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PC Makers Say Vista Is Not a Seller
TekkaDon writes "According to computer and component manufacturers, Vista is not the hotcake that they were hoping for. Take Acer's president, Gianfranco Lanci, who has just said that 'PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry.' Or Samsung Electronics, who now says that DRAM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections, something that is being echoed by the industry as a whole. This seem to agree with Ars Technica article on the 20 million Vista copies sold as a 'huge success' by Microsoft, which can be accounted for by the natural growth of PC sales over the years."
Most businesses won't buy Vista boxes until it's a bit more mature. Most consumers won't buy Vista boxes until their old box breaks. Why would you expect Vista to increase PC sales? Really, you'd expect it to decrease sales, because the price is higher than XP.
why fix it?
most windows machines out in circulation now would need an upgrade for vista.
Unless you are buying a new machine, why bother?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
True, but some previous releases of Windows did drive computer sales and had large numbers after such a short time. Windows 95, for instance. I don't think any reasonable predictions about Vista expected the same thing, but some unreasonable ones did.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
What I'm seeing is a fear of Vista - the same MS-bashing that happened when XP came out. But what joe-public aren't seeing is that most of the faults are just poor drivers and that vista really *is* a large step up!
I think once the dust has settled and there are more success-cases around then momentum will rapidly pick up!
(example #1 = me. I've used Linux on the desktop for the last 5 years - and it's Vista that's making me change back to Windows. Can't even be arsed to repair my aging Mac Powerbook. Yes it is still windows, but its such a giant leap forward...)
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Not that it has been easy to order a copy of the upgrade - but I wonder how many of those 20 million copies of Vista that have been sold are actually the $12 (after shipping) upgrades one could get when they ordered a copy of XP before Vista was sold. I know I did that, because if I needed to use an application that needed Vista, I could throw it on for that case.
I certainly know I'm not going to install Vista unless I absolutely have to, for the same reason I only switched to XP with my new computer a few months ago. It'll be interesting to see when the first pieces of Vista-only hardware come out - likely new DirectX-oriented video cards.
Ryan Fenton
None of the retailers have any incentives to cause anyone to run out and plunk down new cash for a new machine, just because it runs Vista. Here is it the beginning of April and the sales cycle is going to be flat until at least mid August when the kiddies go back to school. At that point, unless there are new incentives in place I think a combination of school discounts on XP/Hardware, schools becoming more software agnostic and competitive pricing from Apple will be a real threat to that segment too.
/. when I say things like this. So don't listen to me. Just keep being fanboys.
But I am always called insane here at
All it takes, is time. It may well be that apple with parallels and in future some deeper emulation integration with windows, will drive demand for people who abandon insecure windows environments for usable OS X. As Microsoft fails to meet its own promises, people will be forced to look elsewhere. Perhaps OS X with its demanding video applications will drive the next big rise in sales.
I am not analyst, but stagnant windows platform isn't living up to its promises, people will be forced to look elsewhere. Elsewhere as in Ubuntu desktop, OS X. Whichever. It will take time.
For Macs and Linux.
/big memory or....drum roll...DRM. If not then you wait till your harddrive seems puny or you get so rooted that your faced with wiping the disk and reinstalling XP then a chain of service packs. At that point buying a new machine looks attractive.
On a more sober note. Maybe this is a testament to the quality of XP. Up until win2000 windows sucked. With win2000 the interface still sucked. XP made big strides in making the interface less sucky.
The point is that every generation of Windows (excluding Bob and ME) has not only an enormous improvement over the last, but almost at the level of an emergency repair that could not be foregone any longer. Thus it drove sales. Any idiot could see why each generation was desirable over the hell they where in.
Maybe with XP the quality finally reach a level where migrating to the next big thing was no longer an emergency. XP had sufficiently good behaviour that the operating system no longer drives sales.
