Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Dell would release PCs running XP without all the other crap it might be worth buying one. Maybe...
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
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!
Don't forget that Michael Dell installed Ubuntu on 1 out of 23 of his personal laptops!
The problem for MS this time around is that everyone was happy with XP. Ok, maybe not everybody was completely happy, but it's pretty stable, and does just about everything most people need it to do. People don't want to go back to having to run something that's buggy, or slows their system down. It's not like with windows 98, where we were still getting frequent BSODs. XP is a pretty good OS, and if people don't want to change, I don't blame them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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!
My friends, this is but another clever marketing strategy for M$ to sell more copies of Windows XP!
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.
Microsoft is in control. All they have to do is to discontinue XP OEM licensing, or substantially raise the price. You'll get Vista with your new PC and you'll like it. If you don't like it, See Figure One.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Nobody touches it, nobody cares. It just sits there, a Dual Processor Dual Core Hyperthreaded monster and nobody thinks its worth the time to even login.
Even I don-t touch it because the fan is noisy, all that eye candy and gloss and the noisy fan outweighs it.
I'm typing this on Feisty Fluffer, no Funky Feaster, no Finkle Fungerstein, oh whatever the latest Ubuntu is called. It's far from perfect, the keyboard layout doesn't know the Spanish keyboard I have (where are those damn brackets_ and why is the question mark an underscore__). The typefaces are not as good as Windows, the status bar is too high and the icons too amateur, but so far 2 people have asked me for a copy of the disk.
So yes Vista is in trouble, big big trouble. It-s a big yawn, it's late and the stories we hear of privileges being determined by filename etc. mean I just don-t want to waste time with it.
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.
What do you mean, slow starter.
They've already sold 244 copies in China!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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.
I saw what seemed like plenty of copies of Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade at my local closing CompUSA marked 30% off, which still made it about $181 + tax. Still too much considering the OEM copies can be had for less, and the real apparent benefits don't outweigh the bugs and incompatibility with my various hardware or software.
Seemed kind of fitting that the "failing OS" was one of the few remaining items on the shelf within a failing computer store.
$ man woman *
-bash:
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".
I've been running Vista for a long while, and retail version since release. It ran alright for a while, but lately has been pretty sluggish with only a gig of ram. I'm really wanting to switch back to 2003, but Media center and the 360 are just too valuable at the moment. (I know.. hook, line, sinker).
Either way.. I can see why it's not going over so hot. Too many changes, too sluggish for most PCs and the differences in change aren't really THAT numerous for people to really want to change. It just wasn't ready for release.
I know it runs well for a lot of people, and it did on mine as well.. though I disabled a lot of the memory hog features. I just can't afford to put more luit into ram, and after that... I hope my luck changes.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
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
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.
Vista. XP. Who Cares? Does Microsoft really care? As long as you are buying their OS, they are doing fine. No, the threat to Microsoft is not people choosing XP over Vista. It's people choosing OSX. In my little part of the world (education/research institution) OSX has reached about 30-50% penetration in the laptop arena. At least judging by what people actually bring to meetings. That trend will spell real trouble for Microsoft if it continutes.
When OEM's are providing customers an option to stay with XP, there no longer is an automatic 'Vista migration' anymore. The trick just went away. If Dell decides that they can't sell PC's with Vista but they can with XP, then Dell will continue to sell XP and customers will continue to get XP systems.
What's amazing is that the beta community has been loudly warning Microsoft for the imminent failure for more than a year. That's unprecedented as well. All Microsoft beta's are near-adorations of the company. Vista is the first where I saw open revolt against some of the stuff being pulled. And guess what, they did not listen.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Vista contributes to global warming? We'd better call Al Gore!
Microsoft actually weaned me off when they started requiring "activation." So even XP isn't attractive to me — it has the same basic problem as Vista does. I run XP from time to time to verify web pages and test software, but it's in a network-free sandbox when I do. I run win98 the same way - no network - and no activation inside a sandbox (Parallels.) I don't use either one as my main OS, and I certainly have no intention of ever purchasing Vista, just to buy into the same set of risks all over again.
What happens when an XP system needs re-installation and I can't get an activation for any reason? As far as I'm concerned, if I buy it, I expect to install it, perhaps put a registration code in that will work each and every time without ever having to contact the manufacturer, and that's it. I'll grant you that it seems unlikely today that Microsoft won't be there in a few years, but will they activate an XP installation? That's a policy decision, and there's just no telling what that policy will be. I'm not hitching my cart to their policy decisions.
