Ballmer Says Vista Selling Really Well 692
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling 'incredibly well,' he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today. 'Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,' the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on '45 percent of all of new business PCs.' Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice." Anyone know anybody who bought Vista except as bundled with hardware?
Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Informative)
Even Time magazine has notice Microsoft is "an Empire in rapid decline" [time.com].
Who's this message directed at? The last people he's going to fool are corporate users. Home users continue to avoid buying new computers because what they have is working just fine. Even if he could convince them to go buy, they have a giant selection of $500 and less Vista failure laptops to chose from if they don't just buy a $300 EEE PC with GNU/Linux.
Re:Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista is Microsoft's new windfall.
Re:Who does he think he's fooling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course Ballmer is going to say Vista is selling well. What TF else is he going to say? He has to lie to his shareholders to keep the stock up, or else they'll run out of funding and won't be able to crush their competition.
If Microsoft had to survive on the merits of their products, they'd have been gone a long, long time ago.
The Question (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The Question (Score:5, Funny)
You'll be stuck in engineering forever. With that attitude, you'll never make it into marketing.
Re:The Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think working in Marketing should be a capital offense.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why Marketing's behind consistently gets kissed (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bad Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
so... 90% of them have stated whether or not they hate vista? You do realize that your phrasing would include satisfied people in those 90%. But I'll assume that you meant that 90% hated it. You are providing technical support for those people! Of course they aren't happy with something. They screwed something up on their computer, and they are blaming Vista for it.
Re:Bad Vista (Score:4, Informative)
He is saying that new PCs are selling well (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupid question (Score:2)
Yes.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd been around on slashdot for more than a few minutes, you'd know it doesn't have an overall political bias (other than the disproportionately large libertarian representation, which is true of both the Internet user population in general and tech industry in particular).
In 2003, Slashdot was a "conservative" website, because most Americans were in support of invading Iraq and let their opinions be known in their comments. Now, when the majority of American opinion has turned against the war, it should be no shock that the majority opinion here has as well.
If you think Slashdot in general has a particular ideological bias, that's pretty much proof that you're the one with a strong and irrational ideological bias, and that you're more interested in disparaging anyone who disagrees with you and claiming the role of victim than in doing anything intellectually honest or productive.
faint praise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Almost no-one buys Windows unbundled anyway. (Score:2)
Anyone know anybody who bought Vista except as bundled with hardware?
You can make that into "... bought any version of Windows except bundled...".
There will be some people who buy the boxed version, but very very few. The vast majority buys Windows only with a new computer. Oh sorry, make that gets Windows with a new computer. There is after all no separate pricing for Windows, it is simply included. And by many users thus perceived as free.
Windows you get with your computer, Windows you don't buy. And it will be a very very long time before that idea is g
Customers want both. (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely not! This isn't an either or choice. Your customers want both! That's why, many of your customers are moving to patforms that offer both. 45% businesses choose Vista? What about the other 55% of businesses?. What did they choose - hmmmmm?
Re:Customers want both. (Score:4, Informative)
XP? Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are business really just sticky with XP? Or are they moving over a Linux distro or OSX for that matter? I have a feeling that the Linux numbers are going to start increasing drastically. Just a hunch.
I can't disagree (Score:5, Funny)
People like Vista because it's shiny (Score:5, Insightful)
They experience Vista's problems and huge system requirements, but they keep using it anyway. Maybe it's because they don't want to admit to themselves that they indirectly bought garbage. But I think it's because they want the newest, shiniest product, regardless of whether it's better.
Fact: most people are MORONS.
Re: (Score:2)
I bought it (Score:2)
About a month ago I started getting random video corruption issues when waking from hibernate on my 2yo XP machine (it only happened when waking from hibernate). I narrowed it down to a software issue, and the only fix after a while was a reinstall. The machine was a refurb HP box, so the only XP install media I have are the restore CDs I burned, which contain all the crap I spent a month or so clearing out when I first got the mach
I know some... (Score:2)
Yep.
The better question is "Anyone know anybody who bought Vista except as bundled with hardware, and doesn't regret it?".
I don't.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't know anybody, or don't regret it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is Slashdot. The answer should be obvious. No need to rub it in.
For Compatibility Testing (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought a copy for compatibility testing that I run in a virtual machine. A side benefit is that I get to compare versions of Windows side-by-side. It's enlightening. Vista is slower in every respect than its predecessors, and it's more difficult to use.