So this time it's going to be the applications that drive sales. You won't upgrade your existing system till the apps start to need whatever Vista has that XP does not do well. Probably this will be some combination of 64bits/video
So Microsoft's big need is the Killer App that only runs well on Vista. You got it?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, that sounds like you are saying that the only people really put at a disadvantage by WGA and anti-piracy measures are honest users that weren't pirating software anyway?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I fail to see why Vista's possible failure should be seen as "apocalyptical". Ford survived the Edsel and the Pinto fiascos, IBM survived the PS2 insanity and OS/2. Big companies sometimes make big mistakes. If Vista proves to be a mistake, then if Microsoft has been managing its resources properly, it will be able to pick itself up and tag along after whoever emerges as the new market leader. Nothing particularly apocalyptic, or even catastrophic, about that. Merely a normal change from industry leader to trailing the pack, that every corporation that has any history has experienced from time to time.
If the reader thinks that a failure by Microsoft would somehow mean the collapse of cyberspace, then the reader should take a look at Unix and Ubuntu. Those two OSs bracket everything Microsoft has ever produced: one on the high end, the other on the low end. Both do what they do extremely well. If some kind of void begins to open where Microsoft products used to be, it will be filled quite rapidly from above and below. No worries there.
The only thing approaching disaster is the economic well being of people who have invested too heavily in Microsoft stock. But that would not be the fault of Vista failing to catch on. That would mostly be the fault of a management style characterized by chair-throwing, monkey-dancing, potty-mouthed threats of using lethal force against people Microsoft management doesn't like. Microsoft would probably be better off if it had a businessman at the helm.
If Vista proves to be a failure, it won't be apocalyptic, nor catastrophic, nor even particularly harmful. We'll all just continue to use Win XP until we're ready to hop over to Ubuntu and Wine, or IBM resurrects OS/2, or Apple decides to market to just plain folks instead of concentrating on the rich snobs.
Exactly. As is and has been the case with every form of copy-protection ever devised. You pay to be disadvantaged.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Really, the last time I can remember people rushing out in their masses to buy a windows upgrade was '95. Remember when XP came out? Sure, you get the usual early adopters rushing out to buy the thing on release day, but by and large they sell the things via pre-installs on OEM systems. The AT article points out that the growth in VIsta sales over XP sales track exactly to the growth in PC sales XP's release. That hardly means Vista is a failure, it just means that, like XP, the vast majority of users are waiting till they upgrade their PCs to buy Vista. Vista will almost certainly have a 50 percent or more share of the consumer desktop market in 2 or 3 years time, just like XP did. By the time we get the next windows iteration in 5 years (or whenever) it will have over 80 percent, just like XP does.
Joe user (whoever the hell he is), does not reinstall his OS. Christ, most users have no concept of what an OS is. They buy a PC, they use what comes on it. That's why Linux will never really take off on the home desktop until a large vendor has real success selling pre-installed Linux PCs. Hopefully, Dell are about to do just that.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
I'm about to pick up a brand spanking new laptop in a couple of days. It comes complete with Vista, I have no choice in the matter. The first thing I am going to do is to slap a Kubuntu CD in the drive and get things set up the way I want it. I'm not holding my breath regarding getting a refund for Vista, and whilst I realize that actually bundling an Operating System with a new computer may help prevent piracy or even increase market share for Microsoft, it does not take on board the fact that not everybody wants Windows. I am aware that not all end users are IT literate and capable of deciding for themselves, although I'm surprised that the EU actually allows this monopolistic practice to continue.
- Move the mouse pointer to the 'Start' button in the lower left corner,
- click,
- find the 'Programs' item,
- click,
- find the program you want,
- click.
The quick-launch bar was a major improvement but I still like the OS.X dock better because of the magnification feature which makes it easier to hit the icon you want and the fact that the dock is simply easier and quicker to use. The new Windows start menu was, if anything worse than the old one. It had some nice features but it was badly organized. My first action on an XP system is always to set it back to 'classic' lookI'm sure that all these things can either be changed by setting some radio button in a not so easy to find configuration window, tweaked with a third party utility or if all fails modified by changing registry settings but I chose to switch to something that works the way I want it to out of the box and it's into the bargain more secure but that's a matter for a whole other flame-war.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Im not planning to run Vista on my box unless I find that I have to in order to do the things I want to with my PC. I refuse to purchase DRM riddled products that prevent me from using the media I legitimately purchased, the way that I want to. Im not interested in backroom deals that determine that if I buy song X at store A I can only play it on player 123. Sorry Microshaft and Itunes until you guys start representing me Im voting with my dollarsIm siding with the independent party.