Whatever Vista offers, it isn't enough. I have plenty of functionality between linux and OSX, and I can run both concurrently, as is convenient. If either one ever fails, I'll just grab my install CDs and I'll be up and running in a reasonable amount of time. The rule of thumb here is (a) software on CD or DVD, and (b) registration codes, if any, sealed in the jewel case in a readable fashion.
I remember trying to re-install a screen saver (some very pretty aquarium simulation) and finding out that it wouldn't install, claiming I was trying to install it on multiple machines (I wasn't.) I wrote the company several emails about it (they were still around) and they never replied, nor would the screen saver ever work again. I was annoyed, as you might expect. But if this had been the OS instead of just a $30 screen saver, I'd have been pissed at about the nuclear level. This is exactly the risk everyone faces with XP and Vista.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"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.
I was raised on Macs, when I was 2 I remember my dad had an Apple 512k when I was very, very little. Ah, the good old days of B&W.
Oooh, and then when they brought out the Apple IIx. The idea of having colors, that was exciting. I remember the first time my siblings and I booted that sucker up. We all went "WoW" at the pretty colors. It was amazing.
I'd keep going, but my brain would fry from nostalgia.
There were some Quadras in there, a Centris, a Performa, a straight up Powermac or two, and eventually some iMacs of various generations. I still have a mac, in fact there's never been a period of time since the 512k was handed down to me that I haven't been the proud owner of a Mac. There isn't a memory of mine that predates that 512k.
But wait...
What do Cmd-Shift 1 and 2 do?
What's Clarus?
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
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.
Just wondering: has someone reverse-engineered the WinXP activation protocol? You could imagine setting up a server that replies "yup, you're okay" to every request. The only thing you need to do it also have a DNS server that points *.microsoft.com to said server for activation time.
The DNS part is easy, the reverse engineering probably very hard.
Of course, there are versions of Windows XP Pro that do not require activation: the Corporate Editions....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
No, but average consumers don't know that. The "Cost of Vista" article points out some fantastic ways in which functionality is effectively being taken away from consumers. Here's an excerpt close to the front of the article:
In other words, a consumer who has high-end audio setup thinking that they're going to be able to listen to the latest and greatest in A/V home theater technology will be sadly disappointed. The discs aren't broken, the hardware isn't broken, and no AVI files have been infected, but the end result is the same: Functionality that the user has paid for and reasonably expects to work doesn't. It's been taken away.
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.
This patch will solves Windows Vista compatibility issues. It will install Virtual PC 2007, along with a Windows XP images. It will also modify the registry to run the Virtual PC on start up as well.
The only way Microsoft will be in serious trouble is if they start losing overall OEM sales to competition like Apple or the various Linux distributions. I suppose they would be in trouble if they don't expand any further either, but then again, that's why they're branching out of the desktop and servers and going into things like video games and digital cable boxes.
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
Sure it would if you created a truly sandboxed network with routing and machines running with said IP addresses on the other side of the rotuer. However, if it uses HTTPS with a Microsoft or otherwise trusted CA signed SSL cert, you'd have a much harder time duping that.
$ man woman *
-bash:
Ever heard of a *routing table*? Pretty easy to send IP requests elsewhere...
That said, yes, the nasty activation crap has repelled me for some time. I have enough legit licenses, it's just that they don't necessarily go with the hardware on which they're now running. Plus I like to use one image for everything, so that when a machine goes wonky, I can just reimage it and restore the user data.
I'm sorry, I thought we were conversing in English. Your use of the term 'communist dictatorship' and inability to understand the similarity between other legally required services with services that MS might be required to provide, indicates that you are using some other language that I am unfamiliar with, which makes this thread pointless. Hopefully, there is enough overlap in our two languages for you to make out what this posts says.
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.
MS is suffering for the market they created, consumers who are satified with mediocre, resistant to change and generally lazy.
