PCWorld Says Firefox is Strong, Vista is Weak 395
twitter writes "PC World has released their year in review statistics and 2007 was not kind to Microsoft. IE 6 users are equally likely to move to Firefox as they are to IE7 and no one wants Vista. 'How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first eleven months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002. In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com--more than 250 percent of the usage that Vista has mustered so far.'"
benchmark? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:benchmark? (Score:4, Informative)
Also, the only problems I can find from a user perspective in Vista is that UAC is annoying as hell. With ME, I would have systemic problems right off the bat. That OS was just plain junk right off the bat. Nothing anyone could do could make it work right. The annoyances with Vista can at least be fixed with unchecking a few boxes.
Re:benchmark? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:benchmark? (Score:5, Informative)
The poster you're replying to either has issues with their PC/setup, Norton, or mistakenly included the spike caused by Task Manager starting.
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Re:benchmark? (Score:4, Informative)
It also does not run when idle. When defragging the disk state cannot change at all so running when idle isnt ideal.
Where did you pull the indexing bit from? Your ass?
The indexing service only indexes the filesystem. It has nothing to do with the speed programs load.
Also its recommended that you disable it because it sucks at what it does. It doesnt help file searches at all.
Although it could account for the 11% idle usage, its certainly not a good thing.
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Windows Vista defragments your hard drive in idle time which improves program loading speed and geenral hard-drive access times.
Windows Vista indexs your hard drive in idle time which makes the Vista search function
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The windows indexer doesnt make searches fast and it runs constantly while chewing considerable resources.
The Vista indexer only runs on idle CPU cycles. It can't 'chew considerable resources' unless those resources are actually physically available, in which case there's surely no issue with using them? If you're not using your CPU, what's the issue with the OS making use of it for you to make things faster?
Yes, it does make searches faster, and saying otherwise only suggests that you haven't used it at all.
This is all by the by, because what you did was ask me to name one thing that Vista does that is useful
Re:benchmark? (Score:4, Funny)
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my boss has a dell running with a high-end intel core 2 duo (3ghz, i believe), 4gb ram, and ati x1k. it is a Ferrari among computers, and vista makes it run like an overloaded Yugo making it's way up San Francisco's Lombard Street [wikipedia.org] .
Does that clear it up for you?
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OTOH, give Mac OS X Leopard or Ubuntu Gutsy that much RAM and CPU and watch it sing.
Sorry for anyone who feels like Vista is great, but facts are facts. Vista is slow and bloated.
Re:benchmark? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if Vista is redeemable. I'm going to have to wait at least until SP2 before I want to try again.
That should be by late 2009. So, imagine double the processor power, with an 8 core processor, a solid state disk and at least 64 gig of RAM. If Microsoft gets their butts in gear and start listening to their customers, SP2 might be something worthwhile. We shall see how it works out.
Re:benchmark? (Score:5, Funny)
So, you mean, never?
Re:benchmark? (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect that Vista may be the result of Microsoft's aging. In the 90's, when the core of XP was built (NT back then - I was a big fan), Microsoft was growing at an insane pace. Much of the best talent (the kind Google gets now days) went to Microsoft. With that kind of success, XP was a natural result. With the web bust, and with the best talent often going elsewhere, and with Bill Gates effectively retired, Vista may be the natural result. I'm not sure I'd hold my breath waiting for Vista to become as good as XP.
Re:benchmark? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be a pretty strong indicator that the market is not "satisfied that Win XP is good enough for their needs" like the article suggests, but that a significant segment are actively rejecting Vista as a bad product even on a brand new computer.
Which, of course, it is. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall, and they cashed in their chips. Which means, they saw that it was time to sell their install base out to third party interests instead of trying to keep hold of them.
We've all seen situations where the value of a good name is measured in how long it's purchaser can sell substandard goods at high markup before the name isn't good anymore.
That's what this is. The industry decided to back "Trusted Computing" despite it being contrary to the interests of consumers, and no one wants to buy it. That's why the new drivers don't work, why the old software is buggy, etc. The common person doesn't know why, but they know it's not working right, and they don't like it.
Re:benchmark? (Score:5, Interesting)
What percentage of Vista sales aren't permanent users?
Re:benchmark? (Score:4, Informative)
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I believe that OEM XP is out of production Jan 1, 2008. So if you want any more, you had better go an buy some quick.
License availability (direct OEM and retail) has been extended to June 30, 2008 (January 31, 2009 for system builders) [microsoft.com]. This was covered at Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] and other news sites.
