Microsoft Claims a Billion Windows Installs by End of 2008

eldavojohn writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed yesterday that there will be a billion machines running Windows within a year. 'The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach 1 billion. If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept.'"

Quality vs Quantity

[Anonymous Coward]

They are the McDonald's of software

Mind-numbing

[Slider451]

Indeed.

Something fishy?

[kraemate]

How is this possible? Do that many people even have access to a computer?

Re:Something fishy?

[NuSuey]

i guess they count the illegal copies too .. *smile*

Re:Something fishy?

[aleph taw]

some people have more than 1 computer

I know I can count for at least 50...

[rongage]

Let me see... I had to reinstall Windows 12 times on my son's computer, 8 times on my Wife's computer, 5 times on my computer at work, 15 times on my dad's computer, and so on....

Yeah, I can see how Microsoft can claim 1 billion installs - let's see them filter it out to "unique computers" and see where that number goes.

Why surprised?

[gstoddart]

If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept

Not sure why that's so mind-numbing. I personally own more computers than I do cars, and I have my laptop from work. Two out of my three machines are Windows.

I'm sure most of us work in environments where computers outnumber people. And, I'm sure the back-room infrastructure of most IT departments consists of a fair number of machines doing various things. (And, any sufficiently large organization is gonna have at least one IT department/location.) Hell, I bet Microsoft and Google combined have several hundred thousand machines if not more.

Now, I have no idea of how they estimated this 1 billion machines, but I don't find it a surprising number at all -- I bet my office of 50 people has well over 100 computers running Windows, and we're one office in a multi-national corporation.

Cheers

Never subtract! Never Surrender!

[conspirator57]

Add number of instance licenses sold
to maximum population estimates of site license holders
to the highest out-of-thin-air web or internally reported estimate of unlicensed instances
add the results of rolling some chicken bones

Repeat until your number sounds psychologically significant.

But all that's ok. McDonalds still has them beat in the meaningless BS accounting department. They gave up at "Billions and Billions Served" though you can occasionally find one with a number in front of the billions. All things considered, i'd rather have the big mac than windows.

Ah, don't underestimate MS

[tjstork]

There's a lot of good stuff in Windows, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Sure, we know that Linux has a better networking stack now, but, there have been things that Windows does better than Linux and will be so in the future.

a) Windows XP remote desktop is easier to deal with than X remoting.
b) Both KDE and Gnome borrow u/i design heavily from the Windows 95 Start Bar. The concept of COM based shell extensions was looted by KParts.
c) Cairo is essentially a GDI+ me too.
d) There's still nothing in Unix that has the same handy role as a Graphics Device Context.
e) Although I prefer OpenGL for its ease of entry, a lot of big gaming houses seem to prefer DirectX.
f) For a long time, Windows lead in hardware discovery. Linux has closed that gap, I think, but in 1995, I was editing config files to get my X to work with my monitor, and Windows would discover both for me automatically.
g) It's -STILL- easier to install a new piece of software on Windows. Too easy, the security people will refrain... :-)

And, in the applications department, there's really no open source offering that comes remotely close to Visual Studio 2005 and C#, SQL Server 2005, and certainly not even Office 2000, let alone newer versions of Office. Sure, OpenOffice word processing is ok, but the spreadsheet is crap, and the "Access" clone is terrible. On the other hand, C++ for Linux has I think pulled ahead of what MS offers, but only really because MS is standing still in C++. If they got pissed off enough, they'd throw a billion dollars into the language and crush us.

The bottom line is, while you and I and many other people like Linux better than Windows, Windows IS a good product, and pretending that its not won't change it. What will change it,is more software for Linux.

Get typing.

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[tjstork]

What I was talking about though, was that a DC in Windows is device independent. So, in Windows you can have the same set of code for printing as you do for display rendering. I think that's pretty nifty. And, Windows Metafiles too, were interesting. Had Microsoft been smart, they could have built a browser around a WMF hacked up to have hyperlinks. They had all the pieces in place as early as 1992, but, they just didn't see the application.

more PCs than automobiles

[stormi]

"more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles"

Why is this supposed to be surprising? A lot of people don't have cars.

