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Vista Sales Expectations Too High, Office Doing Well

Posted by Zonk on from the business-of-windowing dept.

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."

12 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Queue up the chair jokes! by mingot · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Queue up the chair jokes! by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
      > 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.

      You are coming to a sad realization. Deny, allow, or throw chair?

    2. Re:Queue up the chair jokes! by smaddox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I personally think the reason sales are low is because not as many people are buying new computers, as they did during the 98-XP switch. The majority of Vista sales is going to be through new computer sales.

      Since XP actually does a decent job of retaining speed (a reformat still does wonders), no one needs to buy a new computer. If all they use it for is web browsing and e-mail, why do they need a new computer/OS that does neither any better than XP (unless you count more flashy as better)?

  2. Thing is... by gcnaddict · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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    1. Re:Thing is... by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Replace "most people" with "most people on Slashdot"... Most people have no idea what MS has done in the past 5 years, nor do they care. The NASCAR scandal is all they can handle right now.

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    2. Re:Thing is... by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Vista had a lot of marketing among the technology industry, but it also had a ton of bad press from beta testers reviewing it (You are posting a comment critical to Windows Vista, confirm or deny?). The mass media marketing did not really get into gear until fairly recently, and by that time anyone who was familiar with technology was already spreading the news that Vista was not very much different than XP except that it broke a lot of things that work under XP without providing a well-known mechanism for backward compatibility (even XP's broken Win95 emulation mode was better than nothing).

      When faced with a new product that works almost the same as the old product except that existing software doesn't work very well on it, I don't see why it's such a shock that uptake has been so slow.

    3. Re:Thing is... by the_macman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Replace "most people" with "most people on Slashdot"... Most people have no idea what MS has done in the past 5 years, nor do they care. The NASCAR scandal is all they can handle right now.
      Actually...you're dead wrong. You are correct most people don't pay attention to MS, but people aren't gonna go out and pay $250 (or however much it costs) for something they don't know about.

      I know for a FACT that people who are clueless about computers already have the idea Vista sucks and do not want to buy it.

      You know why? They ask US for advice and we tell them it sucks. I can personally think of 5+ accounts of average users asking about upgrading to Vista and a horde of geeks respond with a resounding NO! These are some of the things I've heard average users say about Vista...

      1. "It's riddled with anti-piracy locks, why get Vista when my pirated copy of XP works fine"
      2. "XP works great, why should I get Vista?"
      3. "I heard it won't run on my computer"
      4. "Unless your computer is brand new it will run like crap"
      5. "It sucks for games. If you want to game man, stick with XP"

      So don't say people have no idea about Vista, that is simply untrue.
  3. Re:Is anyone surprised? by SirMeliot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not remotely surprised. XP was a huge upgrade from Win 98. In comparison Vista's more like Win Me

  4. Imagine if people actually had a choice! by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  5. Amazing! by TheOldSchooler · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. Summary is misleading by donutello · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

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  7. Are you sure you want to execute vista-jokes.exe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    *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.