Have you taken a good look at the new Notebooks on offer ... I just got burnt with a Compaq v6620 - no XP drivers available. You can install XP, and it boots, but kiss the Lan, Wlan, Video, Audio good bye. No XP drivers - only vista and linux. So what does that tell you - Vista will be rammed down your throught whether you like it or not. Eventually, all new kit will be running Vista, because the Manufacturers won't be cutting any XP drivers for them!
Most real "business/pro" PCs offer Windows XP as an installation option. I noticed that the Compaq v6620 is sold on HP/Compaq's "Home and Home Office" store [hp.com], so it's probably really targeted toward the "home" user. If you browse HP/Compaq's current line of notebooks at their "Small & Medium Business" site [hp.com], you'll notice that almos
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The Intel GL960 chipset in that laptop should be fine with Compiz.
It's probably PCLinux 2007 not being new enough to recognise it. Try;
SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz --replace ccp &
And if that works, you can use
mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz; echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes >> ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager
for a permanent fix.
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The fact that the newest OSX installs and Linux installs aren't slow on my older machines would be...?
Microsoft designs sluggish, crappy operating systems. The hardware eventually gets to the point that they run ok.
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So, imagine double the processor power, with an 8 core processor, a solid state disk and at least 64 gig of RAM. If Microsoft gets their butts in gear and start listening to their customers, SP2 might be something worthwhile. We shall see how it works out.
That reminds me of an XKCD strip [xkcd.com].
Windows sucks. I guess I'll try it again later. Nope, still sucks. Nope, still sucks. Oooh, shiny! But still sucks.
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Slowness can't be fixed with a check box.... (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, I really wouldn't have much of a problem with Vista if it weren't such a bloated resource hog. For the most part, I like the new features, the new APIs I can use as a developer (WPF, WF, WCF), the new look, and believe it or not, I don't even mind UAC. I've actually been a fairly ardent defender of Vista on Slashdot until about a week ago, and now I'm finally starting to come back over to the pro-XP side, mainly due to p
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(People who got it on a machine and immediately switched to, say, Linux, shouldn't be counted. I'm after the ones that gave it a reasonable trial.)
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Unfortunately this is just about impossible since those people who decide to put on a different OS rarely advertise the fact that they have done so. Even if the person who changes their OS does advertise, how useful is this since many people will go for a dual boot and it would be very difficult to determine how often the person spends in one bootable partition over another.
F
Vista a Flop? (Score:2, Funny)
*shrug*
Don't forget to mention the pre-bundled copies!!! (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget to mention the pre-bundled copies! (Score:4, Interesting)
Close. Vista is preinstalled on less new machines now than when it was first introduced. First there was the big shiny "Vista for All" unveiling, then vendors started trying to get business by offering "Downgrade to WinXP available here!" and being successful at it.
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As for the Mac stat... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Naming? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Naming? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, that'd be right. Typical MS marketing. Mention as many "new features" as you can to distract from the new DRM.
Cancel or Allow?
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Meh. A name isn't everything. Nintendo seems to be doing well with "Wii". And that is arguably the worst-sounding name since Price Waterhouse Coopers Consulting wanted to change it's name to "Monday".
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Ice Weasel? (Score:2)
recession (Score:5, Funny)
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Could the United States being in a state of recession have anything to do with Vista's slow growth? Just kidding, I know Vista is TERRIBLE. My karma is bad and I wish it wasn't. I don't want to have bad karma. I am a good person.
Doubtful. A few reasons too. First, computers expire and need to be replaced. Computers are selling, just get wiped and back loaded with XP. Microsoft might even have a good quarter as people double purchase XP after buying a machine with Vista. And some are upgraded with Linux [youtube.com]
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The American worker hasn't gotten a raise in 6 years. For some, a lot longer. So while it's true that unemployment is low, that doesn't mean much to the PC market if no one has much disposable income.
It's similar to the situation with the PS3, and the other HD "next gen" components.
Forecast calls for a 75% chance of hilarity (Score:2, Interesting)
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Poor comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
They're comparing usage based on visits to their website. Not only that, but they're comparing uptake of Vista in 2007 to XP in 2001. As a percentage.
I can't help but feel that a lot has changed over that time to make that method of comparison completely irrelevant, both in terms of MS's operations (like how Vista follows a fairly strong OS that has had years to take root, compared with XP, which followed Windows Me, which sucked in every possible way) and in terms of the overall PC market (like how Macs are much more competitive, and how Linux has matured, but mostly how so many hardware and software has been developed for Windows XP).
