Vista's 40 Million License Sales In Context 225
Overly Critical Guy writes "Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers. The myriad of factors involved in determining success in the market makes Microsoft's constant comparisons to Windows XP less reliable as a growth indicator — particularly with Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses. 'HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ... If Microsoft wasn't so hung up on XP comparisons as the benchmark, it could really demonstrate that Vista sales are increasing. The first 20 million figure really represented four months of sales, and that could have been positive data because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments. For free! Instead of making that point, Microsoft got carried away with making comparisons back to XP.'"
Did the world end ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well done
Because it is well done. I'm sure they're not playing entirely fair, but still, it's their success, they built it, they earned the reward for it. And it does look nice. Let them have their reward.
I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft.
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Holly crap!
Re:Did the world end ? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Did the world end ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Did the world end ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Fixed that for you.
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Re:Did the world end ? (Score:5, Insightful)
And why are we feeling sorry for people like Michael Dell, again? Lest we forget, this man became a multi billionaire largely due to the "blackmail" contracts he signed with Microsoft. Gateway also made billions in sales from MS contracts.
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Dell is rich because they are selling good products in a competitive market. Gates is rich because he managed to establish an illegal monopoly and continues monopolistic practices.
And this isn't about "feeling sorry" for Dell, it's about the fact that he is trying to offer alternative products that people want to buy, and Mic
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Re:Did the world end ? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a free market, you can say, "I don't like the terms your offering me; change them or I will go with the other guy." In a monopolized market, you either get it *at their price* or you don't. There is no negotiation or exchange. It's a dictation of the terms. In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API.
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Re:Did the world end ? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Linux user, who also makes a living out of using Linux as a tool every day, I don't find myself sharing the same feeling. When Microsoft threatens [slashdot.org] not only my work, my income, but also my way of life, I can't help to see the need to see Microsoft completely destroyed. It's a funny thing, this "evolved" survival instinct. It is hard to ignore.
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I can't help to see the need to see Microsoft completely destroyed.
Given the number of entities that depend on MS software, this would not be a good thing in the short term. But since it's highly unlikely, I won't lose any sleep over that possibility.
What would be good is for MS to gradually decline to just one provider of operating systems amongst several, all with similar market share. That would compel them to honestly pursue interoperability with other platforms. I think that scenario is one which we can hope for over the long term.
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So seeking to destroy Microsoft when it is being annoying is completely natural, and in line with the actions of a highly evolved being.
Makes me worry about you, frankly...
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Next you say, He should be able to adapt the the changes Microsoft causes.
The simple reply is that it's like moving from a tropical paradise to a desert. Microsoft has impoverished the software landscape. Sure, in a Microsft world there are others, but they turn out to be minor players heavily rooted in a Microsoft sofware ecosystem
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Nice sample size! (Score:2)
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You do realize it was you that paid for that license, don't you? They probably increased everyone's tuition and included that to try to sell the school as "giving students the tools". On that note, your school most likely also signed a deal with Microsoft (like a certain former school I went to) that stated something like: "If you want this discounted software, you have to remove Macromedia ___ from all PCs on campus."
Re:Did the world end ? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to see numbers on popularity, try and get the numbers on people buying boxed Vista, and compare it to people who bought boxed XP. I seem to remember boxed XP flying off the shelves for people wanting to upgrade, but who's buying boxed Vista? Microsoft won't release those numbers because it will show how much of a flop Vista has been, and its only because of their monopoly that it's getting sold at all. Vista is a huge example on the amount of damage Microsoft is inflicting on the industry by having a stranglehold on the OS that ships. They're forcing people to pay for an inferior product on purchasing a PC, then charging them for XP when they want to replace it
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The PC world still turns... (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is a case of "...methinks the lady doth protest too much..."; Microsoft is worrying about losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers) and better software (Apple's OS). The louder they talk about market share, but more suspicious it looks.
To me, there are some other pretty important developments that have been going on, such as yesterday's report here on Slashdot about the NYSE replacing IBM mainframes with IBM AIX and with Linux.
