PC Makers Say Vista Is Not a Seller 319
TekkaDon writes "According to computer and component manufacturers, Vista is not the hotcake that they were hoping for. Take Acer's president, Gianfranco Lanci, who has just said that 'PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry.' Or Samsung Electronics, who now says that DRAM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections, something that is being echoed by the industry as a whole. This seem to agree with Ars Technica article on the 20 million Vista copies sold as a 'huge success' by Microsoft, which can be accounted for by the natural growth of PC sales over the years."
Re:Well, this is pretty interesting: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A month and no success? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Many companies are holding back (Score:3, Informative)
I'm unsure what you are talking about. There *is* a market of XP licenses already, and it always was, and probably will be for a while. I know because I build XP boxes, and the price of a license is today quite acceptable [tigerdirect.com], just about the cost of a motherboard, or about 1/3 of a decent CPU, or about 15% of the total cost of the hardware. Since these licenses are 100% legitimate the WGA will not stop you.
Re:no UP button in explorer? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Well, this is pretty interesting: (Score:2, Informative)
6 - Statistics and studies only show you what they want you to see
MS is counting the Vista Upgrade coupons into those numbers (the 20 million). NOT the used coupons... the total coupons "given out" (ie: 12 million PCs sold during the qualifying period, 12 million coupons... and 8 million machines with Vista or copies purchased to upgrade - figures for example purposes only).
What are the actual figures? Who knows? MS isnt telling. And to count the "coupons" would require the OEMs and retailers to produce their numbers alongside MS's - which hasnt happened either.
The "facts" in MS's claims are thus irrelevant. Oh, and who cares? Vista will be the de-facto standard on PCs soon enough. And yes, there are vendors selling XP machines (usually XP Pro for businesses), but I am expecting that will phase out as well. An expectation that Vista would drive the market is retarded... some retailers though, counted on MS' promise that it would (a promise I heard them give to CompUSA - who sold 1/10th the machines and Vista upgrades they had projected to do). Therein lies the problem... MS created ridiculous expectations, and upper management in many companies (retailers and OEMs alike) listened and believed, while us grunts in the field couldnt believe anyone would be counting on such a ridiculous expectation. If you had any clue as to the $$$$ some of the retailers expected to make on the Vista launch, you'd be wondering what their management was smoking...
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't see people rushing out to buy hw now (Score:2, Informative)
Funny I don't think you're that far off, all you have to do to get an XP box is go to the business section of any large vendor. The more people that know that, the more it will happen. Come school time I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't at least somewhat common knowledge, it was a well kept secret that you could get Windows 2000 for a long time after XP came out. I don't think the secret will be that well kept this time.
Dell DOES sell naked PCs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What sucks about the Windows UI? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What Linux should do (Score:3, Informative)
The web management is very nice and it will even act as an NT Primary domain controller for single sign on to a domain out of the box, with Samba shares, ftp, and email. It can act as your firewall/gateway or as just a stand alone server. It is based on CentOS 4.4 and it is great for home or small business servers with WindowsXP clients.
How about some drivers (Score:2, Informative)
1. Both AMD/ATi and Nvidia drivers give crappy performance, and the newest hardware generation of G80's BSOD'd in XP, and slows down (granted not a huge amount, but it slows down) in vista. Yes, I have a G80.
2. Creative sound card drivers are virtually non existant. What good is my 7.1 surround sound if it doesn't work?
3. What does vista do for 'me'? (actually quite a lot but that's beside the point). People don't know why their computer is slow when it has 500 different pieces of spyware and half a dozen viruses, why on earth would they conclude a more secure operating system with help them (or one advertised as such)? Without a minimal ability to diagnose existing problems (hmm my car is on fire kind of problems, not there's a crack in an O-ring kind of problem) people don't appreciate what, if anything vista would do for them.
4. Deserved bad press. UAC is braindead. I can buy UAC as a firewall style app (first time you click on an app is yay or nays it, if it changes it yay or nays it). As it is, it's unnecessarily annoying. Yes, I really did click on control panel.
5. If I'm going to buy vista which version is right for me? What's the difference between 32 and 64 bit? Why don't my 4 Gigs of ram work? It's too damn confusing. Vista should have two versions: Home, and Corporate. Home should more or less be vista ultimate. Corporate should be well, corporate, enterprise licenses, no media center that sort of stuff. Oh and they should only come in a 64 bit flavour, or only a 32 bit flavour, not this crazy half and half.
6. People who have vista have no great reason to be happy. Lots of apps don't work. If I show vista (I have vista on two machines) to people the first thing they notice as a bad idea is the start menu-> programs is all compacted. Exact oppposite of what should have happened compared to XP. Critical interface design flaw.
7. Do I give a shit about wigits or whatever they're called? No.
8. Upgrading. Given all of the above, and the bunch of backwards compatability issues (related mostly to 16 bit installers, and popular apps like itunes), why would I want to necessarily replace my system, with whatever flaws it has, at least those I know something about. There's no sense intentionally breaking applications I already use.
9. Critical apps (ie antivirus, which people usually don't bother to update or use properly but know enough to purchase, thinking that will help, even if they don't install it), don't all come in working vista versions off the same shelf.
I think the critical points are more hardware vendors than MS's fault (and to some extent this applies to any OS), without useful drivers the hardware just doesn't work. Some of that stuff is just 'well on a new system you get vista' kinda thing. And some of it will be rectified with time, installers compatability etc... XP had some backwards compatability issues, it apparently still has some driver issues etc... and it still rules the roost, Vista will likely get there, but MS could have made this a lot easier on themselves and everyone else.