Vista Sales Rate Fell Last Quarter 449
Microsoft is not directly mentioning Vista demand while they brag about how much money they made last quarter, because sales fell. "[Microsoft] shipped approximately 28 million copies of Vista in the latest quarter ended September, or 9.3 million copies per month. Though the Windows developer pointed to 27 percent growth in business licenses and noted that many home users were buying the more lucrative Vista Home Premium or Ultimate editions, the rate represents a decline from the 10 million per month reported early in summer."
What about XP sales? (Score:1, Insightful)
I am beginning to think that Microsoft made Vista as crappy as possible so that whatever "new" version of Windows they come out with after Vista will look like...well, like something actually worth buying.
...What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't this typically the slowest quarter? (Score:1, Insightful)
Followed by a hockey stick type pattern towards the end of the year?
P.S. I'm no Vista user and find nothing compelling for me to upgrade from 2003.
Still outsold all Linuxes combined (Score:1, Insightful)
Those companies that sell Linux's, such as Novell, are chump change compared to the Vista juggernaught. Novell did 21 million dollars of Linux for the 3rd quarter. Microsoft will blow through that in a couple of days of Vista sales... even excluding OEMS. Really, because Linux is open source, there's really no point to selling it at all.
One wonders, too, just how well Linux would survive an economic downturn. With mixed economic signs coming out of the west, one has to imagine that previously generous developers will descend on each other like wolves, when time comes to make mortgage payments.
Vista Ultimate (Score:2, Insightful)
Bitlocker - would love to use it but my laptop has a RAID-0 set of drives so bitlocker just hangs.
Dreamscene - movie instead of wallpaper. Shame I have to open windows that then obscure it *cough*
Texas Holdem - rarely play it
Language packs - yeah - dead useful
err... that's it.
Looking towards the ultimate site - nothing happening of note: http://windowsultimate.com/Default.aspx [windowsultimate.com]
Yawn.
Not news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apart from not being new, this also says nothing about the relative merits of Vista as an OS. In fact, if Vista sales had continued to increase right when people are saving up for the holidays, that would be extremely impressive, and quite unexpected.
Not very surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as folks here love to think that MSFT is a sinking ship, it's having its healthiest growth in years.
Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined (Score:3, Insightful)
As for an economic downturn... something tells me the free OS will do better than the expensive one when everyone suddenly runs out of money...
Nice troll (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens to linux during an economic downturn, what you mean like the one we had when the bubble burst? People all of sudden realized that no, you do NOT require expensive systems to run servers, you can do it with a whiteboxes running linux. You pick up sun gear for a song as all the dotcoms who had splurged on unneeded equipment went bust, while the likes of google (linux) continued on, because they kept their costs under control.
Your troll sounds reasonable, until you remember linux has been around long enough to have seen what you predict, and came out stronger then ever.
As for MS making lots more money, that is true enough (it is also spending a lot more) but if what you say then MS shouldn't feel at all threatned, so why is it acting like it is? You are sayinga mighty lion is not going to be scared by a little dog, while behind you that lion is trying to climb a tree to get away from it.
Most opensource developers already got good jobs, they do this on the side, because they want too. You are predicting that people will stop their hobby when the economy goes bad? A hobby that doesn't really cost anything except time? You got a weird view of human nature.
I got a next troll for you, linux will die when the developers discover girls.
Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason Vista is selling (Score:5, Insightful)
The business market has a little more choice available (XP is still being sold to businesses), and Windows XP is still the big seller.
So what does this tell us? When there is a choice, XP is purchased instead of Vista. Microsoft tis so desperate to make it appear as if Vista is selling, that they are counting the Vista->XP "downgrade" as a Vista license in use.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand the play by play of each sale of Vista. The above is a fairly relevant question. Along with the summary "they brag about how much money they made last quarter". That is the bottom line. Most computers come with Microsoft software, even if the user does not intend to use the software. At work, most of the desktop and laptops PCs come with windows preinstalled (~90+%), and we either put Linux on them or a site licensed version of Windows XP.
Where I work, like 70 or more percent of the users prefer Linux as the OS. So, today in 2007, regardless of whether we use Windows or Linux, Microsoft gets a cut. How does Vista even come into the picture?
Another thing is that desktop OSes have stagnated. AFAIK, there is nothing significantly different between Windows 2000 and Vista (I'm not a Windows person, so give me some leeway here). That is 7 years of supposed progress. Sure there may be driver updates, and I believe that directX for games is limited on 2k, but the core features are about the same.
My point is that MS has to keep doing _something_ to stay somewhat current, but when it comes down to it, they have established themselves almost like the government in that they simply get a cut of everything anyone does. So Vista might be like Bob or ME. They are still in business.
