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."
XP Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone confirm this?
I'm looking to buy a new computer, but at the moment Vista is a deal breaker. I'd even be willing to buy a legit copy of XP for it, but the copy protection is too onerous--I can change my hardware configuration on a desktop machine five times in five minutes, and I'll be damned if I'm going to call Microsoft at 2:00 AM to ask permission to use MY computer. (It's not a problem on my laptop.)
By the way, I'm a little suspicious of some of the pro-Microsoft apologists here, especially after reading posts on discussions about the XBox 360 vs. PS3, which bear no relation from what I'm hearing from owners of those consoles (in some cases with the 360, former owners.) I suspect we have a few people from Microsoft's marketing department lurking here, so take at least some of the glowing reviews of Vista here with a grain of salt.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Informative)
Vista does have more bells and whistles which do slow the system down somewhat. Also ATI and NVidia have had issues getting drivers to perform as well as they do in XP - their developers have had to learn a whole new architecture. Only recently are they catching up...
Yes, vista does throttle the network somewhat when media player plays MP3s. This is a silly, silly design decision to compensate a problem some users may sometimes have. And to compound that a bug means the network is throttled much more than is necessary. This bug is fixed in SP1 (I beleive) and due to the bad press they got I wouldn't be surprised if MS revisit the while network throttling. I hope they do.
I use vista, and there is plenty I don't like about it, but the DRM FUD pisses me off. Yes, vista does support some new DRM features. No, those DRM features are not applied to any of the media you are using today. Vista has performed as well or better than XP for me when ripping, downloading, playing and copying movies.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Can anyone confirm this?
I can confirm it is wrong. If you aren't using DRM-encumbered media, none of Vista's DRM systems will be active.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition, the only benefit I have as a person who runs windows (for games primarily) is DX10; even that at most is not all that compelling. Plus - for "ultimate edition" the price still seems over-the-top for my own needs.
On the laptop I'm typing this on - I dual boot ubuntu (90%) and Windows XP pro (10%) - there are only a few small apps that I truly need windows for. Emulators come to mind - since the Linux side of emulation seems less polished than I would like. If I could, I'd run Ubuntu on my gaming machine - however, my investment in Windows gaming necessitates Windows. And Vista just doesn't appear to add anything that I'd need. I'd be more than open to hear the benefits of Vista and decide on that, but it seems that most geeks that I run into (the group I would be considered in) don't see a good enough value in Vista either.
So, in short, it's not worth the $$.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly this is all too true, and not because Vista lacks features, but they are so poorly marketed by MS even 'tech' people don't realize what features are in Vista.
Pick your biggest Windows Fan Tech site and read a review of Vista, they mention less than 10% of the features of Vista, or why the new architecture of Vista does benefit users even if the workings are transparent to the user.
Someone should start an indepth site for tracking this information like Mark Russ. use to do before he went to MS. He still puts out a few good reads on Vista, but other than him, very little is mentioned about the features or inner workings of Vista that showcase some of the technologies it uses that truly are more advanced than most geeks realize.
MS's horrible marketing has really failed on Vista, especially when you see them tout features like Glass and Flip3D as 'wow'. When there are major things like pre-emptive GPU scheduling so you can run multiple 3D games and applications at the same time without a performance penalty that are 'wow' features.
I hope you find a good OS solution for your needs. Take Care...
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Informative)
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/21/1441240 [slashdot.org]
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=724 [zdnet.com]
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2007/08/27/1833290.aspx [technet.com]
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No kidding. However on the LAN the slowest point is the switch, which should never, ever throttle traffice by an order of magnitude or more. It should throttle only latency,
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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:5, Informative)
That one, I'd have to disagree with. I tried updating KDevelop ahead of the other KDE components in my system, and apt-get insisted it needed to download 450MB of packages to update, well pretty much everything, and everything that depended on that again. Maybe it's the package maintainers being too strict about requirements but in practise, it's not possible unless you want to fuck with the distro's packaging sytem by rolling your own and all that drags along with it.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a lot of people disable Aero, thinking they are speeding up Vista, but the composer technology used by Aero adds API acceleration in addition to shared 3D surfaces.
