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Is Windows Vista in Trouble?
Ken Erfourth writes "The Inquirer.net is running a story about what they consider two powerful indications that Vista is failing in the marketplace. One, Dell has reintroduced PCs running Windows XP on its website due to customer demand. Two, Microsoft is conducting a worldwide firesale on a bundle of Microsoft Office 2007/WindowsXP Starter Edition. According to Inquirer.net, at least, these are signs of serious problems selling Vista. Are we seeing the stumbling of the Microsoft Juggernaught with the slow adoption of Windows Vista?"
With XP, there was a compelling reason for a lot of people to upgrade. For the Win2K users, it got you the gaming APIs and other things formerly only good in the Win98 branch. For the Win98 branch users, it was a huge upgrade in stability and robustness.
With Vista, there is no compelling useful feature for users, and much of the content added is particularly ANTI-user. So why upgrade?
Test your net with Netalyzr
when they slipped their release date by 3 years..
they're in even more trouble since they haven't said a word about their next version of windows..
MABASPLOOM!
I don't like Microsoft, and I gleefully read all about Vista's "innovations" and the Zune's "features" and laugh. But this article is just a little too opinionated to make worthwhile.
Did the submitter know this is /.? Plenty of us here think the answer is yes, and have been thinking that for a loooong time. I'm more interested in anone here who thinks Vista will do well, and why. So step right up and change my mind, let me know why you think Vista will eventually dominate. And I need a better argument than "800-pound gorilla".
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
There's this thing called a monopoly that prevents this trouble from occurring.
Windows users will buy new machines, and get Vista "real soon now." The number of users that switch will be nominal. No harm done to Microsoft.
As much as the media may want it to be, there is no competition in a market with a Monopoly.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
By now, the PC market is saturated and MS already has 90+ percent of it. Nearly everybody who needs or wants a PC already has one. This means that there will be little growth and the market is really based on replacement of older models with newer ones. MS already has a huge market share, so they can't grow by taking share away from the competition.
This does not mean MS or Vista are washed-up. It just means it is a mature market. MS and Vista are actually sitting pretty. They will continue to see 90+ percent of new computers running their stuff for the foreseeable future. But they simply won't have double-digit growth year over year, just a steady torrent of replacements.
Vista is a great OS, it just may be a little too bulky for it's time. It probably needs to wait a little bit for mainstream hardware to catch up to it's outlandish specs (which in all honesty, you don't need if you don't run it in it's Turbo Hyper-Fighting Championship Edition graphics mode).
Windows ME.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Is Vista in trouble? Why wouldn't it be? Even if Microsoft gave the thing away for free, it totally ignores the fact that there's an enormous cost to upgrading. Microsoft doesn't need a fire sale, it needs to be paying people to install this thing.
Let's run down the usual suspects of people who upgrade and see how they feel:
I could go on, but you get the point. Is Vista in trouble? You bet. Add to all of the above the competition that it faces from various Linux distributions that are easier than ever to install and use, products like Mac OS, clever new projects such as ReactOS, and even its own predecessor! and it becomes clear that Microsoft should be praying that people pirate it, because that's the only way it's going to make any kind of splash when all is said and done.
Don't get me wrong, it won't die completely, any more than Windows ME is dead. But in the annals of operating systems, my money is that it will be merely a blip on the screen. If Microsoft is smart, it should be working on adding features to its operating system, making it faster and more powerful and easier to use. It should be fighting with us against DRM, not against us by crippling their software with it.
Personally, I think that Microsoft is not very smart, but who knows, I guess we'll see. At any rate, after giving it a week to try to convince me that it's not as bad as everyone says it is, I was very disappointed in it and won't be running it anytime in the forseeable future.
Care to elaborate? Or are you just onboard with the "Hate Microsoft" bandwagon? As someone who works in an environment supporting Microsoft (and other) products, I'm in no immediate hurry to see them tumble down just because I like to watch big things go boom.
Microsoft reports earnings on Thursday and I'm sure they'll provide some details on sales of Vista and Office 2007. From what I've read, sales of Vista seem to be good. Dell's decision to offer XP is a PR thing...they had a few customers who complained.
