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Ballmer Says Vista Selling Really Well
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat May 24, 2008 09:52 AM
from the yeah-but-to-who dept.
from the yeah-but-to-who dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling 'incredibly well,' he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today. 'Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,' the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on '45 percent of all of new business PCs.' Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice." Anyone know anybody who bought Vista except as bundled with hardware?
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Submission: Vista Selling really well, says Ballmer by Anonymous Coward
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Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Informative)
Even Time magazine has notice Microsoft is "an Empire in rapid decline" [time.com].
Who's this message directed at? The last people he's going to fool are corporate users. Home users continue to avoid buying new computers because what they have is working just fine. Even if he could convince them to go buy, they have a giant selection of $500 and less Vista failure laptops to chose from if they don't just buy a $300 EEE PC with GNU/Linux.
Re:Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista is Microsoft's new windfall.
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Re:Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course Ballmer is going to say Vista is selling well. What TF else is he going to say? He has to lie to his shareholders to keep the stock up, or else they'll run out of funding and won't be able to crush their competition.
If Microsoft had to survive on the merits of their products, they'd have been gone a long, long time ago.
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Bad Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bad Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
so... 90% of them have stated whether or not they hate vista? You do realize that your phrasing would include satisfied people in those 90%. But I'll assume that you meant that 90% hated it. You are providing technical support for those people! Of course they aren't happy with something. They screwed something up on their computer, and they are blaming Vista for it.
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Re:Bad Vista (Score:4, Informative)
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He is saying that new PCs are selling well (Score:4)
I believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd been around on slashdot for more than a few minutes, you'd know it doesn't have an overall political bias (other than the disproportionately large libertarian representation, which is true of both the Internet user population in general and tech industry in particular).
In 2003, Slashdot was a "conservative" website, because most Americans were in support of invading Iraq and let their opinions be known in their comments. Now, when the majority of American opinion has turned against the war, it should be no shock that the majority opinion here has as well.
If you think Slashdot in general has a particular ideological bias, that's pretty much proof that you're the one with a strong and irrational ideological bias, and that you're more interested in disparaging anyone who disagrees with you and claiming the role of victim than in doing anything intellectually honest or productive.
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faint praise (Score:5, Insightful)
Customers want both. (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely not! This isn't an either or choice. Your customers want both! That's why, many of your customers are moving to patforms that offer both. 45% businesses choose Vista? What about the other 55% of businesses?. What did they choose - hmmmmm?
Re:Customers want both. (Score:4, Informative)
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I can't disagree (Score:5, Funny)
People like Vista because it's shiny (Score:5, Insightful)
They experience Vista's problems and huge system requirements, but they keep using it anyway. Maybe it's because they don't want to admit to themselves that they indirectly bought garbage. But I think it's because they want the newest, shiniest product, regardless of whether it's better.
Fact: most people are MORONS.
For Compatibility Testing (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought a copy for compatibility testing that I run in a virtual machine. A side benefit is that I get to compare versions of Windows side-by-side. It's enlightening. Vista is slower in every respect than its predecessors, and it's more difficult to use.
On the other hand, it is shinier.
Not willingly.. (Score:5, Informative)
We're an HP value-add reseller and we can't get xw4400 workstations without vista. We had to request a downgrade kit (they will only give 1 to each business address, even though we order hundreds of these a year) and then downgrade them to XP.
I had some friends who have it on their new laptops...
boughtVista (Score:5, Informative)
I know two people. One is now using XP, and the other got so mad he bought a Mac.
Sells well when you have no choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Volume licenses (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes for Server 2008. I bought a Server 2008 open license edition and promptly installed server 2003. I needed it for an accounting app, but I wasn't going to install 2008...I don't trust it. Besides, servers should NEVER require activation or validation! EVER! That's a deal-breaker IMO.
(Don't worry, that server 2003 instance is only a VM running on a linux box.)
So what have we learned? That just because their FUCKED UP licensing model REQUIRES you to buy the new license in order to use the older, more functional versions doesn't mean that the product is a success. That ambulatory heap of festering dogshit that calls itself "Steve Ballmer" really has nothing to crow about.
