Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected

An anonymous reader writes "Despite reports, it seems Microsoft is not only alive, but has been thriving these last few months. Following Apple's solid earnings yesterday comes above-expectation reporting from Microsoft. Profits jumped 65% from the previous year, and sales of its Windows operating system were strong: 'Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system. Excluding this figure, client revenue totaled $4.1 billion, 30 percent higher than last year.' Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Vista beat internal forecasts by $300 million to $400 million, and Office 2007 sales were $200 million better than expected."

Comments

Well it figures

[Chris whatever]

it figures that sales are higher than last year, XP is not new and is installed mostly everywhere,,,Vista aint, so if we compare growth and sales Vista will surpass sales for Xp since most of every windows users already own a copy of XP and dont need to purchase it every 6 month

Re:Well it figures

[Jarth]

Given the steep price for a Vista license the expectations are probably based on a salesfigure identical to that of XP. Woeha, longlive the oem-contracts.

Re:Well it figures

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. Between the general lack of logic present in the submission and the fact that it was submitted by an AC, methinks it *could* be astroturf.

These are facts. Reported to the SEC. You can't call raw, concrete sales revenue/profit "astrotuf," especially when they provide the breakdown of numbers with coupons excluded. There isn't even any gray area left.

Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everything positive about them is astroturf. I'm hoping it's because you didn't bother reading the article, but you come across like a bitter twelve year old.

Re:Well it figures

[InsaneProcessor]

I will wait until the truth actually comes out. This sounds a lot like creative accounting. Besides, there is always and initial hump due to hype buying. Let's see what the third quarter looks like.

Re:Well it figures

[Moofie]

Right, because Microsoft would never defraud their shareholders. That'd be naughty!

Re:Well it figures

[Mr. Underbridge]

These are facts. Reported to the SEC. You can't call raw, concrete sales revenue/profit "astrotuf," especially when they provide the breakdown of numbers with coupons excluded. There isn't even any gray area left.

Facts are nothing without interpretation. The submission implies that a relatively modest increase in sales on the heels of the first new OS release in 6 years means that everything is fantastic over at Redmond. This indicates either presence of spin or lack of a brain. You pick. Coupled with the fact that the submitter is anonymous, I lean toward a PR campaign, which MS has been known to do in that fashion.

Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everything positive about them is astroturf. I'm hoping it's because you didn't bother reading the article,

I don't particularly care about MS, but lack of logic skills in reporting bugs me. The headline of the submission "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected" is simply not supported by the only externally available evidence ("Profits jumped 65% from the previous year") because Vista DIDN'T EXIST last year.

You want to do a real study, find out how Vista did vs. XP in terms of quarter-over-quarter earnings jump the first quarter after release. Let's not rely on intentionally-low earnings forecasts from MS that have room for built-in good news. Hell, maybe it would show that Vista is doing better. I really don't care. But let's have some intelligent, unbiased reporting and submissions that don't come from anonymous shills.

Sheesh. Basic logic skills are sorely lacking around here.

Re:Well it figures

[encoderer]

Because if Microsoft sells a lot of software it MUST be "creative accounting?"

How, exactly, do you think they GOT the $40bn they have in the bank?

Re:Well it figures

[realthing02]

^^Exactly. When i saw this article and that it had 200+_ comments, i was thinking: What exactly could they be discussing... Should've known it's just people hating on Microsoft. I'm fine with vista having good sales records, i don't have vista, and wouldn't plan on getting it just yet, but i mean... it's not like it's the devil.

Re:Well it figures

[OmnipotentEntity]

According to Microsoft's SEC Filings page net income has gone up 65% as advertised. Revenue went up 32%. This is as compared with the Windows XP launch that saw Revenue up 18% and net income actually *down* 13%. However(!), Windows XP was released about a month after 9/11, in a very unstable economic period, which presumably caused the 50% jump in "Cost of Revinue" and the near fourfold increase Administrative Expendetures, whereas the total outlays for 1st quarter 2007 were only up 11%. Also Windows 2K and ME were still being sold on consumer machines; plus, Windows XP was released in the 4th quarter, versus Vista in the first quarter, though canonically that means that Windows XP should come out ahead though.

Conclusion, there is no good way to compare the release of XP to the release of Vista. Let's try something different. 98 vs. Vista. It's 3rd quarter vs. 1st quarter, around the same economic situation, no competing product, and no massive terrorist attack. 98 showed a 26% increase in revenue and a (get this) 155% increase in net income.

So, as good as Vista's doing, 98 did better.

Re:Well it figures

[X]

The submission implies that a relatively modest increase in sales on the heels of the first new OS release in 6 years means that everything is fantastic over at Redmond.

I think you are reading too much in to one word: thriving. If you look at the context of the post, it was only referring to business performance in this past quarter. They had a good quarter.

I don't particularly care about MS, but lack of logic skills in reporting bugs me. The headline of the submission "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected" is simply not supported by the only externally available evidence ("Profits jumped 65% from the previous year") because Vista DIDN'T EXIST last year..

There aren't a lot of external projections about Vista sales. However, there were projections about overall Microsoft revenue, and they beat those estimates by >$500 million. Maybe there is some other explanation for that beat, but you'd think Microsoft wouldn't try to suppress whatever revenue source is kicking butt.

You may poo-poo a 65% jump in profits because of a new OS being out, but you should recognize that Microsoft gets a huge profit even if nothing new comes in, because they may a sizable chunk of change on each PC that is sold. New OS's actually can cut in to that if they don't sell well, because support costs go up during a launch. Generally Microsoft doesn't charge more for the new OS than they did for the old one a year ago, so the only way for profits to increase substancially is a) a lot more computers are sold or b) a lot of people pay for an upgrade. They added ~$2 billion in profit. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Re:Well it figures

[Nebu]

The headline of the submission "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected" is simply not supported by the only externally available evidence ("Profits jumped 65% from the previous year") because Vista DIDN'T EXIST last year.

Read the article summary:

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Vista beat internal forecasts by $300 million to $400 million, and Office 2007 sales were $200 million better than expected.

Re:Well it figures

[makeajazznoisehere]

Are you kidding me? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Micr osoft THAT is how they got $40M in the bank.

Re:Well it figures

[X]

His problem though is that those were internal forecasts, and since they weren't public they could always have been adjusted after the fact to make it sound better than it was.

Re:Well it figures

[encoderer]

What's your point? Do you understand what you're talking about? Most companies only begin to pay dividends to their shareholders when they're no longer able to grow the business and therefore their capital has more utility value to investors in the form of dividends than it does in the form of re-investments designed to push stock prices up.

Most investors would GLADLY sacrifice the paltry amount they make in dividends in exchange for the company growing their business (and thusly their stock price).

Re:Well it figures

[encoderer]

First, it's 40bn, not $40MM and CERTAINLY not $40M.

Second, what the hell is your point? That they made money not by selling software but by being a monopoly? So did people just send checks to Microsoft with no consideration in return? Of course not... Microsoft sold a an shit ton of software and made hundreds of billions of dollars because of it.

In summary, thanks for backing up my point.

Re:Well it figures

[makeajazznoisehere]

40 billion. OK then. "How, exactly, do you think they GOT the $40bn they have in the bank?" Not sure how you don't see the relevance of the Wikipedia article in relation to that question. They did, in fact, get it by selling a lot of software, that is true. But they don't exactly have a reputation of being an honest or ethical company, and creative accounting isn't beyond the scope of expected behavior as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Well it figures

[RobertM1968]

In addition to that, MS is still counting the copies they sold, so this is still no indication as to the number of copies delivered to end-users.

To add to that, 126 CompUSA's closing with BOATLOADS (errr... truckloads) of Vista and Office 2007 in multiple variants that are now being sold at a horrendously discounted amount - and MS has been paid in full for them. The store I work in has sold $10,000 worth (our current retail discounted price) in the last 2 days to 3 people (previously it was 1-3 copies a day - at one of the largest CompUSAs (by sales) in the chain - even at 30% then 40% then 50% off)... which accounts for $18,000 in normal retail sales of Vista (with our cost being not much below normal retail). Consider the people who bought from my store just hit 5 other CompUSAs in the last 2 days, and many others are being similarly hit, there are tons of copies that wont see an end user for a long time as these people resell the copies they bought to "mom and pop" shops or any other retailer that will snap them up at a much less than cost price they will probably be sold for.

All in all, MS's claims mean not much of anything in the OS marketshare world, though since the current situation will liquidate much of CompUSAs stock, it will be a good thing for MS... there will be far less palettes of the stuff being shipped back to MS because it didnt sell. Our store still has tons of the stuff, but if the current trend continues, a few more entrepreneurs will buy what's left in the next week or so.

So, MS may be making money off the stuff, but that's about all that's currently happening (and this is no indication of future financial stability). And, I am sure if other chains over-ordered like CompUSA did, MS will be getting a lot of shipments back...

...and even if under their current buying contracts they cannot return the tons of copies sitting in chain warehouses, it still doesnt translate into something that indicates financial stability for MS... it will take a very long while for all the copies at retailers to sell out (much longer than the few days we (at CompUSA) were promised. That will eat into their (MS's) next quarters sales projections when retailers arent re-ordering because they still have tons on hand. At best, this is a stop-gap win that has no real meaning for long term financial stability of MS. MS has flooded the supply chain with (using CompUSAs Vista/Office orders and sales as an estimate) 10 times what demand required. It will take a while for that to stop impacting future sales. I bet if MS were to post an indication of their sales over time, you would find they are all one lump sum sale a piece to the major retailers, with only the smaller houses buying in multiple orders at a few a time. Inotherwords, one big burst followed by a trickle.

So, to sum up, this (MS' sales claims and the inferred financial stability) does nothing for their financial stability for anything more than this period... and it will be a couple periods of really dry weather before they can start dragging in some income from this product that no one seems to really want (based off lack of sales at numerous CompUSA's our store has monitored).

Re:Well it figures

[Jarth]

Apparently some MS-funded people on these charts these days ... hehe.

Re:Well it figures

[encoderer]

what?

Because I'm not entirely biased like the most of you fanboys that makes me a MS-funded person?

please.... you really should look into getting a life......

No!

[MyLongNickName]

No. It can't be. I've been hearing on Slashdot how Microsoft is a dying company for the past five years. And I believe EVERYTHING I read on Slashdot!

Re:No!

[bigman2003]

Not only is Microsoft dying..

But every other OS that manages to bump up its marketshare more than 3% is the wave of the future, and the only bandwagon you should be on!

A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan.

Re:No!

[marcello_dl]

A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

If you don't understand that I have a fairly comprehensive explanation for you to download.

In quarkXpress 7 format only.

Re:No!

[mattgreen]

Crap, you beat me to it.

Luckily, THIS year is the year of Linux on the desktop, however!

Re:No!

[Kelbear]

No...no...

I think it's more like having a bad analogy for a well-undeerstood and exceptional situation that really doesn't need analogies for clarification.

Re:No!

[Himring]

Don't let those borg and broken windows icons fool ya. /. reflects stellar objectivity!....

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

I choose not to use Windows because as a developer it's not a useful OS in the slightest. That it costs more than Gentoo, is less standard compliant, and the target of more bugs [regardless of the quality of OSS that is] doesn't help either.

A lot of people use Windows not by choice but by the virtue of it's what came with their computer and they don't care to investigate alternatives [even if it's to their benefit].

It's the same reason people eat at fast food joints. It's convenient, around every corner, and seeking out alternatives means they have to do some thinking on their own, which is really scary.

Tom

Re:No!

[daeg]

I'm sure all of the engineers, factory workers, and shops that center around bicycles would like to disagree with you. I'm sure a lot of the European and Asian countries would also like to disagree with you, given that many of them have higher rates of bikes per capita than vehicles (not so in North America, except for a few cities perhaps). Bad analogy.

And a lot of people, at least here at Slashdot, make a good living administering Linux, so being knowledgeable about multiple operating systems is a good thing. If you can make $A administering Windows, and $B administering Red Hat, and $C administering FreeBSD, it stands to reason that if you know Windows, Red Hat, and FreeBSD, your pay, $D, should be $D > ($A, $B, $C). If Red Hat fell out of favor, you still have two other systems you can manage.

Besides, a 100% identical network isn't good practice, no matter what company you work in. You don't want every server to be impacted by the same security flaw on the same day. Competition to Microsoft is good for everyone, including Microsoft administrators.

Re:No!

[edremy]

Pffft, noob- I've been hearing that for *10* years, and I still believe it!

Re:No!

[klubar]

I believe that correct answer is, "next year is going to be the year of linux". Thus you can always be right.

Re:No!

[bigman2003]

Good point...

QuarkXpress was competing with the overwhelming market leader in the design/layout space- Adobe.

