Slashdot Mirror
Vista Sales Expectations Too High, Office Doing Well
PetManimal writes "A comparison of first-week retail sales of Vista compared to first-week sales of XP back in 2001 found that Vista sales were 60% lower. Steve Ballmer has admitted that earlier sales forecasts were 'overly aggressive,' but at least there is some good news for Microsoft: early Office 2007 sales were very strong compared to the early sales of Office 2003, despite almost no advertising or marketing until the retail launch at the end of January."
Ballmer didn't "admit that previous sales forecasts were 'overly aggressive'".
The implication of that statement is:
- Ballmer/Microsoft issued a sales forecast in the past
- They were pressured on the accuracy of said forecast
- They admitted that their forecasts were overly aggressive.
However, that's not what happened here. The sales forecasts in question were made by external analysts. In this case, it's Ballmer and Microsoft disagreeing with the forecasts. The word "admit" implies that you are conceding something that you tried to conceal before.
Why does Slashdot need to spin every story to try and make it sound even more negative than it is?
Mmmm.. Donuts
It's interesting that Dell doesn't sell XP on the low end machines but it's still available on the mid and high end. Their consumer calls go to India and business calls don't. Are they turning the home users into a large beta test group using the cheaper support resources?
They also have a laptop for $499 which they haven't had in quite a while. It's only available with Vista. Maybe M$ is giving it away (or almost giving it away) to Dell to infect the market?
A quick check of the HP site doesn't seem to have any XP options even on the high end.