What this means in 99% of all applications, and even GAMES running in a Window, it is faster to run them with Aero On, than Vista Basic or Windows Classic.
I think there is even an Tom's Hardware (or other review site) that was testing how much Aero killed performance, and came away shocked that Vista was consistently faster with Aero on in all appliations, and even more shocked when they got a few FPS more in games out of Vista with Aero on.
PS I like your list, good points.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
People said no such thing about Win2K. The only real complaint was it required more memory than Win98, but it was considered a tremendous upgrade over Win98/98se, Me, and even NT 4.0. In fact it was such a HUGE improvement to the NT Family of operating systems that NO ONE missed NT 4.0, except perhaps a few paper MCSEs who loved that NT was sometimes a pain in the ass to add hardware to and were in fear of their jobs.
No, Win2K was a HUGE upgrade and no one had any real complaints about it compared to previous Windows versions. Likewise, aside from a few Activation concerns, there were few complaints about the Win2K3 upgrade. XP and Vista on the other hand, offered little in exchange for eye candy and DRM.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh how quickly people forget. I remember having to fight tooth and nail to get servers moved to Win2K.
Also if you look back to the articles from the time period, everyone was relunctant to move their servers from NT 4 to Win2k, and much like today, all the non Windows server geeks were championing alternative OSes, and saying that this is the first good chance to get everyone to move over from NT back to Novell, *nix, OSX Server, etc.
Things don't change much, just the memories do.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do animations semi-professionally. I work with a lot of media clips, do a lot of encoding.
If my system is running DRM, it uses more CPU power when I do anything with video. So i use Win2k on my render machines.
I also like to play games. The less bullshit my computer has to deal with in the way of DRM, non-needed glitz & glow, the better it will run games. So I use Win2k for games, and sometimes run them on my Windows XP MCE laptop.
I've got a pretty nice laptop, a HP DV8230US, running, as I mentioned, XP media center. It's got a decent PVR capability, and is "Vista Ready". I tried Vista on it. My nice snappy laptop started acting like the P120 laptop I gave my 4 year old to play with.
Essentially, unless you have a 64-bit processor or an older "Hyper-threading" CPU, you will be better off running Windows 2000 than XP or Vista; your system will be able to work better and will give you less problems.
If you have a 64-bit CPU, an older hyper-threading processor, or want to save a little effort, WinXP will do everything that actually matters better than Vista on similar hardware. Everything. no exceptions.
I just can not fathom why anyone would accept a computer with Vista if they had a choice; how is Aero going to help you do anything? neither XP nor vista out of the box is more secure than Win2ksp4 running a free copy of Tiny Personal Firewall & Spybot, and every other new "feature" that it has either hurts your performance or cripples fair use.
I'm really serious on this question. All the Vista defenders I'm seeing in this thread, are you running it by choice? what is it doing for you that Win2k or XP or Debian couldn't do better?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't use Vista and wouldn't recommend most people would, at least until hardware catches up, and Vista SP2.
However, lots of FUD has spread about Vista:
If my system is running DRM, it uses more CPU power when I do anything with video. So i use Win2k on my render machines.
First of all DRM takes a toll on your HDMI enabled hardware, and less so on your CPU. You buy more expensive hardware for the extra chip and protection to do the crypting.
But there's no DRM applied to plain video. It's simply not, never was (can't say never will).
Second, rendering video is even less relevant to playback of DRM-ed video. DRM in Vista means absolutely nothing for your rendering machines.
I simplified my rant too much apparently. In general terms, Vista uses more system resources no matter what you are doing than XP or Win2k. The more free resources, the better the system runs applications. on the DRM issue, i'll just give you a few links to follow, ok? here is one on how Vista DRM causes system slowdown no matter what you are doing [joystiq.com]; The next related issue is with Distributed rendering, or rendering a animation on several network machines at the same time. While there is a fix for both the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ironically, Apple's ads pushed the idea that Vista needed major new hardware upgrades to run more than anyone else has, and their new Leopard demands more in hardware than Vista. And with Leopard it is not even about the OS running slower, if you have an older Mac with a RAGE 128 video for example, several applications just fail to run at all.