It's not restraint of trade. They simply don't offer the product for sale anymore. Why should a company not be allowed to discontinue a product? If a more satisfying product is offered by another company consumers will simply migrate.
I thought about installing on a spare drive just to see what all the non-fuss was about but then I saw that it was going to cost $200+ and said "no thanks".
If you are a gamer, XP is an upgrade from Vista. Helped one build a new system recently. Of course they they bought a copy of (32bit OEM) Vista. 3D performace (with a 512MB NVidia card running current drivers) was pitiful and the machine only saw 2GB of the 4GB installed. They are in an area with no broadband so PeoplePC being unable to get them connected via dialup was the final insult.
So they bought a copy of XP and reinstalled. 3D looked like what a top of the line card should be able to do and dialup worked. Performance in general was vastly improved. Still had the 2GB memory limit though, probably not much to there except go to a 64bit system and suffer the issues involved with that... not worth it.
Yes most of their problem was probably driver related. Doesn't matter, Vista is now facing the same problem we Linux users deal with every day. Users don't want to hear excuses, if the OS doesn't work with their hardware NOW they don't want to hear "maybe it will work someday". Especially since right now it doesn't appear a Vista user has any good options. NVidia doesn't perform well, ATI doesn't even have a DX10 hard out and Intel only has low end onboard stuff.
Three years late and they still couldn't manage to bully the key hardware players to have proper support available for launch. Doesn't sound like an 800lb gorilla to me. This fiacso is going to be long remembered.
Democrat delenda est
Most vendors I talk to have said that they are being allowed to sell XP until the end of the year. Systems sold in 2008 will have to have Vista.
Part of the problem is that there was not enough support for Vista ( a lot of people ran into problems with drivers ).
Basically MS got some of the pressure off of them to put a new OS out. Early adopters get to be the guinea pigs while the rest of us wait for the major problems to be fixed.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
When Windows 95 came out people said the same thing.
When Windows 98 came out people said the same thing.
When Windows 2000 came out people said the same thing.
When Windows Me came out people said the same thing (and were right)
When Windows XP came out people said the same thing.
Rest assured, Microsoft will do all they can to make sure Vista is very much a success. Remember, even with it's supposed bad sales, Windows Vista already has more users than MacOS as a whole...
Dell would release PCs running XP without all the other crap it might be worth buying one. Maybe...
You do realize that all that nagware crap subsidizes the cost of the hardware, don't you? All that crap is exactly why Dells are worth buying. One wipe, which I'd be doing anyways, and it's all gone.
That would be the author of the Inquirer "article". He makes no factual assertions beyond what has already been printed in the press for the last week. Then he asserts that this means *DOOOOOM* for Vista. Ah, yes. "*BSD is dying" for the Windows crowd.
/. keeps giving him, and his lame publisher, links and press time and time again.
Allow me to break the bad news: Vista won't go away. Back when XP was released, there was popular demand for Windows 2000 for several years. Where I work (University lab), we *still* get requests for Windows 2000 from time to time. The university will not support Vista for at least a year. And then it will take another good year to deploy. By that time, I expect a service pack will have been released.