- RG>
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Re:Poor comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Although you are 'technically' correct that Windows 2000 was released between WinME and XP, what is being missed in this argument is that WindowsXP was the FIRST version of the NT based OS that was focused on and designed to specifically replace the consumer level DOS/Win9x OSes.
You are correct that XP is not descended from Win9x or WinME in any way, it is an NT based OS with NO code used from the Win9x era of OSes. (It is was as much of a jump from Win9X/WinME as System 9 was to OS X).
In regard to the article, this is also why the uptake of WinXP was faster than even Windows 2000, as Windows 2000 was the successor to NT4 and was not pushed to home or mainstream consumer users. XP being the first NT version that was designed for and pushed into the mainstream consumer markets had quite an advantage even though Win2K users ignorantly thumbed their noses at it. In contrast to the generation of consumer OSes it was replacing, it was a massive difference in terms of performance and stability. XP not only ran faster than Win98 (the fastest of the DOS/Win9x generation), but it also was significantly more stable and secure than the previous OSes that had no knowledge of any type of security.
So for consumers and home users, XP was good jump, and even just upgrading Win98 or WinME to XP would not only increase the lifetime of the computer, but would fix technical problems in the installation wihtout having to wipe settings, and gave the users a virtually crash free experience.
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"They were all great within the time the [sic] lived."
Did you ever use NT 3.51? 4.0? 2000? They were terrible. XP is the first MS OS that has actually stayed stable for me for more than a few days. I still get bluescreens, but hey, it is a MS product. The "professional" line was worthless in a variety of ways.
For a lot of people, they did go from ME to XP because they had no consumer option. What was the consumer OS from MS after ME? XP Home! Another POS, but far better than ME. So YOU learn your
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I didn't use NT 3.51, although I did have to do some work for a company using it on their server (in 2000, would you believe)
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Yes, I installed and ran NT 3.51, as well as 3.1 and 4.0. I run WinXP at work, where I'm pushing people to convert to Vista (for business reasons, not for technical ones). I have a Win XP/X64 box here under my feet, and a Windows Server 2003 box a pencils throw away. I still own the Windows 98 Upgrade disk that I used to convert from Windows 95 to Windows 98, along with every DOS disk I've
Re:Poor comparison (Score:4, Informative)
I NEVER get blue screens, ever, end of story. If you get blue screens with XP, something is wrong and it's not the OS.
2000 is absolutely rock-solid stable, as is w2k.
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Re:Poor comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Until Vista came around, each new version offered significant improvements, required significantly more resources, added some quirky problems but was overall an improvement. The problem is that with Windows 2000, MS pretty much solved all their major problems (besides security, but that could be mitigated by a little bit of common sense, despite the horrible track record of security issues). By XP SP2, even security issues were starting to be not so severe. The biggest changes between 2000 and XP were minor UI tweaks (and the ugliest theme ever put on a GUI since Tandy DeskMate, but that could be turned off, and was turned off, by anyone who realized it could be), and support for new hardware, especially wireless, which didn't really become "nice" until SP2 came along. All Vista really needed to do was support the newest hardware, throw a little eye candy in (because you always need a little eye candy in a new release) and fix some of the many problems that will always plague any OS and it would have sold like hotcakes. Instead we got a Frankenstein monster of an OS that looks and feels like it was designed and written by Cold-War Era East German government employees, with more bloat than the U.S. Tax Code and fewer useful new features than the, well, the U.S. Tax Code.
IMO, Microsoft has been growing beyond their capacity to manage themselves since the early 90's and they have finally reached the point where they are so large they literally cannot do anything right. Just like the U.S. government, MS is so huge, bloated, mismanaged and downright corrupt, the only way it can possibly be improved is for 95% of it to simply go away.
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No, what the original poster was saying is that Vista is to XP what ME is to 98. There are certainly some advantages, being able to use USB for example but nothing like the Windows 95 upgrade or the XP launch.
If you have the hardware that will cope with it, Vista is a really nice O/S to run. But there isn't the same incentive to upgrade an existing machine as there was with XP.
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This is ./, the summary is almost never correct.
If you bothered to read the article, you'd seen that the author has exactly your arguments why the adoption of Vista could be this slow.
BTW, I don't see why these arguments should speak in favor of Microsoft. Vista does not deliver what the mutli-billion, five years long development cycle promised. XP is enough for most people and they probably don't see why they should pay hundreds of dollars for an eye-candy-only upgr
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I've just upgraded one machine at home ... (Score:4, Informative)
In the end, that'll be why people upgrade to Vista - difficulty in obtaining applications that still work on XP.