This is FUD.
Leopard's minimum system requirements are an 867MHz G4 and 512MB RAM. The CPU requirement is realistic; the RAM requirement should be 1GB. An 867MHz 1GB system will run Leopard very satisfactorily. A comparable system will run Vista, but not Aero, and it will be dog slow. (I have found Vista useless with less than 2GB RAM.)
As for RAGE 128 issues, those are only to be expected -- no machines that came stock with a RAGE 128 meet Leopard's requirements (unless they had aftermarket CPU upgrade
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly, Leopard's cut-off hardware is less powerful than Vista's "Home Basic recommended system". The Home Premium requirements are *much* higher than Leopard.
You're promoting an odd position--that Leopard runs slower than Vista. Speaking from *personal* experience with *both* systems on the *exact same* hardware, I can tell you that, hands-down, the *opposite* is true.
Have you run both?
Re:XP Sales? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I've been a tech for over 20 years. And I DO have a machine that I CAN rip out the video card, or network card, or whatever, with no adverse effects to the OS or hardware... this particular machine (one of numerous models) is an IBM Netfinity 7000 M10. But here are the relevant points that refute your statement. (1) It's a function of the HARDWARE, BIOS, (IBM's add-on software and updates for the OS), and DRIVERS, (2) That feature is supported on numerous NON-VISTA OS's... if the HARDWARE, ETC supports it (the feature is supported under far earlier versions of Windows than Vista, as well as OS/2 and now, I think Linux as well for my machine - for EVERY PCI and PCI-X slot).
On the machines that DONT support it (which is many non-high end server machines... such as what you'd buy retail), removing the card will either shut down the machine, hang the machine, damage the machine or numerous other things faaaar different than what you claim will happen. While a few of the newer buses support such a feature, it is still HARDWARE, DRIVER and BIOS allowing it, and NOT locked to Vista, and in NO WAY an indication of stability in Vista - NOR a feature specific to Vista.
Get your facts straight.
I could go on in length about the rest of your post, but dont feel like wasting my time... perhaps later when I am bored.
Re:XP Sales? (Score:5, Informative)
1. To save money
2. Not to fund MS.
Re: (Score:2)
My point is that MS has to keep doing _something_
Without trolling, I could think of a few things:
1. How 'bout delivering a more robust file system, ala Relational FS (or something) so that the OS knows where all files are at all times? Desktop search is a joke. The search is for me, not for the OS.
2. How 'bout making a quantum leap as far as the architecture of the OS itself. Create a VM to support legacy software, but completely do a top/down sweep of the past 27 years. There are still relics from the MS-DOS days still in Vista. Let them die, alr
...What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Vista is the anti-thesis of geekiness. Everything is hidden away for the sole purpose of making sure you don't play with it and can't see how it works. All the details are hidden behind a wall of eye-candy meant to prevent you from probing too far. The idea is anathema to true geekiness.
It's sad times when every tard with an iPod considers themselves a "geek".
percent? (Score:2)
Secret plan (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Also worth noting (Score:5, Funny)
Vista Sales Numbers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I assume those numbers also include the copy I received (and promptly wiped) when I bought my new Thinkpad.
Yes, you know it does. You also know it includes those that got wiped for XP or Linux. What would be a good indicator is how many have shipped versus how many "called home" last week for updates. The actual numbers of running Vista instances is greatly exaggerated.
My guess is Microsoft will keep that number very very quiet. If Vista was a car, it would be known as an Edsel.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm running Ultimate on a few computers and can't for the life of me think what features are worth paying the extra for.
Presuming you're comparing with Home Premium rather than Business, the most obvious things which come to mind are dual processor support (*cough*Artifical-Market-Segmentation*/cough*), and Volume Shadow Copy (i.e. Windows' version of Leopard's Time Machine, sans fancy interface). VSC can actually be pretty damn useful even if you have a proper backup system, if only for its ability to be used as an ad-hoc file versioning system.
Then there's the enterprise & semi-server stuff like ability to join a do
Re:Vista Ultimate (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly, "Microsoft Vista" is an anagram of "Cost Favoritism", and "Microsoft Windows Vista" is an anagram of "It Wows Avid Conformists." I believe that these are original.
