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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."
Then let's settle into a nice discussion about how vista sucks because it's more of the same and office 2007 sucks because it's not more of the same.
Vista received a huge marketing campaign, but most people who kept track of what Microsoft was doing for the past 5 years know that Vista could've been much better than what it turned out to be due to the development crash in August 2004.
Office, on the other hand, was praised as something which would make life much easier for people because of the new ribbon. There's even a home and student version for people who can't afford paying for standard edition.
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I'm not remotely surprised. XP was a huge upgrade from Win 98. In comparison Vista's more like Win Me
Having had access to the Vista RTM for several months through my MSDN subscription, Ive had a decent amount of friends and family asking me if they should upgrade. I always tell them thats its a fairly nice OS but its not worth the money. Take it if its free, but otherwise stick with what you have. There aren't enough feature updates to justify spending $100+.
People rarely talk about just how viral Office updates are. You save a doc in 2000 format, and suddenly 97 can no longer open it. Save it in 2003 and 2000 can't open it. And so on. A customer/vendor/friend sends you a doc file, and you can't open it. Time to upgrade!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
And of those who did buy Vista, most didn't even want it!
I've helped four friends/family/FOAFs out so far who just bought a new PC and wanted to know how to get rid of Vista (the major OEMs no longer even give you a choice of XP).
They all, without exception, had the same set of complaints... They didn't know where to get at all the normal Windows tools, and despite having "upgraded" for a faster computer, their new machines, it felt significantly less responsive (I've translated a bit, and removed the streams of obscenities).
Short of piracy (or actually buying XP), I explained to them how to make Vista as XP-like as possible. Still not perfect, still a CPU and memory hog, still moved quite a bit around from the XP layout, but at least they could then use it.
Pathetic. If Microsoft wants to offer a new OS, fine. But they've gone out of their way to make it almost impossible to get a new, legal copy of XP, just so they can boost Vista's market penetration.
what OS they want?
Seriously..you assume that all non slashdotters are NASCAR fans?
;)
I would really rip into you if it were not so busy following the Anna Nichole Smith scandal
A goal is a dream with a deadline
My mother in law saw Vista on my laptop, saw me searching, using the start bar, and using Office 2007. She was very eager to upgrade, and she asked how she could do that.
I explained that she could buy the disc at a place like Office Depot, Best Buy, or wherever else she likes to get software (she's always just stuck with the OS on her machine from birth->death), but I also warned that she should make sure that the software she wants to run on her machine will run without problems before she bothers to do a big upgrade.
Quickbooks, some realtor software, and something her office uses have notes about compatibility problems with Vista. She stopped looking after that.
This is the first Windows release that I've used in which roughly half of the things I install have had some compatibility issues, noted in advance or discovered by me. It doesn't keep things from being usable in the general case, but it's more than just media FUD at this point.
They/we will fix it with OS/software updates over time.
It's almost as if the crappy product with very little innovation is selling poorly, while the well thought out product that has some innovative features is doing nicely. Who woulda thought.
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
*Open FireFox*
...
You are trying to open a web browser, do you want to open it?
[ Continue ] [ Cancel ]
*continue*
This web browser was not signed by Microsoft, operation aborted.
[ Okay ]
*click* *Open IE*
You are trying to open a program made by Microsoft. Good choice!
[ Okay ]
*click* *slashdot.org*
You are opening a port to connect to an external website. Are you sure? It might be dangerous.
[ Continue ] [ Cancel ]
*continue*
You are connecting to Slashdot.org. Are you sure you want to go there? How about MSN instead?
[ Continue ] [ Go to MSN ] [ Cancel ]
*continue*
You appear to be posting to Slashdot. Any comment you write might be read by third parties. Are you sure you want to continue?
[ Continue ] [ Cancel ]
*continue*
You appear to be posting material that is disparaging to Microsoft. This is forbidden by section 66, paragraph 6 of your Windows Vista Super Mega Chair Monkey Team Hyper Force Go! ULTIMATE Edition EULA.
[ Report Yourself to Microsoft for Being Naughty ]
*BANG*
For sale: Like-new computer w/Vista. Slightly shotgunned.
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.