Re:I've just upgraded one machine at home ... (Score:5, Interesting)
[T]hat'll be why people upgrade to Vista - difficulty in obtaining applications that still work on XP.
That may not happen very quickly: at least one developer I know is under orders to write only things that work under XP, and test them with Vista for compatibility. Anything that's Vista-only is explicitly forbidden, because Vista uptake has been so slow.
Economically speaking, if Vista can run XP programs, your market for writing something that runs on both is vastly larger than your market for writing something that only runs on Vista. If you sold software for money, would you write anything Vista-only?
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You can use 'new' APIs for stuff but normally it's nothing that couldn't be done with two or three API calls to 'old' APIs.. and any developer will have a library of code that does that anyway so it'd be more work to change it than leave it as it is.
Another issue is security (Or how to sell Ubuntu) (Score:2)
/. effect (Score:5, Interesting)
oh look. twitter spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Only on slashdot folks.
twitter strikes again (Score:3, Insightful)
twitter also has another journal entry there [slashdot.org], which is hilarious if not for the fact that he spends so much time arguing that Dvorak is an idiot when he says something about Linux twitter doesn't like.
For someone who has already ruined two Slashdot [slashdot.org] accounts [slashdot.org] with his misguided "evangelism" and is down to trolling AC, he sure has a lot of fun trolling [slashdot.org] the site.
twitter, please stop "helping" us. Free software needs people who can make intelligent arguments about why it is superior to closed-source gunk, not trolls who spend all their waking hours making up shit about Microsoft with liberal doses of infantile creative spelling.
Another way to look at Vista's adoption rate (Score:5, Insightful)
Also along these lines, I know quite a few people who are getting Vista on their new home machines, and have been, for the most part, favorably impressed. This, over time, will also translate into increased adoption in the business world. Like it or not, Vista will become the pervasive desktop in the next 2 years.
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Windows 2008 also takes advantage of the new deployment mechanisms in Vista, and rolling out Windows 2008 first and then creating the automated VIsta rollouts will be significantly easier than moving the desktops to Vista before 2008 Server arrives. It is also something business is looking forward to, as the ease of auto
I prefer Vista to XP (Score:2)
Six months ago I bought a drive and Vista Business OEM. I flipped the new drive into my laptop and launched the Vista installation DVD. The OS detected all the hardware (on a May 2006 Dell Inspiron), installed the appropriate drivers and rebooted flawlessly. I installed all of my apps, doing the compatibility thing for the ones that balked, and everything just works.
Please note: When Win2K came out every Win98SE lover bitched, then when XP came out every Win2K user bitched. It's a new day, bitc
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When WinME, everyone who loved Win98 bitched... and today it is still the punchline to jokes about operating systems. MS has a monopoly, but it is not on producing a good or even well liked operating system every time they try their hands at it.
Re:Another way to look at Vista's adoption rate (Score:5, Insightful)
You see the much same thing in the w3Schools OS Platform Stats. [w3schools.com]
There are, by some estimates, one billion Windows users.
To claim 14% of a market that size in one year would be pure fantasy in any other context.
MS Vista was the only OS showing significant growth in 2007. Linux has gained absolutely no traction in the w3Schools stats in the better part of five years.
Vista's strength has been in OEM sales of Vista Premium and Ultimate in the consumer market.
That is good news for Dell, HP and the big box retailer.
The el cheapo $200 Linux box - the "network appliance" - makes headlines on Slashdot. But that isn't the only price point that interests Walmart - or the Walmart shopper: HP TouchSmart Desktop PC [walmart.com]
Not only that, but the brand name multifunction color printer-scanner with a Vista driver will set him back less than $50. HP All-In-Printer & HP 21 Ink [walmart.com]
The Geek tries to frame the "Microsoft Tax" as a percentage of the price of the computer. But the ordinary user - the middle class buyer - is looking at the price of the system bundle, the cost of services and consumables.
OEM Vista is a one-time expense.
The ink jet cartridge or the monthly bill for Roadrunner won't come any cheaper if he migrates to Linux.
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I bought a new notebook with Vista and I notice basic i/o is much slower than Vista. Do programs launch quicker? It seems openoffice is faster but the last computer I ran it on was much slower.