I think the latter needs an animated GIF, and is a great comeback to the "well everyone else is upgrading so you should too" nonsense.
Re: (Score:2)
Users going for home premium? (Score:2)
> Ultimate editions...
Obviously. The "Basic" version (which is still considerably more expensive than Mac OS X Leopard or certainly Linux) is crippled to the point of ridiculous. It doesn't even come with the ability to play DVD's; instead it will take you to a Microsoft page where you can buy the necessary plug-ins.
This is the way it should be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RsOIdF_DdY [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously. The "Basic" version ... is crippled to the point of ridiculous. It doesn't even come with the ability to play DVD's...
No version of Windows XP came with the ability (i.e. a codec) to play DVDs. Nor does any version of Linux that remains simultaneously free and legal. That doesn't mean Windows XP & Linux are "crippled to the point of ridiculous", it's just a licensing issue.
... is still considerably more expensive than Mac OS X Leopard":
BTW, I don't know what strange maths you use to reach the conclusion that "The "Basic" version
Vista Home Basic upgrade: List Price - $100; Amazon.com price - $59.
Leopard upg
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends. If I were Microsoft, I'd do anything NOT to put the idea into people's heads that even waiting for SP1 is not enough. They are probably losing tons of early sales as it is, because they can't manage to put out products that are stable from day 1.
I for one, however, think the biggest problem with Vista atm isn't the OS itself, but the flaky third-party
Sales rate of product falls after peak at intro! (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As much as folks here love to think that MSFT is a sinking ship, it's having its healthiest growth in years.
It will be short lived. People are running out and buying XP to replace Vista, and many are not happy about it. Am I glad I bought my last PC just before Vista came out.
Re: (Score:2)
No, its because X-Box is kicking ass.
Re: (Score:2)
Stocks "...have reached a permanent high plateau." (Irving Fisher, October 1929).
How could Microsoft screw up so bad? (Score:3, Informative)
Now, some of that breakage is the result of improved security, but our Windows driver guy tells me that the disruption caused by the security causes a lot of users to just disable the security.
Also, I understand that MS provided a version to a few top-tier OEMs that didn't require product activation by end users, so as not to annoy them. This resulted in a crack being written by the w4r3z community that doesn't require activation at all! (look for it on a p2p network near you.) The product activation is very sensitive to hardware changes, more so than XP, so that legitimate users get no end of hassle from Vista, while pirates aren't inconvenienced at all.
Surely Microsoft must have had some regular people beta test Vista. And surely some - maybe all - of these people must have told MS that Vista shouldn't ship in the state it's in.
My wife is thinking about getting a new laptop. I said to her "Make sure you don't get Vista, it's really screwed up" and you know what she said? "Oh, yeah I know. Apple runs these TV ads with a young guy who's supposed to be a Mac, and a guy who looks like Bill Gates who's supposed to be a PC. And whenever they try to talk to each other, this Secret Service agent interrupts them to make sure it's OK."
Remember the Twiggy drive? Apple tried to manufacture their own floppy disk drive for the Apple II. They were never able to get it to work. There was a big shareholder lawsuit. I could really see a shareholder lawsuit coming from Vista. Corporate officers have a fiduciary duty - that means they're legally obligated - to look after shareholder interests. And Billy and Steve Balmer really screwed up.
Re: (Score:2)
My wife is thinking about getting a new laptop. I said to her "Make sure you don't get Vista, it's really screwed up" and you know what she said? "Oh, yeah I know. Apple runs these TV ads with a young guy who's supposed to be a Mac, and a guy who looks like Bill Gates who's supposed to be a PC. And whenever they try to talk to each other, this Secret Service agent interrupts them to make sure it's OK."
You mean that Apple advertisments claim Vista is bad? Really? Say it isn't so! Ah well, that settles the issue then: everyone knows that marketing and advertisments never lie.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The lack of "buzz" is noteworthy (Score:5, Interesting)
My nontechnical friends and acquaintance do make light conversation about things they've heard of in the news, and will ask me, as a "computer genius," what I'm using at work. Previous Windows upgrades got mentioned in casual talk. Usually there are a least a few people who want to be the first kid on the block with it.