Quark is all but forgotten, while Adobe used its position as a market leader to continue to grow and expand. The people on the Quark bandwagon whithered, while those on the Adobe bandwagon continued to thrive.

Re:No!

[Yvan256]

I've been hearing on Slashdot how Microsoft is a dying company for the past five years.

They're just trying to copy Apple again, which has been dying for over 20 years now.

Re:No!

[countach]

Well, it's probably better to be in an emerging and growing technology, than a large but shrinking technology. Wages in the former will be on the way up, and in the latter will be in decline due to a growing supply/demand imbalance.

Re:No!

[jellomizer]

A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan.

As someone who makes a living progamming on different Operating Systems Every Day. There is a definate advantage having skills in the non-market leader products.
First You can charge more. .NET programmers are a dime a dozen. But for a good FORTRAN Developer that will cost more, and can't easilly be replaced. Or someone who can make heads or tails out of an RPG Data File. For many of these people with old systems moving to windows is much to expensive moving to Linux is much better, easier to port old software, current administration skill, etc... So learning different languages and systems is a real bonus. Even if it not and never will be #1. Also as technolgy advances a lot of things that were old become new again. People with knowlege in a wider skill set are much more adaptable to different systems. How many advanced windows users get fustrated just because a Linux distribution decides to put the Minamize, Maxamize, and close button on the other side of the windows. How many Mac Users or Linux Users get confused when working on different systems. The more you know the better you are at each one. Also it helps with administration even if you don't know the systems as well as an expert with you knowelge with other OS's it allows you to ask the right questions. Say I know the SEARCH command on VMS and I do a google search for VMS to Unix commands and I find that grep does the job of SEARCH. Or if I need to do some scripting on windows what I learned from the numerious SH scripts I can put into .BAT files. It really helps. Putting all your eggs into one OS even if it is the most popular one will lead you become obsolute rather fast.

Re:No!

[CogDissident]

Lets see you run some video games on Gentoo. Sure, M$ has an unstable unreliable operating system, but I don't want to have to spend an hour configuring my system every time I get a new game.

Re:No!

[Jearil]

Except back in the mid-late 90's and even into the early 00's, Quark was the standard for design and layout. Adobe had PageMaker, but real professionals used Quark.

So if you placed all of your important work into the defacto standard of the time, Quark, you'd be a bit behind right now as the industry has mostly moved on. I think what the GP was trying to make a point with, is no companies dominance lasts forever, so try not to tie yourself to heavily to one.

Re:No!

[dwater]

> And a lot of people, at least here at Slashdot, make a good living administering Linux, so being
> knowledgeable about multiple operating systems is a good thing. If you can make $A administering Windows,
> and $B administering Red Hat, and $C administering FreeBSD, it stands to reason that if you know Windows,
> Red Hat, and FreeBSD, your pay, $D, should be $D > ($A, $B, $C). If Red Hat fell out of favor, you still
> have two other systems you can manage.

Shouldn't that be A$, B$, C$, and D$?

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

I don't spend hours either, I play the few linux compat games (ET, Doom3, quake4, ut), and for the rest I use my xbox, DS, or GBA. The consoles I have plug directly into my tv tuner card, which works in Linux, allowing me to play console games without buying a TV [yeah you can do that in windows too, just saying it works fine in Linux].

You can *choose* not to continue to buy games from publishers who don't respect your right to choose an OS (and frankly, I think development in Linux or BSD would be cheaper as the OSes favour software development a lot more than Windows anyways).

And in the grand scheme of things it's just a video game. Most of the time I'd rather hang out with my friends, jam on my piano, or just chillax then sit there holding a controller or at the keyboard hunting fps baddies. I think I can do without the windows games if it means I don't have to run/buy/install/deal/think about/etc windows.

Tom

Re:No!

[dwater]

> I believe that correct answer is, "next year is going to be the year of linux".
> Thus you can always be right.

...as oppose to always being wrong?

Re:No!

[WED Fan]

I choose not to use Windows because as a developer it's not a useful OS in the slightest.

I choose to use Windows because, as a developer, its the most widely installed OS, and God knows, I love the money that comes rolling in from the users of the most widely installed OS. I develop useful applications and web services that don't require my customers to build and learn a new operating system. I let my customers make the choice. (Psst, I also develop on Linux and provide solutions to those customers that make that choice.)

In other words, as someone who likes money and lifestyle, who likes eating, who likes playing, who I choose to go where the money is. Idealism is fine. Personal crusades of windmill tilting are fine, Don. But, in the end, they don't put food on the table, they don't pay for the Hummer, they don't allow you to jet to Fiji for a cool vacation.

I remain flexible, screw idealism and useless and childish OS prejudice.

Re:No!

[bigman2003]

Thank you for a well-thought reply. I agree with you that putting all of your eggs in one basket, no matter WHAT that basket is, is a bad idea.

My initial point was that many people say that Microsoft is a BAD basket to be in. I personally think this is ridiculous. For a very large percentage of the industry it is a GREAT basket to have your eggs in.

Sure Microsoft's market-share has declined slighly in the recent past. And other OSs have increased slightly. This is not a surprise.

Because people hated my first analogy, I figure I should use another one.

Let's say you have 10 basketball players. One player on the team scores like 90% of all of the points. The other 9 scramble for the rest.

Let's say the guy who makes 90% of the baskets dips down to making 88%.

Well some people would have you believe that one of the other players, who has managed to move from 2% to 3% is the ONLY way to go. Heck, he increased his share of the points by 50%! And the super-star? Obviously his days are numbered, and the time to cut him from the team is now!

I have no problem with the rest of the team. But when it comes to betting, I'm still putting my money on the 88%.

Re:No!

[heinousjay]

The interesting thing about the standards compliance issue is that since Windows is by far the most popular OS, it could be argued that it is the only standards compliant OS out there.

It would be a stupid argument borne of ignorance, but it could be made.

Re:No!

[bigman2003]

That is the reason I mentioned 'the design/layout space'. It should be seen as an industry where things are tied together.

Quark had one product.

Adobe had a much larger focus, with PhotoShop, Illustrator AND PageMaker/InDesign, as well as fonts, printing, etc.

Eventually their herd of elephants ran right over Quark, and they did it with their muscle in the field.

A single product cannot survive, but dominating an entire field can last much longer.

Re:No!

[Kennon]

A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

Since you don't understand let me explain. I have met so many Admins with this attitude and the fact they they "ally" themselves with something just because of it's marketshare speaks volumes about their character and really illustrates a huge problem in the IT community today. And I would like to meet anyone who seriously thinks that keeping their Windows skills up to speed is harmful to their career. I am forced to work on some Windows systems because of marketshare. But I choose to "ally" myself with Free and Open Source software because it is truly better than closed source. I am slowly replacing the former with the latter in every project I am a part of.

To address your lame analogy:

It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan. Using your philosophy would mean that we would all still be walking because walking had the marketshare on human transportation for a couple million years before any other mode of transportation was every thought of.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

If your only goal in life is to make money. All the power to you.

To me working is a split of "what does this day have to offer" and "it pays the bills." Don't get me wrong, I love my job and my station in life, but if I had the choice of being well off (e.g. financially set) or working I'd rather be well off. Gives me more time for my actual interesting pursuits like music, and a high score in Wii tennis :-)

I also write software, albeit usually in the form of software libraries and not end user applications. Most of our customers are embedded folk who really don't care about Windows in the slightest. I guess when you're in a rational market your customers aren't demanding the lowest of you. E.g. if you don't sell drugs, your customers won't ask you for drugs.

I'm not trying to pretend that I'm somehow morally superior because I use OSS over closed source msft shite. Just that I'm aware that I have a choice and I choose not to use, develop, or support anything to do with windows. I'm not an enabler :-)

Tom

Re:No!

[e2d2]

If you don't understand that I have a fairly comprehensive explanation for you to download.

Yes but there is a difference between a technology causing harm to the industry and causing harm to you personally. For instance if I'm a developer working on Windows I won't be causing myself any harm. In fact I'd probably be helping myself.

A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN" often portrayed here on slashdot and make an excellent living at it. Can I program on Linux? Sure, I do so all the time at home, programming embedded devices and robots and I've released open source software under GPL license. Maybe one day I'll be able to work on them full time. But right now I work on the "Ford" of the industry. It's not unwise and it's not unethical. It's just reality. We deal with the reality of the industry, and that reality is that Windows dominates the market so it makes economic sense to use it.

I don't align my personal feelings with a technology, it's not wise.

Re:No!

[tsmit]

Right... and the red sox are going to win the world series... Wait a second...

Re:No!

[nine-times]

QuarkXpress was competing with the overwhelming market leader in the design/layout space- Adobe.

You're not a designer, are you? Until a couple years ago, Quark completely dominated layout. Sure, you might edit your photos in Photoshop or build some graphics in Illustrator, but when it came time to place those graphics on a page, QuarkXpress was all anyone used. Adobe's layout programs were basically a joke. No one thought Adobe would ever be able to beat out Quark.

And then... Well, Adobe was working on improving their product while Quark was ignoring their customers. People started moving to InDesign. But keep in mind that this was only two or three years ago-- before that, no one used anything but Quark. And it's worth noting that Macromedia controlled a lot of web design until Adobe bought them out. That wasn't long ago either, considering the first Adobe-branded version of formerly-Macromedia software was... a week ago.

Re:No!

[Flodis]

Good point...

QuarkXpress was competing with the overwhelming market leader in the design/layout space- Adobe.

... except it was exactly the other way around, with Quark starting out as market leader. Not Adobe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress

Re:No!

[e2d2]

Sure but that same rarity that makes the FORTRAN programmer wages higher also limits his/her opportunities. He doesn't see the same job opportunities as the .Net programmer. If that's acceptable then so be it, but it's something to weigh in a decision regarding the technology path you choose.

I think people choose the path of least resistance usually, if they grow up in a linux/unix shop then they get used to it and Windows scares them. And of course vice versa. Then after 5-10 years in they realize that being a programmer means being able to program ALL computers and understanding ALL language/environment paradigms (or at least as many as possible). This is where the true big bucks come in. When you can jump from C++ on Linux to C# on Windows to FORTRAN on a mainframe, thats where the real money is. The problem solver, not the technology specialist.

Re:No!

[CogDissident]

Oh yes, you can "do without" the windows games by "not having to think about" windows. It sounds an aweful lot like you are implying that Linux or Gentoo are somehow easier and more intuitive.

Additionally, do you know how expensive it is to cross platform produce? Making something from a Windows only game into a Windows/Linux/Gentoo/8billion other versions of Linux/unix/ect distribution is an absolutely massive undertaking thats only performed by game companies that know they're going to be selling to over 50% of the computer gaming market.

Re:No!

[ContractualObligatio]

Your lack of logic and objective thinking is scary. Are you sure you want to be a developer?

(if you can't figure out at least a couple of reasons I say this, again I would ask the developer question)

Re:No!

[kivine]

Wrong! I believe that the correct answer is, "next year is going to be the NEXT year of linux".

Re:No!

[quitcherbitchen]

The problem with fast food joints isn't convenience, cost effectiveness, and accessibility. It's that the nutritional quality of the food is lacking. Microsoft Windows won't raise your cholesterol or make you fat.

People use Windows because the alternatives don't stack up as well enthusiasts assert that they do. Market forces would have driven a better, cheaper substitute into use if such a product delivered on those claims.

I don't proselytize for Microsoft, but I also don't deride the majority of their users as mindless cattle who are unable or unwilling to invest significant time to flesh out a premature alternative. That's not their job. It's ours, the experts in the field whose duty it is to create robust and usable software.

Re:No!

[alucinor]

I don't think Microsoft is dying so much as it's still reaping the benefits of its strategic moves from the late 90s. But if you look at where the pieces are moving for the next 10 years, MS has not found itself a very advantageous position: slowly but surely, commodization is moving up the stack, from x86 hardware to compilers and networking to the OS and general-purpose applications. The main reason for Microsoft's success in recent years has been its tight integration between client and server, which the EU is now contending isn't innovative but merely obfusgation.

From a business standpoint, I love MS because they've made many of us wealthier because of the consolidation they've brought to the industry. From a computer science standpoint, I detest them because of the monoculture and lack of robustness in their code given how much money they in turn make. I wonder where all our dollars go, apparently not back into the product. Another fear is always that if your software becomes popular enough, MS will surely assimilate your idea with their own cloneware and bundle it with the next OS update. Then you're hosed.

I think even more money will go around for all of us as Linux becomes more widespread and its userbase encompasses more customers willing to pay for software. Then not so much cash will be flowing into a single company, but into many different ones.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

It's only really hard to cross-platform develop if you use PLATFORM SPECIFIC APIs. An OpenGL app should be relatively portable, and if you're not using DX or Win32 porting shouldn't be a huge problem.