Demerjian is a troll with the backing of the worst IT rag in the industry. And
With Microsoft Goal a PC on every desk with Microsoft on it. Coming as close to reality as it is going to get. People are no longer excited by computers as they once were. Back in the 80s and early 90s PC were things for Geeks and Young People and Computers are the future but the presents is fine. So the younger generation started getting computers and such causing the growth in the PC market. Everything was new and exciting. Then the last big hooray was Windows 95 where all computers not just Macs were considered easy enough for everyone to use and with a timely popularity of the internet (in which MS jumped onto late) PCs became technology of NOW where everyone needs it, to function in our society fully. Now computers are way to common and the average person is not excited about the upgrade they have been threw the process and most people today have at least one upgrade under their belt, and that upgrade wasn't as exciting as they expected. So more and more people are not caring about a new flashier version of windows. Now the Geeks are hoarding and around Linux and Apple, so that is where the people who care are giving excitement too, back in 95 a lot of geeks were willing to wait until midnight to be the first for Windows 95 and now many of those people will hit refresh on their browser waiting for the next version of their favorite distribution or go to Apple Update Parties. As for Windows people don't care. Sure they use it but they are not excited on getting a new version just because it looks cooler. If they are going to put money into it it needs to be something much bigger. And the fact they learned that they could keep Windows 98 running for almost a decade afterwards and still run modern stuff. Makes them realize that XP will be around for a while to and no need to upgrade, heck they could probably skip a version if they felt like it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You aren't kidding, and when I read the title "Vista in Trouble?" I thought to myself HELL YEAH! I bought Windows XP x64 less than 2 months ago (OEM Edition) with the promise of a FREE VISTA UPGRADE!!! I got it off Newegg, which I've NEVER had problems with... Microsoft doesn't recognize my computer's serial number (no kidding shits, I built it!), and even though I got XP legitimately, MS STILL won't honor my FREE VISTA deal.
As far as I'm concerned, forget Vista, XP works fine and for what it DOESN'T do..I have virtualization.
I'm posting this from a Vista laptop.
Now, If I had my choice, it would be a MacOS or a Ubuntu laptop. But I specifically requested a Vista laptop so I could evaluate our software on it (it seems fine).
The thing is, other than some fairly trivial eye candy, there is nothing here that is a must have for users. The thing that was great about the Win2K upgrade from NT was that the horrible instability of NT4 was fixed. Vista at first blush is a lot like the Win 2K to XP upgrade -- basically eye candy as far as most users are concerned. But unlike XP, Vista comes with a pretty hefty sacrifice in RAM and CPU. So it feels like a bit of a downgrade.
Much of what we'd really like to know about Vista lies in the future. The great fault of NT4 was stability. The great fault of 2K and XP were security. If Vista, in the long term, proves more secure than XP, then it will be a worthwhile sacrifice of RAM and all will be forgiven. For now, savvy users are not counting on it in the short term. Vista was a horribly late project pushed out the door. It introduces many new technologies, none of which are particularly important to users, which add massive complexity to the product. Both these argue for a bumpy start.
Overall, I'm pleased with this Vista machine because it has enough RAM and power to run to OS adequately.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Vista contributes to global warming? We'd better call Al Gore!
"Why should a company not be allowed to discontinue a product?"
Uhhh...Because they are a monopoly that was convicted of using their monopoly position in an illegal manner. Given that people still want to buy XP, and that they can sell it at a considerable profit, one must then ask why they would not be willing to sell it to an eager public. The answer entail vendor lock in. This is a problem for a monopoly that has been convicted of anti-competitive behavior.
That extra three years XP became more entrenched each day. Every time somebody installed a new printer or upgraded their wireless or beat their way through a software install, the compatibility bar for vista got higher. Every time someone new installed XP, the breakthrough point for widespread adoption of Vista got higher too. Each time XP gained share the leverage of having everyone on the same plan became more apparent as the pool of people you could exchange files with grew. Every time somebody bit their lip and bought a hugely expensive new program in the faint hope it would install and run correctly and be compatible with their extant setup and not be lame, the cost of upgrading to vista grew higher again. Even the negatives of some of these things forewarned people that change can be very bad and unnecessary change can be dumb when things go horribly wrong as they sometimes do over the simplest things.
XP isn't perfect and it doesn't have to be. XP works reliably enough for most people to do what they want to do most of the time. They've grown comfortable with their XP setups and invested heavily in padding their XP nests. To abandon that for a whole new Vista that doesn't have any of their expensive software or work with their expensive peripherals or just won't do what they've done each day for years or isn't quite interoperable with their friends' just isn't going to fly unless there is a compelling reason. A new desktop theme is not compelling enough for most people. For that level of sacrifice people want real change.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Two words: MSDOS 4.0.
Those of you old enough to remember, and yet who can't even recall MSDOS 4.0, will immediately know what I mean.