Do they count "downgrade rights" as a Vista sale? (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterfeit sales (Score:5, Interesting)
Or at least that's how I understood the deal. Correct me if I'm wrong.
db
old machine / new machine crossroad (Score:5, Insightful)
Why am I using the past here? because, for the first time since I started 20 years back, I see absolutely no use changing to a new machine. I use Excel. I use Access.there are some other apps that work well on XP. my machine is 3 years old, in the prime of an optimized and no nonsense life. I do not play big computer games at work. THAT's the real problem with Vista. Users have to change/upgrade machine to use Vista. what for?
I think that business users might go to Linux, but what they'd really want would be to stay as they are for years to come.
It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Informative)
PC Magazine's editor sure gave Vista the thumbs down [slashdot.org]. The only thing any of my friends ever tell me is that "It looks nicer" so they like it but they have more problems with it than XP. That kind of opinion does not make me want to risk buying a new PC.
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Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Informative)
Misleading. 32 bit Vista can only access 3.1GB without a hardware hack called PAE [msdn.com] which will not work with all software.
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Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Informative)
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PAE is not a hack (Score:5, Informative)
PAE is a feature of the modern x86 architecture, just like MMX or SSE. It was introduced with the Pentium Pro in 1995 (13 years ago!), and has been standard since the Pentium II (1997). PAE increases the number of address lines from 32 to 36. It also adds a new mode to the x86 MMU (Memory Management Unit) which supports 36-bit hardware addresses. The new mode adds a third level to the page table structure, in facilitate a larger page table entry size.
Both Vista and XP enable PAE, but with a major caveat. Both avoid using any hardware address above the 4 GiB mark because it turns out a lot of drivers can't handle such. That includes drivers which ship with Windows -- and Microsoft takes on part of the support burden of those. (Microsoft doesn't support third-party (non-WHQL) drivers and never has.)
The reason both OSes enable PAE mode is to get NX (No Execute bit) support. (NX is used as a defense against code injection due via buffer overrun. Microsoft calls it DEP (Data Execution Prevention).) The NX bit is only present in the larger page table entries. So they enable PAE -- and take the performance hit of the third level of page table lookup -- but don't actually use the larger hardware address word.
So anyway, because the OSes can't use hardware above 4 GiB, they (re)configure all your peripheral hardware to exist within the 4 GiB space. That includes configuration space, ROMs, buffers, video memory, the AGP aperture, memory mapped hardware I/O (DMA), etc. Any RAM at those addresses gets "shadowed" and is not accessible to the OS.
Linux doesn't have this problem -- it's been 64-bit clean for years, and will happily put your peripheral hardware above 4 GiB. (One can still run into problems with motherboards, BIOSes, and/or expansion cards which don't support hardware addresses > 32 bits, though. Some motherboards don't have the PAE lines "wired". Some BIOSes just don't support it. And some 32-bit PCI cards don't support DAC (Dual Address Cycle), which would let them accept a 64-bit address.)
But to support a hardware address > 32 bits with Windows, you either need to run the x86-64 versions of Windows, or run Advanced/Enterprise Server. (The "Standard" version of Windows Server is limited in the same way as Win XP/Vista.)
Note that all of the above is about hardware addresses -- the actual address lines coming out of the x86 chip. The virtual address space is still limited to 32 bits and 4 GiB. And all software -- including the OS kernel -- use the virtual address space for practically all operations. But with PAE, you can at least have multiple processes which total to more than 4 GiB.
(There are also techniques which let a 32-bit process make use of more than 4 GiB of RAM, such as bank switching (memory windowing). But such techniques are cumbersome at best. Ultimately, a 32-bit process can only directly access 4 GiB of memory. You need long mode (x86-64/AMD64) to get a 64-bit virtual address space.)
(Windows further limits most 32-bit user processes to 2 GiB, reserving 2 GiB for the kernel. There's a BOOT.INI switch which changes that split to 3 GiB for userland and 1 GiB for the kernel. But unless a program was specifically compiled to support that, it will still only use 2 GiB. And robbing 1 GiB from the kernel can impact performance in other ways.)
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Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
7 reasons a geek should buy OSX, off the top of my head:
- 64-bit OS in all flavors, also works with 32-bits programs/drivers and older machines without 64-bit cpu.
- Backup to DVD-R or CD-R since
- Cheaper than Vista, VPN integrated for networks.
- Time Machine. Much better than restore points.
- Full consistent UI and spotlight. Press Command-Space, type in then name of the file or some meta-data you can set or the content of it, and you get it.
- Full bash support from the ground up. Free developer tool-chain, with some tools (e.g. Dashcode or Quartz Composer) easy to use to the non-coder people.