I don't know how many people were around when Microsoft successfully spiked the Unix market with their FUD about workstation NT running on RISC processors. At the time, the Unix server and workstation companies were talking about converging their various flavors of Unix. This would have allowed more and better cross-platform compatibility of distributed application software. Microsoft countered with a campaign to run Windows NT on RISC processors as an alternative. DEC, HP and others squandered resources on this effort and the Unix market withered. Microsoft's campaign even had consulting businesses like Gartner Group predicting that NT would replace both Unix and the mainframe in a few years time. HP even went so far as to try to munge its PA RISC processor with the Intel x86 processor (Itanium) with the goal of running both x86 and Unix code on one platform. Intel never delivered on the early promises of that project, but they got HP's processor technology for their troubles.
Looking back, you have to hand it to Microsoft for the brilliant way they marginalized Unix. Problem is, they never did supply a replacement server platform except for some lousy versions of NT on Intel processors (And into that void slips Linux.)
I'm guessing that Windows XP represents the peak of Microsoft's work. Vista was years late, and the future of processors; cell, multi-core, distributed computing, internet-based applications, cell phone computers - will be beyond Microsoft's narrow, one-user/one-cpu, world view. Office productivity software has matured, gaming programming is moving onto GPUs and Microsoft's operating system is becoming less and less relevant.
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ExxonMobil is huge, exerts much influence, and makes dickloads of profit, but they have nowhere NEAR [reuters.com] the stranglehold Microsoft does.
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As was the case with XP Home, Vista Home will only use one processor. It will take advantage of multiple cores on that processor, but ignores any more than one physical processor. That seems pretty silly to me since tons of free Linux and *BSD distributions will let you use multiple processors, and in the Mac world the same copy of the OS happily uses a
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Wishing that Vista was a failure does not make it so.
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Don't kid yourself. (Score:3, Interesting)
Beyond that, things even look less rosy. Yes there are plenty of places that have Vista licenses and have not bothered to load them, xp woks just fine.
My own personal antidote, I deal with 4 machines (laptops) that came with Vista. My wifes laptop at home, she could only put up with it for about 2 weeks. She dual boots Ubuntu and XP. With the XP only used for popcap games.
At work, there is my laptop, which now runs only Ubu
7 articles on Vista sales (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I speak for the majority of Slashdot's readers, that we don't fucking care about Vista's sales that much.
They mean nothing and the actual trend will be known in 8-9 months from now (you can be sure Vista will see decent adoption either way, because if it doesn't Microsoft will be forced to address the worst problems in a SP).
So please stop wasting our time with this. We can live on without reading yet again about Vista's sales, in context, or out of it.
Re:7 articles on Vista sales (Score:5, Funny)
Re:7 articles on Vista sales (Score:4, Funny)
Re:7 articles on Vista sales (Score:5, Funny)
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Can I ask you a question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then can I ask you something? Why did you click the Read More link on the front page, read the summary, click Reply, and type out an entire post if you don't fucking care? I have a much more effective solution to your problem--use the scrollbar on the right side of the window to move right past the article you don't like.
You're welcome!
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I provided "feedback", in the hope it improved Slashdot. If we all just ignore the noise, a point comes where the noise completely masks the useful articles. Then what do we do?
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Oh yea, solid logic there. DIGG should've kept erasing comments of their users then, that generated quite some traffic to their site.
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Not really. Thing is, I don't think people like reading the same thing over and over on whatever the topic is.
The fact that sites and magazines think recycling Apple and Microsoft
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Uh, guys? (Score:2)
Ummm, the only reason anyone cares about those numbers is because of their impact when weighed against all the gloating from clowns who were estimating sales in the low three-digits.
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It's been this way for more than 10 years.
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Clearly, actual Vista sales to consumers are disappointingly low [...]
Yeah, but y'know, operating system upgrade sales have always been low. I heard it took Windows XP over a year to hit the one million mark. That's not to say there were only 1 million people using Windows XP after a year. It's that only one million people went out and bought the upgrade.