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If Linux had 14% usage in 11 months (Score:5, Insightful)
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From Microsoft's point of view it doesn't really matter if people don't upgrade from XP to Vista because they are guaranteed sales of Vista with new PC purchas
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If that's the case, it doesn't bode well for future MS sales. They are stuck then on relying on malware (or low-reliability components, I suppose) to drive u
Automatic 'upgrade' to IE7 (Score:2)
IE initially became popular because users did not need to make a choice.
Therefore, if you want Firefox to take off, you need to get it included/bundled with Windows.
The hating-Vista bandwagon (Score:2, Informative)
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Its better than WindowsME I suppose.
I bought a new laptop last week which is a sparkling new AMD Turion x2 dual core with 2 gigs of ram and a fast 7200 rpm 200 gig drive and it came with Vista. My previous laptop was a Compaq which had a 1.7 ghz PentiumM with only 1 gig of ram and a slooww 4200 rpm drive running XP.
Man is this new machine slower than my compaq thanks to Vista. I could transfer hundreds of megs off my flashdrive to my XP machine with a 4200 rpm in about a minute.
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Vista and managed software (Score:3, Insightful)
The most different thing about Vista and XP is the off-take of
On the other hand we have the more fine-grained security model. Yes, this means more popup boxes. But if I'm running Ubuntu, it's much worse. I'll have to type my passport so many times that it isn't even funny anymore. Just clicking a popup box seems more user friendly to me.
Not to nag, but even though Vista is a bit of a pain to work with, are we sure we (yes, we, I'm not a Microsoft fan boy, far from it) should keep discrediting Windows? Lets play the technological game and innovate instead. We can do better than MS, both at security, speed, and UI design. Now let's show what we're made off instead of screaming foul.
I don't see the vista hate (Score:2)
Yeah, my pc is a bit above the minimum requirements (quad core, 4gigs of ram, 8800gt 1gig, etc.) but in dollar terms a PC that could run XP well when it came out was
I have to ask (Score:2)
You can spot inflamatory and ultimately useless stories like this a mile away. If it w
Not reasonable comparing XP to Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
Geeks are Not the World (Score:2)
Since when did PCWorld.com become the de facto website that all web users visit?
More interesting to me would be the same analysis from a website such as CNN or MySpace or Amazon.Com which has a much more normalized audience. Did I just call MySpace normalized?
As for all those new Mac visits, my guess is that now that they have Boot
Smoother transition? (Score:3, Funny)
To Vista or From Vista?
Ahh the internet... (Score:2)
rimshot!
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I've been an MS user since 3.1 This year I switched all but my work system to Linux and have not had any real issues. Sometimes I stuggle with installs or devices, but much of what I want to do, I can do with Linux. MS choose a dark road a long time ago; one of greed, control, power. Those roads tend to end poorly.
Save money next time, try
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XP Home: $199
XP Pro Upgrade: $199
XP Pro: $299
No Vista: Priceless! (sorry had to add this last one)
Anyways, I guess he meant XP Pro not upgrade.
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Should I remind anyone who's interested that a facility which feeds food pellets to sheep is not a restaurant, regardless of the number of "meals" it serves?
If every pirated copy of Windows stopped working tomorrow, and people were forced to buy new ones or go to an alternative, I wonder what those browser numbers would be?
Virtual reality check (Score:5, Informative)
IE6 (all operating systems) 35.22%
FF (all operating systems and versions) 18.35%
IE7 (all OS) 18.15%
Other.. the rest
Should I also remind anyone that IE8 is under progress, including new UI and engine that passes ACID.
You could, if you wanted to hear someone remind you that Firefox 3 is about to come out (far sooner than IE8) and also passes ACID, as if that were relevant.
Note, these are not the opinions of my employer, but they are the data of my employer.
Re:Virtual reality check (Score:4, Interesting)
FF (all operating systems and versions) 18.35%
IE7 (all OS) 18.15%
Other.. the rest
May I ask what "the rest" is, being that it's about 29% of your numbers? I would guess that Safari, IE5, and Opera are probably at about 5% combined, so that leaves a bit to be accounted for.
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Of course, someone will say that you can switch it classic style, well, I don't want it to look like windows 95 w/o the quick access to my documents, my computer, network, printers, etc.
Why couldn't they have an option to have a XP like menu. I don't dislike vista because it causes problems (I have it running on one PC and the GF has it on her laptop), I dislike vista be
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After that do a google search for themes and you can find a theme that can make the start menu look like XP. Its not elegant but the color schemes and start menu drive me crazy too. Especially with all teh garbage at the front of the menu thats bundled with your computer and all the real folders where you do work on the bottom.
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classic leaves out all the extra things a xp/vista start menu gives you.
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