Not this time.
People talk about the iPhone, they talk about their newly-installed Verizon FiOS, their iPods, what brands of Wintel computers I trust, whether they can run Windows on the Intel Macs.
I don't detect any consumer excitement about Vista. Nobody has asked me if they should upgrade. And a couple of people have asked me whether I agree with friends of their who told them to avoid it.
Unscientific sample? You bet.
Re:The lack of "buzz" is noteworthy (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Vista was late. Really late. Many of the 'killer' features were torn out, leaving an OS that had very little new to offer. Apple's list of improvements between OS versions is very specific and tangible, addressing individual concerns. Time Machine sticks out as being a good example of this.
2) Unlike Windows XP, which was a significant upgrade, and replaced an OS (98/Me!) that many consumers were unhappy with, people are generally still happy with XP. For the most part, all of the complaints people had with 98/Me were solved by XP.
3) It was marketed poorly, and as I've already mentioned, it didn't have all that many tangible selling points. They could have put a huge emphasis on its supposedly improved resistance to viruses and spyware, but this would be admitting that XP was deeply and fundamentally flawed, which probably wouldn't sit too well with consumers either. This was a lot more noticeable against the backdrop of Apple's marketing campaigns. Apple's had arguably the most successful marketing campaign of any company in any industry over the past few years.
4) Many consumers felt abandoned by Microsoft, after they stopped improving IE, and did virtually nothing to stop the pandemic proliferation of viruses and spyware until it was far too late. The fact that they strongly urge customers to purchase a 3rd-party AntiVirus reeks of incompetence, even to ordinary consumers.
Come to think of it, Vista is probably the best thing that's ever happened to Apple.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think Apple's share price agrees with you.
Re: (Score:2)
That sure must have taken the wind out of "media edition" sales. And made everyone hate Microsoft.
Cool, my new OS will refuse to play movies for me, and won't let me copy DRMed mp3s. I'm feeling the love.
Leopard sales vs XP vs Vista (Score:2)
I think a fair assumption to make is that a large majority of Vista sales are on new computers. I think the interesting 'statistic' will be the number of Leopard sales in coming months as compared to Windows purchases (and downloads!). These purchases will likely be a part of a new PC purchase (or with some MS products) the purchase of hardware + OEM license
Anyways, with the ne
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: (Score:2)
I'm in the later, I really dislike Apple, so its not like I'm a fanboy trying to push his favored OS... but this isn't 10 years ago... There IS a choice,
You got to be kidding me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Joke. Re:You got to be kidding me.. (Score:4, Funny)
Eek, modded down so many times! And you almost have a 5 digit user id, so you must have been doing this for a very long time! Well, you're certainly persistent! Have you considered a career in Jehovah's Witnesses? They keep coming to my house and I can't seem to get them to give up. I think you and they may have a lot in common, with the obvious exception that you're slightly more fanatic about your beliefs.
Actually, Vista's done quite well (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, i
Fall Sales - 7% (Score:3, Informative)
Also consider that a rather large shopping season is right around the corner. Consumers will be rushing to upgrade their computers for the family, and businesses will be looking to spend some cash to get bigger tax breaks.
Microsoft also cooled it on the advertising for the last quarter. They have a new campaign which is just now starting, and I predict the money they *didn't* spend last quarter will be given to the Q4 advertising budget.
A little perspective (Score:2)
How Well is Vista Really Doing? (Score:3, Informative)
Think about it. A massive percentage of Microsoft's revenue comes from Windows. (With most of the rest coming from Office.) If Vista sales were bad, or even a just a little under what was expected, Microsoft's stock would take a hit.
But, funny enough, that's exactly the opposite of what happened last week. Microsoft's stock is up about 10% [yahoo.com]. And that's a HUGE deal for a company as mature and with such a huge market cap as Microsoft.
Now, granted, Vista sales aren't the only thing that can affect Microsoft's stock price. There was lots of good news for Microsoft. Windows Server market share is increasing (at what just so happens to be almost exactly the pace at which Linux server market share has decreased in recent months), their "entertainment" group (aka Xbox) posted their 2nd profit (thanks to Halo 3), and Office sales are awesome.