On the other hand, it is shinier.
Not willingly.. (Score:5, Informative)
We're an HP value-add reseller and we can't get xw4400 workstations without vista. We had to request a downgrade kit (they will only give 1 to each business address, even though we order hundreds of these a year) and then downgrade them to XP.
I had some friends who have it on their new laptops...
boughtVista (Score:5, Informative)
I know two people. One is now using XP, and the other got so mad he bought a Mac.
Sells well when you have no choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Volume licenses (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes for Server 2008. I bought a Server 2008 open license edition and promptly installed server 2003. I needed it for an accounting app, but I wasn't going to install 2008...I don't trust it. Besides, servers should NEVER require activation or validation! EVER! That's a deal-breaker IMO.
(Don't worry, that server 2003 instance is only a VM running on a linux box.)
So what have we learned? That just because their FUCKED UP licensing model REQUIRES you to buy the new license in order to use the older, more functional versions doesn't mean that the product is a success. That ambulatory heap of festering dogshit that calls itself "Steve Ballmer" really has nothing to crow about.
Do they count "downgrade rights" as a Vista sale? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know somebody who bought vista non bundled (Score:2)
I made a conscious decision to purchase a copy of vista home when building my recent box from parts. For what its worth I use linux extensively at work and dual boot and I like linux. Vista was frustrating at first but actually its pretty much like XP but fractionally better in a few areas. What I dislike about it is that they didnt push the boat out enough with the ui candy, I would kill for multiple desktops and expose (features both Mac and Linux have). And would it freaking kill them to have an "
Vista Media Center is worth the price of admission (Score:2, Funny)
Counterfeit sales (Score:5, Interesting)
Or at least that's how I understood the deal. Correct me if I'm wrong.
db
Vista is a hard sell!!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Riiiight (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you sold a copy of Vista, that doesn't mean were using it.
Ten Percent (Score:3, Interesting)
old machine / new machine crossroad (Score:5, Insightful)
Why am I using the past here? because, for the first time since I started 20 years back, I see absolutely no use changing to a new machine. I use Excel. I use Access.there are some other apps that work well on XP. my machine is 3 years old, in the prime of an optimized and no nonsense life. I do not play big computer games at work. THAT's the real problem with Vista. Users have to change/upgrade machine to use Vista. what for?
I think that business users might go to Linux, but what they'd really want would be to stay as they are for years to come.
Piracy and Downgrading (Score:3, Informative)
1) Use pirate versions of Vista, mostly in Latinoamerica and Asia.
2) Downgrade right away to XP or Ubuntu, usually wasting the license that came with the PC.
So I wouldn't take sales as a factor here.
Somebody is stuck in the 80s (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in, oh, 1983-ish, I realized that PC stood for personal computer. Maybe Balmer will start calling Windows-based PCs IBM compatibles...that'll really show us how on top of the industry he is.
Re:Somebody is stuck in the 80s (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi I'm a mac. and I'm a PC
Ballmer saying Vista selling really well? (Score:3, Informative)
Sales not equal to installs (Score:3, Informative)
Vista ? a nightmare for editors (Score:4, Interesting)
It was the worst nightmare we ever had. After finguring out for several months what was going on, we came to the conclusion that it simply wasn't possible. To summarize (sorry for simplifying):
- UAC is the worst design/implementation ever. Windows has several execution environments (unlike UNIX, which has... 2: user(s) and root), and UAC asks you for permission each time you cross a fence ! (in UNIX, sudo at leasts reminds the password for several minutes or so)
- ActiveX are simply impossible to use under Vista+IE7. Problem is that Microsoft didn't care to offer a replacement technology.
The consequence of all this is that our application was no longer available under Vista/IE. It worked well under Vista/Firefox, though.
Finally, we hired an ex-microsoftie, who re-implemented the ActiveX part entirely, using MS _private_ APIs, and now it works - more ore less.
Going through all this, i wonder if the NT platform can be secured at all. Since we also have a support department, i can tell you that users have fare more problems with Vista than XP.
This is going to kill MS. Almost all techies i know, plus lots of "power users" are switching to Linux or OSX (even the ex-microsoftie we hired was using OSX as his primary OS). Only big companies are sticking to MS, because of the total lack of competence that reigns there.
MS *knows* how many copies are actually *used* (Score:3)
MS goes on and on about how many licenses they've sold.
