notebooks listed as "Windows 8.1" and only 2 for "Windows 8.1 Pro".

That's surprising. And the prices are even more so - seven of these units are high-end premium $1000-or-more. CyberPowerPC offerings outnumber HP and Acer combined.

This must mean the vendors are stuck with Win8.0 licenses that Microsoft wouldn't convert, claiming the 'free upgrade' covered it all. And the vendors are probably happy with that because they have Zero Additional Labor to do this update. "Leave the old units on the shelf - make customers do more work."

I wonder how long this disparity between Win8.0 and 8.1 units will last?

[Sean]

It’s fairly similar here also. Most stores here call them laptops now as most people associate a Notebook as being a Netbook or an entry level laptop.

Going by Dabs, they’ve roughly twice the number of Windows 7 desktops as they have with Windows 8. Laptops and especially Ultrabooks fare better with Windows 8, but no Ultrabooks mentioning Windows 8.1.

The following are the filter lists on dabs, shown in the sequence of Desktops, Laptops and Ultrabooks:

I excluded Netbooks as they’ve just the one now, a refurbished Asus EEE with Windows 7 Starter, so I’d imagine that category will be pretty obsolete soon.

[ChristineBCW]

I wonder how Inventory-Execs are feeling about having masses of this “old OS” on the shelves for New Christmas sales? It makes me wonder how much of the New Notebook/Laptop Inventories were propped up by Microsoft promises on Win8.0 sales?

I don’t think I saw even a 50-50 split of Win7 Notebooks to Win8 units two months after Win8’s release - I remember some stores pulled all of their Win7’s off the floor and only offered Win8’s from Day One.

“Too much 8.0 inventory” is certainly an issue - they can’t pull them and re-do this vast quantity. Especially IF 8.1 drivers are truly a ‘work in progress’. Maybe that too explains why NewEgg’s W8.1 notebooks are almost exclusively high-end.

[ChristineBCW]

Sean, one more question. Can you dig thru those Desktop Win7 Pro’s (“202 models”) and see how ‘new’ the CPUs are? Are there any Haswell’s in there, or are those old Ivy Bridge CPUs?

It’d be pretty strange to see Retail Desktops with newest Haswells loaded up with Win7. Someone in Microsoft probably has both eyes blackened.

[Sean]

Unfortunately Dabs doesn’t filter by Intel generation (unlike its motherboards and CPUs sections), but I did rough counts based on the title of each product in the index, as nearly every desktop mentions the CPU model # in the title.

The following are Core i3/i5/i7’s I counted in the Windows 7 Pro category:

[ul]
[li]Core i3-2xxx - 8
[/li][li]Core i3-3xxx - 35
[/li][li]Core i5-2xxx - 3
[/li][li]Core i5-3xxx - 43
[/li][li]Core i5-4xxx - 13
[/li][li]Core i7-3xxx - 12
[/li][li]Core i7-4xxx - 3
[/li][/ul]

The rest are with Celeron, Pentium, AMD, etc. CPUs.

Here’s an example of a fairly high end 4th-gen Intel desktop with Windows 7:

[Stereodude]

FWIW, my brand new Haswell based HP Elitebook came with Windows 7 Pro (via downgrade rights).

[ChristineBCW]

Thanks, Sean. Yes, that 4770 is definitely a Haswell. Boy. What does THAT say about the world’s greatest OS? There have GOT to be some blackened eyes in Redmond.

Sean, if Dabs has a way to distinguish chipsets (1150=Haswell, 1155=Sandy/Ivy B)? I did that on New Egg with rather shocking results, too.

Does anyone remember seeing XP boxes for sale a year after W7 was offered? I know there was a big push to ‘get XP, not Vista’ but there were a lot of Vista notebooks out there.

This “downgrade rights” is a whole new phenomenon for Microsoft, I think.

[Stereodude]

[QUOTE=ChristineBCW;2712217]
This “downgrade rights” is a whole new phenomenon for Microsoft, I think.[/QUOTE]
Microsoft has had downgrade rights for a really long time for certain OS flavors. The OEM could install XP from a Windows 7 license. 2000 under a XP license. Etc, etc, etc…

[Steve33]

Sort of side topic but I really don’t understand i7 dual core mobile haswells.
Is that a ripoff?
My thinking any i7 should be at least quad…unless I am missing something.
Some processor expert out there enlighten me.

[Stereodude]

Most mobile i7 chips are dual core not quads. They’re really just souped up i5’s. Why Intel does that I have no idea.

[ChristineBCW]

Now, we’re seeing ads with “Downgrade Rights” being listed, though. Spelled out - “Win 8.1 downgrade rights Win7”, or “Win7 downgrade rights/Win8”.