MS for years has built a audience that was willing to accept good enough. With XP for many MS finally delivered "good enough", Its fairly stable, acceptably easy to use and has more features than the average user has any need for. Though there are some nice new features with Vista the important ones are not ones that are noticable to the novice. The only compelling selling point for Joe Average is the eye candy which was "good enough" in XP for most and is stripped out of the affordable versions of Vista anyway. The lack of bells and whistles on the low end versions of Vista coupled with mostly fud articles on backwards compatability plus the much publicized DRM issues scares off a large portion of their target audience. If home users arent upgrading you can bet that businesses are going to drag their heels as well. Sadly I dont see this as being something that will move people to Linux in the immediate future, it does buy Linux developers time to make more inroads towards usability, ease of install and buzz, all of which need improvement and can lead to increased market share.
The question of whether Vista is a failure is moot because the usual meaning of failure doesn't apply in this case. Most Windows purchases in a few years will be Vista simply because it is the latest version of the OS and eventually, most people want to have the latest version. They may delay for an SP or two, but not forever. So in that sense, Vista cannot be a failure. The Dell issue is just a speed bump.
The real measure is whether the dissatisfaction with Vista will increase the rate of switchers to another track, e.g. Mac or Linux. The only way to tell is to compare the rates of switching to and from Windows before and after the Vista dust has settled down.
If the net switching rate away from the Windows to other OSes jumps significantly enough for MS to feel it in their pocket, then it could be considered a failure. I don't think we have those numbers yet.
A offputting variant of what people are used to, late to market, costs more, works worse, bad enough to make even the suck-up trade press like ZD question the value of upgrading.
Are we looking at Windows ME: Next Generation?
You're lucky.
Windows Vista, or MeII as they dubbed it is a nightmare. It's the only OS I've ever wanted to throw out a window. To give you some perspective, I usually like new Microsoft operating systems. Indulge me in being a karma whore for a minute:
"These two actions by Microsoft are proof of what I suggested three years ago. Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can't compete on level ground, so is left with backpedalling and discounts of almost 100 times."
I like the inquirer. They're on of the better publications of their genre. Although both the Inquirer and the Register are always quick to point out the fact that Microsoft will die. And, while I agree that Microsoft will die at some point, I think that saying Microsoft will die when they hold the three dominant computing platforms in terms of known users is a little premature.
I say "known users" because Microsoft controls the outlet. You would think that would be enough, but it's not.
So, as a result they start intentionally confusing users, this edition, that edition, some other edition. They put DRM features that do nothing to pirates, but harm lagitimate users. Then, as if all this wearen't enough they dumb down the multi media and sell it as a "high definition OS." And here's the kicker... everyone else (think Adobe) follows suit. Seems to me that if Lemmings really did jump off cliffs, they would look a lot like Microsoft executives... or the MeII's of the software industry.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I'm pretty sure microsoft will have to keep their XP activation servers open for a long time. If they turn them off in even a decade, they will be wide open for some very nasty, very easy lawsuits. The windows licenses don't have an expiration date, so MS would have to demonstrate the the customer had violated the terms before they could stop activations without breaching contracts left and right.
Microsoft's alternatives would include giving all remaining XP users a refund (not feasible, even for them) and setting up an automatic approval server or other mechanism that would allow XP to be activated without troubling them. Unfortunately, that would make piracy even more trivial, and XP will continue to be usable (if a bit insecure) for years to come.
$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.
Even if Vista turns out to be a big turd, Windows is so entrenched with businesses, hardware manufacturers and game developers that there's just no possible way Vista doesn't achieve nearly the same market share as WinXP enjoys today by virtue of the fact that it will be the path of least resistance for 90+% of the population. They'll fix most of the compatibility problems by the time SP1 ships, manufacturers will have updated most of their drivers and most of the whining will die down to a dull roar.
I suspect that given today's other viable alternative desktop platforms (Apple, Linux within a few years, maybe even Google at some point), Microsoft will probably concede a few percent of its desktop market share over the next 5 years, but I wouldn't say they're in trouble... yet.
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.
I think it is a sign of the times. Technology has developed at a neck breaking pace and now reached a level of maturity while of course a large user base now has grown up with Windows 95 and up. Like everyone else I feel that XP does a pretty good job. Doesn't crash, I know how to work it and doesn't leave me wishing for more.
I think Vista is a scary OS. I hear about DRM limitations but also so called "security" features that will break a lot of applications and generally make life for a software developer hell.
Just Like Microsoft Office, Windows is finished and pretty much complete. In fact I have an old PC for my son that runs nothing else but a Firefox browser and a flash plugin. He can do everything on that that he needs to do so we basically don't care for Vista, glass interfaces (bah you could cut yourself) and so on.