But the question is: How many of these are actually in use?
The thing is, MS knows this number - it's the number of copies pinging the Windows Update servers.
Could journalists please start asking them this question? And keep asking until they answer.
It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Informative)
PC Magazine's editor sure gave Vista the thumbs down [slashdot.org]. The only thing any of my friends ever tell me is that "It looks nicer" so they like it but they have more problems with it than XP. That kind of opinion does not make me want to risk buying a new PC.
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:4, Informative)
* 4 GB of memory supported on 32-bit Vista.
* Backup to DVD-R or CD-R
* MUCH better Wi-Fi control
* Restore Points can be set for user files, not just system files
* New UI technique -- hit windows key, type the name of your file or program, and hit enter. (The upgraded Explorer has a whole bunch of new and useful bits, but this is the one I miss the most from the Beta.)
If I could upgrade the three PCs my wife and I have for less than $100 total, I'd do it. But since I can't, Vista isn't worth the upgrade price -- but I wouldn't shy away from it if I were purchasing a new computer.
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Informative)
Misleading. 32 bit Vista can only access 3.1GB without a hardware hack called PAE [msdn.com] which will not work with all software.
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:4, Informative)
It seems that XP without SP2 actually supports more memory but MS disabled that feature because many drivers didn't get on with it and bluescreened. And XP without SP2 is not supported anymore.
So afaict if you wan't more than 3.something gigabytes of usable memory on a supported 32 bit version of windows you have to go for a server edition
PAE is not a hack (Score:5, Informative)
PAE is a feature of the modern x86 architecture, just like MMX or SSE. It was introduced with the Pentium Pro in 1995 (13 years ago!), and has been standard since the Pentium II (1997). PAE increases the number of address lines from 32 to 36. It also adds a new mode to the x86 MMU (Memory Management Unit) which supports 36-bit hardware addresses. The new mode adds a third level to the page table structure, in facilitate a larger page table entry size.
Both Vista and XP enable PAE, but with a major caveat. Both avoid using any hardware address above the 4 GiB mark because it turns out a lot of drivers can't handle such. That includes drivers which ship with Windows -- and Microsoft takes on part of the support burden of those. (Microsoft doesn't support third-party (non-WHQL) drivers and never has.)
The reason both OSes enable PAE mode is to get NX (No Execute bit) support. (NX is used as a defense against code injection due via buffer overrun. Microsoft calls it DEP (Data Execution Prevention).) The NX bit is only present in the larger page table entries. So they enable PAE -- and take the performance hit of the third level of page table lookup -- but don't actually use the larger hardware address word.
So anyway, because the OSes can't use hardware above 4 GiB, they (re)configure all your peripheral hardware to exist within the 4 GiB space. That includes configuration space, ROMs, buffers, video memory, the AGP aperture, memory mapped hardware I/O (DMA), etc. Any RAM at those addresses gets "shadowed" and is not accessible to the OS.
Linux doesn't have this problem -- it's been 64-bit clean for years, and will happily put your peripheral hardware above 4 GiB. (One can still run into problems with motherboards, BIOSes, and/or expansion cards which don't support hardware addresses > 32 bits, though. Some motherboards don't have the PAE lines "wired". Some BIOSes just don't support it. And some 32-bit PCI cards don't support DAC (Dual Address Cycle), which would let them accept a 64-bit address.)
But to support a hardware address > 32 bits with Windows, you either need to run the x86-64 versions of Windows, or run Advanced/Enterprise Server. (The "Standard" version of Windows Server is limited in the same way as Win XP/Vista.)
Note that all of the above is about hardware addresses -- the actual address lines coming out of the x86 chip. The virtual address space is still limited to 32 bits and 4 GiB. And all software -- including the OS kernel -- use the virtual address space for practically all operations. But with PAE, you can at least have multiple processes which total to more than 4 GiB.
(There are also techniques which let a 32-bit process make use of more than 4 GiB of RAM, such as bank switching (memory windowing). But such techniques are cumbersome at best. Ultimately, a 32-bit process can only directly access 4 GiB of memory. You need long mode (x86-64/AMD64) to get a 64-bit virtual address space.)
(Windows further limits most 32-bit user processes to 2 GiB, reserving 2 GiB for the kernel. There's a BOOT.INI switch which changes that split to 3 GiB for userland and 1 GiB for the kernel. But unless a program was specifically compiled to support that, it will still only use 2 GiB. And robbing 1 GiB from the kernel can impact performance in other ways.)