- Expose, Dashboard, Spaces, iWeb, iPhoto, etc etc. YMMV on the usefulness of those.
- Support for Zeroconf (Bonjour), which is still not there on Vista.
I've been buying Macs for some times now, and haven't thrown a computer yet. All upgraded to Leopard and still fully functional in its full G4 glory.Parent
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
- User control sucks, and it sucks to code for. Yeah, it can be disabled, but you can't count on that in your apps - and it's a bitch on older software.
- Many apps and games are broken. Obvious point. - It takes damn-near twice the processing power and memory that XP does, no matter how you look at it.
- They're artificially forcing it down people's throats by trying to restricting software to be Vista-only when it'd run fine (possibly better) on XP.
- Mostly all the menus and configurations were changed. I say changed and not improved, because they haven't improved (from my point of view).
- Many misc UI changes. See previous point.
Short summary, there is no good reason for me to be wanting Vista, aside from the fact that MS and other companies (most likely for extra money from MS) are trying to force it down my throat. (Besides, the effective forcing [and quit the "you have a choice" crap - that shit doesn't apply in the real world] sounds like monopoly abuse to me. -- And for the record, I don't even hate Microsoft. They *can* make excellent software, and I use Windows XP Professional exclusively.)
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Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the point of upgrading?
And, more importantly, by doing this, your experience is not a typical vista experience for the average user.
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Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Interesting)
Serious question.
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Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with Vista is that Microsoft was not up front about what you really needed to run it; many "Vista Ready" machines -- weren't. On top of that, Vista went out without drivers for a lot of things, which is a lot of the point of using Windows over something better -- better hardware support.
I think Vista is largely a mixed bag; it was released beta quality, which (in part) probably contributes to its heroic resource demands on hardware. Even the early MacOS 10 releases were pretty inefficient. But with respect to beta software being released as production ready, I'd the same thing about Ubuntu Hardy. It's not really release quality IMHO. However, its easier to take a few lumps on an upgrade if it is (a) free and (b) optional.
And that, I think, is a big part of the reason for Vista hatred. People have decided they don't like riding the upgrade merry-go-round. They got to the point they felt like they could live with XP; they'd probably pay good money for an improved XP. What they got was something which was not as radical as intended (no WinFS), but sufficiently radical to be noticeably rocky and resource intensive. Some of the changes in Vista are unqualified improvements, some of the changes are defensible with implementation faults (UAC and Windows File Protection), and some are there to support Microsoft's agenda alone (DRM).
We may be in an era where customers don't want to be dragged kicking and screaming into a vendor's vision for the future. They'd rather see consistent, incremental improvements. Even the minor changes Microsoft makes in situations like this are starting to piss people off, like renaming control panel applets.
People may not be happy about having to pay for MacOS upgrades, but they're getting incremental improvements on a known quantity. Likewise, I think Ubuntu Hardy is a bit rocky, but the changes are intended to be much the same: incremental improvements on a known quantity. And it's asymptotically approaching that point.
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Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using it regularly on a new laptop since January and I absolutely despise it. I'm also really sick of seeing people say what you did: just because YOU like it doesn't mean all the people saying it sucks don't really hate it. I'm sure there are some that bitch about it who haven't tried it, but then again I'm sure there are some who claim it's great who haven't tried it either so they balance out.
So why do I hate Vista? I have several very good reasons:
There are other things but they're more minor, the above cut into my productivity the most for no good reason. I've given Vista a chance but it's days are looking numbered, I'm probably going to go to XP Pro soon as I'm tired of Vista wasting my time.
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Re:Vista not so bad (Score:4, Informative)
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Sales of Windows off 24% (Score:5, Informative)
It's remarkable how he can paint a happy face on the steepest decline in the history of the company [bloomberg.com].
If his figures are correct, the PC market just experienced the largest contraction ever and nobody noticed. Especially odd in that Intel's operating income is up 23% [newsoxy.com]. Top PC seller HP's net income is up 16% on strong notebook sales [wsj.com] and huge growth in emerging markets. Lenovo is reporting a 17% increase in sales on strong global demand [pcworld.com].
Is anybody besides Microsoft seeing this decline? Is somebody lying to Ballmer? "Gee, no, Steve. Business is off everywhere. It's a recession. People adore Vista. You can put the chair down now."
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We worry more than other people (Score:5, Interesting)
On my Linux box if a website manages to get a popup window open without asking, that's a major security breach requiring immediate examination and correction.