For those of you who are too young, MSDOS 4.0 was a tremendous flop. MSDOS 3.3 was used pretty much continuously from its release in 1987 until it MSDOS 5.0 came out in 1991, and even then, I ran into machines running v.3.3 for years afterwards. Version 4.0 was buggy and bloated while adding virtually nothing in the way of useful features, and the market reacted with a resounding yawn.
Microsoft, it should be remembered, was the dominant OS vendor in 1987, but it was not a monopoly yet. There were still plausible alternatives (then as now, technically superior). Microsoft is the dominant OS vendor in 2007, but its monopoly is crumbling, and all it will take is one gigantic screwup for competitors to move in. Vista is a gigantic screwup, just like MSDOS 4.0.
This could be good news for Linux, great news for Apple, and freaking fantastic news for ODF, especially if MS takes as long to recover from Vista as they did from DOS 4.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
No, don't try to convert them to Linux (unless they ask you to) but go help them when their computers fail. When you hear a friend or a relative suggest that they're going to buy a new PC because their old one is getting slow, go and help them out. Tell them it probably just needs a reinstall, maybe a bit more memory, a bigger hard disk... But *STOP* them buying new computers just for the sake of it.
And when you've helped them out, help them to install Firefox and Thunderbird, install OpenOffice for them and set it up.
People need to be educated properly about what it is to own a PC and what they need to do on a regular basis to keep it running relatively fast. We need to take control of our PCs - not buy every Microsoft upgrade, remove the Norton and McAfee Nagware crap that comes installed on every new PC.
That's the *PROPER* way to make Vista fail...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yes, I know this'll get plenty of troll and flamebait mods.
If some OEM forces Vista on you , the License Agreement apparently gives you the right to return it.
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/66189
Linux users have used this technique for a while. In some jurisdictions you might have to take the OEM to small claims court if their customer support people are uncooperative -- but since the license is in your favor you'll win a default judgment and they won't even try to fight it.
With that discount you can then install the OS of your choice.
Everywhere by the US has sugar, NOT corn syrup. However, because of high tariffs on sugar, and heavy corn subsidies in the US, high fructose corn syrup is cheaper than sugar in the US, so most products use it. In the rest of the world, importing sugar is cheaper than corn syrup, better for the customers, and tastier, so nobody else using all the corn syrup products that are used in the US.
Every Jew gets to realize this during Passover, as all our corn syrup products are unavailable to us for a week. In fact, it's the ONLY time you can reliably get Coke/Pepsi with sugar instead of corn syrup and is tastier.
It's a shame, a short-sited policy, but benefits a few (I think two) wealthy families that own the US sugar production and benefit from high prices.
You're missing the point. What if "Susan" says "no, you can't have a code?" You're shit outta luck, that's what!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Unless their contracts specifically required that an OEM be someone building a system *for resale*, it's their own fault. I may not be in the business of selling computers, but if I build my own I *am* an OEM.
TANSTAAFL
So.. exactly what part of that article qualified as journalism? It read like a page from a scandal rag... well anyway...Why upgrade... you probably shouldn't.. you've already decided you don't like it..... why else? You're computer probably can't handle it anyway. Unless your purchasing new hardware or you're the tuner type like me, Vista really doesn't hold much in the "I need it now" catagory. Of course, if you're a gamer, there's good reasons to upgrade, as long as you're willing to buy a DX10 card with it. (And don't give me the XP could run DX10 line, that's pure BS and anyone who programs understands exactly why XP can't use the memory funcitons that are in DX10.)
As for the two indications the article spoke of: First Dell letting people have XP again. Yes.. they should. Especially on the low end sale computers, they just arn't designed to handle it and really suffer in the performance department. So putting XP back on the low end stuff is a good thing. I applaud Dell for not screwing their customers on the OS. As for the second "Indication", ug... this guy's so far off base it's comical. The computers that will run the XP starter edition and Office that Microsoft is selling for $3 a copy can't possibly run Vista in the first place. Often these developing nations that are going to get this software are looking at getting the bottom of the barrel, whatever is left over after the rest of the world bought their machines. They can't run it, end of story, and MS isn't going to say to a devloping country, "Oh sorry, you have to buy Dell's highend machines, because we're only giving you Vista." *sigh*
People please... logic... it's not just for breakfast anymore.