Well everyone that is forcing themselves to either use, or develop Vista would disagree about that. Wouldn't it be nice to buy a game and have your choice of 3 or 4 operating systems to play that game on instead of just one? If the operating system manufacturers had to build to a blueprint set out by the application software designers instead of the other way around. I guess in a more perfect world.
Truth is, with product activation required, MS could give you a truthful figure of just how many Vista systems have been activated. But, Nooo, that would be lower number and they wouldn't be able to try and convince the weak-minded that Vista is taking over the world and you need to jump onto the bandwagon now, or be left behind forever. What a load of absolute crap.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
However, it most certainly is a hotcake: people can't get rid of it fast enough. :)
Vista is a solution looking for a problem. Or maybe a problem looking for a solution - it's difficult to say, really. The fact is that Vista is not the OS that people have been waiting for from Microsoft since the inception of Windows 2000.
People don't want more bling in their OS. They are, in almost every subset of user, wanting something which Just Works. Since 1995, we've been bombarded with bling widget after bling widget - multimedia this, multimedia that. Even the candy-ass Fischer Price default theme of Windows XP was too much for most people. Most people are just fine with the Windows interface - and, if they're not (a characteristic usually shared with the ability to do something about it) there are plenty of shell replacements to chose from.
Yet, that is principally what Vista offers: more bling. It does not deliver on any of its meritous promises. It does not improve the underlying operating system to any significant degree. They've crawled out onto a massive monolythic limb and have decided to start chopping firewood by destroying the one thing that has made Windows dominant: its highly marketed user interface. People do not want to learn new things, as a rule, when it's useless to do so. In a way, this is an example of them being an enemy of their own success: the Windows interface has been so widely accepted that it's become standard and expected, and with it installed on the vast majority of machines, why change?
Techies, on the other hand, do not have such a luxury, as it is our job to learn these new things and make them work for everyone else. If they'd only promised on half of the underlying technologies (just fix the infrastructure and security/defaults, thanks), it would've captured the Windows XP market by storm.
Similarly, techies view Vista as just as much of a change to another OS, like MacOS or Linux, without having any of the benefits. What would you get? New incompatibilities and technology without any inherrent gain by switching operating systems. This is Microsoft's own fault - not only for ignoring what people (techies and users) want in their OS, but also for building up a single, monolythic product, unable to be disassociated from any of its individual components and accessories. Where would Linux be if, for every minor kernel release, there was an associated base distro, X, and wm release? Nowhere - probably stuck somewhere around 2.0 still.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The operating system is focused on when installing/uninstalling programs and peripherals which for the average user may account for a relatively small amount of time vs. checking e-mail, surfing the web and writing documents. Therefore, most of the time, people are using applications instead of the OS. In this case, the most important feature of the OS is stability. For virtually everyone I know, XP home and professional reached a reasonable level of stability.
I'll guess s/he is referring to the 1st. Microsoft law: "You may not sell a PC without an OS on it."
There are however some problems in some countries where a naked PC may not be considered a "full working product" when there is no OS on it (because it can't do anything) it is then considered a "spare part" wich creates problems with the warranty (wich may be regulated by law).
The main reason for the flagging sales has to be the fact that Windows XP Professionbal, if completely up-to-date and secured, is pretty much the same thing as Vista minus the flashy video gimcrackery.
I was one of the first people to adapt to WIN XP when it came OEM with an Athlon 1800, and that product was not nearly completely under control until it was almost four years old! I will wait for Service Pack One to be applied to Vista before I jump this time.
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!