One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?

CWmike writes "More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"

Not exactly surprised...

Ordinary users expect stuff to work easily. Vista has an awful reputation in this regard, and it chews up more processing power/RAM and is slower than XP.

Re:Not exactly surprised...

Not even a first. Anybody remember Windows ME? Redmond is forgetting their history apparently....

Re:Not exactly surprised...

that's because marketing keeps changing history to suit their needs.

It is one thing about linux I like. you can see the progression of change in the software. everyone else tries to hide what horrible things and stupid ideas they tried in the past. In 6 years time people are going to go there was Vista?

Re:Not exactly surprised...

Marketing is changing nothing. Now I hear this new Windows Mojave rocks! I can't wait till it gets released!!!

Re:Not exactly surprised...

Not even a first. Anybody remember Windows ME? Redmond is forgetting their history apparently....

Nonsense. Redmond was always at war with East Asia.

Re:Not exactly surprised...

A larger OS will of course use more resources. This does not surprise me in the least anyway since I am sure close to 1/3 of the people who buy new PC's get 1GB of ram or even less nowadays....and with less then 1gb and even 2gb of ram vista will bog down the system when running anything but word processing/email.

I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it. Many people may say it does nothing to improve computing, but I just think its a little before its time... (probably a first for MS anyway.)

Re:Not exactly surprised...

I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it.

It's a canard to say that the problem with Vista is that "the hardware is not ready for it".

If Saab made a car that could only run on some super high-test gasoline that is not sold in gas stations, would you say that "the gasoline was not ready for it" or that "it was a stupid design and poor business decision to release it"?

Re:Not exactly surprised...

It's a canard to say that the problem with Vista is that "the hardware is not ready for it"

Isn't that kind of a lot for a duck to say?

Re:Not exactly surprised...

It's a canard to say that the problem with Vista is that "the hardware is not ready for it".

If Saab made a car that could only run on some super high-test gasoline that is not sold in gas stations, would you say that "the gasoline was not ready for it" or that "it was a stupid design and poor business decision to release it"?

If, for instance, Saab released a new hybrid car which ran on hydrogen, and there was no infrastructure in place to supply that. I would not call the car stupid design because there was no infrastructure in place. I could, if I believed (or in foresight knew) that someday there would be, call it "Ahead of it's time" or "We just weren't ready for it".

However, that has nothing to do with Vista, because it was stupid design. And while the hardware still isn't ready for it, even if it were, it'd be a stupid design.

I don't know if the people making decisions on Vista just weren't all on the same page or what, but Vista is a pile of poorly planned half implemented aborted attempts at doing what the marketers over sold it as being capable of doing.

That has nothing to do with hardware other than the fact that having a beefier machine might, might, mitigate the issues the same way an elephant gun might do as a fly swatter.

Re:Not exactly surprised...

Throwing more hardware at a problem is far from an elegant solution. For all the bloat, what exactly does it accomplish which warrants such a massive hardware investment?

Re:Not exactly surprised...

I have quite a few friends who work at MS and most of them recommend running XP over vista when asked the obvious question. It isn't a question of hardware being ready for it as much as the OS isn't optimized enough. To add to vista woes, MS brought out tons of SKUS to further confuse customers.

A friendly conversation I had with an MS employee led to his asking me as to why people wouldn't want to upgrade to the latest supported OS and my response was a local school scenario where the budget for the school doesn't exactly accommodate upgrading 30 PCs to be vista capable. An underpaid overworked school employee in charge of the computing lab would probably find it easier to use XP till the OS is supported and switch to a distribution like Ubuntu OR do a smart thing and make the switch to a Linux distribution now and not worry about the change later.

Also in the above scenario it's easier to get the kids used to a new distribution and even keeps them from the mischief they can do in the windows world. My friend had no answer to this except that if the school made a strong case and appealed for aid, MS might donate hardware and I believed my buddy that MS might actually do it.

This is not a case of MS being ahead in the timeline (BeOS was ahead of its time, not Vista) - this is a case of getting a halfbaked product out (look up "code optimization"). I give you just one example as to why not using Vista is beneficial but I am sure there are tons others.

I am a gamer (and yet I do not care about DX10 for now) and I have stayed away from Vista. I do not want a larger OS - I want an OS optimized for gaming. I have a dual core processor with 3 GB of ram and I do not want an OS that can use it all just for the sake of using resources. I am surprised you have been modded interesting...

Re:Not exactly surprised...

I wouldn't go that far. Almost everyone has a friend who "knows computers." Many tech-oriented people hate Vista. When Joe Sixpack asks his tech friend for advice on purchasing a shiny new laptop, chances are the geek may say something akin to "Avoid Vista like the plague." And, if you've ever met Joe Sixpack while working a retail or support job, one-line quips from his geek friend are the infallible word of God.

The Barn?

Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn

Or better yet - BURN THE BARN!

On a serious note, it is sort of sad that Vista has performed so poorly. I mean, I really enjoy Linux, but on my gaming desktop I'd like to have the best OS for the job (with DX10 if it's used). As a gamer, the whole thing put a sour taste in my mouth. I guess I can say I'm happy with Linux, but a bit sad that nothing useful came out of Microsoft's work, except for being able to lord it over them.