Also most of the issues of sound, input, etc are things you can WRITE ONCE and re-use in future games/productions. If you write a pluggable API you can easily have library that targets multiple platforms (admitedly sound is a weak spot in the OSS world).

If you look at the games that were ported they use this technique of an abstraction layer. And again, you can re-use the code so it's not a recurring cost.

Tom

Re:No!

[CastrTroy]

If you want to play games with no troubles, I suggest you get a console. I've done video games on computers, and I'm tired of trying to keep up with the video driver updates, directx updates, game patches, trying to figure out if my computer has enough power, and borked copy protection schemes that make games not work.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

No the problem with fast food is that they mass produce it, beyond the needs of society. That it's unhealthy is another problem altogether. Slashing and burning forests so you can graze cattle isn't exactly the best use of territory.

People choose it though because of it's abundance. It's just everywhere and frankly it's an easy choice. I could make myself a healthy meal or grab something at one of the millions of fast food joints around.

Most people, not all, but most, use Windows just because it's what was installed on their machine. The average user does trivial tasks like browsing the web, reading emails, watching videos and listening to music. Things you have been able to do in Linux for a long time.

The reason you don't see Microsoft going away as much as "it should" is that it's unfairly bundled with machines, often as the only choice. I'm sure if Dell offered laptops with Ubuntu, sans the MSFT tax, that people would buy them [provided Dell marketed it properly and didn't just offer it as a non-descript choice].

15 years ago it would have been less of an issue to offer alternatives, and they did, e.g. DR-DOS vs. MS-DOS. But in the end, mutually assured destruction kicked in. Now people compete on shady terms simply because their competitors do as well, and if they didn't they be eaten alive.

That doesn't mean that's a good thing though. Which is why I usually go for custom boxes that never see a drop of MSFT software. Not funding that economic terrorism is the least I can do to help society.

Tom

Re:No!

[Paradise Pete]

Wrong! I believe that the correct answer is, "next year is going to be the NEXT year of linux".

Well then by that logic wouldn't that make this year the year of Linux?

Re:No!

[suv4x4]

I never understood the whole, "LINUX ONLY!" developers.

What's there to understand. Lots of idealism, poor job, lots of time to post on Slashdot.

You just said what I thought about it better than I ever could. Thanks!

Yea, he kinda said using Windows will make you rich. Of course, I think he did more than this, but Windows users at least have something to hope for.

Re:No!

[bigman2003]

Aldus Pagemaker was the first big design/layout program.

Adobe bought Aldus, hence PageMaker.

Quark started to steal marketshare, until it nearly owned the business. But Adobe had it first. If you think InDesign was Adobe's entry into the design market you are sadly misinformed.

Re:No!

[Maxo-Texas]

And that's a nice rational decision.
We make those kind of decisions all the time and there is nothing wrong with it.
There are probably a lot of windows users who really appreciate that you are a good windows developer.

As a developer, I'm typing on a windows machine right now tho I create java programs. I'm more of a project leader these days tho (havn't coded in months) and I like it. A fixed body of knowledge to learn and master (like the older programming languages) instead of the constant treadmill of learning things that are obsolete 12 months later.

As an end user, I've personally moved everything but everquest to applications that will run on any platform because I see that windows wants to move me to a tightly controlled environment that i pay a monthly subscription fee to use.

Re:No!

[MrR0p3r]

You could say the same thing about Team Fortress 2!!

Re:No!

[Giometrix]

"Lets see you run some video games on Gentoo. Sure, M$ has an unstable unreliable operating system, but I don't want to have to spend an hour configuring my system every time I get a new game."

I will agree with you that by default Windows is less reliable than Linux/BSD/Mac security wise (and I'll argue that it is just as good or almost as good if properly configured), but Windows has been very stable for me since 2000.

Re:No!

[norman619]

Love the wishful thinking you demonstarte here. A lot of people use Windows because:

1) It's the OS they use at work

2) Their friends use it

3) They want more software options than is offered by the many flavors of Linux and OSX

4) They want to be able to play modern video games

5) They want to run a mainstream OS

The only people who would benefit from moving to an alternative OS are those who do only the very basic of things like email, web browsing, and word processing. Linux would be idea for them due to the price (free). BUT since Lunix usually requires a tech savvy person to install and set up properly it's not something for Joe Average to tackle. For Joe Average who needs something that works out of the box with very minimal, if any, tweaking needed, the only real alternative option is an Apple box. Now I know Dell offeres Linux on boxes but I'm not sure what kid of support they offer so if they do properly support the Linux boxes they sell then Linux and OSX may be the same in the out of the box functionality.

I hear the myth of "A lot of people use Windows not by choice but by the virtue of it's what came with their computer and they don't care to investigate alternatives [even if it's to their benefit]" being thrown about as if it were a fact. If you dislike MS or Windows then just come out and say it. Please don't try to support your dislike with BS. It tends to be misleading.

Re:No!

[Donniedarkness]

You know, some people actually prefer food from McDonalds over...let's say.. The Outback. Or Applebee's. Or The Olive Garden. I happen to not care much one way or the other (the food is the same to me... go get a $10 chicken sandwhich and wait an hour for it, or get a $3 chicken sandwhich and get it...NOW). My girlfriend is one of those odd people who actually PREFERS the fast food joint's offerings.

Also, I've TRIED to convert a lot of people to Mac OS and Linux... Not many people stick with it-- most people go back to Windows. I guess it's just EASIER for most (non-technical people) people.

Yeah, I'm a big MS basher, but they DO have some things going for them. Same with fast food joints (and like I said, it's not just that they're everywhere or that "you don't have to think").

Re:No!

[CogDissident]

A small game developer can barely afford to write the sound/imput/ect other drivers even that first time.

Additionally, most find it easier (especially with the right incentive programs that M$ provides) to write for DX rather than OpenGL.

Also, keep in mind, the market share (for gaming) they're working with for open platform distribution is an order of magnitude smaller than the market share of windows.

Re:No!

[oliverthered]

Well, the people who write windows software don't allow other people to run the OS of there choice, even if it actually works.

Re:No!

[seandiggity]

...well there's always the option of developing cross-platform apps like those based on the Mozilla Application Framework. It'll keep your sub-aquatic Hummer rolling to Fiji, or whatever's fashionable in money-wasting these days.

Re:No!

[nschubach]

A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN"

When was Microsoft NOT "Evil Satan"? I'd go so far as to say that Xerox, IBM and Apple would disagree with you on many levels.

Re:No!

[Tazz_ben]

You know you could just develop web applications and then they work on anything. Just a thought.

Re:No!

[WebCowboy]

A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN" often portrayed here on slashdot and make an excellent living at it.

Some of "us" old-timers developed software for CP/M systems...or Apple II or Commodores...and made a good living on it too. Those platforms were all market leaders in the PC realm at one point in time and they all faded away in obsolescence. CP/M was not a Microsoft product and was what powered the vast majority of "open architecture" PCs for most of the first decade of the markets existence. It doesn't matter how big a leader one platform is over another, it does NOT make sense to jump on one wagon and dismiss the others. There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of a leading market position, however far too many people doing that neglect the alternatives. People need to broaden their horizons.

Can I program on Linux? Sure, I do so all the time at home, programming embedded devices and robots and I've released open source software under GPL license. Maybe one day I'll be able to work on them full time.

Glad to hear that--especially that you make contributions towards the vast library of Free software out there. That way, you aren't limiting yourself should other opportunities arise in your career. There are already many people making a good living with Free software, and perhaps if (when?) you get bored and/or frustrated with Windows you can seek employment with a company such as IBM or Red Hat or Novell, where thousands of people make a living at computers without windows.

But right now I work on the "Ford" of the industry. It's not unwise and it's not unethical. It's just reality. We deal with the reality of the industry, and that reality is that Windows dominates the market so it makes economic sense to use it.

Sometimes it IS unwise, or even unethical, to stick with "the Ford of the industry". Ford USED to be King, and along came this upstart Japanese company Toyota, at a time when "made in Japan" still meant "cheap junk" to many in America. Fast forward to last year, when Ford LOST over a MILLION dollars PER HOUR and Toyota passed them in market share. This would've never happened if people stuck with Ford because it was the market leader. However, people noticed some superior attributes of Toyota products (fuel efficiency, price, reliability) and Toyota improved quickly in area where it was weak (acceleration, corrosion resistance, etc). In the meantime, Ford rode on its established presence and conentrated on sweeoing its problems under the rug instead of actually fixing them (Hello there Pinto!).

So, in the late 1970s, would've you considered it unwise to buy one of those new Honda Civics instead of a Ford Pinto because Honda was new to the US car market and had a much smaller market share? I'd consider that foolish. I'd rather have bought the Civic and saved on fuel, plus the Civic was somewhat less flammable. Market share be damned...the Civic made more economic sense than a Pinto by far.

Microsoft really IS like Ford and Windows sure drives like a Pinto, and I've seen it crash...and burn...far too often not to look at alternatives. Apple could enjoy a Toyota like renaissance...or perhaps Red Hat or Novell or some company yet to emerge.

To hell with Microsoft "Ford Pinto" Windows. I'm looking at "Toyota Corolla" Fedora, "Honda Civic" SuSE and "Subaru" Ubuntu to see what they have to offer.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

Well, first off, there are cross-platform game libraries. Allegro springs to mind. It works in a half-dozen OSes (including Windows), and takes care of sound, timers, input (keyboard/mouse/joystick), etc.

Second, I don't see how writing for DX can be easier than GL. DX like all MSFT software has a long list of complicated functions that are well documented in the MSDN but only useful for that platform. Learning GL means you can write apps for many more OSes.

And yes, I agree the market is larger in Windows, but proper software development techniques virtually demand sensible coding practices anyways. you can, believe it or not, write properly and still target Windows. It's lazyness and indifference that causes people to just use DX and other msft proprietary shit apis.

Tom

Re:No!

[e2d2]

When was Microsoft NOT "Evil Satan"? I'd go so far as to say that Xerox, IBM and Apple would disagree with you on many levels.

Doubt it. Apple remembers when IBM was the "evil satan" and Microsoft was the small shop that sold DOS. Microsoft was a piss ant company then. But I guess that's before your time? Basically if you were born in the 70s you remember that IBM was the giant monolith along with DEC/Sperry Univac and Microsoft was the fresh face on the block.

As for Xerox, well APPLE stole from them, not MS. So at least get your stories straight..

Replace company names today, rinse, wash, and repeat.

There will always be a hated company. MS just happens to be the current flavor. Probably because they are the status quo. The other companies you mention are no more ethical in anyway whatsoever. They'd kill their proverbial grandmother if it meant a nickel raise on the stock ticker.

Re:No!

[nschubach]

Does the fact that most of this work is already done in Open Source Projects totally bypass your discussion? The sound drivers and these other things are already out there and freely available. You don't have to code them for the most part.

You are quick to point out though how Microsoft abuses it's Monopoly by providing "incentives" to groups coding for their operating system. Thanks for pointing that out, but not understanding why this is a bad thing.

Market share could change rapidly if standards were used. Look at Firefox. It's gained a tons of the market share IE/Microsoft had on the web. Since HTML is standardized, using Firefox is transparent (for the most part) to every user, and rightly so. If operating systems had to follow a list (even a minimal list) of standards, market share might quickly change too. However, thanks to Microsoft, users are forced into their recreational habits on one OS. I say Microsoft should be forced into opening up DirectX and providing the API specs to anyone that wants to use them. Then we'll finally see who has the "best" operating system or as you put it, the operating system with the most market share.

Re:No!

[drinkypoo]

Speaking from experience I can tell you that this is not what happened. You can use the output of various Adobe programs inside of Quark, that's not the issue. The issue is that Quark went from being light, fast, and reliable to being a gigantic bloated pile of shit in which you couldn't fucking find what you were looking for and if you did the program would probably crash. This has left things open for Adobe to make InDesign into a big turd and STILL control the market, which is why I'm so pissed off at it these days (CS2, so far.)

Re:No!

[Maxo-Texas]

The problem is..

Our major application is broken because New Windows is not compatible with Old Windows.

It is going to take us several months to fix this. Microsoft is aware of the issue (CSS differences) and has no plan ot address it.

That means we have to have ONE block of code that works in all browsers and another block of code that works in IE7.

Likewise, a couple years ago.. Microsoft completely divorced backwards compatibility in Visual Basic leaving many developers stranded unless they could swing a .net job. A large part of this decision seems to have been mainly just to screw with java (which is a HUGE threat to them).

As the hardware gets more powerful, java applications (and other generic languages) are going to be a better choice to develop in. And when you can get the same software to run on any hardware (and we are even seeing video games lately) you start to lose the need to be in Windows.

Re:No!