The vast majority of Windows users don't upgrade their operating system. They upgrade their computer. If they want Vista, they go buy a new computer to run it on. It's alot easier than buying the upgrade and discoverin
Please Explain (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe it is just a matter of there appears to be little market for _actual_ news as opposed to what is fed to the media from corporate/government sources.
I'd like to hear some opinions because I don't want to be that cynical.
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Logical Fallacy (Score:4, Informative)
You must be new here.
The "truth" you speak of is a Accounting/Finance obligation, NOT Marketing. So, marketing can, and does frequently abuse the facts.
I'm not sure why it is you trust them, their security and interoperability proclamations have been complex lies for years. Their Vista proclamations are more of the same. At best they can be called misleading half-truths. Hopefully, the spirit of intentionally misleading consumers hasn't reached the Accounting/Finance department.
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Another Failed Assumption (Score:2)
Yes, they most certainly can. Marketing can call "Sales" whatever they want. Much like politics, some vague approximation of the truth legitimizes their behavior, but no one goes to jail for their crazy claims.
Accounting, OTOH, will report sales in a GAAP way, but that way is very non-specific and intentionally allows any company some secrecy balanced with accountability and transparency. The GAAP rules allow f
Why is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even fewer care what MS marketing says about Vista sales.
Nobody cares what someone else says about what MS says about Vista sales.
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I disagree. Since most of us are either students in computing fields, or work in some aspect of the computer industry, we are all affected by how well (or poorly) Microsoft sells Vista. If Vista sells well, we'll all have to use it, eventually, whether we like it or not. Microsoft still has that power. However, if Vista does not sell well, then a good number of us won't have to worry about touching it.
So, yes, the sales of Vista do impact Slash
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However, if Vista does not sell well, then a good number of us won't have to worry about touching it.
It doesn't matter how well Vista sells at the moment. It's inevitable that all new computers will sell Vista, just like it was inevitable that new computers sold XP. We had exactly these same stories when XP came out. After Vista achieves a critical mass and everyone is used to it, everyone else will slowly upgrade..
It is simply impossible in the current world that Vista won't eventually be the mainstr
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Vista is so disappointing that even the fanboys are ignoring it and sane people are forbiding it in their work places.
Where is this mass disappointment? It doesn't exist in the normal world. Sure, there's a lot of wishful thinking, but there's not exactly huge lines outside Best Buy returning Vista. Like I said, we had EXACTLY the same stories last time. "XP is getting slow adoption", "Everybody hates XP's new crayola user interface", "Even new computer manufacturers are offering Win/2000 or ME instead
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Right not, it simply is not cost effective to upgrade to Vista.
Oh? And why was it cost effective three years ago when XP came out? What's different? All the PHB needs to hear is "better security" (which is true, although not perfect).
Furthermore, since MSO2007 does not create documents in the file formats that the government accepts, there is no point to using MSO2007.
Au contraire, Office has a plugin for ODF.
Re:Why is this here? (Score:5, Funny)
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That's funny, why then were there som many comments to the last Vista sales article?
Agreed... except, of course, that what they say about their sales affects what other people think about their sales. Such as, for instance, the people signing the POs for new systems this year. Plenty of management types will isten to this, and assume that since Vista is selling so well, it must be a good thin
SO DON'T READ IT OR POST TO THE FUCKING ARTICLE (Score:2)
Many people care about this because it's a sign of Microsoft's downward spiral and their inability to release worthy updates to their flagship products. We sat through five years of marketing promises, and now we're sitting through months of sales promises, all while this company is threatening us through non-specific patent claims. And you w
Thus Sayeth The Marketers... (Score:2)
Twisting statistics, taking 'em out of context, anything, anything at all to make things look good. IMHO, Vista sales aren't drastically bad, but they aren't meeting (let alone exceeding) the hype, either.