On the average user's Window's box an unexpected new browser toolbar, websites that redirect to unfamiliar places and a short game of Kill the popups [heavygames.com] is such a common part of the landscape that people just don't notice them until they render the computer completely unusable [splasho.com].
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Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
In order for your comment to be true the exact opposite of what I illustrated happening in my post must be happening. Since I provided links, it would be fair to ask you for some.
PC sales are up in a big way in units, dollars of sales and dollars of profit. Windows sales are off by 24%. Make of that what you will. I choose to believe that Microsoft is getting a lot less for Windows than they used to especially in emerging markets, they're bleeding share on high end retail units and they've fully booked the sales under Software Assurance. I also choose to believe this is because nobody wants Vista, especially on the cost effective platforms that don't run it well.
We have run the circle:
We're back at nothing but XP for you. All your base are belong to XP. Now you just also have to take the Vista License so they can book another Vista sale for their marketeering. That way Ballmer can say stuff like "almost 100% of retail PCs are Vista." If you'll remember, Saddam Hussein also got 100% of the "popular vote" in the last election before his execution. At least they aren't making you take a SuSE coupon as well -- yet.
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Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:5, Insightful)
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HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc not interested in $E3? (Score:5, Funny)
All of them have their $4,000 laptops and Media Centers, but Apple sells twice as many as them combined. Tell me another good joke about vendors not being interested in high margin business and I'll tell you a good joke about a $400 OS and a $450 Office suite. Steve Ballmer is blowing smoke from his crack pipe.
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Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:5, Interesting)
My old XP laptop with half the specs does things faster than vista. I had some hopes for SP1, but so far I've seen no real improvement... As far as I'm concerned, vista made things shiny, added a few handy but hardly necessary features, and slowed down my machine.
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Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:5, Insightful)
So speak for yourself. Many people hate it, and almost no companies are upgrading.
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Re:The Question (Score:5, Funny)
You'll be stuck in engineering forever. With that attitude, you'll never make it into marketing.
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Re:The Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think working in Marketing should be a capital offense.
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Why Marketing's behind consistently gets kissed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The Slashdot Stepfords (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not helping the statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not true at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway here is the conversation I have been having Quite a lot lately:"Can I ask you a question?"..Sure,that's what I'm here for,shoot."I heard that you won't be able to get anything other than Vista come (insert wrong date,usually Xmas),is that true?"....Actually it is the last day in June,after that it is Vista only."OMG! My (insert cousin brother sister etc) got that thing and it REALLY sucked! Isn't there anyway YOU could get one after that?"....If you buy a retail or OEM copy of XP Home or Pro then I will be able to build you a new computer anytime you want and install XP on it."So it won't have to be an old computer? I can get a new one with Xp if I buy one of those discs?"....As long as you have me or another system builder put your system together you will be able to have a new system with XP. But you won't be able to just go buy a Dell or HP unless you are willing to get Vista."EEEW! No way do I want that! So,how much do you need to order me one of those discs? And I'll be looking for a new machine come(insert date,usually Xmas) can you take the disc then and make me an XP machine?"
Hell,I have been having that EXACT conversation over and over and over. I even have a little graphic artist who has been running WinME(EEW) all these years and he just handed me the cash to order him an OEM to go with the machine he just had me build because he was afraid he would get stuck with Vista. So Ballmer might as well accept the fact that even if Vista SP2 is the second coming, the word is already out there that Vista sucks and trying to change folks minds once they are made up is usually just a waste of breath.
Of course he isn't helping things by killing XP at a time when there are plenty of single core systems with only 512Mb of RAM being sold. By forcing them to run Vista Basic he is reinforcing the perception that Vista is a POS. I have yet to see Vista run as well on a single core as XP. And Vista should NEVER be run on less than 2Gb of RAM,ever! It is just TOO damn painful and thrashes like mad. He could probably IMHO turn it around if he kept XP home for the low end and XP pro for the corporates that have apps that won't play nice and push Vista as the new "elite" OS from MSFT. If he did that as well as get rid of so many different versions(I say Home Premium,Business and Ultimate for retail along with Enterprise for volume licenses) then he might be able to fix the Vista=suck in folks minds. But he isn't going to win by forcing Vista on crappy low end Dells and killing XP,which folks are more comfortable with. But that is my 02c,YMMV
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Re:Somebody is stuck in the 80s (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi I'm a mac. and I'm a PC
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