[e2d2]

That was a great argument and I see exactly what you are saying. I do see innovation being introduced in Linux and that makes me happy. I do see Linux surpassing Windows one day, but on that day Microsoft will proclaim Linux the greatest thing ever and reverse course. They are pretty slick. BUT eventually all things come to an end, especially undeserved positions of power. It's one thing to dominate a market on merit, it's another to dominate a market using a monopoly and strong arm tactics. Those tactics are coming back to bite MS in the ass these days.

I can see the writing on the wall, Windows is not the juggernaut it used to be. I just wanted to explain why windows developers do what we do. Many on here see us as either weak developers using VB to funk up a pathetic office app or simply industry shills. But we have motivations like every other man and woman.

Re:No!

[drinkypoo]

People choose it though because of it's abundance.

No, people choose it because of convenience. There are other food options between my house and my work besides fast food, but there's nowhere else I can pick up something to eat and be back on the highway in just a couple of minutes, speeding workward with a biscuit sandwich in my hand.

I tend to get up super early in the morning and just don't have the go-juice to make breakfast, and I want something hot. Sometimes I eat at work but it's actually cheaper to eat the fast food and frankly there's not a big difference between that and eating an omelet here, in terms of actual food value. It's probably better for me because I'm not eating a pile of greasy hash browns :)

(Soon I will be going back on the Atkins diet - and no, I don't care to hear anyone's ignorant take on that - and then I'm going to have to start making breakfast again.)

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

It's the OS they use at work because their boss says so and it's what Dell ships. Not for a technical reason.

Their friends use it for the same reason.

There is way more useful software I find for OSS systems, but I guess it depends on what you do.

I play modern video games.

What the hell is a "mainstream OS?" And what does that have to do with buying decisions [or lack of]

There is more to an OSS OS than the basics. My point though was if you're not running DX games or whatever, chances are a decent linux distro will do you just fine. As for hard to install ... um ever try Fedora or Ubuntu? It's literally just put the CD in and click on install. If that's too hard then chances are you don't need a computer, you need a rubber mallet so you can crush your skull and remove yourself from the gene pool [cuz honestly all you'd do is run a virus bot infested windows box and make the world a worse place for the rest of us].

I like how you turned what I said around with offering a shred of evidence though. Good quality trolling.

Tom

Re:No!

[stocke2]

OK, pull your head out and get your history right. Apple PAID!! Zerox for what they used!!!!

Re:No!

[immcintosh]

One of my first experiences after installing Gentoo... 1. emerge wine 2. come back when it's done compiling 3. wine WoW.exe -opengl Unfortunately, I didn't have time to mess around more with Gentoo... I was a little busy in Karazhan.

Re:No!

[nbritton]

Yes but there is a difference between a technology causing harm to the industry and causing harm to you personally.

Anyone know how to get Microsoft to pay for my high blood pressure medication?

Re:No!

[nbritton]

Yes but there is a difference between a technology causing harm to the industry and causing harm to you personally.

Anyone know how to get Microsoft to pay for my high blood pressure medication?

It would be interesting someone did a medical study comparing the state of wellness of Windows users verse Mac or *nix users.

Re:No!

[nschubach]

But I guess that's before your time?

Nice try. Trying to make me out as a kid who knows nothing. Immediately resorting to Personal attacks... great. I should ignore you, but since you decided to try to put words in my mouth, let me explain.

Microsoft started it's buy-up early on with DOS, but being as you remember it all too well, I won't go over all the details, but this is where I tied IBM into the mix. Microsoft even went so far to insist that all versions of DOS be labeled MS-DOS even though they were being cross developed.

Now, as far as Apple is concerned, it gets very grey (to me, as I was working with other machines at the time). From what I understand of it, Xerox basically gave the interface to Apple. Bad business move, sure. But Xerox had it's mind on other things and didn't see the interface as important at the time. Windows was clearly modeled after Apple's OS, but as Microsoft was well on it's way to fortune, they also had their hands on some top dollar legal council. Apple didn't stand a chance.

I never said IBM wasn't bad though. Again, you insert information into a small paragraph of mine. But Microsoft used that power to promote DOS 1.0 if you remember. Microsoft was formed and maintained it's shady practices all through it's life. Denying that, you support it.

Re:No!

[nine-times]

Pagemaker? Geeze, you're really reaching back, aren't you? In my time working professionally with designers, I haven't actually seen anyone use PageMaker. Granted, that experience only stretches back to the mid 90s, but given how young the industry is, that's a pretty long time.

Re:No!

[caseih]

Personally I only program windows when I have to because it is horrible to work with, especially system programming. But having working mostly with Unix, I find the transition to programming for Windows (everything from system to app programming) to be much, much easier than someone trying to transition the other way. I purposely employ good programming practices that keep my code as portable as possible. My full-blown GUI apps run quite easily on any *nix, Mac, or Windows operating system. The effort expended to achieve this portability is exceedingly minimal. To me, more important than using Linux, is to not tie myself down to *any* OS, whether it be Linux or Windows. Each OS has its time in the sun. I'd rather be as nimble as possible than to completely tie myself down to even the most dominant, lucrative OS. Plus I can explore other markets easily, as my skills are much more transferable than some of my friends who are Java programmers only, or .NET programmers. I can fairly easily work in Java, C#, C, C++, php, or python (and whatever other language is needed), whereas as they find it more difficult to do that (or at least uncomfortable). Perhaps it is because I'm an old-school, pre-Java programmer. They likely will make all the money they need, and will have no problems staying employed for life. I also have the same, but with a greater breadth of experiences that I enjoy very much.

When I'm hiring people, I look specifically for non-windows experience. The main reason is that I know that a Unix guru will work just fine with Windows or whatever OS I throw at them. But even more important, it shows they enjoy computers and actually make a hobby of it, something that's not really possible to do with Windows. They are likely the people that are tinkerers and people who try to really understand the under-the-hood things, and understand that computers are tools. Qualities that make good employees.

As for paying for trips to fiji, I know plenty of people who leverage standards and open-source technology to make a lot of money, particularly in web development. Note that this is a field that makes Vista irrelevant. It makes any OS irrelevant.

Re:No!

[Divebus]

As for Xerox, well APPLE stole from them, not MS.

Here we go... Xerox invented then ignored the personal computer as we know it and Xerox management didn't "get" that, much like HP didn't "get" the Woz. Xerox was a COPIER company who was playing in computers only because IBM started making COPIERS. Management wasn't serious about computers and was happy enough to sell off the technology.

Apple actually licensed the technology from Xerox and hired some of the design team. I worked for Xerox at the Training Center when all that was going down. Yes, I worked on the Xerox Alto workstations, the Xerox 820-II CP/M machines and even touched a Star 8010 Workstation just before they dumped it all.

Re:No!

[daeg]

Since when do you refer to dollars as 1,000$? Maybe in other languages, but USD the dollar sign always precedes the value.

Re:No!

[Knara]

Well, that and it was *years* before Quark had a product what would run native in OS X. It's been a while, but I seem to recall that Quark wouldn't even run in classic mode, so you couldn't get a new Mac for a very long time that would run Quark (esp after you couldn't dual-boot OS 9.2.2 and OS X anymore).

Re:No!

[jb.hl.com]

And Apple copied BSD.

(Wait...that actually happened. Shit.)

Re:No!

[Jasper__unique_dammi]

A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that. Perhaps they are measuring the succes of their career not (only) by salary, but also in usefullness to other people? If a technology not GPL-ed/forkable, a person might think it is not usefull enough to others, because others would have to pay to make use of it. Perhaps they even think of it as destructive, if it is damaging free software.
I think ideological people just want GPL-ed software to work, and jump to any story that says so. That is a lot of emphasis on those stories, but does not mean that most of those people themselves actually think that use of the software will explode this year.
"It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan."
Pretty sure bicycles are here to stay.

Re:No!

[polyex]

Huh? Most people (especially management types) ally themselves with whats popular, the old no one ever got fired for buying IBM (or Microsoft) mentality.

Re:No!

[endrue]

I think you mean the "Toyota" of the industry.

- Andrew

Re:No!

[noewun]

I learned on PageMaker. And Illustrator 88. And I used Photoshop 1.0. . .

For the record, any statements along the lines of "And then Adobe wiped the floor with Quark" and the same kind of marketing crap people are attacking Microsoft for. While ID has been able to steal significant market share from Quark, Quark is still an entrenched and important tool. I tell people getting into the industry they need to know both programs in order to be considered for a job. Beyond that, ID is just another page layout program with its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

Re:No!

[bigman2003]

No, no, no!

Just like I mentioned up above- PageMaker was KING before Quark Xpress. Adobe bought Aldus/PageMaker when it still had a large share of the market.

PageMaker started the business and owned the market before Quark came along.

I was a heavy PageMaker user from version 2 through 6.5. I also used Quark starting with 3.2.

For a shop needing to create 4 color separations, PageMaker was the best way to go for a long time (Until Quark 3.2) and it wasn't like I was going to give up thousands of files to jump over to the newest thing in town.

Aldus/Adobe OWNED the world of desktop publishing for quite a while before, and after, Quark.

Re:No!

[BasharTeg]

You're not alone. We only seem like a minority because most of us only have time to read the articles before we get back to work, rather than jumping into these MS hating flame wars. Computer science has its Linux/OSS fundamentalists just like Islam and Christianity have their fundamentalists. If you don't agree with them 100%, you're evil and damned.

No disrespect to those who love Linux/OSS but aren't fundie retards btw.

Re:No!

[TrancePhreak]

Well, if Ellen Feiss is any indication most Mac people are "on cough medicine" most of the time.

Re:No!

[The Bungi]

I'm not trying to pretend that I'm somehow morally superior because I use OSS over closed source msft shite

Yes you are. That's the overriding theme of your posts in this article so far, and that's your problem.

Or perhaps the problem is that you actually can't see that. I wouldn't be surprised.

Re:No!

[quitcherbitchen]

Economic terrorism?! Dell sells Windows computers because it suits their business, so what? Should Linux become easy to support, and useful to the consumer, why wouldn't they offer it? What evidence do you have of shady business dealings?

Wal-mart sells pre-loaded linux computers, Apple is stylish and available, commerial and free OS alternatives abound, but market share is what it is. Do justice to society by your personal choices all you want, but if you strive to make a difference, help make these alternatives a viable choice for the rest of the world.

Re:No!

[TrancePhreak]

Allegro is not a good solution. It has lots of issues and bugs of its own, and the only support you get is "here's the source!".

Second, I don't see how writing for DX can be easier than GL. DX like all MSFT software has a long list of complicated functions that are well documented in the MSDN but only useful for that platform. Learning GL means you can write apps for many more OSes.

It's "in MSDN", no need for "the". Learning GL means you can use GL on the platform you learned it on. They all have various incompatabilities and differences in how they operate. There are some libraries that try to take care of this all, but usually they fall short of the quality one would expect from a game company if given the time to do a proper release. Also, you need to consider that it's Direct3D, as GL provides no real competition to DX as a whole.

It's lazyness and indifference that causes people to just use DX and other msft proprietary shit apis.

And here's the strong-man showing your true goal to push inaccurate FUD. DX is much more an enterprise class API with the debugging and profiling support than GL. MS has teams of people you can call and get support from. GL has the internet. Expecially if we consider managed DirectX, then programming in GL you will often end up trying to add things in that DX already has such as reference counted buffers and texture management.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

In my GL class in college we had people writing GL [and GLU/GLUT] applications in Windows that routinely worked in Linux as well [as well as diff distros].

Sure, some of the GL extensions change per platform, but the core of GL is fairly stable, otherwise it'd be totally useless. As for Allegro, last I used it [early 2000's] it worked fine in DJGPP world and Linux. Wrote quite a few 2d top down games and other weird demos with it.

If DX is such a wonderful API where are the ports to other OSes?

Tom

Re:No!

[TrancePhreak]

So if by producing Windows software you could be finacially set, would you do it? I know quite a few people who retired at 30 after making a couple million. It's not uncommon, but it is harder as time moves on.

Re:No!

[Danga]

Well, the people who write windows software don't allow other people to run the OS of there choice, even if it actually works.

Get an emulator then. Why is it our job to make sure the software we write can run on any OS available? Maybe if my company had a lot more money we could develop multi-platform software but since it didn't start out that way it would be a HUGE project to make our current applications multi-platform.

Another thing is the money might not be there. I am in the computer forensics field and nearly all of the people who are computer forensics professionals have a Windows system anyway since the two big case management applications FTK and EnCase run on Windows. A lot of them actually prefer Windows as well. It would be awesome if we could spend the time to make our software able to run on Mac and Linux but I don't believe we would ever recoup that investment. I have been amazed at how many government agencies I deal with have already started migrating to Windows Vista and they want to know if our forensic software will be compatible with it. That right there is an indication that the tide is not turning yet towards the other OS's (at least in this area).

