Poll: Scant Demand for Windows 8

By Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft (MSFT) bills Windows 8 as a "re-imagining" of the personal computer market's dominant operating system, but the company still has a lot of work to do before the makeover captures the imagination of most consumers, based on the results of a recent poll by The Associated Press and GfK.

The phone survey of nearly 1,200 adults in the U.S. found 52% hadn't even heard of Windows 8 leading up to Friday's release of the redesigned software.

Among the people who knew something about the new operating system, 61% had little or no interest in buying a new laptop or desktop computer running on Windows 8, according to the poll. And only about a third of people who've heard about the new system believe it will be an improvement (35%).

Chris Dionne of Waterbury, Conn., falls into that camp. The 43-year-old engineer had already seen Windows 8 and it didn't persuade him to abandon or upgrade his Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) laptop running on Windows 7, the previous version of the operating system released in 2009.

"I am not real thrilled they are changing things around," Dionne said. "Windows 7 does everything I want it to. Where is the return on my investment to learn a new OS?"

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Microsoft usually releases a new version of Windows every two or three years, but it's different this time around. Windows 8 is the most radical redesign of the operating system since 1995, and some analysts consider the software to be Microsoft's most important product since co-founder Bill Gates won the contract to build an operating system for IBM Corp.'s (IBM) first personal computer in 1981. Microsoft is hoping the way Windows 8 looks and operates will appeal to the growing number of people embracing the convenience of smartphones and tablets.

The consumer ambivalence, however, was even more pronounced when it came to Microsoft's new tablet computer, Surface, which was built to show off Windows 8's versatility. Sixty-nine percent of the poll's respondents expressed little or no interest in buying a Surface, which Microsoft is hoping will siphon sales from Apple's (AAPL) pioneering iPad and other popular tablets such as Amazon.com's (AMZN) Kindle Fire and Google (GOOG) Nexus 7.

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