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Survey Finds Few Intend to Upgrade to Vista
thefickler writes "A recent Harris Poll has found that while most online computers users are aware of Microsoft's Windows Vista, few are intending to switch over to the new operating system anytime soon. The Harris Poll of 2223 US online adults in early March found that 87% were aware of Vista. Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 12% of Vista-aware respondents were intending to upgrade to Vista in the next 12 months."
Alas, where I work we will be enthusiastically embracing Vista. My supervisor was very upbeat when she
told me I would be getting a new computer loaded with Vista and that I needed to familiarise myself with it
because everyone else would be getting Vista, too.
I'm an old school computer guy. I don't "upgrade" until I have to or there is sufficient benefit to be
gained. I learned this from a crafty old fellow who felt so, after being burned several times.
As to why, I see Vista as little more than a ploy to hold market share and gain some profits, as the existing
XP profit cycle has likely flattened. There will be a few bells and whistles, but the security aspect tells me they know
less about writing operating systems than their predecessors of 30 years ago. I think they still just don't get it. I also feel it's been rushed.
After all these years Windows is still a big mysterious black box, wherein things happen of which we know little and therefore
have little say in behaviour of or control over.
Besides, I've always been a fan of having the actual code at my finger tips.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 12% of Vista-aware respondents were intending to upgrade to Vista in the next 12 months.
fortunately for Microsoft, the OEMs provide good business.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
-Aero is a joke. The ~5 mm glassy effect (which does not improve productivity at all) comes at a way too hefty performance-cost.
-Vista dumbs the user way too down.
Example of an everyday-task gone wrong: When using a laptop and traveling much, my ip-adress will often fluctuate. To show my IP-adress under XP, i doubleclick on the connection-icon in the systray and change to the second tab. Under Vista, i doubleclick the connection-icon and end up in the Connection-Center. From there, i have to choose the common Task to manage connections. There i have to rightclick on the connection and click on properties. THERE i have to click on the advanced-button.
- The driver-situation is embarassing.
-SSH dynamic port forwarding does not work under Vista (used putty and plink; neither did work)
What i really liked in Vista was the combined search/run-field in the startmenu. But i can live happily without it when the rest of my system behaves.
So is this where the "Wow" starts? :-)
A similar survey showed that many people have an aversion to swimming in volcanoes. As one respondent said, "I suppose it's just not my thing: I've never really liked high temperatures".
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
People dont like to spend money on things that are not clearly better. Whats more, they dont want to replace computers they bought a few years ago, to buy something they already have only is more expensive!
News at 11.
Most people buy a PC and run the same OS for its lifetime (which is around 5 years if you want current programs). "How many people are planning to buy a PC with Vista as opposed to any other computing device" survey would likely return 90%.
What I wanted:
A lean and mean OS that ran in 64 bits, had good driver support, could make DVD movies, supported Directx 10, and NO DAMN PRODUCT ACTIVATION!
What it is:
A bloated and ponderous mess that still can't make DVD movies, tries to support more of Microsoft's proprietary formats, focuses more on eye candy than performance, and has even worse DRM and activation rules. Maybe when Halo 2 comes out we'll rush out and buy Vista just so we can play a game that's been on consoles for over a year....or just buy a console.
Actually, the UI is pretty damn cool, and has lots of good new stuff in it. I like it. I wouldn't pay an extra $200 for it, but I'll gladly take it on the mew PC's I buy.
I don't respond to AC's.
At first, my boss was very excited about Vista (without having tried it on his own skin). I spoke to him about this and asked him to reconsider. Then he went online, googled for reviews and feature listings - and we are now no longer on the road to the DRM-upgrade.
In fact, given the chance, we'll probably start migrating to some form of Linux within 6-9 months. If only we had a well-functioning* alternative for Exchange/Outlook available...
I just heard! There's a new survey out, that says that while 90% of people know it's possible, only 1% of all car owners are planning on replacing their existing engine in their existing car! New car engines are a failure, and nobody's buying them... right?
I don't respond to AC's.
Maybe I'm showing my increasingly distressing age, but did we not hear effectively the same thing when Windows XP came out? "Few users are planning to upgrade from Windows 98!" "My Windows 2000 works just fine!" "They can have my Windows 95 when they pry the drivers from my cold, dead peripherals!" Don't get me wrong -- I have no plans to upgrade either.
...from Win2k to ReactOS.
