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."
Why would it drive demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
if it aint broke (Score:3, Insightful)
most windows machines out in circulation now would need an upgrade for vista.
Unless you are buying a new machine, why bother?
Re:A month and no success? (Score:5, Insightful)
poor drivers = poor customer perception (Score:2, Insightful)
I think once the dust has settled and there are more success-cases around then momentum will rapidly pick up!
(example #1 = me. I've used Linux on the desktop for the last 5 years - and it's Vista that's making me change back to Windows. Can't even be arsed to repair my aging Mac Powerbook. Yes it is still windows, but its such a giant leap forward...)
How many are unused Vista upgrades? (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly know I'm not going to install Vista unless I absolutely have to, for the same reason I only switched to XP with my new computer a few months ago. It'll be interesting to see when the first pieces of Vista-only hardware come out - likely new DirectX-oriented video cards.
Ryan Fenton
I don't see people rushing out to buy hw now (Score:3, Insightful)
But I am always called insane here at
Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception (Score:4, Insightful)
Rubber demand curve (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not analyst, but stagnant windows platform isn't living up to its promises, people will be forced to look elsewhere. Elsewhere as in Ubuntu desktop, OS X. Whichever. It will take time.
Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:5, Insightful)
On a more sober note. Maybe this is a testament to the quality of XP. Up until win2000 windows sucked. With win2000 the interface still sucked. XP made big strides in making the interface less sucky.
The point is that every generation of Windows (excluding Bob and ME) has not only an enormous improvement over the last, but almost at the level of an emergency repair that could not be foregone any longer. Thus it drove sales. Any idiot could see why each generation was desirable over the hell they where in.
Maybe with XP the quality finally reach a level where migrating to the next big thing was no longer an emergency. XP had sufficiently good behaviour that the operating system no longer drives sales.
So this time it's going to be the applications that drive sales. You won't upgrade your existing system till the apps start to need whatever Vista has that XP does not do well. Probably this will be some combination of 64bits/video
So Microsoft's big need is the Killer App that only runs well on Vista. You got it?
Re:Why would it drive demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, this is pretty interesting: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:5, Insightful)
Less sucky in what way? Anyone who knows how uses the classic start menu and control panel. The only thing that really leaves is the theme and anyone who is at all concerned about performance uses the windows classic theme.
Re:A month and no success? (Score:3, Insightful)
I fail to see why Vista's possible failure should be seen as "apocalyptical". Ford survived the Edsel and the Pinto fiascos, IBM survived the PS2 insanity and OS/2. Big companies sometimes make big mistakes. If Vista proves to be a mistake, then if Microsoft has been managing its resources properly, it will be able to pick itself up and tag along after whoever emerges as the new market leader. Nothing particularly apocalyptic, or even catastrophic, about that. Merely a normal change from industry leader to trailing the pack, that every corporation that has any history has experienced from time to time.
If the reader thinks that a failure by Microsoft would somehow mean the collapse of cyberspace, then the reader should take a look at Unix and Ubuntu. Those two OSs bracket everything Microsoft has ever produced: one on the high end, the other on the low end. Both do what they do extremely well. If some kind of void begins to open where Microsoft products used to be, it will be filled quite rapidly from above and below. No worries there.
The only thing approaching disaster is the economic well being of people who have invested too heavily in Microsoft stock. But that would not be the fault of Vista failing to catch on. That would mostly be the fault of a management style characterized by chair-throwing, monkey-dancing, potty-mouthed threats of using lethal force against people Microsoft management doesn't like. Microsoft would probably be better off if it had a businessman at the helm.
If Vista proves to be a failure, it won't be apocalyptic, nor catastrophic, nor even particularly harmful. We'll all just continue to use Win XP until we're ready to hop over to Ubuntu and Wine, or IBM resurrects OS/2, or Apple decides to market to just plain folks instead of concentrating on the rich snobs.
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:2, Insightful)
Err....
WinXP = Win2k + overly large and garish buttons that consume vastly more resources? As to a killer-app for Vista, my current thought on that is "Crysis".
Re:Well, this is pretty interesting: (Score:4, Insightful)
This matters why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe user (whoever the hell he is), does not reinstall his OS. Christ, most users have no concept of what an OS is. They buy a PC, they use what comes on it. That's why Linux will never really take off on the home desktop until a large vendor has real success selling pre-installed Linux PCs. Hopefully, Dell are about to do just that.
Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is, however is that because Microsoft put out Vista, the drivers *will* get fixed, one way or another, and in pretty short order.
Will that happen with Linux? Eventually, yes maybe. The situation is definitely a hell of a lot better than it was 11 years ago when i started using Linux, but it's a long way behind.
Is it fair that virtually all the Linux drivers are written by volunteers, often without hardware specs? No, of course not - but in the real world, "but that's not fair?!" won't cut it. Results are what people are concerned about.
Linux really is *almost there* and once the hardware devs jump on board in a big way, it will get critical mass and start becoming more competitive. Unfortunately at the moment it's on the edge of that "chicken and eg" scenario where hardware (and commercial software) devs won't justify linux driver development for a small market, and the market is small because of driver/commercial software development.
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I gave a shit enough to bother digging up old slashdot posts.
When XP came out, there must have been 100 posts a day (slashdot was actually popular then) complaining about how stupid and childish the XP interface was. It was relentless. Unlike Vista, XP really DIDN'T offer anything Windows 2000 didn't already have, except for the improved interface and related APIs. Ok, it had system restore too - but that was pretty much it.
Personally, I think the Vista interface is far better than XP, which I hated.
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anybody actually want Vista? (Score:2, Insightful)
What sucks about the Windows UI? (Score:5, Insightful)
- Move the mouse pointer to the 'Start' button in the lower left corner,
- click,
- find the 'Programs' item,
- click,
- find the program you want,
- click.
The quick-launch bar was a major improvement but I still like the OS.X dock better because of the magnification feature which makes it easier to hit the icon you want and the fact that the dock is simply easier and quicker to use. The new Windows start menu was, if anything worse than the old one. It had some nice features but it was badly organized. My first action on an XP system is always to set it back to 'classic' lookI'm sure that all these things can either be changed by setting some radio button in a not so easy to find configuration window, tweaked with a third party utility or if all fails modified by changing registry settings but I chose to switch to something that works the way I want it to out of the box and it's into the bargain more secure but that's a matter for a whole other flame-war.
Boycotting Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well, this is pretty interesting: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:if it aint broke (Score:3, Insightful)
Truth in Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Truth is, with product activation required, MS could give you a truthful figure of just how many Vista systems have been activated. But, Nooo, that would be lower number and they wouldn't be able to try and convince the weak-minded that Vista is taking over the world and you need to jump onto the bandwagon now, or be left behind forever. What a load of absolute crap.
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:2, Insightful)
this is not the hotcake you're looking for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista is a solution looking for a problem. Or maybe a problem looking for a solution - it's difficult to say, really. The fact is that Vista is not the OS that people have been waiting for from Microsoft since the inception of Windows 2000.
People don't want more bling in their OS. They are, in almost every subset of user, wanting something which Just Works. Since 1995, we've been bombarded with bling widget after bling widget - multimedia this, multimedia that. Even the candy-ass Fischer Price default theme of Windows XP was too much for most people. Most people are just fine with the Windows interface - and, if they're not (a characteristic usually shared with the ability to do something about it) there are plenty of shell replacements to chose from.
Yet, that is principally what Vista offers: more bling. It does not deliver on any of its meritous promises. It does not improve the underlying operating system to any significant degree. They've crawled out onto a massive monolythic limb and have decided to start chopping firewood by destroying the one thing that has made Windows dominant: its highly marketed user interface. People do not want to learn new things, as a rule, when it's useless to do so. In a way, this is an example of them being an enemy of their own success: the Windows interface has been so widely accepted that it's become standard and expected, and with it installed on the vast majority of machines, why change?
Techies, on the other hand, do not have such a luxury, as it is our job to learn these new things and make them work for everyone else. If they'd only promised on half of the underlying technologies (just fix the infrastructure and security/defaults, thanks), it would've captured the Windows XP market by storm.
Similarly, techies view Vista as just as much of a change to another OS, like MacOS or Linux, without having any of the benefits. What would you get? New incompatibilities and technology without any inherrent gain by switching operating systems. This is Microsoft's own fault - not only for ignoring what people (techies and users) want in their OS, but also for building up a single, monolythic product, unable to be disassociated from any of its individual components and accessories. Where would Linux be if, for every minor kernel release, there was an associated base distro, X, and wm release? Nowhere - probably stuck somewhere around 2.0 still.