There are peoples in cities, who have taxis, buses, subways, trains, carpooling, bikes, legs, etc.

There are people in the countryside, farms etc, who may not have need of a car because they walk or use animals on their land.

There are teens and college students everywhere who are likely to have a computer and not yet have a vehicle.

If anything, that car analogy makes the numbers seem a lot less staggering.

Re:more mind-numbing...

[ArsenneLupin]

and don't forget boats for that matter: Windows for Warships (not a joke)

This "Windows for Warships" link is funnier:
Windows NT Crashes, Leaving U.S.S. Yorktown Dead in the Water [coneslayer.org]
Ha!

Re:Moderators!

[Reverend528]

It's a very successful troll post. Look at some of these claims:

no open source offering that comes remotely close to ... SQL Server 2005

OpenOffice word processing is ok, but the spreadsheet is crap, and the "Access" clone is terrible.

Not to mention the fact that he complains about having to manually configure X for his monitor in 1995.

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[plague3106]

Ok, please explain to me, what is wrong with Windows scheduling, timesharing, fault tolerance, response, file system and networking. It seems to provide those very nicely, and any developer can tap into those features as well. Be specific, repeating your statement doesn't make it true.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Mind-numbing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this "mind-numbing"? I own 1 working car and 4 working computers (not counting work computers and servers). How many students have computers and no car? I would have thought computers would have surpasses cars a while ago.

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[jZnat]

Try out a LiveCD of Ubuntu or Kubuntu to see how well your hardware works (which should all work based on what you've said).

For image editting, on Kubuntu (or any KDE-based distribution really), try out Krita which is a lot more similar to Photoshop than Gimp ever will be. There is also cinepaint for an Aperture-like program.

For video editting, there's Kino and Cinelerra (I don't believe this is in the repository, so installing it isn't as easy as tick the box -> install). There is also Avidemux, but that seems to be more suited for small edits and transcoding videos (GNOME program as well, not that it matters if you don't care about desktop environments).

For office, check out KOffice (faster and better than OpenOffice.org).

For video, you can still use VLC of course, but you can also check out Kaffeine with libxine1-ffmpeg and the win32 codecs (download at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html [mplayerhq.hu], get the essential codecs, extract to /usr/local/lib/codecs/; there is probably an easier way to do this via EasyUbuntu or something like that, but this is how I normally do it) for support for everything ever.

If you need more help, you can contact me via Jabber (in profile), or you can go on IRC (Konversation's a good client for that) on Freenode at #kubuntu. There are also the Ubuntu Forums [ubuntuforums.org] as well as alt.os.linux.ubuntu (for some reason, I can't find the group on Google Groups, but it's available in AT&T's Usenet mirror). The community is very friendly and helpful, so don't be shy!

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[plague3106]

Try to run something that uses 100% CPU and then try to do anything else while that happens. What a great scheduler...

I don't have any problems using 100% CPU; when its doing disk operations though there is a slow down, but you have to expect a program hitting the disk that much will slow up other disk operations.

Also, try to fill up your RAM. Kind of hard, isn't it? Windows doesn't seem to think you have as much RAM as you do and starts to swap far too early to be considered useful. This is why people complain about Firefox using $x amount of RAM; Windows starts to swap way too early and causes slowdowns all around.

People complaining that FF uses too much RAM have two issues; one is that the memory used column in Task manager isn't accurate. The second is that there does seem to be a memory leak in FF. As far as swapping goes, i don't see the OS swapping until it is out of physical RAM. Since you want to talk about disk problems though, perhaps you should try Linux an an AMD x2 chip and see what happens.

Try to delete a file that's in use (something you can do in any Unix-like system). File in use? Whoops, can't do that.

Wow, that's the ONE complain about the FS you have? Big deal.. it doesn't let you delete a file in use. The only really ligitimate use of that "feature" is to hide what your program is doing, which a ligitmate process shouldn't need to do anyway.

Also, Windows has jack shit support for more filesystems than their own FAT and NTFS families (both of which get fragmented; modern filesystems prevent that on the fly). Sure, you can get more support via plugins (I believe there are two different ways to make a filesystem plugin for Windows: kernel and shell), but that isn't as reliable as having native support for them. Windows should at least support FFS (fast filesystem, the UNIX/BSD file system of choice for a few decades).