And this likely does not matter to MS. From some estimates I have seen, MS makes 80% of it's money from license only deals, and most growth comes from OEM sales. Therefore, MS seems to be most concerned with keeping the OEM in line, doing whatever is necessary to keep the desktop monopoly.
In any case,here are the facts as I see them. MS sold millions of copies of MS Vista even before the product was publicly released. Many were already sold through the commercial licensing program. I seem to recall that every one of those contracts were an implicit sale for MS Vista, which is why MS had to get out the OS, at least to corporate, by december. In addition, many machines that have been shipping since December are also an implicit sale of MS Vista, not to mention most machines that are now shipping.
I suspect that the retail software channels are kept awake at night figuring out how to convince the unwitting MS consumer that MS Vista "slim" edition is superior to MS Windows XP, but I doubt seriously many higher ups at MS are.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
What if a monopoly made a product and nobody bought it?
Many people still use Windows 98. They use their computer for reading and writing e-mail notes and for writing asinine comments on Slashdot. Windows 98 is sufficient for these banal activities.
I just switched my Desktop and my Laptop back to 98. XP did not offer much good to me, and there were several annoying UI-things:
-Those ugly Theme things hog way too much CPU.
-XP dumbs the user way too down.
- The driver-situation is embarassing.
What i really liked in Vista was the smart icon arrangement in the startmenu. But i can live happily without it when the rest of my system behaves.
Fixed. It's just like Windows XP all over again.
Another 5 years and everyone will be bitching about the switch to Windows Panorama and asking why anybody would ever want to leave Vista. LOL
the WOW starts now...
WOW nothing works no more!
WOW it wont let me playing this media because of DRM
WOW my entire system has stoped working because it thinks im a pirate
WOW i no longer control my pc it controls me.
WOW i have to pay for this?
Is that a fact or did you imagine it just now? So what you're saying is that you have the pulse of several hundreds of millions of Windows users. Correct? And they don't want Vista. Correct? Can you show us some data to back this up?
How do you figure? I'm a little fuzzy on how this happens... How is this the "likely result"?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Because nearly everything I read at the time told me that it would be great for gaming in general. At that point I knew a lot about Windows 98; I knew how to install it and then strip everything out that I didn't need. I was able to bend it to my will, and my upgrade to XP was sort of a culture shock because I didn't know where everything was or how to tweak it just hte way I wanted. I remembered that I wavered between the two for about a month and then just dove all the way in and made myself use the (then) new OS from Redmond. It turned out to be quite an improvement over the Win98SE2 once I figured my way around.
Nowadays I'm still a heavy gamer, and while the thought of having all of my games organized sounds nice, all of the benchmarks I've seen show an actual reduction in framerates and an increase in overhead from Vista. This is also the reason I won't be using a Linux distro as my main OS--I can get some but not all of my games to run on it. Plus I'm now finally running SLI with two 7900GT's, and I can't and don't want to buy a DX10 card at the moment.
I'm moderately skilled and the problems others have had with Vista's install and driver support don't really faze me all that much; but the bottom line for me is that until my favorite games perform better on Vista, I'll be sticking with XP.
There is simply too much glass..
Give Beryl a try.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
It's all about the spin baby...
"In other news, a recent survey says that over 10% of all adult computer users are intending to switch to the new Microsoft 'Vista' operating system. This is great news for the software giant, as it indicates that Vista is being embraced by more than the 'early adopter' crowd.
Amazing how different that sounds, eh?
Err, forgot where I was, sorry. I mean "M$ sucks. Boo. Boo-urns..."
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Not knowing much about your specific situation, all I can say is that it's worth taking a look at Zimbra. It's beginning to get some enterprise adoption, and they have several million mailboxes for an unknown number of customers.
Actually - read your EULA.
A Vista license allows you to "downgrade".
Most manufacturers offer their computers with Vista installed, but all it takes is a phone call or email to get them to put XP on it instead. I bought a Dell laptop a few weeks ago with XP & it was very easy to arrange.
like ever even...
i tch_to_linux_after_microsoft_piracy_case
"Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped
off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead."
http://www.secguru.com/link/russian_schools_to_sw
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Right. So aside from maintaining a separate frame buffer for each window, providing a toolkit that allows resolution independant user interfaces, forcing developers to stop assuming that only one user is logged on at a time and that that user is an administrator, moving most of the device drivers out into user space where they can't crash the rest of the system, improved scheduling on multiple cores, improved memory management, non-destructive re-partitioning, a version of DirectX where vendors can't claim their hardware is compliant when it really isn't, full disk encryption, 3rd party credential providers that don't replace system libraries, Media Center, and a desktop that doesn't look like ass, what does Vista actually offer?