In short, hate on Vista all you want. Call it MEII, call it the worst OS from MS, I really don't care, but at least show why it's a bad os, not "Oh MS must think it's failing because they're giving away copies of XP to people who can't run Vista." And before you judge, run it on a PC that it was actually designed to run on, not one that's 2 years old and you bought on sale from Dell for $499
Dunno where you pull that "info" out of, but I remember it quite differently.
When 95 came out, people were literally storming the stores. There were geeks camping outside like it's some sneak-rare-midnight-preview of Star Wars 7. There were people buying it that even didn't have a computer 'cause it was supposedly SO cool you had to have it.
98 was originally more a downer, even though it did add new features and fixed a lot of problems. And the "SE" of it surely showed that it was superior to its predecessor and soon became the clearly superior system to 95.
ME was a desaster. For many reasons. First of all, it was essentially Win98. Second, pretty much all the new gadgets that separated it from 98 were buggy, flawed or simply useless and nobody wanted them. Most had all 3 features. And finally, 2k was around the corner.
2k was a definite improvement, over both, WinNT4.0 and Win98. It was the merge of the simplicity and compatibility of 98 and the stability (you there, stop that snickering, will you?) of NT4. It certainly was a key cornerstone in the development of the Windows platform and was received as such. Geeks, gamers and businesses alike loved it.
XP already had to deal with a problem: What for? 2k was already the "perfect" system. It had everything you wanted to have. There was no really compelling reason to upgrade, and it would have been far from impossible for MS to add the features (like WiFi and other support) to the core of 2k if they would have wanted. Of course, they wanted to sell XP, so that was a no-go option.
And Vista now is suffering from the same problem. Why upgrade? We might see some reason in a few months or years, when some new fad or feature picks up that MS doesn't even dream of supporting in XP, so we'd have to switch to Vista to benefit from it, but so far, we're at the same point where we were with the introduction of XP: Why upgrade?
XP is "good enough". In some ways, it is even "better" than Vista. We will eventually see the reason why we'll have to get Vista instead when MS refuses to support some essential hardware, but the way you put it is simply and plainly wrong.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I disagree. There is, at this time, no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. If your employees/IT staff are trained on XP, but not on Vista, you aren't going to be buying Vista machines. As a home user, what do you have to dislike about XP? 95, 98 and ME were all pretty crappy (relatively few people ran Windows 2000 on their home machine), so XP provided a significant improvement. People are generally resistant to change. Vista is change for the sake of change for most home users. Eventually, DX10 gaming will provide reason to upgrade. Linux isn't even on the radar for most home users, and that's largely thanks to XP not being horrible. If it had been a failure of an OS, Linux (and the Mac) would've gained significant traction as users became fed up with Microsoft's buggy software--but it wasn't a failure, and XP was actually pretty stable.
DirectX 10 is the only reason I bothered to get Vista. But it appears that games taking advantage of DX10 are at least a few months away, and games that *require* DX10 are likely not going to show up for a couple of years at least. So until DX10 becomes necessary for a mainstream game, I don't see much interest in a majority of home users for Vista.
If any one remembers when XP was originally released, and how buggy it was I'm sure everyone just feels the same about Vista, give microsoft itme to work out the kinks and I'm sure it will replace XP.
$5bn development costs might not be huge for MS, but it is still a wad of money and shareholders are going to want to see some benefit for their investment. Most shareholders will probably be wondering why MS spent $5bn when the masses would rather have XP, and anyone buying a new PC would have bought XP if they didn't buy Vista. In other words, for the shareholders Vista has been pure cost with no benefit.