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
7 reasons a geek should buy OSX, off the top of my head:
- 64-bit OS in all flavors, also works with 32-bits programs/drivers and older machines without 64-bit cpu.
- Backup to DVD-R or CD-R since
- Cheaper than Vista, VPN integrated for networks.
- Time Machine. Much better than restore points.
- Full consistent UI and spotlight. Press Command-Space, type in then name of the file or some meta-data you can set or the content of it, and you get it.
- Full bash support from the ground up. Free developer tool-chain, with some tools (e.g. Dashcode or Quartz Composer) easy to use to the non-coder people.
- Expose, Dashboard, Spaces, iWeb, iPhoto, etc etc. YMMV on the usefulness of those.
- Support for Zeroconf (Bonjour), which is still not there on Vista.
I've been buying Macs for some times now, and haven't thrown a computer yet. All upgraded to Leopard and still fully functional in its full G4 glory.Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's PC Magazine and just about everyone. (Score:4, Informative)
I have one of these chipsets, the Intel 965. My motherboard officially supports 8GB of memory. I tried 4GB of memory with x64 vista and it caused file system corruption and complete data loss. With 3.5GB of memory the system was also unstable. I believe that the memory addressing is screwed up in terms of directx. There is a bug about double mapping address space for directx compatibility that is supposedly fixed in SP1. So if you have a video card with 512MB of RAM, vista uses an address space of 1GB (below the 4GB range). That explains why it would not work with more than 3GB of ram in my system.
More information: I have an intel DP965LT motherboard with a core 2 duo. It was x64 ultimate vista. (ubuntu couldn't boot on it either 32bit with 7.x, but 6.06 worked) The only os that worked that I tested was MidnightBSD (amd64).
I used vista for 10 months on 2.5GB of ram and it was fine. After the crash, I went back to xp because 3GB of ram is insane for it and i got 5FPS in my games by doing so. I just didn't feel like going through it again. Not to mention all the games I have that don't work. Some would have worked with 32bit vista, but not all.
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
- User control sucks, and it sucks to code for. Yeah, it can be disabled, but you can't count on that in your apps - and it's a bitch on older software.
- Many apps and games are broken. Obvious point. - It takes damn-near twice the processing power and memory that XP does, no matter how you look at it.
- They're artificially forcing it down people's throats by trying to restricting software to be Vista-only when it'd run fine (possibly better) on XP.
- Mostly all the menus and configurations were changed. I say changed and not improved, because they haven't improved (from my point of view).
- Many misc UI changes. See previous point.
Short summary, there is no good reason for me to be wanting Vista, aside from the fact that MS and other companies (most likely for extra money from MS) are trying to force it down my throat. (Besides, the effective forcing [and quit the "you have a choice" crap - that shit doesn't apply in the real world] sounds like monopoly abuse to me. -- And for the record, I don't even hate Microsoft. They *can* make excellent software, and I use Windows XP Professional exclusively.)
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Insightful)
Alright, I'm no fan of vista for many reasons, but this is just flat incorrect. If you don't assume that your user has admin rights they need never see a UAC prompt from within your application. The actual rights required for practically every system API are extremely well documented; if you fail to read that documentation you can't blame the OS.
Fact is, UAC is forcing lazy programmers to actually pay attention to the code they're spewing out. It doesn't take a lot of effort to avoid UAC in your app -- just a little extra awareness of what you're doing.
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the point of upgrading?
And, more importantly, by doing this, your experience is not a typical vista experience for the average user.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfriendly Access Control (Score:4, Interesting)
It is poorly implemented in that it doesn't have a grace period. As such every instance of requested elevation will hit a user instead of once in a reasonably short time window.
This is a real problem when people are initially bumping up against the new Windows 'feature'. When they buy a new machine and are installing countless pieces of software, it's like being hammered over the head with near constant 'cancel/allow' requests.
Once (if) the typical user gets past this initial Trial By UAC and aren't installing programs one after another, UAC is barely noticeable and is handy for the security it provides, but a user's introduction to the process is *extremely* negative and likely to sour them to the control mechanism, IMO.