Maybe it doesn't offer you anything. That's fine. Don't assume that's the case for everyone else.
Every PC I've ever bought was free of any OS.
The amount of unsubstantiated negative hype going around about vista is apalling.
Let's look at the facts:
1. For all intents and purposes it's a Windows XP + stuff. aka a glorified service pack.
2. Quite obviously it will displace XP in corporations, educational institutions and home with time.
3. Unless you're using domain logons, It is MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE SECURE than XP because UAC is on by default, palatable to power users (I've been working with it for several weeks now, it's ok) and teachable to non-tech users. Overall, it's worked out much better than you could have done on XP. It is not OpenBSD and shouldn't be compared to it, it is probably less secure than Gentoo with KDE. Nevertheless, compared with XP's work-as-root model, it's worlds apart. I'm not suggesting it's either bulletproof, bugless, unexploitable or mature. But A security model, ANY security model, is better than XP's *NO* security model.
4. Laugh at UI all you like, but a good UI is something everyone can use to get more done. Both joe averages and powerusers alike. Vista's UI serves as a welcome improvement over XP IMHO. I'm talking about useability improvements ala sidebar, "open containing folder" stuff etc, not eye-candy a-la aero which I frankly couldn't less.
5. It guzzles 700MB RAM on neutral right after loading. Who gives a flying fuck? My kde desktop at work eats 200MB. the number is *meaningless* unless it indicates, say, an excessive overpricing of the machine. is 200MB a lot? 10 years ago, we'd have all said it was. Does that make my gentoo/KDE desktop bloated crap today? no. On the same coin, when 1GB of RAM is next to free, 700MB is just another meaningless number.
1GB of DDR2 lappie ram costs 70US$ on ebay. Sure, if you have a P3, run XP. But if you run any form of hardware bought anywhere in the last 5 years, plug some RAM and you're good to go.
6. Microsoft will stop selling and supporting XP at some point anyway. So it's not like Vista will be some doomed stop-gap measure until something significantly better comes along, like Windows ME was. Vista is here to stay for the next 5 or so years until another "service pack" along the same lines appears.
7. If whatever DRM is built into the system prevents you from doing what you're used to do with a computer, use Linux.
Case in point:
If you're screaming "Vista's shit!" and have an old computer with XP you don't want to spend more money on, you're likely making the right call, but are an idiot for screaming out the shit bit. I have a 2005 Toyota echo and screaming how the 2007 model is shit because I don't need it (having the 2005 one) would make me the same kind of idiot.
If you're screaming "Vista's shit!" and you're using Linux/MacOS, you're either a clueless fanboy or someone who's tested both ends and can draw up pros and cons of each and stake a legitimate fact-based preference.
If you're screaming "Vista's shit!" and thinking you'd rather be getting XP with a new computer, you're a total clueless idiot. Especially if your spiel contains the word "security" in it.
Vista is a welcome improvement on XP. Give it some time to mature, give IT departments time to evaluate and learn to work it, it'll be ok.
Is it worth upgrading from XP? depends. Depends if you value a better security model (and eye candy). I've serviced many people with many malware computer problems who paid me lots of good money to fix said problems. Wild guess says a security model for them will pay for itself, from the money it costs them to periodically fix their shit. Locks tend to be cheaper than periodically re-outfitting a robbed house, and people tend to be able to do math when it's their money.
-
There is a ray of hope though. In conversations past with other computer enthusiasts we talked much about how fast computers really needed to get before people just wouldn't excited anymore about new technology. I think we are rapidly approaching that point on several major components in the system with a few more just a few more years away. Sound cards are becoming harder and hard to justify. Basic 3d Video cards cost absolutely nothing now. High end graphics cards are supper computers in their own right and are dropping fast in price. Physic cards were exciting for all of six months and now they are being run on other hardware much more cheaply. Flash memory is finally getting cheap and fast, harddrives are moving right up to rediculous for the amount they can hold and CPU prices are tanking even as they get faster and more cores. RAM is being stubborn, but new types should up the competition and put a dent in the price.
I give it only a few more years where the entire computer on a single card becomes not only possible, but the norm and "Opperating systems" are nothing more than various User Interfaces layered over which every kind software that works the best.
