Slashdot Mirror
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.
But given that the personal computer market has nearly doubled since XP launched, Vista sales "probably should be more," said Michael Silver, vice president of research at Gartner, a technology research group.
In summary: computer sales up; consumers forced to adopt Vista. Microsoft chuckles gleefully.
MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Price
There. Fixed that for you.
The big sell is to MS shareholders. Somehow MS must convince the shareholders that the $5bn spent on Vista is going to be a worthwhile investment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If Windows sales have doubled because the PC market has doubled. Should Linux and Mac sales have also doubled?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Two brand new Dell Dimension Workstations ($1200 each) came into our office last week. One remimaged to XP (SP2) because office user said Vista (Pro) was slower than crap. The other was regulated to the lab for dual-boot Redhat/SuSE client testing. Vista wiped clean off it.
What Microsofts Marketing Machine states and what users do are two different things.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Wait a minute. Did you just say Me was "good enough"?! Are you nuts?
XP was a pretty big improvement over what was available prior to it. Most home users were running 98 or Me. The jump from 98/Me to XP was much greater than XP to Vista in my mind.
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 am looking to buy a MS-based computer for development (I normally use Linux). I'm looking for an XP computer, not a Vista one. The reason: The Microsoft software I want to run does not run on Vista, only on XP!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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...
My Dad's new 'Vista-Ready' machine came with XP, and we're KEEPING it on XP precisely because this this thing is a graphical dream on it. It's got an nVidia card, sweet processors, ability to support two 22" widescreen monitors... all for under $1000, because it's 'merely' an XP machine, albeit a Vista-capable one.
If this is their idea of 'Vista-Capable', why would I want to go to an operating system where these awesome specs are merely ADEQUATE?
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.
Can it open ODF, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. formats natively within its own OS or office applications?
Does it support writing to PDF natively?
Can it natively play all of my media audio and video formats, including FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Theora and others?
Does it support onboard IM clients using standards-compliant protocols (Jabber? irc? Others?)
Can I use freely available tools to build software on it, and do those tools come with the OS itself?
Can I read multiple filesystems at the same time on multiple different external and internal media? Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and other filesystems?
Can I mount NFS shares to other non-Vista resources with existing, included applications/tools?
Remind me again what Vista does that my Linux box can't? Oh wait... purty jellybean graphics and melted-crayon menus and icons. Right.
No thanks, Linux does more, on less resources, at less cost, and is more extensible, secure and updates are MUCH easier to manage.. oh, and I KNOW what's running under the covers, and if I don't, I can go look and see for myself.
If you buy Vista Business, or Ultimate - you have downgrade rights to install XP Pro... This is what I am doing at my office. Every new PC that comes in with Vista - wiped and XP installed. Call up MS licensing, and they generate a key for you when you tell them you are downgrading. Perfectly legal and in the eula. This way, when we finally HAVE to go to vista, the licenses are ready and waiting, since the PCs came with them.
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Vista release date Nov 8, 2006: XP release date Oct 25, 2001:
Vista at < 0.5% Dec 2006 XP at 4%, Nov 2001
Vista at 0.6% Jan 2007 XP at 6.5%, Dec 2001
Vista at 1.2% Feb 2007 XP at 9%, Jan 2002
Can't wait till the Q1 SEC reports come out, ouch!
sources:
Google zeitgeist, w3schools, wikipedia
It certainly is exaggerated and is being used for stock speculation. They are telling the world they are selling twice as good to get that stock up. It'll go up and then fall back down as the real numbers rear their heads. I've done my part and continue to do so in telling customers about the spying and the other DRM/CRM implemented into Vista and how Microsoft is now hostile towards its customers. I describe it as an example with Walmart entering your home to search your belongings to ensure that you have not stolen anything from their store. Most people understand that their computer is an extension of their homes and that they certainly would not let the government enter without warrant and when I then tell them that they would certainly not allow a private entity to enter they agree wholeheartedly.
Sheesh, what does it take to understand that Microsoft is doing the equivalent of searching your home when they enter your computer and search. No, they don't have the right to enter my computer or home to search for any reason. If they feel I have stolen from them let them hit the courts and sue/arrest me. They'll find I am above board. But the sentiment stays. Hit the courts and do it legally. Even the police can't keep entering your home over and over to search. If they do it is harassment. The problem is that people don't know that or don't initially understand it as a search and seizure procedure.
Let me repeat. They have no right to enter my home/computer/business to do anything unless I give them permission even if it is to protect their IP. If they think I am stealing they can hit the courts up and to through due process to convict. I say this even though I am 100% legit on all copies of Windows. You would not let Walmart enter your home or business to search for goods that might be stolen and hence you would not let, should not let, Microsoft do the same.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.