In the gaming arena the same trend is developing, suddenly people go out and buy a Nintendo WII instead of the much more advanced PS3 or XBox360. Why? Because the cheaper box does the job just fine. It is time Microsoft goes out and finds a new market to open up and they are miles behind Google.
Soon I be buying a new PC for one of my projects but I will not accept Vista on it.
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.
Just to provide some facts (I hate to do this, especially on /. where I will be modded to hell)
Vista will allow you to perform a fully functioning install without using *any* serial or license key. You can run Windows Vista, fully functional, for 30 days without entering a key or verifying that key via the activation product. Sure, during that 30 day period you need to fix up your license details and activate the product. This is an anti-piracy process. If you respect copyrights and have legitimately paid for your software, this shouldn't be a problem.
If you don't respect copyrights, or just feel like pirating the product, or don't want to phone home to Microsoft, it's a simple matter of using any of the fire-and-forget third party product activators.
Now, most importantly, all of those facts above indicate clearly that Vista can be installed and running and useable immediately after the initial install process. It's not as free as open source/free software is, because you're dealing with proprietary code.
But if you ask me, it is a million times better than OS X. At least with Vista I get to choose who I buy the computer from. Microsoft doesn't lock me in or tie me down to a specific hardware platform like some DRM laden MP3 player sellers do.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
It's not that easy. Microsoft would pull the Mac version of office in the blink of an eye once Apple announced OSX for the general PC population. That would annoy many Mac users and eventually probably force them to switch. There just is no alternative to Word on the Mac yet that allows you to not use Office as a professional user in the current market.
:-)
While the Apple tools are nice for home users and even the smallest of businesses. And it currently lacks a spreadsheet application which is a major point. What else is there? OpenOffice would be a candidate but there the official version is X11. Not good enough. NeoOffice is a nice effort but not quite there yet.
MS pulling the plug on MacOffice would be a major blow to apple. But what about hardware? Do you really think you can make money with operating systems? I don't think so. Currently Apple is in the nice position to have a controlled hardware base to support. Changing that will result in significantly increased trouble to get the operating system stable and supported on the millions of confiugrations out there. I'm not sure if the needed effort will ever pay up especially since OSX on your average PC will cause Apple to loose sales of their hardware. While it's not exactly true, apple hardware is seen as expensive. But it's not really expensive but it's higher end than many of the machines of the likes of Dell and HP. Many people would probalby stop buying Apple hardware to save some bucks because they want the experience Apple provides but don't really care that much about the looks of their hardware.
So in the end I tend to not see apple actually winnig by opening OSX. The Apple ecosystem currently enjoys a healthy amount of software. While some of the Windows Titles are missing, you usually have adequate alternatives. Think Visio and Omni Graffle or Nero and Toast or Mind Manager and Novamind etc. Opening up OSX would significantly increase the installed base but would it really change the software landscape? What other advantages would there be? I can only see disadvantages for Apple.
Of course if you are a PC user envyous of OSX I can understand your point
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...)
I haven't seen this for a few days.
I was actually beginning to get a bit worried.
Just as one human being to another, I'm glad you're ok.
"There is nothing nice about Steve Jobs and nothing evil about Bill Gates." - Chuck Peddle
Something I've noticed, while administering desktop PCs for clients as well as my own XP laptop and desktops, is that the memory requirements of a Windows PC get larger over the life of the computer.
One cause of this is installation of drivers and add-on applets for various peripherals and software packages. A printer adds a status applet that takes 4MB. An accounting package adds a process that checks for updates, taking another 2MB. Over the life of a PC, these things add up, until the commit charge starts to exceed the amount of physical RAM. That's when the system starts sucking mud, especially on startup.
Another cause is Windows Update. Every patch increases the memory footprint of the OS, albeit in small increments. But over the 3-5 year lifespan of a computer, hundreds of updates are applied (yes, hundreds: my brand new HP workstation needed 68 updates to XP out of the box).
So that 512MB nominal minimum for Vista will double in a couple or three years. I know this because XP workstations that were delivered to a client with 256MB three years ago (and ran fast and responsive out of the box) now take four to five minutes to settle down into a usable state after startup or reboot. I had the same situation with my 256MB Toshiba laptop, sluggish until I added a 512MB DIMM.