But the fact remains that Vista sales are meeting or beating expectations. Virtually all Vista sales happen via new PC purchases, and those were higher than expected for most of the year... thanks to, you guess it, Vista.
Since we're just pre-holiday season right now, PC sales tend to drop a bit... and that's what happened. (And please note that the sales RATE dropped, yet overall sales are still higher than last year at this time.) To say that this drop was caused by Vista is, put simply, retarded.
Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps true, but as someone who writes software for Windows for a living, I managed for about 2 days with Vista before I was overcome by the overwhelming urge to replace it with XP. It is, by far, the suckiest POS OS I've ever uses and I will do everything I can to avoid ever having to use it. Most people I know have had a similar Vista experience. I don't know a single person who has said, "Wow, Vista has really made my computer so much better." On the other hand, a lot of people who upgrade from Windows 98 to XP did say that about XP.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
For those of us with MCE's as our Tivo, and some specific problems with MCE2005, it's a good upgrade.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There! Now you know someone! In fact, it annoys me that my work computer is still on XP.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Windows STILL got a monopoly people, they will until some alternative to office starts seeing numbers like office, AND people who try to send you office documents get "could you send me that in this other format? Office's standard format is so bad, I can't work wit
Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (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...
Re: (Score:2)
Linux has already been through several economic downturns. The dot com crash was particularly hard on developers, but there were no signs of any issues in the open source community,
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Linux always makes it's best gains when Microsoft changes their OS. And with an economic downturn, companies will be looking to tighten up the budgets, this will include the cost of the OS. And the TCO of well run Linux can go up against MS-Windows
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: (Score:3, Funny)
no, it would get more crazy, because every vi nut will find himself married to a girl who extolls the virtues of emacs.
Re: (Score:2)
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'd like to add that the "hobby" can look "really" good on the resume, as it can often single-handedly demonstrate your class of sophistication. This way you can say I worked on project X, rather than just saying I tended bar for X months.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What about XP sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahem.
Except it's not crappy. It's a perfectly fine Windows OS. It's better than XP in every way I can think of.
The problem, I think, is that it doesn't really have anything to get people who are content with XP to upgrade. That combined with all the FUD about Vista makes for poor sales. I got it because I built a new machine, mainly for gaming. My old machine still had Win2000 on it as I wasn't a fan of XP. Now it has Slackware.
Re: (Score:2)
Then you probably aren't thinking very hard. Or you just happen to disagree with most people who come in contact with the UAC or run a foul of the drivers issues. Either way we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about XP sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet a large proportion of the increases in business licenses are companies like ours who need just need more XP licenses.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If as I suspect this is a Microsoft thing rather than our anything to do with our respective software distributors, then yes, there is probably a significant portion of Vista corporate licenses sold being used solely for Windows XP. I know our IT department have absolutely no plans to move anyone to Vista, th
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Vista is the new Coke few want. Ch^H^HRant with me now...
We want our old Coke back!
We want our old Coke back!
Buy any machine aimed at businesses (Score:3, Funny)
I just bought a Dell. They sell the same laptops as "small business" machines that they sell for the consumer market, for about $200 less if you count the service contract - in basic black instead of shiny mac colors, and XP is one of the features they're pushing. They know businesses don't want Vista that will break their programs with those new security features.
You know, if you write an OS that refuses to run any programs at all, then you're perfectly se
Re:Isn't this typically the slowest quarter? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Nevertheless, I'd expect a 7% drop to be statistically significant given any reasonable as
Need to seasonaly adjust numbers (Score:2)
Nevertheless, I'd expect a 7% drop to be statistically significant given any reasonable
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: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.
Stop Feeding The Troll (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a little dose of reality:
Your source is Bill Gates at WINHEC. You are the pot calling the kettle black. You are as guilty of spinning as the summary's author.
While you personally may believe what you wrote, it's impossible to know what the motivation is. Microsoft rewards you for evangelizing their stuff? Or perhaps you enjoy living in a Microsoft jail. Or maybe you haven't been burned yet.
P