Again, who cares? Ext2 suffers fragmentation as well. The newest NTFS deals with this as well. How many Linux systems go beyond FAT and ext2/3? Not many I'd image. Support is there, sure, but is it useful to the majority of computer users? Nope. Your fringe case when you need more than a few filesystems supported doesn't make Windows a crap OS.

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[dal20402]

I'd suggest Tuxpaint to you and your like.

This sort of comment is exactly what he's complaining about, and a very good reason for someone without an extensive *x bacground to avoid desktop Linux. You just undid all the goodwill that the previous, very informative reply might have generated.

He isn't a computing n00b. If he wants something comparable to Photoshop, and similarly easy to use, don't smugly point him to a kids' drawing program. Just because a program is arcane and difficult to use (GIMP, although it's *slowly* getting better) doesn't automatically mean it's more powerful. Likewise, just because a user seeks a usable program doesn't mean that user is stupid or doesn't need serious functionality.

Given that Linux users needing support have no alternative but to turn to the community, it's pretty unhelpful when the community is rude and condescending.

You can't have it both ways. Either 1) you want Linux to stay the domain of a few self-satisfied, smug nerds, and accordingly never become important on the desktop, or 2) you need to realize there will be users who are new to Linux but, somehow, nevertheless manage to be smart and competent people.

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[plague3106]

Perhaps they did it because they didn't want a program running to be using a specific version of a component, have it unloaded and the next time it loads its a newer version.

You're doing something wrong if this is hitting you all the time during development. I've been developing on Windows for 10 years now, and have not had this features impede my development. Its also trivial to find which process is using the file in question; its called FileMon.

Re:Poor, poor FOSSies

[utopianfiat]

Actually, the reason why Microsoft is showing such an inflated number of installs is people are buying OEM Vista machines, getting fed the fuck up with the OS, and going out and buying a copy of XP, so MS can double-dip their figures.
1 billion installs isn't that much, especially considering that they're probably including numbers from Windows 386 or DOS forward. It just means that some random guy reinstalled so many times that they're counting 1 billion installs.
Is my food tasty, troll?

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually, if you have over a 10% negative response rate, the result is generally bad. Les Gibson in "How to be People Smart" says you will be perceived as a negative person that people do not want to deal with or be friends with if you are negative more than 10% of the time. People generally like to be around people that are pleasant and agree with them. You have to build up a bit of positive credit before you can let loose with a "No."

It takes a lot of positive, supportive words and deeds to guide people to do things. Most people collapse very easily in the face of any challenge, negativity, or rudeness. They are typically very brittle about it too- they think and act like they are completely committed but after 10-20 minutes of seriously struggling with something they are done and want to quit and never deal with it again.

While you may relentlessly attack Linux issues, how well do you handle a single social rejection? A single rude comment by a new group of friends? Perhaps a single failure at trying a new activity like dancing or wood-carving. Learning slow dancing was one of the hardest things I've ever done emotionally- Linux doesn't even compare.

Similarly, a person who is trying out Linux can be turned away by a single negative response. Linux is not their passion. They are just mildly interested in it and a surprisingly small amount of rudeness can drive them away.

And there you have Windows, all cuddly and friendly (and Mac- even MORE cuddly and friendly) waiting with open arms for them.

Re:Poor, poor FOSSies

[Anthony Baby]

Not just OEM Vista, they are surely including OEM installs of every version of Windows. I own Windows 98 four times over despite the fact that I never wanted or even used it, Windows 95 three times, XP Pro once, and XP Home four times.

Re:Ah, don't underestimate MS

[vuffi_raa]

that is the biggest problem with the linux community- there are a lot of snob coders that aren't interested in the multimedia/graphics/audio/video/3d_development side of computing and put it down all of the time. That is what keeps me from switching (and trust me I would love to if it was realistic) but there is no way that I could do in multimedia/graphics/audio/video/3d (hell I can't even on a mac with as little software and hardware support) that I can in windows, though vista can't do a lot of it either so there goes that- I guess my xp system will end up like my atari st and amiga were- holding on for as long as they can until the world realizes what it left behind.