In a happy world where everything is perfect you might see all software run on all OS's the world has to offer but this is the real world where the dollar is what matters and if you can't make money off of all the effort that would require then most businesses will not attempt it.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

No, the theme is choice. You have a right to let other people decide for you. That's not immoral, just stupid. I will contend that I'm smarter than the average person paying the MSFT tax because I made a choice that better enables me for my role as a developer, as well as let me use my devices, and not cost me a dime.

Tom

Re:No!

[strength_of_10_men]

It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan.

Wrong mode of transportation.

I hate use yet another car analogy but..

Try looking at the auto industry. Ford and GM owned the big pickup truck market and made boatloads of profit on each one. But now that that market is shrinking, they're a-hurtin.

Meanwhile, smaller, more nimble companies offering more reliable CARS are eating the big 3's (or is it 2 now) lunch. Didn't Toyota just pass GM in worldwide car sales?

Just because you're the biggest and make tons of profit on your core business doesn't mean it's guaranteed to stay that way. You'd be a fool to think that it will last forever.

Re:No!

[Just Some Guy]

In other words, as someone who likes money and lifestyle, who likes eating, who likes playing, who I choose to go where the money is.

My thanks to you (and every other programmer who uses greedy algorithms to optimize their career paths). By steering toward the money, you've left an enormous vacuum - ironically creating a huge, well-financed market demand for the rest of us to fill.

Seriously, thank you for making support for the "other" OS so darn profitable.

Re:No!

[e2d2]

Well excuse me Mr. light skinned. Notice how I put the question mark at the end, ie - I didn't know your age. How the am I supposed to know all that information you posted above from your initial one-liner statement? What am I the great shish-ka-bob? I seriously don't remember MS being seen as evil in the early days. Maybe I hung out with the wrong crowd, those ne'er do wells over in PC-ville.

Also, can we please lay off the "poor apple" bullshit? It wasn't Microsoft that killed the mac the first time around, pummeling apples sales. No, it was because they were way the fuck overpriced and they didn't have any value in the market. PCs could do it cheaper, point blank.

Oh, and I like the "denying that, you support it". A Nice black and white statement. Complete bullshit. But nice.

Re:No!

[e2d2]

Supporting Microsoft is supporting illegal, anticompetitive behavior, period, the end.

Yup! And doing heroin support terrorism..

Re:No!

[drinkypoo]

Yup! And doing heroin support terrorism..

Not all of it. There's locally produced heroin, we produce damned near all the kinds of recreational drugs in the USA.

Actually, you can support terrorism just by buying imported marijuana depending on where it comes from.

And you are almost certainly supporting gang violence by purchasing imported drugs.

This is of course a result of drugs being illegal, and increasing amounts of money being spent putting people in prison for a victimless crime. Only organized crime can afford and has the manpower to carry off a significantly-sized drug opration. Legalize the shit and the majority of problems will go away overnight. You are then left with the problem of dying junkies, but that's less of a problem than prisons packed too full of drug offenders to have room for violent criminals.

Re:No!

[Overly Critical Guy]

As for Xerox, well APPLE stole from them, not MS. So at least get your stories straight..

No, they didn't. Apple paid for the tour and hired a bunch of the Xerox guys who ended up working on the Mac. Apple themselves invented most of the desktop metaphors we take for granted, such as pulldown menus (including the standard "File Edit View Window Help" layout), overlapping windows, icons, the trash can, and cut-and-paste (even the phrase "cut-and-paste").

The "Apple stole from Xerox" myth is FUD spread by folks who can't stand that people harp on Microsoft for its thievery.

Re:No!

[e2d2]

Sorry, I meant it tongue in cheek. The parent made a similiar comparison and I thought I'd post a funny.

I'm for legalizing drugs 100%. It's more of a social disease than a criminal thing and I'd rather our prisons be filled with actual criminals, not ones that committed victimless crimes.

Re:No!

[Lars T.]

A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN" often portrayed here on slashdot and make an excellent living at it. Well, for many this was the starting point.

Re:No!

[TrancePhreak]

SDL tries to be DX ported to other OS's. It is a much better choice than Allegro, and has been used commercially. It even came about from Loki, a commercial group releasing games for Linux. It just falls short when you reach debugging or advanced features. DirectX has been ported to the DreamCast, and is a big part of the XBox and PocketPC.

Wrote quite a few 2d top down games and other weird demos with it.

This is actually part of my point. Allegro was originally the way things were done, but they never moved out of the stone age. I've tried to use it myself, but it's just too barbaric. I remember back in 98 trying to load graphics with it and you had to do some really bizarre things. Later when I learned DirectDraw, it was a much simpler process. You create a buffer, load the graphic onto it, and it's ready for display.

Re:No!

[The Bungi]

No, the theme is choice.

As long as it's not Windows. Yes, I get it.

Re:No!

[Allador]

It is going to take us several months to fix this. Microsoft is aware of the issue (CSS differences) and has no plan ot address it. How is that even possible? Does the software follow the guidelines in the logo program? If it was, unless your business is in hardware drivers or anti-virus, the whole XP to Vista should have just been a big yawn-fest.

And how can CSS changes break software? At most, it should just make it more ugly, but how can a CSS change break functionality?

Microsoft completely divorced backwards compatibility in Visual Basic leaving many developers stranded unless they could swing a .net job. Yes, and it was the right thing to do. VB6 wasnt an OO language, it was a hodge-podge of 4GL, OO, and procedural. It was a career and learning death-trap.

And besides, its not like VB6 doesnt work anymore. It's not like MS is stopping VB6 programs from running or being developed. They just released something orders of magnitude better.

Should they have not ever made something better just because some people were comfortable with the old tried & true?

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

Well when Windows offers anything useful for me as a developer I may consider it. I mean by your logic I'm also a MS-DOS bigot because I don't choose to run it. Wait, do you run MS-DOS? Are you a DOS bigot?

I mean give me a fucking break here, I can play games in Linux. Get over it, there are games for Linux. I can play my media, I can use my PVR card. Most importantly though when I sit down to work, I have all the tools I need, that are standard and cross-platform. What would Windows give me that a good Linux distro can't?

If I want to play a game that isn't in Linux I'll find the console version and play that. Or simply do without. My spending habits don't revolve around my gaming habits. I buy the computer I need for work, if I can get it to do other things all the better.

Tom

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

If I'm not mistaken Allegro treats images as BITMAP objects [much like linearly addressable screens]. There are LoadBMP functions which take a filename (or a packed archive as Allegro supports it's own archive format) which would load a bitmap and store it in the BITMAP object. Then a blit later it's on the screen.

The entire analog of "hello world" with a bitmap in Allegro was like 5 or 6 lines of code. Init allegro, init the screen, load bitmap, blit, wait for key, exit.

I'll agree that Allegro sucked at 3D work, but you didn't have to use it's GFX capabilities. You could easily use GLUT/GL and then use Allegro for the rest [e.g. timers, keyboard, mice, joystick, etc].

Tom

Re:No!

[Maxo-Texas]

It's a well known problem guy. Drop down lists on web pages stop working.
Trivial search on google.

Solution is to make unscheduled software changes to a multi-billion dollar web package- required testing means this would take at least a month even if it was red-lined tomorrow.

Re:No!

[The Bungi]

Everything you said is true. Linux is a perfectly capable platform. I'm glad people have choices now where before there weren't many. OS X and Linux are good counterweights to the Windows domination of the desktop.

This whole thing started because you essentially claimed anyone who runs Windows is an idiot. I took offense at that. I'm knowledgeable enough to use Linux or OS X if I wanted to (hell, I can still install Debian), but I don't. Primarily, I run Windows. It does everything I need it to do. I like it. I enjoy using it as much as you probably enjoy using Linux.

That's my choice. You can slam it all you want, but it doesn't really matter. I've wised up to that "any color you want as long as it's black" and "join us or die" attitudes I see with people like you. I don't have a problem with people who use other OSes. It's not a religious issue to me.

Re:No!

[tomstdenis]

I have little problem with people who genuinely need to run Windows. My problem is they're a minority of Windows users. And because of this, we [those who decide to live in a world of open standards] have to make due interfacing with the Wintards who use shit like .doc, .ppt, MSIE's version of HTML/CSS, MSVC's version of C and C++, etc, etc, etc.

I guess I'm saying I'd have a lot less problems if MSFT actually followed a standard, just once, for a change, instead of assuming they know better.

A comment I got from my boss [who is obviously older than I am] about when DOS started becoming popular. "What? No network stack?" At the time he was using one of the UNIX distros which had a full multi-user environment, with a proper kernel, full network stack, etc. He couldn't get why DOS [or Win95 for that matter] would be so popular since it was technically inferior to existing OSes.

MSFT went their route, cut out of a lot from the OS to make it "simpler" and remove choices. As a result, MSFT customers do as they're told. Don't like this incompatible C, network, or threading API? TOO FUCKING BAD! Don't like that your office tools are using proprietary formats for which you have to pay money to access, and MSFT dictates what you can do with them? TOO FUCKING BAD!, etc, etc, etc.

People aren't wholly this stupid though. I mean if you showed the average person from 1908 a win XP box, they'd probably have little clue about how to use it. Maybe not much has changed but I'd like to think society is quite capable of having a little learning time from time to time. Not like installing Ubuntu is really that hard [put CD in, click OK, wait 15 mins, done].

Point is, people making due with a more expensive, and lesser capable system just because it's easier doesn't say much about society. And having to put up with their shit is fucking annoying too.

Tom

Only 30%?

[EchoD]

Revenue is only 30% higher after releasing a new product, and this is higher than expected? I'm no expert, but for a new "revolutionary" product that the whole Windows world is expected to adopt... not so good.

Re:Only 30%?

[thanatos_x]

With respect to whatever background you might have... could it be possible Microsoft has people who are experts who say this is to be expected?

Or at least marketing people to spin it that way... (critical mass is important in software)

I mean, they had how many people spend how many weeks creating the start menu. I think it was something like 10-20 for 15 weeks or something, full time. I think they could afford a few analysts...

Re:Only 30%?

[maxume]

It's a matter of perspective; that 30% revenue growth is equivalent to all of Google's revenue for the quarter. It's hard to push an elephant.

Re:Only 30%?

[Rolgar]

What's the OEM price difference between Vista and XP. If Vista OEM is 50% or more expensive that XP when buying a new computer, then, sure they're getting more money, but they aren't moving any more copies than they were before. This was the whole point of the new OS, to milk more money from the same number of customers.

Re:Only 30%?

[EchoD]

All of this is true, which is why I'm no expert -- as I said. It just seems like a 30% increase after releasing a new, higher priced, product compared to a product that is six years old and already saturating the market isn't too impressive. Yes, 30% for Microsoft is a lot of money, but after the hype they applied to Vista... I'm still not impressed.

Re:Only 30%?

[Grashnak]

Revenue is only 30% higher after releasing a new product, and this is higher than expected? I'm no expert, but for a new "revolutionary" product that the whole Windows world is expected to adopt... not so good. Dude, 30% of 4.1 BILLION dollars is more than a BILLION dollars. Vista has only been out for what, 4 months? Exactly what amount of money would constitute "good" in your world?

Re:Only 30%?

[maxume]

_$14.1_ billion. The revenue growth was more like $4.5 billion:

http://biz.yahoo.com/seekingalpha/070427/33696_id. html?.v=1

Income was up ~$2 billion.

Re:Only 30%?

[westlake]

Yes, 30% for Microsoft is a lot of money, but after the hype they applied to Vista... I'm still not impressed.

I'll take the odds that it looks damn impressive to Red Hat, Linspire and Sun. Strength on the client side. Strength on the server side. Strength in Office.

How many thirty year old companies in a mature market - a market in which they hold a ninety percent share - see thirty percent growth in revenues in one quarter?

Re:Only 30%?

[denobug]

Vista OEM is 50% or more expensive that XP
Vista OEM price is not that much higher than Windows XP right now (in fact they are both $149 for business version). If you know some reseller you can verify my claim on this.

When Windows XP rolled out, The OEM price for WinXP Professional is less than Windows 2000. Based on previous experience its only a matter of time before MS eventually position Vista Business version with better pricing than Windows XP to move user into the new OS. But they will need to solve the software incompatibility and driver issues first.

Re:Only 30%?

[petehead]

Revenue is only 30% higher after releasing a new product, and this is higher than expected? I'm no expert, but for a new "revolutionary" product that the whole Windows world is expected to adopt... not so good.

I'm surprised that the revenue is 30% greater overall because much of the Vista revenue surely cannibalizes XP revenue.

Re:Only 30%?

[Allador]

I'm not an OEM, but it appears that for the end-user Vista Business is exactly the same price as XP Pro. At least configuring identical dell latitudes and optiplex's, one with Vista Business the other with XP Pro, they come out exactly the same price.