Thing is though, marketing could literally kill MSFT in the long run. Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all
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I'll bet the headhunters are just breaking your door down now with requests to head up multi billion dollar corporations after reading your
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In the large view - it is. IBM did it (and in some ways are still doing it), Novell had to do it, Apple had to do it... what makes MSFT so immune?
(so how about something cogent next time - or are sniveling attempts at sarcasm all that you're capable of?)
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Well lets see. You proposed a strategy for a new CEO and retrenchment. SOP for a company in financial difficulty. You bring a hachet man to break the company up, close loss making divisions and sack half the workforce to reduce costs.
Eh? When did I mention sacking "half the workforce"?
Its just astonishing to me that Wall Street does not concur with your vision of what MS needs but then they are ususally loathe to break up successful organisations with proven leadership. Perhaps you know something about Microsoft's accounts that no one else does.
I'm only looking at the basics - MSFT has exactly two money-making divisions - Windows and Office. Everything else is losing money to various degrees. R&D and new ventures I have no problems with, but obvious flops like the Zune? C'mon... you can't possibly justify keeping that thing alive. MSN Internet? Even AOL is getting out of that business, and if it weren't for Qwest and the likes of Best Buy dragging it along as a bundle or rebate bennie,
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Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all MSFT is spending cash on, and jettison all departments that aren't making money.
Microsoft has been a monopoly for so long they don't know what they do anymore. The whole business is built around the concept that they own the desktop and can just muscle anyone else out of the scene, rather than spending money to develop superior products. The problem is, some competing products have managed to squeeze in and provide people with some actual choices, and people have started to ask some questions about what exactly it is Microsoft is providing. Now, if Microsoft can recover from this or n
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Now, if Microsoft can recover from this or not is hard to say, they could be on a downhill trend (although it's a very big hill, so they won't hit bottom for a VERY long time), or they may turn around and actually provide some compelling reasons to stay with their software.
Inertia will keep 'em alive for quite a long time, and it's true that they may never really die off completely. Unisys once was an 800-lb computing gorilla. Towards the end, the most influence they had in the IT world was the GIF patent (among a handful of others), but aside from legacy systems here and there, no one gave a damn about them - they got passed by. What do they do nowadays? Tandem was once a big player, as was Amdahl, Cray, Wang, Texas Instruments, and lots of other companies who made their
Article from April 18th (Score:3, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/15122
Re:Article from April 18th (Score:4, Informative)
Are they counting my non-license? (Score:3, Insightful)
MS is doing what they do best: marketing, marketing, marketing and not letting quality control or the facts get in the way.
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Oops. Apologies for the error.
Editors, please change the headline to "Vista's 39,999,999 License Sales In Context."
Seriously, Microsoft is probably not concerned about the tiny percentage of people who know enough to convert their machines to dual boot with Linux. They really don't care about people who pay for a Vista license and then use XP (you're still paying to feed the monopoly and still using monopoly software
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I thought about doing the same thing when I bought a new laptop a few months ago, but then I realized Vista is actually a good operating system and there's no sense in taking a step back to XP. The security warnings get annoying quick, but a few minutes of searching on the Web took care of that. With Aero disabled, Vista looks almost identical to XP. And I'm certain few people have reformatted to XP given that they just paid for a copy of Vista.
You're not developing software for Windows XP platforms and targeting shops that have already stated they won't even think about adopting Vista until SP2. Windows 2000 Pro still has over 2 1/2 years of support left. Windows XP Pro is good until 2012. Why the hell switch operating system right now just because there's something newer available -- especially when the newer O/S is so well documented to not work with lots of mission critical software?
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Speaking of Dell.... (Score:2)
Its what HP is doing right... not being DELL.
I "bought" vista but I don't use it (Score:3, Interesting)
No loss. I have my Linux system and it just works.
I would've probably stuck with XP had the computer come with it. Adapting to the gratuitous changes in Vista was way more effort than I wanted to invest. Aside from everything being moved around, Vista had security pop-ups every time I tried to do anything. I don't believe these pop-ups really add security as they give you no meaningful option other than to say "OK."