You got to be kidding me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is for myself and many many others, the downsides of Vista (hardware requirements, bugs in a zero revision OS, etc, etc) outweigh the benefits.
As time goes on and new patches/service packs come out, and people move to new faster hardware, those downsides will become somewhat less, and more people will likely switch to Vista that currently wouldn't consider it.
Re:Why downgrade on a new high end pc? (Score:5, Insightful)
Compatibility, for example. Or maybe most people just don't like the interface? How about the fact that it wants me to reactivate my product every few weeks?
Regardless of how high-end my computer is, I do not want Windows Vista. XP handles my printing. For everything else, there's Ubuntu.
Re:The lack of "buzz" is noteworthy (Score:3, Insightful)
Thus, even though XP was uther garbage when it came out, no one noticed, no one really cared, and by the time anyone was really considering switching, SP1 was out, and -then- XP was good.
With Vista, people were ready a LONG time ago and were WAITING. So the usual trick that Microsoft pulls off (come out with crap, and patch it LONG before anyone even was ready to upgrade) didn't work. People WERE ready to upgrade the day Vista came out... they didn't want to wait for SP1 like they did for XP. Things will be a bit more interesting when SP1 come out (I mean come on, Windows NT was garbage until at LEAST SP5...and didn't stop bluescreening all over until SP6...)
You are comparing quarter and monthly sales... (Score:2, Insightful)
That comes up to about 7.5%. About just where it should stand with that 5% of computer market share.
Oh... and MS sold 88 mil. copies of Vista so far. That is 88 mil copies of a piece of shit OS.
And even without silly commercials where one annoying guy is Vista and other irritating guy is something else.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
For me, an OS is a base system that's just there to run my applications. It's supposed to do its thing, be unobtrusive, and then get the hell out of my way.
Linux:
* My current install doesn't have performance degrading pointless effects.
* It doesn't have activation, or require entering serial numbers
* It doesn't have DRM
* It doesn't popup message boxes when it wants to get updated.
* It doesn't try to REBOOT without my consent. Seriously, WTF is up with that?
* It doesn't require an antivirus which slows down performance, and constantly pops up message boxes announcing gleefully how it now can detect 3 viruses more.
* Installing programs doesn't require clicking through legalese, and refusing offers to register. They install, no questions asked.
* Software doesn't ship with spyware, and doesn't nag to be updated/registered
* It doesn't require a full OS reinstall if I want to get a feature added in the latest version. On Windows, you can't get ClearType without upgrading to XP. On Linux all you need is to update the necessary components and everything else stays the same.
Trying to sell me Vista because it has features is a pointless endeavor. Here's what I want: Win2K with kernel improvements, DX10 and all that. No DRM, no Aero, no activation, no interface changes. Until MS makes that, I'm not buying.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but I had to laugh out loud when I read that. I don't think anyone actually reads the legalese to install a program. Further, whenever I try to install someone non-trivial on Linux, I wish I got questions. Instead, I get standard error output! I usually spend an hour or so trying to resolve some dependency error, or debug on obtuse error when trying to use some very well-intentioned but buggy (in my experience) utility for automating it (e.g. apt-get).
I use Linux as my primary OS at work and I have been using it for years, but I spend much more time at work tweaking my machine than I do at home. And further, I don't know any non-zealot who believes the whole "Linux is easier to maintain and use on the desktop" nonsense. Hell, even Linus doesn't. RMS might, but he hasn't used a non-GNU OS since System V;)
I hate feeding the trolls but:
No DRM, no activation
There's some nice folks at the the pirate bay that can help you with that....
no Aero, no interface changes.
You can turn it off. Before you bitch about it being the default, let me ask you if you just choose all the defaults for your Linux install?
Re:XP Sales? (Score:0, Insightful)
1. Buy a copy of Vista.
2. As Windows update is optional, turn off automatic windows update, this way it will never prompty you for an udpate and it will never restart your PC.
3. Don't install an antivirus program, you don't need one if you know what you are doing anyway.
4. If you don't like software that requires you to accept a license, don't install them. Nobody is forcing you.
5. Don't play/read any protected content, so you will never have to use DRM features of Vista. (Yes in spite of what people thing, Vista's DRM is there to only allow you to play those protected contents not lock down your own files)
6. Disable Aero and go back to classic interface.
Here now you have what you want. No Aero, no interface changes, no programs that slows down the system and you only need 5 minutes to change default configuration to match this.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
The issue there is that it's not unattended. On Linux I can install all of KDE, in one command, pulling in dozens of packages, and have all that happen in a completely unattended manner. On Windows I'd have to do manual dependency resolution, just like what you get with programs that require you to have SP4, IE6 and DirectX 9 installed first.
