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MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Pace
Several readers made us aware that Microsoft said today that it sold more than 20 million Windows Vista licenses in the first month after the OS's general debut on January 30. This compares to 17 million licenses of XP sold in the first two months after its release. (Just a coincidence the announcement came out a day after this community's speculation, surely.) Most of the coverage of this story, picked up from Reuters, looks like it follows an MS press release. The Associated Press dug deeper, noting that since XP's release the overall PC market has grown by almost a factor of 2, so it would be a surprise if Vista didn't do twice as well: "...51 million PCs were sold to consumers worldwide in 2002; this year... 96 million consumers will buy a computer." Also, Microsoft's 20 million figure includes the backlog of upgrade coupons bundled with XP computers sold since last October.
Not quite... computer sales up, lots of Vista freebie coupons lying around and still only 20 million copies? Vista is not going well and as far as I can tell Microsoft is doing everything it can to prop up the numbers. Two different discount programs, now this misleading press release. I don't think Microsoft has much reason to be chuckling at all...
If Windows sales have doubled because the PC market has doubled. Should Linux and Mac sales have also doubled?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
So Microsoft isn't quoting figures for sales spanning two months, but rather for more than five months, including at least three months of "pre-sales" in the form of coupons which likely may never be redeemed. If the coupon is never redeemed, then it can't be counted as a Vista sale, since Vista was never installed.
More FUD from the masters. Which frankly doesn't surprise me. Without apps irrevocably tied to Vista, there's no impetus to "upgrade," and people will stay with XP. Microsoft is clearly desperate to make Vista appear to have a larger installed base than it does so that ISVs will commit to it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I guarantee you that this was planned, and they are stuffing their product chain to provide these numbers. Basically for anyone who does not understand the process, it simply means that when they stock vendors, they are counting these items as "sold". This is a very common tactic, and was exactly what they did with the Zune... Meaning they have a history of using this manipulation tactic...
:-)
Seeing as they did not say they were NOT doing this, I can assure you that they are. Dont believe me? Well, lets see when their quarterly report comes out... I will bet almost anything that it will be uneventful...
I wouldn't even give them that. Personally, I don't plan on upgrading any of the computers I administer until at least 18 months out. I've got a test machine running Vista Ultimate, and while I'm actually a fan of the features Vista introduces, it will be an absolute nightmare to roll this out to my users, especially since (currently) Vista and Server 2003 don't always see eye-to-eye. Microsoft is just trying to convince people that Vista is doing well, and I understand that, but any business that tries to upgrade any time soon is asking for a world of hurt.
Not all new PCs are capable of running Vista with anything even remotely close to decent performance.
:)
A couple of weeks ago I got my mum a fairly low-end notebook (1.73GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD). Since she's not exactly much of a power user and only wanted to browse the web, extract pics from her camera and occasionally check her email, her needs were easy to satisfy with a cheaper computer. Only problem was, this notebook (like EVERY SINGLE ONE in the store) was pre-installed with Vista. I figured, hey, if they're running Vista on a brand-new PC then surely the manufacturer had chosen a decent configuration to ensure decent performance. Damn I was so naive.
It was slow to boot, slow to shutdown/hibernate, slow to run programs on, full of useless pre-installed crap (e.g. Norton with 30-day subscription). After Vista did some weird shit that caused this new PC to hang with massive non-stop disk accessing, I decided to blow Vista entirely away and stick an old copy of XP with Service Pack 2 on instead. Now, the system is faster to start, faster to shutdown/hibernate, faster to launch software, it has only the software it needs with no crap lying around after an uninstall, much more responsive, plus I freed about 8 GB of a hidden recovery partition. All in all, it was a win for us with absolutely no disadvantages and a shitload of positives. In the future I might even be tempted to install Ubuntu instead, but I won't push my luck just yet.
This shouldn't be particularly surprising I suppose, but I mention it because I was totally shocked how quickly and ruthlessly the manufacturers were in totally abandoning a perfectly-working OS like XP, and sticking Vista as their default setup on hardware that shouldn't have been running it to begin with. It really astounded me just how useful the system was... *without* Vista.
I agree. I absolutely do not believe Microsoft's numbers. I remember quite clearly the rollout of XP and the major organizations that upgraded pretty quickly, plus the general interest in the enthusiast community. Neither is the case with XP. Maybe a lot of those numbers are like me, who got a copy of Vista Home Premium with a new computer, and after a few hours of frustrated wrestling with it, simply formatted the hard disk and installed my trusty copy of XP Pro SP2. I imagine that since I paid for an OEM copy of Vista, they can count me as a purchaser, although I won't touch it at least until Service Pack 2 AND Microsoft announces they are taking all the DRM out of Vista. Until then, I will not use it or recommend it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
>Consumers don't have to rationalize buying Vista. If they're buying a new computer, they don't have a choice.
Well... a week ago, an acquaintance said she was finally upgrading her computer (from one running Windows 98, with 64 Mbytes of RAM!), and wanted some advice, because she'd heard bad things about Vista. She'd heard of Linux, but had bought the line that one had to be a "nerd" to use it, so she was hoping to buy a computer with Windows XP; I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I did tell her that now that Vista has been released for the general public, basically any computer running Windows she buys now will have Vista on it. Based on that, she said a Macintosh was looking better and better, so I expect that's what she'll end up with.
Of course, that's a lousy sample size, but I'm heartened somewhat that an average computer user is leery of moving to Vista.
And exactly what features would that be? Seriously.
I've been using Vista for a few weeks now, came with my new laptop. There's been a single thing where I've thought "Hey, that's new, and really useful". And that's the search in the start menu. Everything else is just meh, or just a new face on an old item.
The taskbar preview is a perfect example. I move my mouse down to the taskbar to click on a folder, and a little thumbnail appears. A *useless* thumbnail. It doesn't do anything, or provide any more info than the folder icon and it's name did. It's just miscellaneous fluff. Same thing for the flip 3d thing. I don't even use it, just alt-tab the same as I've always done. Oooh, the start menu, that's different, it's now a circle instead of an elongated oval. Woohoo. Except it no longer scrolls in a useful manner. Until I turn off the new appearance, which makes the one useful thing disappear (the search). The sidebar? It's the same old stuff just on the side, instead of down at the bottom in the tray. A couple of new games.
And in exchange for these few new things, I get UAC that harasses me 20 times a day every time I do anything like open a folder or install a program. There's really nothing here, it's the emperors new clothes. The same old XP in a new face to hide it.
Literally, I have *zero* desire to install it on my other computer that came with XP.