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Aero
2. The Apple Spotlight clone
3. The Google Sidebar clone
3. Windows Explorer now allows you to filter by file extension
Not worth the $220 and 10% to 15% performance reduction I paid. I recently reinstalled XP after using Vista everyday for over a year.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the contrary, I would guess that most *nix-using Slashdot-readers would normally run as unprivileged users, and only elevate their privileges with su/sudo for special tasks. Why would that be so bad for the Windows-using Slashdot crowd?
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Interesting)
Serious question.
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Informative)
- MSPaint now saves to JPEG as the default file format.
There you go.Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with Vista is that Microsoft was not up front about what you really needed to run it; many "Vista Ready" machines -- weren't. On top of that, Vista went out without drivers for a lot of things, which is a lot of the point of using Windows over something better -- better hardware support.
I think Vista is largely a mixed bag; it was released beta quality, which (in part) probably contributes to its heroic resource demands on hardware. Even the early MacOS 10 releases were pretty inefficient. But with respect to beta software being released as production ready, I'd the same thing about Ubuntu Hardy. It's not really release quality IMHO. However, its easier to take a few lumps on an upgrade if it is (a) free and (b) optional.
And that, I think, is a big part of the reason for Vista hatred. People have decided they don't like riding the upgrade merry-go-round. They got to the point they felt like they could live with XP; they'd probably pay good money for an improved XP. What they got was something which was not as radical as intended (no WinFS), but sufficiently radical to be noticeably rocky and resource intensive. Some of the changes in Vista are unqualified improvements, some of the changes are defensible with implementation faults (UAC and Windows File Protection), and some are there to support Microsoft's agenda alone (DRM).
We may be in an era where customers don't want to be dragged kicking and screaming into a vendor's vision for the future. They'd rather see consistent, incremental improvements. Even the minor changes Microsoft makes in situations like this are starting to piss people off, like renaming control panel applets.
People may not be happy about having to pay for MacOS upgrades, but they're getting incremental improvements on a known quantity. Likewise, I think Ubuntu Hardy is a bit rocky, but the changes are intended to be much the same: incremental improvements on a known quantity. And it's asymptotically approaching that point.
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't really get all the Vista hatred (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using it regularly on a new laptop since January and I absolutely despise it. I'm also really sick of seeing people say what you did: just because YOU like it doesn't mean all the people saying it sucks don't really hate it. I'm sure there are some that bitch about it who haven't tried it, but then again I'm sure there are some who claim it's great who haven't tried it either so they balance out.
So why do I hate Vista? I have several very good reasons:
There are other things but they're more minor, the above cut into my productivity the most for no good reason. I've given Vista a chance but it's days are looking numbered, I'm probably going to go to XP Pro soon as I'm tired of Vista wasting my time.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you are referring to "move files from one folder to another, ignoring any files that have namesakes in the target folder", that can also be done in XP. You move the files, and when the overwrite dialog appears, hold down Shift and click "No". This works as "No to all".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301347 [apple.com]
"To take advantage of Quartz Extreme, you need one of the following graphics cards:
ATI: Any AGP-based ATI RADEON GPU, with 16 MB VRAM or better.
NVIDIA: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX or later, with 16 MB VRAM or better."
Apple did not forget CPU. CPU is not even mentioned since it has nothing to do with the idea of offloading GUI to GPU!
I am not a big window
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista was developed not as an OS to give customers a better experience, but as a DRM platform. This is rather evident in the final product.
The DRM is a large cause of the sluggishness and poor driver stability. Not to mention it drives up the cost of hardware in general due to Microsoft now dictating certain aspects of hardware design to satisfy the DRM requirements. And what about when it breaks [msdn.com]?.
I would say it is most relevant to me regardless of use. The OS is full o
Re:Vista not so bad (Score:4, Informative)
Sales of Windows off 24% (Score:5, Informative)
It's remarkable how he can paint a happy face on the steepest decline in the history of the company [bloomberg.com].
If his figures are correct, the PC market just experienced the largest contraction ever and nobody noticed. Especially odd in that Intel's operating income is up 23% [newsoxy.com]. Top PC seller HP's net income is up 16% on strong notebook sales [wsj.com] and huge growth in emerging markets. Lenovo is reporting a 17% increase in sales on strong global demand [pcworld.com].
Is anybody besides Microsoft seeing this decline? Is somebody lying to Ballmer? "Gee, no, Steve. Business is off everywhere. It's a recession. People adore Vista. You can put the chair down now."