This comes at the same time as Zune too. It would have been easy to say "Hey we goofed with Zune, but Vista is great". Now they have to admit two major screwups at the same shareholder meeting. Ouch!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes, that sounds good, doesn't it. It's difficult to think ahead years at a time. However, I've already been down the road. I've got win98 machines, no longer networked, that are doing various things. They work fine, no particular need to fuss with them. Microsoft stopped supporting them - meaning no security updates, no nothing - fairly recently. In 1998 that didn't seem like much of a threat. Today, it means they can't safely be on the Internet. There's no recourse other than upgrading them, but if they fail, reinstall requires no interaction with Microsoft.
Having gone from brand new win98 install to "no longer supported", I tend to think in terms of "what happens?" when the latest and greatest thing of today is discarded, as win98 was. It'll happen; you can count on it. As I said in the original post, since activation is required for a reinstall, and activation, even today, is based on Microsoft policy, you are tying yourself to the whim of whoever sets that policy a few years down the road.
Do you think in five years, when Vista's been out all that time, that they'll re-activate copies of XP? They might, but where is the certainty? And then when Vista is 10 years old and HooHaOS is the latest and greatest, will they reactivate Vista? You seem to think so, while I observe that the fact is I'd have to guess. In the end, I'm not willing to tie the continued functioning of my computers to a guess about Microsoft's future policies. To be frank, I don't trust them.
OSX will work for me as long as the computer does and I keep track of the install disks. Linux will work for me as long as the computer does and I have disks. Hell, I've still got a couple of machines running AmigaOS, and Commodore is long since nipples-north. XP and Vista will work as long as Microsoft lets it, and as long as they are around to let it. After that, one crash, and you're dead in the water -- you must migrate to something else, regardless of what compatibility problems and other inconveniences (like spending money) that may cause you. See the conceptual difference?
Activation is literally Digital Rights Management, where the concept is, you don't have ANY right to reinstall your software. That right belongs to Microsoft and is entirely subject to Microsoft policy, as well as their existence. My reaction to that is unprintable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ok, let us presume that Microsoft would not, under any circumstances, refuse to activate an OS they took money from you for. Even if some serial number generator put your serial number out on the net, Microsoft would say, well, we love you man, and so we're going to re-activate you anyway.
Now. Suppose Microsoft is destroyed as a company. Big earthquake, sinkhole, meteor, new OS company kicks their ass, Apple takes over, the stock market crashes hard and they simply bail, a worm kills every Microsoft machine out there and no one trusts them any longer, linux becomes the obvious choice even to the sheep out there, whatever.
Microsoft is gone, just a memory, like Commodore is today. Who are we going to sue? And how does that help get XP or Vista or HooHaOS working again, anyway?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have a Win2k vm running on an Ubuntu VMware host.
There comes a point after successive rounds of intensifying hostility to the customer that this customer flips them the bird.
Has there been a significant step in the evolution of the MS EULA that has been in the customer's favor? I'm not aware of one. Having run out of scope to do harm with the license, now the violation is baked into the OS. No thanks.
(Interesting Freudian typo - I wrote "evilution" at first...)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And kids, this is probably the best sign you would be so much happier with a freshly cracked Vista downloaded off the 'net... when available.
:)
Ok, so it comes with a free botnet or other zombified software pre-installed, but at least it:
a) never requires an activation
b) is probably safer as the commercially available Vista
c) might even have *gasp* some levels (or ALL levels) of DRM disabled
Ok, ok, so I'm being saracastic... still... is it only me, or does Windows mainly survive BECAUSE of the pirates, and not vice-versa ?
I mean... hell... if everybody that had XP (or will have Vista in the future) would have to actually PAY for it... how many computers with Windows ** would be around on the net ? My guess is, significantly less.
Oh, and you can bet your ass that whoever has a pirated copy of Windows *WOULDN'T* have bought it anyway.
On second thought, maybe the FOSS community should support the fight against software piracy more actively
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
Well, it is worthwhile to point out that Vista is the first Microsoft OS that people don't want. While w2k and XP were welcomed with apathy by new PC buyers, Vista actually is met with a rejection reaction. That becomes really interesting.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Do you think the pricing of Vista would be the same if MacOSX and Linux did not exist? Do you think Vista would have even been released without their competition?