And a quick look at NewEgg puts them at exactly the same price for OEM/System Builder versions:

Vista Business
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116207

XP Pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116059

Sketchy figures...

[Theaetetus]

Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system.

So are they counting upgrade coupons as full sales? What if they're never used?
Also, not once do they mention the number of units sold to consumers. Are they including units shipped to stores in their figures, like book publishers do? "We sold 10 million units! 9 million were returned unsold by the stores, however..."

Re:Sketchy figures...

[Simon]

I agree. It sounds very fishy. It looks like they are counting the combination of XP+coupon as being a Vista sale. I wonder if they also counted it as being XP revenue at the same time? I have a hard time imagining that even 50% of the XP+coupon systems sold before January 30 have been upgraded. Most people are capable or interested in upgrading an OS, and a big chunk of those who are, probably (hopefully!) have common sense to stay with XP.

--
Simon

Re:Sketchy figures...

[bigman2003]

Thank god there are financial analysts here on Slashdot to point out Microsoft's accounting shenanigans.

Microsoft had the entire financial industry bamboozled, but nothing gets past the wiz-kids here!

Re:Sketchy figures...

[topham]

THe difference is; in general publishers will accept books back. Simply because they have been shipped to book stores doesn't mean the publisher will actually profit from them.

If Microsoft ships 5 million copies they won't accept them back in bulk.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[will_die]

In your example you are counting sales by units, in this article and what Microsoft is saying is ignoring units and giveing the monies they received, so counting upgrade coupons as full sales is irrelavent. In hte US revenue is the money taken in before costs have been subtracted, if they receive back excess inventory and because of that they had a debt to the store they would of needed to apply that against the gross revenue. Which is why for investors revenue is less important then the profit.
The $1.2 billion has to be enough to cover all costs required to cover the valid coupons that are out there, in the even that they don't receive the coupons and they get to count the what is left of that $1.2 billion in the third quarter revenue.
No missleading just the use of business jargon.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[draos]

That's not how it works. They offered upgrade coupons to PC buyers during the holiday season since the product wasn't out the door yet...essentially those users "bought" Vista in the form of a coupon in the third quarter. So now when they ship a copy of Vista to a coupon holder it is counted as sale made in the third quarter...this is a standard accounting practice that is accepted throughout the business world. They are looking at it, financially, as though they released Vista during the Christmas season rather than when they did because they ran a promotion that was equivalent from a marketing perspective. Because they are a public company they are required by law to look at it this way, only small businesses can use cost based accounting that records the sale as occurring when the money/product changes hands.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[syousef]

The next version of Windows will be called MS ENRON

Re:Sketchy figures...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Microsoft had the entire financial industry bamboozled, but nothing gets past the wiz-kids here!

To be fair, so did ENRON, WorldCom, LTCM, etc.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[Embolism]

I also wonder how many have purchased a new PC (like me, new laptop), were forced to take Vista, then subsequently had to wipe it out to re-install XP Pro (compatibility issues forced me to install XP Pro).

Re:Sketchy figures...

[westlake]

So are they counting upgrade coupons as full sales? What if they're never used?

Those free upgrade coupons went to home users buying "Vista Rated" PCs over the Christmas holidays. The geek who thinks those coupons aren't being redeemed is living in a dream world.

Drop the deferred income from the picture and it's still an impressive quarter--client revenue was up 30 percent over last year, at $4.1 billion. Vista, Office 2007 drive record profits for Microsoft

Re:Sketchy figures...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

To be fair, since when did /. ever catch those companies either?

WorldCom was pretty much found out long before the financial "geniuses" caught on, mostly because the company was in a business /. crowd is very familiar with. The rest were outside of the ./ populace's expertise area (except for the Enron ISP/"Enron OS" thing which was again pretty much exposed here long before the whole house of cards came down). Needless to say, Microsoft's activities fall rather squarely within the ./ reader's expertise.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[ad0gg]

If they are never used, its more profit for microsoft since the coupon gets you a free copy of vista. Its like a rebate but you get vista instead of money.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[firedancer414]

Deferring revenue is a pretty common accounting practice ... it's used to make your revenue streams more static ...

For example, if you were, say HR & Block and you make money for only 3 months out of the year, instead of marking all your revenue for that quarter and posting a loss the other 3 quarters, you would defer some of that revenue and "use" it some of the other three quarters if you have salaried employees ... This isn't sketchy at all.

Also, they aren't counting the upgrade coupons as full sales next year ... this example is kind of like Red Sox tickets. Let's say the Red Sox sell out all their regular season games on one day at the beginning of the season. They won't say that they made $200 million in revenue on one day, and then had losses the rest of the season. They'll defer that revenue over all the games, even though most people paid for their tickets on the first day ... Whether or not people actually show up for the game or not (or choose to install Vista or not), they paid for it in one way other another, and that's what counts for your earnings.

Seriously, this is very normal.

Re:Sketchy figures...

[Keeper]

This is actually required accounting practice by the SEC. You get the coupon money up front as a lump sum, but the coupons are renewed over a certain period of time; you're not allowed to recognize that revenue all at once.

Well, duh.

[KlausBreuer]

Obviously they sold a lot of Vista.
After all, every new PC comes with Vista, if you want it or not (with very few exceptions).
Thus, sales are up. Since Vista is not all that cheap, profits are up.

You're surprised?

Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[morgan_greywolf]

This just reeks of stock manipulation. Hold back your sales figures for an extra quarter, cash in those stock options, and then suddenly announce, 'oh yeah, we had these coupons, so we had to hold back our sales figures.' Then watch your stock price shoot through the roof.

But, I just looked at their insider trading roster and actually Bill Gates sold off a suspiciously large number of shared in Feb. I wonder why?

Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[da_foz]

He needed the extra cash so that he could afford to upgrade all of his personal computers to Vista...

Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[maxume]

The stock was at a five year high...

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=5y&l=on&z=m &q=l&c=

Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[MeBot]

Either that or it's called the revenue recognition principle in accounting. You know the one under GAAP where you have to record revenue when it is realized, not when cash is received? No, that can't be it. Must be the conspiracy.

Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[DohnJoe]

if you look at the numbers of 2006 and 2005 you'll see that he sells a lot of his MS stock all the time, so nothing suspicious about him doing it in februari as well...

Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[endeavour31]

Are you aure you understand what stock manipulation really is? Is it really worth tanking the stock for a quarter so you can have one 3 month run up which is clearly obvious to everyone in the market and regulators to boot. This only makes sense when the company is circling the drain and you are cashing out before the whole thing sinks. There are no indicators that MS is in that position. Whoops - sorry - it Microsoft and therefore everything they do is not only tainted but designed to serve Satan and ruin society and the common man.

Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation?

[Allador]

Are you kidding me?

Did you even read more than one page down the link that you just linked?

Count up all the shares sold by Bill Gates in Feb 2007 and then count up all the shares sold by Bill Gates in Nov 2006.

He sold more MS shares in November than in February.

In fact, if you go back in time you'll notice this surprising pattern, every quarter these kinds of folks that own huge sums in businesses sell off a percentage, and diversify.

It's so common and not-unusual/not-suspicous that it just about puts me to sleep.

Stagnant Stock

[Joebert]

Finally.
Maybe the people who have been holding Microsoft stock for a year longer than anticipated now will get a chance to dump it at some sort of profit.

Ahhh-Chooo!!!!!!

[Taimat]

"Ahhh-Chooo!!!!!! ....excuse me, I'm allergic to bullshit."
-Will Smith, i-Robot

This is getting old

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know that Vista sales will increase and XP sales will fall. We all know that however much Windows idiots say "I'm sticking with XP," it's really not their decision. They'll get Vista with their next computer, and they'll like it, because that's the only choice they'll have. And if not the next computer, certainly the one after that because the hardware won't be supported in XP.

So can we please stop getting these articles about Vista sales? It doesn't really matter. In 5 years Vista will be just as entrenched as XP and it's not interesting how fast it gets there. Especially when all the articles contradict each other. Every other day Vista sales switch from very bad to very good.

Re:This is getting old

[Anivair]

I wonder if you said the same thing about Windows ME.

Re:This is getting old

[Just Some Guy]

In 5 years Vista will be just as entrenched as XP and it's not interesting how fast it gets there.

Very true. I remember how everyone laughed at Windows ME, calling it a broken, incompatible system that ran like a dog. However, it replaced the popular Win98 release and went on to become their biggest seller.

The fact that MS shipped something doesn't automatically mean that everyone will buy it. They probably will, but that's not exactly a given.

Re:This is getting old

[Zephyr14z]

While it's definitely true that many windows users will eventually find themselves with Vista, many others will switch platforms. In fact, every windows user I know, even the less tech-savvy ones, plan to switch to a Mac or Ubuntu when XP hits EOL. I honestly think that Vista will cause a fall in MS's marketshare, even if it takes a few years for that to happen.

Re:This is getting old

[Coryoth]

To be fair, when it came to Windows ME there was an alternative available in the form of Win2k. Once MS stops licensing WinXP your options will be Vista Home, Vista Professional, or Vista Ultimate (or whatever the hell they call the different "versions"). Choosing to go with Mac or Linux instead of Vista is a much bigger leap than choosing to go with Win2k instead on Win ME.

Expectations

[webrunner]

Didn't they lower their expectations in January? And now they're saying it's higher than expectations? How does that work?

Re:Expectations

[tuffy]

Increasing success by lowering expectations. Since whatever they expected is some arbitrary value, all they have to do is lower them enough and the actual sales will have to be much higher.

Re:Expectations

[Billosaur]

Wall Street Analysts lowered their expectations... undoubtedly from reading Slashdot. Microsoft knew this and therefore came up with the whole profit deferment scheme so they'd come out beating market expectations and their stock price would get a significant bump. Let's wait and see what their next earnings report looks like... I suspect it won't be nearly as nice.

Re:Expectations

[destructchaos]

haven't you ever read 1984?

Re:Expectations

[Keeper]

No, they didn't change their expectations (ie: they didn't lower their revenue guidance); they said that analysts were setting their expectations to high.

Maybe Vista does make sense

[eebra82]

Maybe this does make sense after all. Here's why:

Windows XP is a very mature operating system. People rarely experience lockups (I haven't had one for months), it looks OK, it's speedy with today's hardware and it is far more secure than it was a few years ago.

The point is that XP is good to those who currently use it. Those who want 'more' just get Vista. Maybe XP and Vista is going to co-exist longer than any of MS:es previous operating systems ever have before, simply because both products are good (or at least Vista will be in half a year or so). Previously, we had 2K and XP competing, and before that 9x/Me and 2K, where we had a clear winner in both operating systems. Now I can't say that Vista is a clear winner to XP, but rather a good 'alternative'.

Yes, Ubuntu and OSX are great alternatives, but it takes a lot to make a user switch an operating system entirely, so I am not taking this into account.

Re:Maybe Vista does make sense

[hexed_2050]

It is a clear winner. Sure people on Slashdot will be the first ones to tell you it's garbage, but if you actually sit down and really go through it and learn the new security measures in Vista, you will begin to love it as a system administrator.

Why do I say you'll love it as an administrator? Well let's just put aside for one second our gripes about Microsoft and the fact that they are a monopoly and just focus on comparing it to XP...

What is one of the most nagging, worst things that a system administrator will tell you he/she hates about XP? This is easy... It's the fact that it is almost impossible to log a person in as a 'normal user' in a corporate environment and not have them calling IT every two seconds to install a new piece of hardware or do something that a system administrator can only do. Therefore what ends up happening? Come on, we all know.. 99% of Windows users are logged in 24/7 as an administrator level account which allows people to pick up a ton of wanted gems such as malware, spyware, This all changes in Vista. After system admins sit down and really READ what is new and PROPERLY understand it, they will begin to love UAC because for once, Microsoft users will actually be able to be logged in as a simple user instead of an administrator all day long.

There are so many great things that Vista offers over XP, but UAC once you understand it is one of the best for the corporate environment once you understand it internally and how to harness it in a GPO domain environment.

Yes, I do wish that we could just deploy FC6 across our networks, but let's face it.. it's not happening anytime soon so I'll welcome Vista because it's light years ahead of XP in terms of assisting me do my job.

h

Re:Maybe Vista does make sense

[fitten]

Unfortunately, the goal of IT is to enable end users. In that respect, what is hard/easy/whatever for IT is not as important as enabling the end users to do their jobs. When options are considered, IT has a very important role in presenting facts, such as licensing costs, and estimates, such as the amount of additional startup and continuing support costs for using some product, which should be considered when making any decision. However, the ease of use for IT is secondary when comparing against how the use of some product will benefit the end users, and thus the company as a whole. (I work in IT.)

