Dark light in the distribution of Windows 8 machines

It's been two weeks since the release of Windows 8 and the arrival of the more than 1000 devices that support it. And their presence in the major establishments where you might expect to be able to tinker with the new gadgets is, to put it mildly, very unrepresentative

Complicated start, Surface remains outside our borders

The first splash of cold water was at the Windows 8 presentation press conference where, when asked, they announced that our expected Surface would only reach England, Germany and France.Leaving Spain for a second wave, for which there is no scheduled date.

"On the contrary, at the event and immediately after at Fnac, I was able to enjoy dozens of devices of all kinds with Windows 8: RT tablets, PRO tablets, touchscreen ultrabooks, hybrid ultrabooks, touchscreen laptops , portable hybrids, huge 19+ tablets, even a 23+ all-in-one."

So, after a couple of days and with my eyes full of touch screens I went to the main consumer electronics stores in Madrid. And there came the surprise that it wasn't that there were few, it's that there wasn't even one Not a single device.

Almost three weeks have passed since then, the Christmas promotions just started, and the panorama continues to be bleak. Not so much anymore because the ">can mostly only be tested on a non-touch-enabled laptop, which inevitably causes rejection by users who don't understand Modern UI and are unaware of the mere existence of the desktop.

But there's more, the very few Windows 8 touch-enabled PCs have zero software selection. Next door, at a huge table full of computers, we have the iPads with applications for children to play or paint, adults to see or take photos and a display very well thought out to attract and bind them all. On the other hand, Windows 8 tablets come with the default software... and that's it.

Even an early adopter like this writer got bored with an ultrabook until I finished downloading a simple finger painting program.

Barriers to entry for Windows 8 computers

Knowing the commercial and economic power of Microsoft, the difficulty of the arrival of Windows 8 devices to the Spanish market deserves reflection, especially when the tables of devices in the USA are enough to fill several pages.

So the first barrier to entry is the omnipresent crisis Windows 8, unlike the previous version of the operating system, is primarily designed for special hardware that has been built by hardware manufacturers, and is in dire straits all over the western world.

So everything related to promotion, marketing, and leaving hundreds of units in stock as a way to promote your devices, is something really expensive in the measure of the effort on dwindling budgets.

Risking millions of euros on products that have just come out of the oven, in fact most of those seen in the events that I refer to above were prototypes, is a bet that right now the big manufacturers cannot afford .

And here we come to the second big barrier: why am I going to risk my budget on a promotion like this when I have entire families of Windows 7 productsthat, when the touch screens reach the market, they will be replaced by second-generation devices, and that they are also selling very well?

In addition to this same question, national distributors and stores join their long shelves full to bursting with notebooks, ultrabooks, laptops and even PCs that they will want to sell before the new ">

And it is that, added to everything I am pointing out, establishments must make an effort to train their salespeople. That it is not the limited range of Apple, or the known material that they have been selling and advising on for years. No, vendors should be aware of devices that are radically different in both features and user experience, and in large numbers.

Conclusions, we will have to wait

Unless there is radical change and many millions of dollars behind it, I think it's safe to say that this is not going to be the Christmas campaign for Windows 8 devices What's more, if the rate of arrivals continued as it is today, we would have to wait until spring to have a representative catalog of the hundreds of Windows 8 devices that are certified for immediate sale.

Which is a shame, since until then the majority of the general public will continue to think that there are only three options: Apple, Android or Windows 7. When I can attest to the paradigm shift that the touch user experience in Windows 8 and its great virtues