We worry more than other people (Score:5, Interesting)
On my Linux box if a website manages to get a popup window open without asking, that's a major security breach requiring immediate examination and correction.
On the average user's Window's box an unexpected new browser toolbar, websites that redirect to unfamiliar places and a short game of Kill the popups [heavygames.com] is such a common part of the landscape that people just don't notice them until they render the computer completely unusable [splasho.com].
You're doing pretty good (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not a bad approach. Now:
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The Russians had looked up the definition of "hacker" in the Jargon File and been inspired to leverage the creative power of open source Free Software. The first campaign took place in August 2006 and was detected a month later, ha
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
In order for your comment to be true the exact opposite of what I illustrated happening in my post must be happening. Since I provided links, it would be fair to ask you for some.
PC sales are up in a big way in units, dollars of sales and dollars of profit. Windows sales are off by 24%. Make of that what you will. I choose to believe that Microsoft is getting a lot less for Windows than they used to especially in emerging markets, they're bleeding share on high end retail units and they've fully booked the sales under Software Assurance. I also choose to believe this is because nobody wants Vista, especially on the cost effective platforms that don't run it well.
We have run the circle:
We're back at nothing but XP for you. All your base are belong to XP. Now you just also have to take the Vista License so they can book another Vista sale for their marketeering. That way Ballmer can say stuff like "almost 100% of retail PCs are Vista." If you'll remember, Saddam Hussein also got 100% of the "popular vote" in the last election before his execution. At least they aren't making you take a SuSE coupon as well -- yet.
Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:5, Interesting)
My old XP laptop with half the specs does things faster than vista. I had some hopes for SP1, but so far I've seen no real improvement... As far as I'm concerned, vista made things shiny, added a few handy but hardly necessary features, and slowed down my machine.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:5, Insightful)
So speak for yourself. Many people hate it, and almost no companies are upgrading.
Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:4, Informative)
If you see a +1.2M UIN account posting the usual "I agree with you" replies to one of twitter's comments, chances are it's one of his sockpuppet accounts.
(I'll take my offtopic mod now)
Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing is moving, Apple is handing him his ass (Score:4, Interesting)
The real thing is that Microsoft has become so disconnected and arrogant that it has put itself in a position that its customers are willing (and wanting) to find any viable alternative to their products.
I really believe that Microsoft believes their own stories. If you go to a computer/electronics store you won't find a choice between computers with Vista and XP. You will find Vista rammed down the consumer's throat. I think they really believe that the customers are really choosing Vista over XP even though they have no choice.
As far as businesses: The company I work for purchases lots of computers from Dell (100+ a month) and last week I changed our purchasing from ordering only machines with XP licenses to only ordering systems with Vista licenses...
I'm certain that Microsoft will lie to themselves and tally this up as a successful sale of Vista instead of a customer who wants no part of it but is going to pick up the license for the same price and hedge his bets.
When a company lies to itself and loses focus on trying to meet customer needs it is walking the road to failure. The only question is if there is a David out there that can capitalize on Goliath's faltering. (Can Linux pull a major rabit out of their hat? I just don't see it...)
HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc not interested in $E3? (Score:5, Funny)
All of them have their $4,000 laptops and Media Centers, but Apple sells twice as many as them combined. Tell me another good joke about vendors not being interested in high margin business and I'll tell you a good joke about a $400 OS and a $450 Office suite. Steve Ballmer is blowing smoke from his crack pipe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But for many of us half-decent isn't good enough. I'd rather save and get something as good as I can possibly afford, on most all items of my life. Half decent sounds like half assed to me, and I try not to settle for anything in life. Life is too short just to 'get by' on everything.
Re:The Slashdot Stepfords (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes the crowd is right (Score:4, Insightful)
Vista sucks. Maybe they added a few improvements here and there, but overall, it is not as good as XP. In no way does it justify seven years of development. Look at what Ubuntu was seven years ago (oh wait, there was no Ubuntu seven years ago, well, then look at Debian). But this is no surprise. Monopolies do that. They churn out crappy products. No surprise here.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not helping the statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Resources (Score:3, Interesting)
The resources I worry about in a laptop aren't dollars... they're electrons. If your laptop is running Vista, you need a faster processor (less battery life) and more RAM (less battery life) and you run the CPU at a higher power level (less battery life) to get the same experience as you would with XP. Paying $200 more for a laptop isn't a big deal. Not having to play