Re:Maybe Vista does make sense

[fitten]

Addition to the above that I forgot to add:

I'm not saying that your experience is invalid. Vista might be really good for the end users as well. Obviously, making it harder for malware to disrupt work activities or compromise data and the like benefits everyone, including IT. If Vista is, as you say, easy for IT to administer as well as being a good thing for end users across the spectrum of things that they do, then it is a win-win. I haven't used Vista yet, but if it is nice like you say, it'll be nice to see a product that is good across the board (for one of the rare times). :)

Re:Maybe Vista does make sense

[hey!]

I've had fairly frequent application crashes on Vista -- four or five times a week I'd say, using various applications. However, the OS did not lock up. I've also had the audio system crash a few times, without locking up the OS. Fortunately the laptop I got has an actual hardware volume control, so I could turn down the speakers which were emitting snow-crashy noises, but the OS did not lock up.

Overall what this tells me is that the Vista is still shaky in some areas, but more effort has gone into isolating processes and functions from each other. Perhaps the resemblance to Mac OSX is more than skin-deep; maybe they've taken more of a microkernel approach rather than overlaying a small kernel with a massive blob of tightly coupled software. In any case it's worth mentioning that early version of OSX were somewhat resource hungry.

Clearly, Vista was an ambitious project that overran its schedule, and was rushed out the door with features stripped out and in a somewhat immature state. However, in the long run I think it will be pretty good by MS Windows standards. It may never run as resource efficiently as Linux would on the same hardware, but by improvements in hardware and in the operating system itself the resource differential will eventually become negligible.

Re:Maybe Vista does make sense

[hexed_2050]

Well it's not "easy to administrate" at first and I think this is where a lot of people are getting upset. Vista like any new OS requires retraining, and unless people sit down and read how they can harness the new features rather than just hate them, then it's going to be a tough road to go down.

The good thing about Vista is that it is a step in the correct direction. I hate MS as much as anyone else, don't get me wrong. But let's face it.. it's time for people to get weened off logging in as the Administrator 24/7 just like the *nix crowd did way back when.

Hmm, this is odd...

[mattgreen]

I've read so many predictions of Microsoft's demise here because of (admittedly well-founded) flaws in Vista. Surely this article is wrong! Maybe RoughlyDrafted can set the record straight for me...

Re:Hmm, this is odd...

[Guuge]

Anyone who seriously expected Microsoft to be hurt by Vista has way too much faith in the market.

Someone had better tell Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

"Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected "

Then someone had better tell Ballmer. He's been saying forecasts were over-optimistic:

"Ballmer's comments came during a conference call with financial analysts in which he repeatedly hammered home the theme that sales forecasts for Windows -- Vista in particular -- have been "overly optimistic."

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;7680622;fp;1 6;fpid;1

Obviously, Ballmer thinks people's "expectations" were "overly optimistic"; now we're being told they were overly pessimistic. There's a disconnect somewhere.

If you charge an arm and a leg, yes

[unity100]

whats the prices on these things ? $299 to $550 or something ?

and they were making Dell and other producers PUSH these with new computers. it wasnt like customers had any choice. but then again, dell did not turn on their customers and switched back to providing xp again.

so how this is a pointer to anything ?

Re:If you charge an arm and a leg, yes

[Anotherfling]

$110 US for home premium (full version dvd) if you happen to be building a new system and qualify for the OEM system builder version (Newegg). Amazingly it installed in about 15 minutes (thanks RAID 0), and works fine... I'm still in shock. So far I like it, although I could do without the constant "are you sure you want to.." popups, and I doubt it would have worked so well without the new, compatible, hardware. Now I just wish I didn't have to hear about how good/bad/strong selling/weak selling it was every few days on /. ...

Re:If you charge an arm and a leg, yes

[Allador]

How about instead of just making up arbitrary numbers that support your hypothesis, lets take 30 seconds and go to NewEgg.com and see for sure.

Windows Vista 32-bit Ultimate - $189.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116213

Windows Vista 32-bit Business - $139.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116207

Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium - $111.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116202

Windows Vista 32-bit Home Basic - $94.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16832116195

The 64-bit versions are a few dollars more expensive, and if you buy the 3-packs, the per-unit is a few dollars less expensive.

Figure that Dell gets a higher volume discount than this, so they pay even less.

Re:If you charge an arm and a leg, yes

[unity100]

Here in turkey, there are no $93 vistas around technology shops to buy.

I am not worried about vista selling.

[marcello_dl]

I am worried about people starting sending around stuff in vista-only formats, which will bring back the days of the "can't read your document" mails.

As long as I can run a linux distro, if the rest of the universe prefers hogging down their hardware with vista, it's not my business.

Re:I am not worried about vista selling.

[NSIM]

Can you name a VISTA only format? Perhaps you mean Office 2007. Yes there will be DRM media that needs VISTA for playback, but that's a rather different issue.

Re:I am not worried about vista selling.

[KillerBob]

The thing of that is that you can still *read* the documents. I had to install the PowerPoint Viewer 2007 on my laptop yesterday, because I received a PPT 2007 document from work that I needed for today. I can't create or edit documents with the viewer, but the MS Website has freely downloadable viewers for all of their proprietary Office 2007 versions of documents, and all of the viewers are backwards compatible with older versions of the software.

It's a pain in the ass (PPT Viewer was a 25.7MB download), but it's a bit misleading to say that people don't have a way to view documents created with Office 2k7 without buying the software.

Re:I am not worried about vista selling.

[GreenEnvy22]

As others said, Vista doesn't store files in it's own formats, it's applications do. The big one is Office2007 obviously. MS recently released a free update for office2003 to allow it to work with office2007 files.

Re:I am not worried about vista selling.

[marcello_dl]

Being able to read after 25megs download of a viewer (what about my powerpc linux laptop? obsolete, maybe but then what about a PS3?) is surely good but for my recent computing experience in free software environments is a big PITA.

Not quite...

[mattgreen]

Its more complicated than that. The MS FUD is always viewed with skepticism, but the anti-MS FUD is ALWAYS right. Full stop.

Does this include....

[Gta-Klue]

Ok, sales are up. But since every PC you buy has Vista pre-installed how can sales NOT be up? And does this take into account (like what happened with me), I bought my son a new PC w/Vista pre-installed. Nothing worked, wireless, sound, etc. So I wiped the drive and installed XP Pro.

So that counts as a Vista sale, but we are not running Vista. :/

Re:Does this include....

[BradleyUffner]

You still bought vista even if you wiped it. This is a financial report, they don't care if you are not using it, they still sold it to you.

Re:Does this include....

[Gta-Klue]

Not a lie and not a stretch. Video worked fine, so not EVERYTHING didn't work. But sound and wireless (even linksys approved Vista drivers) didn't work.

Believe me or not, why lie? Like I said, I still installed XP Pro so it's not like I said "OMG!!11 INSTALL LINUX FTW!!" so give me a break. :)

Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[Marcion]

Counting Coupons according to when they are redeemed is a way to spread out the data. It's a big game, no one outside of Microsoft really knows the real numbers, otherwise the shareholders would demand serious restructuring (kill Xbox, Zune, become MS Office company, return cash pile to shareholders, produce more Mac software etc).

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[jaweekes]

Are they also including the numbers for Software Assurance? That would increase the figures nicely!

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[FrozenFOXX]

I'm not so sure any serious shareholders would want them to kill the XBox. The others I'd fully agree with but the XBox despite long term losses is helping out in other ways, primarily mind share. It's a basic FACT among console gamers that if you're serious about your gaming experience you owe it to yourself to get an XBox or an XBox 360. With the sheer number of them in circulation coupled with its critical success MS in one generation has gone from nobody to biggest player on the block.

That kind of reputation I think is worth keeping, even if it costs them money in the process. Heck, they could probably go full-on into it and actually make money but that's just personal opinion so don't take it as fact. Losing Zune and putting more work into Mac and Office products WOULD make them more money, though.

I understand what you're saying, this is just my opinion on it in terms of seriousness.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[Marcion]

Sure, I would not hang up the Xbox, but spin it out, look how well IBM have done, Printers became Lexmark, Laptops became Lenovo and so on. Applications is what Microsoft were good at and they need to get back to it and get on with them, making them faster, simpler and more collaborative, and sell them to anyone who will buy them including Mac, Linux, Symbian, embedded, mobile phones etc, if they don't then in 5-10 years they will find Adobe and Google will have redefined how to be productive and will have pulled the rug out under them.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[fourchannel]

It's a basic FACT among console gamers that if you're serious about your gaming experience you owe it to yourself to get an XBox or an XBox 360. Why? I like my PS2, and I consider myself to be a serious console gamer (until I got to college). And how is this a fact? Did I miss the memo on joining the console gamer's union or something? Are there statistics that allure to this somehow? I respect your opinion and enthusiasm for the Xbox, but I believe that you have assumed too much -- just because you can't see how the PS2 could be serious, you have decided that no one could see this as well. This is a common logical mistake.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[FrozenFOXX]

PS2 was serious and is now past its prime. How many new AAA titles have been out for it in the past year? While I'm not going to call it dead as that's premature it's also fact that it's on its way out. We're talking about the current generation which is the XBox 360, the PS3, and the Wii.

I mean heck if we're going to drudge up old console history then you aren't a "serious" gamer unless you've got a NES with at least 80 carts. Please try to keep in mind the context of the comment which is the present day with present systems in a current generation. It's not that the PS2 isn't viable but that it's now "old news" and it's a safe assumption if Slashdot is any indication that to be "serious" about a hobby you should be up and current with "new news."

I'll agree with one of the other comments about separating out the XBox from MS and focusing more on software. Doesn't sound like a bad idea at all, really.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[arse maker]

Yes, if that means shareholders are short sighted idiots. With software the target is always moving, you have open office gaining traction and Linux gaining traction. Microsoft has something big... it's a 60 billion+ war chest... it's time to find more things to do. While Microsoft aren't the nicest company around (well what big companies are, anyone like their insurance company?) they are good at doing something well as long as they want to. It's in their interest to diversify and try to secure their future. Hell that's what IBM did, the largest revenue company in the world (last time I checked anyhow). They started their consultant business and that is now their most profitable department. Standing still is the death rattle of a company. Once you don't expand you get taken over... as a developer I know its 100x times easier developing an application to compete against an existing application than it is developing it from scratch (another argument against over ambitious patients, they should be there to help, not to hinder simple ideas being used, they need to take into account international conditions, it's not just in the west we are competiting).

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[yahooadam]

hes probably complaining because you said "xbox or xbox360" - the xbox is marginally newer then the PS2, but Ive always felt the PS2 had much better unique titles (titles not on the PC)

So really, the context of your post does not say "current generation" at all because your talking about old hardware (hardware in the leagues of the PS2)

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[encoderer]

So by "Kill xbox" you meant "spin it out" ?

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but come on....

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[Chosen Reject]

Actually, in all my experiences, I have found that if you want to appear to be a hardcore gamer, you need to have an Xbox. If you actually are a hardcore gamer, you'll have more than one console (which may or may not include the Xbox) and you'll probably be also playing on the PC. Nearly every person I've met (anecdotal I know) that only has an Xbox are the type of people who just want to look like their on the inside. When I talk to them about games (past, present and future) they don't know what I'm talking about. But get them started on Halo or Gears of War and they can drone on forever about how much they love games. Technically you only need two to say "games" I suppose.

This would be equivalent to someone saying they love board games but they've never played anything more than Monopoly and Candy Land, or someone saying they love vegetables, but they've never even heard of an eggplant. Note that I'm not saying they don't like anything other than Monopoly or Candy Land, but they've never played anything more. I'm not saying you have to like eggplant in order to say you're hardcore into veggies, but you should have heard about it.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[FrozenFOXX]

I'll concede to that, I should've clarified with "owe it to yourself to get an XBox" as I forgot that there are indeed some people that do not own multiple consoles. For that I apologize and say that you should probably have an XBox in addition to any other platforms you may already have.

There, everybody happy now? No implications, no assumed knowledge or lack thereof on anyone's part.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[SgtChaireBourne]

No. He was right. Kill it.

It's not profitable and appears to serve only as a pilot for DRM'd hardware. Until we see some auditable numbers, we can guess that the smoke and mirrors are to distract from the case that MS VIsta's not going anywhere.

It would make a lot of sense to spin off MS Office as a separate company. Detached from the main political movement, they'd then be free to do what is profitable rather than what is political. Who knows, but I expect we would see MS Office for Ubuntu from that as well as OpenDocument support.

Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

[zippthorne]

So... what MS shareholders want most is for MS to go out of business?

just proves one thing

[FudRucker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_a_sucker_born _every_minute

This seems to sound familiar..

[mulvane]

Didn't ENRON play a similar game with their reported earnings?

FUD!