There’s no way this is a favorable judgment by the retailers on the Win8 team.

[alan1476]

The only way to buy an OS system if you have more than one computer is to buy a TechNet license. One TechNet license is less than one retail Windows 8.1 license.

[ChristineBCW]

TechNet’s an annual subscription, these days, and I’m not sure how the OS (or updates) survive past the end of the subscription period now. They used to survive, on and on, but last year (??) they changed that so licenses expired IF the subscription did. I think that means “no re-activation if a re-load” but I have wondered how ongoing support for the original activation went on.

We do MSDN for the other goodies, though, and those cloud-services are not showing any relief from the WinStore’s clutches.

EDIT: Oops… I see the MS has stopped issuing TechNet subscriptions. They honor the renewals and there is a brief note that there may be subscriptions available thru certain MS partners.

[tmc8080]

I think the inventory of hardware is the problem, not necessarily the software. There are a plethora of high-end win7 machines that are now technically OBSOLETE and vendors didn’t sell them… and they don’t want to sell them dirt cheap either b/c what the hell are they going to do with all the new fancy touchscreen laptops they have now?
I would’ve bought a touchscreen but Staples had crappy deals… touchscreen laptops w/ 4gb of ram & 320gb hard drive, and processor below 2ghz isn’t gonna cut it… and the higher spec’d ones are $150 - $200 more (2+ghz, 500/750 & 6gb ram)-- I have a $200+ gift card sitting there… and can’t find much I’m interested in at this store anymore. I may have to widdle it down buying food from the office section of the store at high-way robbery prices, lol.

[tmc8080]

[QUOTE=Stereodude;2712224]Most mobile i7 chips are dual core not quads. They’re really just souped up i5’s. Why Intel does that I have no idea.[/QUOTE]

It is a common QC mfg process… the substrate that doesn’t QC at one level, gets rebranded at another when they label the chip. This is not new and done by all CPU makers and other tech/nontech product lines.

[ChristineBCW]

TMC, the problem of “plethora of technically obsolete hardware” should be similar at every WinOS switch-over, but I simply don’t recall seeing “Win7 downgrade rights to Vista/XP” ever.

Do you remember seeing such a statement?

I do remember there was a wariness about moving to Win7 simply because of the very bad experiences that Vista’s first waves suffered. I remember there were a lot of articles full of Win users saying, “I’ll wait for Win7 SP1” but, after a few months, I saw more and more articles with quotes like, “I’m not waiting - Win7 is good enough to switch without SP1…”

In all of that, I don’t recall a single ad that stated “Downgrade Rights From Win7 To ___”.

And in those days, PCs were still moving quite rapidly, so inventories were higher then than in the last year.

[tmc8080]

If you recall in the early days of Windows 7, PC makers were trying to get away with selling 1.3ghz, - 1.6ghz single, THEN dual core machines which would CHOKE on windows 7… then eventually they got over that hardware HUMP (after the criticism on the PC hardware makers’ side) BTW, what I think I was getting at was those who are “enthusiasts” will not want windows 8 and opt to try to downgrade to windows 7-- since they would have access to older copies, pirated or not… the only thing standing in the way of that idea is lack of driver support of a key hardware component, such as SATA drivers or lan drivers… This probably was most notorious in the windows 95 to 98 and 98 to me/vista transitions

I agree the reseller sector is remarkably the same when it comes to liquidating leftovers even in this economy. The rule is generally the same, the longer the product is in their hands, the lower their potential profit might become… short of a catastrophic MFG shortage issue coming up (like mfg capacity disappearing in the blink of an eye- as we saw at HDD plants).

[samlar]

I love newegg and have bought from them for years but now I purchased most of my items from Amazon if they have them because newegg went with there Super Eggsaver Shipping that means items that I used to order on one day and get the next take five to six days.
This is because Super Eggsaver means they give it to Fedex who takes at least two days to get it to USPS who then takes 2 or three days to get it to me. With Amazon I have Amazon prime with free shipping.
The last two items I order from newegg I could have purchased for the same price from Amazon and had them in two days.

[JohnVito]

Shipping with the major online retailers has become a crap-shoot these last few months.

In the past B&H Photo was free one day shipping via UPS Ground as I’m right over the river in NJ. Now can take up to 10 days to get an item with free shipping as the item will be handed off to different carriers.

I ordered from Amazon and tracking revealed the item arrived via UPS to the USPS NJ center in three days… from there it went down the Delaware for a day or two, then up to Maine for a visit, then down to North Carolina for a visit and eventually back to NJ for deliver. No wonder USPS is in trouble.