But they sure do get in the way. Especially if you want to do unattended or remote operations, as I do frequently. Now I understand that with a few more hours research I could've probably found workarounds, but I could not get VNC to work in server mode, or sshd to install as a service.
I did not *ask* for a new, incompatible, version of Windows. It was forced on me.
Ironically, the expedient choice has now changed -- at least for me -- from just accepting the pre-installed system to installing Linux.
Re:I "bought" vista but I don't use it (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's what a monopoly is all about. Making alternatives sufficiently unattractive that they are no longer viable choices in a large numb
Numbers (Score:2)
M
Often "Marketing" == Lies (Score:3, Interesting)
It often seems to me that the entire job of some marketing people is to be deceitful. We can be SURE that if the number of actual activated Vista licenses was high, Microsoft would be talking about the number with everyone.
We can then suppose that the number of people actually using Vista is very low. Probably companies are buying new computers and installing their old corporate licenses of XP.
It was enormously expensive to our company to deal with the bugs in Windows XP until Service Pack 2 was released. (The cost of ownership of Windows XP SP2 is still many, many times higher than the cost of a license.) We have been burned by Microsoft many times, and are not about to get burned again with Windows Vista, so we are waiting to consider it until the second Vista service pack is released.
I'm not the only one who thinks that Microsoft is abusive, of course. Woody Leonhard of Windows Secrets [windowssecrets.com], in the most recent paid edition, called himself a: "card-carrying member of the 'Association of Windows Victims' ".
Two words: (Score:4, Interesting)
How many software assurance accounts are active for Windows XP Home or Pro? If I'm not mistaken, every one of those would provide an upgrade license to some flavor of Vista. That in turn would, I'd think, be counted as a "Vista license sold."
Two things to consider (Score:2, Interesting)
The second item is a statistic I read somewhere stating that in the next decade, about 50% or more of the people
How many were Free Upgrades (TM)? (Score:3, Insightful)
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40 million licence sales? (Score:2)
Here is what my developers did. (Score:2, Informative)
What was the first thing they did? They installed XP on the 2nd disk, called Microsoft and asked for an activation key based on the Vista license they have.
Yes you are allowed to "downgrade" to an older version of Windows if you have a legitimate copy and an authentic media of the old/other OS you want to install.
If you don't believe be read the EULA.
How many people did that? Bought a brand new machine with Vista, downgraded..etc?
Looks
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I have one (Score:2)
Because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday (Score:2)
They did? Actually, they did a good job pretending they'd give you a deal if you bought XP over the holiday.
I ended up just buying Vista for less than what they offered through the well-maybe-it'll-be-free holiday-bought-XP to Vista upgrade path.
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Any Vista sale is just a sale that would have been XP anyways. If anything, Microsoft is losing money on this proposition since these are units they would have pushed anyways. When you're at the top of the hill, the only way you can move is down.
Microsoft is just trying to avoid the obvious conclusion that they are stagnating while milking a saturated market.
Rumor at the time was... (Score:2)
Badda-Badda-BING.
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40 million units sold of primarily the only two good versions business and Ultimate. So 40 million times $200 a piece, is 800,000 million dollars. MSFT is nearly at 1/5 the 5 billion they spent on creating Vista.
Yet Dell sells 14.4 billion dollars worth of physical hardware and makes a profit of just under $700 million.
Vista Sales for MSFT in four months is worth more than all of Dell's sales for a year.
Is Vista overpriced?
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I'm runnng Vista on 2 work machines and 2 of my home machines. It needs more ram than XP. It's prettier. My Hp 7150 doesn't work with Vista. Getting CCCP setup in Vista media center is easier than it was on XP Media Center.
My 4 year old work laptop sleeps/wakes/hibernates faster and much more reliably than it did under XP.
None of my Vista installs were OEM. The two home machines are stuff i built out of newegg orders.
I'm sure none of my Vista installs count in the