Maybe it's because I remember the days when one could do useful things with a computer that had just 8 or 16 or 32MB of RAM, because the operating system wasn't taking up 50% to 66% of physical memory and paging things out to disk.
I don't mean to single out XP or Vista. My OS X workstation and my Red Hat server are the same way, though they're both running services that my XP workstations aren't. When I was doing computer animation, I kept a Win98 box around just for the DOS version of Autodesk 3DStudio. When booted into DOS mode, the OS and 3DS took just 3.2MB of the 512MB available, leaving the rest free for textures and meshes.
Imagine that, an OS and software taking less than 5% of the available RAM.
That's why giving up 50% of memory to housekeeping functions seems like an anathema to me.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
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.
I tried your suggestion and had to immediately run for the plunger; and now I also have a pretty bad rash. Thanks jerk.
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
I have at least a dozen WIN98SE boxes all running (home & work, combined), and most are on the Internet regularly. We're using FireFox and Thunderbird. FF has the AdBlock and NoScript utilities installed. (Worth their weight in gold-pressed latinum!) Annual sweeps with AdAware & SpyBot S&D show nothing more than a few "tracking cookies" once in a while. (In the IE days, those sweeps removed *dozens* of adbots, etc, every *month*!)
;)
98SE, behind a standard router, with FF, is "safe enough" to use online, constantly. For one thing, how many virus writers are still actively targetting 98SE? In the past year, I have seen several serious virus warnings, all of which concluded with these words: "Windows 9x is not affected by this attack." to which I just smile, smugly.
98SE is a snap to reinstall if/when the thing blows up beyond repair. Unfortunately, the WindowsUpdate site is becoming very buggy! Many times, it thinks I'm using a Mac! What's with THAT? Reload, reload, reload, ah, there it goes! That's the typical pattern. I suspect that someone at MS has been tinkering with the site deliberately, to annoy the crap out of die-hards like myself who insist on keeping *fully functional* systems running as long as possible.
Vista? Yeah, that's the "New ME", alright. "Mistake Edition". They can keep it.
Willie...
Sooner or later, people are going to buy new computers. And what operating system will come with these new computers? Windows Vista. If you walk into a Best Buy or a Circuit City today, there probably won't be one computer on sale without Vista on it. Whether they like it or not, the computers that people buy will come with Vista, and that's what people will use since they probably aren't going to install other operating systems. Sure, Windows ME was a flop, but that was because it caused all sorts of problems with stability and the like. Vista, as far as I know, doesn't have major stability problems and is not a step backwards from XP (although it isn't a step forwards, either). In the next couple of years, millions and millions of computers will be sold, and along with them, millions and millions of copies of Vista will be sold as well since it will most likely be pre-loaded on these computers.
Microsoft's business model makes pretty much every operating system they make a popular one - As long as there is demand for new computers, there is demand for Vista.
I got windows XP the month it came out even though I said I wasn't. In general even though I was running a great 2k box, all the little improvements blew me away and I had to move to XP after I checked it out.
I got Vista for free from MS and after reading gaming reports on the fps loss and it making many games unlplayable I didn't want to touch Vista with a ten foot pole. I installed the vista buisness it on my dual core rig and was not happy with the slowness when moving the windows with all the eye candy. I have a decent geforce 6800, 1 gig of memory and that was noticably pokier than XP even with aero turned off.
I got my sister a great el Cheapo laptop from the Fab HP (I make my own desktops but for non gaming laptops you can't beat HP). It had vista basic with 512 ram. After reading tons of reviews about being horrbly slow looking at the nice specs on the dual core cpu on a 499 laptop I couldn't resist. I figured that I can add ram for that price. Well after removing useless norton, and all the redundant HP software except the fast start media player that normally isn't loaded into memory and the button controls it is actually very speedy. After configuring everything to my liking I found at least the user directory structure a breath of fresh air. The user configuable favorite folders are an unexpectedly nice addition after I was playing around with vista for awhile. The power configuration options are really nice too.
The prgrams HP that were bundled with the laptop were properly configured and dind't constanly ask me for admin rights unlike some programs I loaded on the laptop myself. So once everyone gets on board with vista we will probably have less of the security screens that are the most annoying feature of vista (I know you can turn it off but that would kinda defeat a main reason to go to vista)
Vista will be ok once there are some decent video drivers for it. But if you don't game Vista isn't that bad right now once you fool around with it for awile, and disable the crap manufactures load on it. Even the basic verson isn't that bad at all. I really don't know what MS was thinking with the horrid FPS losses that vista brings though. Oh well they will pry XP from my cold dead hands. I am sure that Halo 2 will definitely be a vista system seller.
