Our fine, fine friends at Avast software managed to publish a ginormous survey of potential Windows 8 users today, and have indicated that a lot of people are considering a switch to the Mac and OS X. In fact, one-third of of those looking to upgrade to Windows 8 from XP, Windows 7, and Vista are considering making the switch. Not very good news for Avast, but excellent news for the fine folks at Apple.
Of the 350,000 customers polled by Avast, 42 percent of Windows users were looking to buy a Mac (12 percent), or an iPad (30 percent). USA Today published some of the findings today on its website: “Avast’s poll of U.S. Windows users found 16% planned to purchase a new computer. While 68% indicated they would get one of the new Windows 8 models, 30% planned to buy an Apple iPad touch tablet, and 12%, an Apple Macintosh computer.”
We’ve had a long history with Avast, and we feel it’s important to point out that the company is an antivirus company. The poll, conducted by Avast, would be of that demographic and the users that install that type of software package. We should probably also take that perspective while looking at these numbers. People are tired of pre-installed crap. Those people are switching to better platforms with less bloat. USA Today also pointed out that most people today are keeping their computers longer and buying iPads as secondary computing devices.
The computer will always remain in our lives, but when it comes to home usage and normal daily computing practices like email, surfing the Internet, and conducting quick research on the couch while watching your favorite sitcom, the iPad is pretty much the perfect device. If anything, we wouldn’t be surprised if we found evidence that suggested that most Windows users are leaving behind computers and moving to a more tablet friendly, iPad world in their homes. Heck, given the Surface push from Microsoft, it’s pretty obvious that the folks in Redmond are seeing the same kind of things the rest of us are at this point: tablets are the new home computer. Scratch that, iPads are the new home computer. People are tired of being locked in a home office when they get home from the actual office. Checking email shouldn’t mean being chained to the desk.