And the rest simply don't know how to.

90% of users are Joe Sixpacks, and still 35% of them jump through the hurdles to drop Vista. It's hard to imagine what Microsoft would need to do to fare worse than this.

Re:And the rest simply don't know how to.

Only in the short term. In the long term, it entrenches the idea in peoples' minds that newer is not necessarily better when it's coming from Microsoft, which is not a mindset MS wants people to have. The debacle of Vista makes people more wary of new offerings from MS, and will harm them in the long run.

laptops

It boggles the mind why anyone would want a low to mid range laptop to come with Vista preinstalled. And yet that's the only way to get them (reasonably).

And apparently Toshiba's only honouring the warranty now if none of the original bundled software has been removed. So a friend of mine ended up buying a cheap Toshiba, with the understanding that it functionally has no warranty, since he's immediately nuking Vista off of it.

Re:laptops

And apparently Toshiba's only honouring the warranty now if none of the original bundled software has been removed.

Dear [deity], what?!? So, even if you remove the crapware trial software, upgrade to an open driver, remove crap Windows services, etc, you're screwed?

If this is true, I think this point alone should be front page news.

Non-Compatible Laptops

I bought my laptop with the intention of downgrading to Windows XP for increased stability and performance.

I was shocked, on the other hand, to find that there were no Windows XP drivers and that inserting the Windows XP CD and booting from it caused a BSOD before the installing starts. I have an HP Pavilion DV5-1002NR.

Do not purchase this laptop if you want to use Windows XP on it.

how about the new version of Windows?

How come no one is talking about the new version of Windows called Mojave? It looks great, and has little utilities called gadgets ... I love Windows Mojave. I give it a "10"!

... er, what's that you say?

Downgrade? How?

How is XP a downgrade?

I'm not a Vista hater. I actually like it better - it's UI for explorer (folders) is much better and I like that, unlike XP Home, UAC is in every release of Vista. I think the security is also better but not great yet -- services shouldn't run in administrator level but just be sandboxed to their own account.

But it is dog slow out of the box for many computers with integrated video chipsets (why some manufacturers don't set the Aero level appropriately for their models is beyond me). It takes up too many resources of low-end computers. And Microsoft has gotten way too version happy - 12 versions IIRC (counting 32 and 64 bit seperately). Microsoft is also squeezing wallets for truly inane things - I can't even get 64bit business upgrade easily when I have 32 bit business even though such an upgrade should be minimal costs (somehow my disc doesn't count for alternative media...).

Why is this? I don't know if it's peculiar to Vista, but it really pisses me off when the computer decides that it will restart in T - 10 minutes just for a security upgrade and there is nothing I can do about it -- which pretty much summarizes how Microsoft is treating the customer base in a lot of decisions.

No wonder Macs are starting to get popular on the high end and Linux is starting to get popular on the low end mini notebooks. XP sucks in a lot of regards security-wise, but at least it's small and fast and there were only 2 versions of it for a desktop and all the Apps work on it (Endicia Dazzle still isn't 100% Vista ready...)

it's all a bit silly, really

God, this feels horrible, but I have to defend Microsoft/Windows here a bit
Windows 98 was slower than Windows 95, running on the same hardware
Windows XP was slower than Windows 98, running on the same hardware
Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP, running on the same hardware.

Does anybody see a pattern here? Most people thought XP was rubbish for the first couple of years that it was out for, and now those same people are proclaiming it to be Microsoft's best OS to date.
Vista does a lot of things right, and improves on XP in many, many areas, it's just dogged by this idea that it's crap because you can't run it on your P3-800 and it won't work with your dot-matrix printer from 1977.

Ugh, that felt terrible, I need to go play with Ubuntu for a few hours now....

Re:it's all a bit silly, really

XP was an upgrade from Win2k, not 98

And in that regard, XP is faster than 2000 is.

Re:it's all a bit silly, really

those same people are proclaiming it to be Microsoft's best OS to date.

Do any of those people not work for one of the major computer magazines?

My latest computer came with Vista Ultimate pre-installed. It's got 4 gig RAM and a quad-core processor. I back-graded to XP Pro so I could get work done, but recently, I threw away a weekend giving Vista a second chance. Now I'm back on XP Pro and I've lost about 18 hours that I'll never get back again.

Before I give Vista another chance, Microsoft is going to have to arrange to have my dick sucked, preferably by one of their division heads.

But, since I still craved a great new OS after my failure with Vista, I am now very impressed with the latest Ubuntu Studio, and for the first time can actually do professional work on a Linux machine. I guess I owe Microsoft thanks for forcing me to give Linux another chance.

So now I can record and edit digital audio using Reaper on my XP machine and offload some of the rendering work to my Ubuntu machine using Reamote and ReaRoute over fast ethernet. Cool cool cool.

Re:Me too!

Every machine I've ordered from CDW has been preloaded with Windows XP, for which I thank them with my continued business. Vista has no place here.

Agreed. Our office has ordered around 120 PCs in the past few months, all with XP preloaded. We wipe and reimage them before the end users see them, but the gesture is appreciated.

Re:Server 2008 = Windows 7

I hate to break it to you, but you've stumbled on Mojave. Server 2008 is Vista to the core, minus some of the flair.