Go back to O.P. and read closely. You can't help but see that the progression from discussing Vista as a costly marketing failure has led naturally to discussing Coca Cola's failed introduction of "New Coke" (and the implied discussions about the moral prostitution of Bill Cosby in selling the stuff on prime time tv), which is presented as a very similar marketing failure. The case is made that in both instances the corporations purposefully set out to destroy their existing massive customer base by removing their best selling products and replacing them with products that the market quickly decided were inferior. An interesting extension that I had never heard before is that Coca Cola may have done this deliberately (screwing Bill Cosby both ways) as part of an ulterior campaign to introduce the New Classic Coke, which otherwise would have been rejected outright.
"New Classic Coke" replaced sugar, the traditional nemesis of all Good Moms Throughout The Land, with the new and more horrific nemesis: high fructose corn syrup. Twice the sweet at half the cost, maybe fewer dental caries, but much more asthma and obesity, and all kinds of other health and ecology impacts that we'll discover over the 10 years or so. But the profit margins are so much better with HFCS, and then there's the high margin tag-along markets like asthma inhalers and diet foods.
There were significant asides about the government subsidizing several aspects of HFCS production and managing to do so while projecting the image that it was subsidizing traditional farmers, not multibillion dollar chemical corporations that have bought or leased much of the USA corn belt. These were not directly relevant, it is true: there is no indication that Microsoft has been accepting government subsidies, or even hinting that they would like them. On the contrary, Microsoft would prefer to buy government policies.
So the discerning reader is now prepared to question whether Vista is nothing more nor less than a strawman set up by Microsoft as part of a larger marketing campaign that will involve the announcement of "Classic Windows XP" later this year.
Classic Windows XP will provide all the features that Windows XP provides, but with all the actual processing done on Microsoft's own servers, using its proprietary tunneling protocols, encryptions, and secret handshakes to move data back and forth between client machine and Redmond. Most computer systems built after 2005 will be capable of running Classic Windows XP, although the addition of a second 250 GB hard drive will be necessary in some cases. The footprint of Classic Windows XP on ram and hard disk will be no more than 20% greater than most of today's Windows XP installations, but there will be a major shift in internal resource allocation:
Classic Windows XP will perform significantly more slowly than today's Windows XP since transferring all that data back and forth to Redmond over those tiny innerweb tubes will slow things down. However it will look pretty much like today's Windows XP, and people will have forgotten how fast today's operating system is by the time the "Classic" version becomes available.
So, this summary should demonstrate to everyone that this thread has actually been on target all along.
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.
It is not yet a problem. But what happens when Microsoft decides at some point that XP and Vista are obsolete and will no longer be supported, including activation?
I guess that legitimate customers could sue Microsoft at this point and win in court. But some of us prefer not to give them the option of refusing activation in the first place. Like GP, I don't run XP on my private PC for that reason (let alone Vista, which appears to be worse in almost every regard). As long as Windows 2000 does the job, fine. After that, it will be Linux, even if I need to dump most games as a consequence.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Why? Why on earth? What do all these versions do and why do I need to do research into that before I can buy?
Yeah.
"Please God, don't make me use my brain! I'll do anything...anything but that!"
Windows 95 was damn near completely unusable before 95B; Winsock 2 and a raft of stability improvements made all the difference.
You need to remember that Gates' philosophy has always been, "Ship it now, fix it later." Microsoft throw something broken and unfinished out the door in order to initially plant a flag in the market, and then they worry about actual usability in service packs later. That's always been their MO.
Sure, Aero is completely redundant (like I said it would be) and won't be touched by anyone who cares about hardware efficiency. I'm guessing it will also continue to piss gamers off as well, since one thing Windows has never been good at is RAM flushing, and if Aero fills up your vram with textures, chances are it won't be entirely empty for when you then try and load a game, meaning performance problems.
Once they bring out a few service packs though, Vista will predictably become something which the average person will probably find acceptable. If Microsoft alienate gamers with it however, that will be another nail in the company's coffin.
Microsoft has a history of being able to encourage people to buy their products using their desktop domination as a leveraging tool, some may call the practice wrong but in this world it's the money that determines the rules.
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
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?