Re:Why would it drive demand? (Score:1, Insightful)
While I have no doubt that you and the legions of other *nix fanbois here desperately want that to be true (and, despite all the howling y'all do everytime you think someone's dissing linux by telling you what a pain in the ass it is to use, it's sort of ironic that you're all first in line to scream out any piece of FUD you can dream up about Windows - "do as I say, not as I do" - I suppose eh?) Nevertheless, I digress... I've been running Vista for over a year and it is a marked improvement over XP and anyone who says patently STUPID things like you've just done obviously (a) doesn't really know, (b) has a counter-agenda they're promoting, or (c) is just repeating the FUD they've been told b/c it suits them (which is something of a "both of the above" kind of answer).
BTW: My favourite post in this thread is the AC who pointed out that the "flop" that you're all crowing about vis-a-vis Vista's market share after ~60 days is a higher percentage share of the desktop market than linux has EVER had (unless you only count
Desktop Linux is NEVER going to be a huge hit for neophyte users until you can deliver an operating system WITHOUT A COMPILER that can run any piece of software that you buy or you choose to download. (Hint: Microsoft has been doing that for 20+ years).
Lastly, the VAST bulk of problems Vista experiences today (60 days out from release) is coming from two directions:
In answer to these two things, I'd point out that developers have had access to Vista RC's for over a year. ANYONE who is running software today that isn't Vista compatible should be calling up the vendor and asking WTF they've been doing for the past freaking year? At this point, there's really very little excuse whatsoever for not having Vista ready software, except that the Software and Hardware Vendors have spent the last year+ with their thumbs up their asses and when Feb 1st came around collectively went, "wha? Vista? we have to update our crap? we had no idea...."
-AC
Windows OS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What sucks about the Windows UI? (Score:5, Insightful)
For those who don't know, the quick launch bar was introduced as part of IE 4.0 in 1997, it is by no means a win2k/xp/vista feature. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was disabled by default in XP (but enabled by default in win2k and vista). I believe that in XP microsoft thought the 'recent apps' addition to the start menu replaced the need for quick launch, but by Vista the realized that it did not
Re:What sucks about the Windows UI? (Score:2, Insightful)
In fact, very little about XP's default config makes sense- the recycle bin is down in the lower-right hand corner, making it easily missed at first since it is not where you normally expect it to be (somewhere in the upper left hand corner. also, the "My Computer" icon is nowhere to be seen, casing me to waste my time adding it.
Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a little shortsighted. Large portions have been re-written as managed code, the network stack has been re-written, the security model is different, the audio subsystem is completely new, etc. Time will tell if the re-writing will actually be of any serious improvement, but to pass the whole thing off as mere "bling" is being a little hasty.
After using vista for a couple of weeks, i can think of a number of improvements in the interface that I really miss when going back to XP - the new start menu you can easily scroll through, flip3d (yes, it's kinda lame, but I do miss it, i'm an alt+tab freak, windows+tab makes it easier to find which window you want), the new address bar, etc.
The user interface changes are not massive - they're minor tweaks which do make a difference.
No, they're not killer features, but I'm a lot more happy with the interface changes in vista compared to the changes that happened between Win2k and XP.
But I disagree with your point anyway - the interface is not what has sold windows and kept it there, it's the applications. The Windows interface has been copied plenty by Linux distros and it hasn't helped them at all.
Irrespective of all this, Vista will take off within 18 months as people start requiring more than 4 gigs of RAM. XP doesn't support more than 4gig unless you go to XP 64 bit, which is a dead end product if you ask me...
Re:Dell DOES sell naked PCs (Score:3, Insightful)
There are however some problems in some countries where a naked PC may not be considered a "full working product" when there is no OS on it (because it can't do anything) it is then considered a "spare part" wich creates problems with the warranty (wich may be regulated by law).
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows 2000, and XP after it, made a quantum leap towards relative stability and reliability of the Windows platform. Most peripherals started to work properly from the first try as driver model and manufacturers' experience improved, and BSOD's became a thing of the past -- I remember getting at least one BSOD daily in '98 days, but I don't remember my XP system hanging up or BSODing for at least a year now.
Why would I want to upgrade with all the Vista horror stories?
Re:Oh it's driving demand all right (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista Sales not quite as expected (Score:2, Insightful)
I was one of the first people to adapt to WIN XP when it came OEM with an Athlon 1800, and that product was not nearly completely under control until it was almost four years old! I will wait for Service Pack One to be applied to Vista before I jump this time.