Back in the Elder Days, when my company was writing DOS-based programs, this system called Windows 3.0 came out, and some of our customers were using it. The owner decided to go ahead and start writing stuff for it, using this Visual Basic instead of the QuickBasic that had been working just fine. Of course, he wasn't stupid about it, by declaring our DOS code obsolete.
When Windows 3.1 and VB 3.0 came out, it was a lot more stable. We started the migration in earnest. We soon had a halfway-decent system developed on Windows 3.1. Of course, that's when Windows 95 arrived, and I wondered what would possess anyone to switch to that, because Windows 3.1 (Sorry, now 3.11 for Workgroups) seemed to do everything that we could think of.
After a couple of service packs had been made available, the owner had us start building for Windows 95. I griped, moaned, and complained - why bother? What did Windows 95 offer that was any better?
We repeated the process for Windows 98 and XP. I didn't want to migrate - it was going to be a pain in the backside, the benefits were not apparent compared to the effort, and we waited until a couple of service packs came out and the bugs got shaken out.
Now, had it not been for the early adopters who voted with their cash for the new systems, and then beefed unceasingly until the first bugs did get remedied, we wouldn't have been able to do this. Still and all, most businesses are not known for being early adopters if they have an existing investment in their code base to try to wring more money out of.
This is not a blast at Microsoft. This happens with all operating systems, even Linux. I have a dual-boot laptop that I will upgrade to Vista only when the proverbial gun is at my head, but that isn't because I loathe Microsoft (I don't); it's because I don't see how the changes in the OS will benefit me.
Of course, after Vista has had a year or two to get some of these early issues resolved, it may be less painful than it seems to be now. But this isn't meant as MS-bashing - just as an indictment of the "jump on the brand new system NOW" syndrome that marketers encourage.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Well, I won't pay Microsoft any money until they stop treating their customers like criminals
I am a Windows user however for this reason, Microsoft treating it's customers like criminals, I am switching. For my desktop I got a PC with Linux preinstalled and for a laptop I plan on getting a Macbook Pro. Not unless and until MS gets rid of Activation and WGA/WPA will I willingly buy either a PC with Windows installed or Windows on disk in a box. I see no reason I should even need Windows again, other than what I am already using, but if there's any software I need but for which there are not versions for Linux and/or Macs, I looked and found none that does not run on either, then I will use Crossover/WINE to run them in.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Just stop. Seriously. There have been articles about Vista's poor prospects almost twice weekly. It's hard to imagine that many readers still care. We don't need a new post every time another pundit decides to chime in with the same information.
Any chance you, or some Anonymous Coward, would like to provide a link or other information about that? I'm really curious since I've never heard of a crack being open-sourced before.
Cracking groups always seemed very -- at some points almost comically -- secretive about their source code and method of exploits; I'd sooner expect a crack dealer to give you the name of his wholesaler than for a cracker to distribute source.
Kinda makes me wonder if perhaps the number of trojans disguised as cracks have been the push necessary even to push the 'black' areas of coding into open source.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
In comparison, when I was installing Windows Vista, I could not find a forum to address and when I did, I am still waiting for any of my Vista issues to be discussed by anyone but me.
Installation of ubuntu including settling issues 75 minutes. Installation of Vista . . . 4 hours and still some issues were outstanding when I decided to "can" Vista and install Ubuntu.
AND by the way, all my clients run Windows of some flavor. I create and share documents with them with the greatest of ease . . . it is called Google Documents. My clients can copy Google Documents into Windows Office and vice versa. Most of my clients have stopped copying the documents into Windows. They are happy to work with documents in Google Documents itself. Great collaboration tool.
There are serious alternatives to Windows.
I must be one of the few people that acctually intentionally took the leap of faith to Windows Vista. Granted, I did set my computer up as a duel boot with XP but I wanted to try out Vista. More than anything because I wanted to see how the new TV tuner software worked (I was tired of using the pirated software I already had that was pretty buggy) and I just wanted to see for myself what new bells and wistles were with the new OS. It's prettier than XP but I haven't seen anything that really makes me think it was something I needed. And one of my primary reasons to upgrade, the tv tuner, doesn't have Vista drivers so it is totally useless. I also found that when sharing files with my XP Home laptop, Vista is almost always guarneteed to lock up when I go "File->Open" and browse to the shared files on my laptop. Finally my screen resolution should go up to 1600x1200 but I can only get it to go to some weird 1384x1148 number (something like that), and that's with the newest drivers for my Radeon 9700 that are supposidly Vista complient. Other than the problems, it works great. I really can't honestly see anything in Vista now that makes me think I needed to upgrade.