I ask a very simple thing: That software be installed. Once I ask that I want it to be just installed. I absolutely hate babysitting the thing. My favourite are the ones that include some extra junk I don't want (google toolbar, itunes, etc).
And while dependency problems do exist with apt-get it's in my experience a very infrequent thing. I don't remember having any in the last 6 months or so. One dependency problem I remember having was due to installing the latest version of KDE from a third party source, but some risks have to be assumed if you want to be on the bleeding edge.
Who said anything about ease? I'm talking about convenience. I turn my computer on, start KDE, then start kdevelop. My work isn't interrupted by an antivirus slowing things down and popping up notifications about updates and some random box on the internet that decided to ping mine. If my hardware fails I can move the disk to new hardware with very minimal hassle.
And they probably very kindly include a trojan in there as well. I can't know for sure, there's no source for any of that.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about what you've written there.
Do you realise how dumb you've just made yourself look.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's actually funny that you mention DirectX. Every version of DirectX from 6.1a to 9.0c was available for Windows 98. It's only DirectX 10 that's Vista exclusive. Now I fail to believe that's because of the new driver model -- or rather, I fail to believe that the new driver model makes it impossible to make DirectX 10 available for at least XP (if not also 2K, since the two are quite similar). I'd wager that the driver model in Vista is more akin to the XP/NT model than XP's model is to that of Windows 98.
And honestly, I don't understand these artificial limitations. Vista should have been an update to XP (SP3/4), and should have taken 2 years at the most. Instead, it took more than twice as long, and implements its "improvements" poorly. Seriosuly: the improvements sounded nice, but the execution sucked. They implemented a brand new, shiny network stack... which proceeded to behave incredibly poorly during audio playback [slashdot.org]. They _finally_ put the NT permissions system to work by setting sane defaults... and then made an interface that annoyed users to no end (on top of that, it still doesn't have completely sane defaults [slashdot.org].) They redid part of the UI with a new look.... and then redid a different part with a different look... and then... All these improvements would have been great if done right, and released for a decent price. Unfortunately, Microsoft botched the implementation, and charged far too much for the resulting product.
Re:Isn`t it strange? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, articles like this are pure FUD, trying to take a moment of Microsoft's success and some how make it about their failure. If the OSS community wants to support article writers like the jackass who wrote this one, you're just going to hoodwink yourselves into thinking you're destroying Microsoft when in fact, they're posting record profits and sales of Vista are moving along quite nicely.
Here's a little dose of reality:
Source [softpedia.com]
And while the Cupertino-based company crossed its fingers and hoped that the trade-off was the right strategy, statistics released by Market Share by Net Applications paint an entirely different picture. Market Share by Net Applications data reveals that MacIntel has lost market share and is down to 2.48% in June compared with 2.51% in May. Mac OS has also dropped to 3.52% from 3.95% two months ago.
The open source Linux operating system is stagnating. The various distributions of Linux are credited with only 0.71% of the operating system market in June 2007, up from 0.70% in May. One other platform that has been continuously experiencing the erosion of its market share is Windows XP. With Windows Vista available for five months already, XP users are increasingly upgrading their operating systems. Vista has a good momentum in the detriment of XP, which dropped from 82.02% in May to 81.94% in June. By comparison, Vista continues to increase its installed base and has jumped from 3.74% in May to 4.52% of the operating system market in June.
The reality of the situation is, Vista surpassed Mac OS X and Linux in desktop usage without breaking a sweat. The reality of the situation is, XP users are upgrading to Vista. The reality of the situation is, IE6 users are upgrading to IE7, either through Vista upgrades or Windows Update. If you don't like any of these realities, and you want to do something to advance the cause, please do. But don't let idiotic propaganda articles trick you into thinking the battle is already being won, because it isn't.
The only credit I can give to the author of this sad excuse for journalism is that I simply couldn't imagine it was possible to spin a leap in revenue and profit, in the billions of dollars, for a single quarter, into somehow saying Microsoft is suffering. Making a big fuss about "slowing" sales of Vista, when any operating system sold, including OSX has the exact same sales characteristic. After the initial rush of sales during the first few months of product release, sales of OSX slowed! OH NOES! And pointing out that Microsoft's advertising unit posted a loss due to an acquisition... duh.
This article is crap, and it's sad that it got posted on slashdot because it only feeds the flow of misinformation to the OSS community. I remember how upset we all used to get about Microsoft FUD articles, yet it seems some of those pretending to support OSS have figured out that they can write pro-OSS or anti-Microsoft FUD articles and most people will lap it up because that's what they want to hear.