[McGurk]

What is WITH all the M$ FUD on /.??? Can't you just report facts in an unbiased fashion? What's with all this "Vista will fail" shit? All this "Vista don't work" shit? All this "Vista... " wait, hold on. Vista sales exceeding expectations? Lemme check my URL, hang on... Nope, this is /. Oh, wait, it must be one of those fishing sites exploiting vulnerabilities in IE7 in order to get my OSTG login information! DAMN YOU HACKERS!!

Re:FUD!

[geekoid]

Because:
a) Vista seems to not be as well received.
b) Numbers like these dn't have much meaning by themselves.
c) They have deffered expenses to forth qtr.

There are several reasons for a company to do that, but considering MSs available cash and size, the ONLY reason for them to do that is to try and keep investors around another quarter and to have more time to push Vista in hopes of making up the difference.

This explains some of MSs moves in the last month or so. Based on some market advisors* is Vista doesn't see a shrp increase very soon, you will begin to see some stock selling towards the end of Q3 by some of the big boys. No, this doesn't mean MS will be in dire straights as a company, just there stocl will lower. If Vista keeps up it's mediocrity IT may go away, or more likely change in price.

The Expectations Game

[DannyO152]

The performance is measured against Microsoft's public predictions. The stock market punishes severely any company that underperforms the predictions, thus, there is a real incentive to understate expectations, if one can still show growth.

So, is Vista a failure if it causes more XP licenses to sell? Money is money, one may argue. I expect that Microsoft really thinks about targets for the cash cow products not in terms of revenue goals, but in terms of installed base goals. If we see Vista discount pricing, it may be to accelerate progress towards those goals. After all, there will come a day when a customer will not have the choice to buy a new copy of XP and the OEM XP licenses die with the OEM machine.

Misleading statistics?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If Vista is selling so well, then why don't I know a single person or organisation who's using it?

This seems like one of those situations where the "official" statistics are wildly at odds with the observations of the guy in the street (or the server room). Of course my experience might not be typical, but looking at the comments in on-line forums full of people with an interest in IT, I'm guessing it is.

Re:Misleading statistics?

[0racle]

You don't know enough people.

Re:Misleading statistics?

[heinousjay]

Maybe because your anecdotal evidence is worth the bits that encode it.

Re:Misleading statistics?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Did you even read the last sentence in my previous post?

The more time I spend on Slashdot, the more I think a lot of people who talk about anecdotal evidence have no idea when it is and isn't relevant, and just wheel out the cliches to avoid answering the real questions.

M$ is lying

[surfduke]

Folks.... it's a complete and utter smoke and mirror trick so investors won't begin bailing out. I sell Technology products to Schools and Universities.... To date, not one of our 4000 clients have ordered Vista. For those who have ordered new computers, 100% of them have said they will be erasing and putting XP on the new machine. Vista is as complete disaster for M$. It's their Newton.

Re:M$ is lying

[Gonarat]

For those who have ordered new computers, 100% of them have said they will be erasing and putting XP on the new machine.

The only thing about that is that Microsoft still gets to count each of those PCs as a Vista Sale and those dollars will go into their till. If they buy a copy of XP to put on those machines, then Microsoft wins again. Even if Vista is wiped and Ubuntu is put on the machine, the Vista sale still goes into the books.

The only way to avoid paying the "Vista tax" is to buy or build a PC without an operating system or with XP installed.

Re:M$ is lying

[laffer1]

You contradict yourself. If they ordered a new PC with Vista, then they did order Vista. Just because they choose not to use it does not mean it doesn't count as a sale.

I can also explain the reasoning behind not upgrading. Many software applications do not run properly on Vista. Some require software upgrades. Schools have to roll out a lot of money to get new versions of software if they even exist. I am a sys admin for a computer science department. (labs + servers) We are 50/50 Mac/PC. We have no plans to upgrade to Vista, but plan on running XP for some time. The current plan this summer is to buy iMacs to replace our Dell optiplex systems and use boot camp. Actually, we are considering trying to triple boot Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Since they are Macs, they will not count in Microsoft's numbers.

I don't think Vista will be a disaster long term. Initially, after each Windows release I saw people complain and say this one is the one that will get another OS to take off, etc. When I upgraded to Windows 95, older geeks said I was stupid and it was not worth the upgrade. Likewise, Windows 98 was just a "rehash" of windows 95, Windows 2000 was just NT4 with graphical improvements (which is not true), and Windows XP wasn't any better than 2000. I've been discouraging users from upgrading to Vista for one reason. There aren't any drivers for sound cards or video cards worth a damn. My audigy actually drops out audio randomly and I have to reboot. This really sucks while watching a DVD or playing WoW. Industry doesn't want to pay for the interface changes Microsoft has made in Vista. Eventually, they'll have to. Until then, I can watch movies in MidnightBSD and try to use my wife's Mac to play games. (funny isn't it)

Re:M$ is lying

[imsirovic5]

I happen to work on Wall Street, and the ignorance of how some people perceive the financial markets is just amazing. I am sure "surfduke" is way smarter than the analysts than the following Analysts that follow MSFT:

A. G. EDWARDS & SONS, INC. KEVIN BUTTIGIEG
ARGUS RESEARCH CORP. ROBERT BECKER
ATLANTIC EQUITIES CHRISTOPHER HICKEY
BANC OF AMERICA SECURITIES LLC. KIRK S. MATERNE
BEAR, STEARNS & CO. JOHN DIFUCCI
CANACCORD ADAMS PETER MISEK
CIBC WORLD MARKETS CORP. BRAD REBACK
CITIGROUP BRENT THILL
COWEN AND COMPANY WALTER PRITCHARD
CREDIT SUISSE - NORTH AMERICA JASON MAYNARD
CROWELL, WEEDON & CO. JAMES D. RAGAN
D. A. DAVIDSON & CO. ALAN L. DAVIS
DAVENPORT & CO. OF VIRGINIA, INC. F. DRAKE JOHNSTONE
E.K.RILEY INVESTMENTS, LLC ROBERT E. TOOMEY
FIRST ALBANY CORP. MARK MURPHY
FIRST GLOBAL STOCKBROKING LTD. SHASHIKIRAN RAO
FRIEDMAN, BILLINGS, RAMSEY & CO. DAVID M. HILAL
GLOBAL EQUITIES RESEARCH TRIP CHOWDHRY
GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. SARAH FRIAR
GRIFFIN SECURITIES, INC. CHRYSTYNA BEDRIJ
ICAP EQUITY RESEARCH RICHARD T. WILLIAMS
JPMORGAN ADAM HOLT
JYSKE BANK PER-ROBERT JACOBSEN
KINTISHEFF RESEARCH TSVETAN KINTISHEFF
LEHMAN BROTHERS ISRAEL HERNANDEZ
MCADAMS WRIGHT RAGEN SID PARAKH
MERRILL LYNCH KASH RANGAN
MORGAN STANLEY MARY MEEKER
NUTMEG SECURITIES JEAN WOPAT ORR
PACIFIC CREST SECURITIES BRENDAN J. BARNICLE
PACIFIC GROWTH EQUITIES YUN KIM
PIPER JAFFRAY MICHAEL J. OLSON
PRUDENTIAL EQUITY GROUP, LLC JOHN P. MCPEAKE
RAGEN MACKENZIE, A DIVSN OF WELLS FARGO TAUNYA R. SELL
RBC CAPITAL MARKETS (CANADA) STEPHEN WALKER
RBC CAPITAL MARKETS (US) ROBERT BREZA
ROCHDALE SECURITIES LLC DAVID ELLER
SANFORD C. BERNSTEIN & CO., LLC CHARLES J. DI BONA
SOLEIL-ONE-ON-ONE RESEARCH DAWN S. TALBOT
STANFORD GROUP COMPANY NEIL J. HERMAN
THOMAS WEISEL PARTNERS TIM E. KLASELL
UBS (US) HEATHER A. BELLINI
WILLIAM BLAIR & COMPANY, L.L.C. LAURA J. LEDERMAN

Not to mention countless buy side institutions with trillions dollars in combined assets such as hedge and mutual funds. At the moment of this writing the stock is up $1.24 or roughly 11 billion dollars in market cap. I guess they are not reading slashdot. I wonder why don't all the people on here that forecast demise of MSFT put their money where their mouth is and just short the stock, or even better buy some put options. Go ahead take a second mortgage and bet your life against the Company if you really believe MSFT is doomed. I used to be a frequent visitor to Slashdot since I always valued input of some really smart people on vide-variety of mostly scientific topics. But blatant, childish attacks on MSFT and herd mentality on some of the topics made me visit this website less and less. And its amazing some other companies, like AAPL for example seem to be darlings on this board. And its surprising to me that AAPL stands higher on moral and idealistic scale even though it is a fact that AAPL has been accused of many monopolistic practices, it is a fact that Steve Jobs is a liar and a thief (anyone that does thinks that a CEO of a major corporation has no idea what option backdating is needs a reality check.). It is sad to see such consistent high scores on comments that exhibit such level of herd mentality on this website. Anyway I will stop now, I am sure I provided enough material to get moded as a troll. Its an earning season and if I want to get out of the office by midnight I need to stop wasting my time here and go back to work...

Re:Microsoft genius

[Junks Jerzey]

Create a crap OS.

Oh come on. If it really were crap, then you wouldn't have 99% of major commercial software vendors targeting it as a primary platform.

Simple Explanations

[cordsie]

The way I see it, this can be one of two things:

1) Vista is actually being well received, and selling like hotcakes despite all reports to the contrary.
2) Even MS-Excel has critical bugs when running under Vista, especially the version used by Microsoft's accounting department.

XP will be supported longer than you think.

[argent]

I'm still running Windows 2000. Only hardware that isn't supported without scrounging is Bluetooth - you need to get a card compatible with the Widcomm stack. And sometimes you have to disable the checks for XP in the installer... the drivers still work (kind of like websites checking for Internet Explorer whether they need to or not).

Re:XP will be supported longer than you think.

[MMC Monster]

Well, in five years ReactOS is hopefully going to be at 1.0. By that point it will be able to install & run MSOffice 2K. That will be the death knell for MS in a lot of small businesses.

Re:XP will be supported longer than you think.

[argent]

Errr, the only thing on the status page is a link to to http://svn.reactos.com/api/ which is 404-compliant.

I Am Not Impressed.

Re:Microsoft genius

[Tanamo]

Sounds reasonable. They're a corporation, they're not there to make a good OS, they're there to make money - if the two coincide then so much the better for the consumer, but nobody's forcing you to part with your money!

Re:It is strange how

[spikedvodka]

ob 1984
Remember: He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future...

Oh yeah, and the Ministry of Plenty is pleased to announce that the weekly chocolate ration has just been increased to 10 Grams a week

Except in China

[The_REAL_DZA]

Or at least that's what they're saying here...

And how many times...

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times have we seen companies play games with the books to beat Wall Street expectations only to have to restate those earnings later? In short, who the hell knows what state MS is actually in?

Fas as whether MS is "dying," that's a bit of a tautology. When you're the dominant operating system of planet Earth, where do you go next? Mars needs Windows? There is only one direction for them to go and it ain't up.

You know, IBM beat back the government's anti-trust suit against them only to, in time, resort to essentially breaking themselves up in a desperate effort to survive. Their fall (and turn around) took a number of years to play out. MSFT thinks they "won" the anti-trust fight. Not only did they not win, they cut their own throats. If they were smart, they'd break the company up on their own. I doubt their corporate culture will allow for such thinking.

We'll see.

All I know is all those non-techie folk I told--all those years ago, all those times, "You should buy a Mac, they're easier," have started coming back to ask which Mac should they get.

Took 'em a while but they finally got the point...

Think about it..

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Every news item reporting Vista's sagging sales has been from less than stellar "analyst" sites, Linux sites, or Anti-MS sites. Considering that none of these "sources" had access to actual sales numbers or MS revenue figures, this isn't all that surprising.

Might not be ALL real numbers....

[Dukebytes]

I just spec'd out a new Dell for my dad. He wanted XP on it - but it only came with Vista. I told him that it should be OK......

He IS NOT a geek. But he does all his work and some photo stuff on his notebook and desktop. He HATED Vista. No driver for the printer, some software he uses won't work, had trouble with the camera etc... He was pretty pi$$ed when I talked to him... I told him maybe we could get Dell to give us XP and send Vista back and that would fix everything... (he has XP on the laptop and its OK :)

I tried to get Dell to trade it in, or give me credit, a discount on XP or something like that... but they blew me off and told me that I would have to send back the machine so I could then order the "open source" version. I talked to my dad and he just went nuts for a while and them said he would take care of it... So I figured that he was going to send back the machine and let me build one for him...

NOPE - he gave M$ more money and they also have another "Vista" user on the books... He went out and just bought a full version of XP. I didn't say anything other than OK I'll be up and get it loaded for ya... You have to know my dad... I already found all the drivers that he needs for XP. So everything should be fine.....

BUT IT JUST SUCKS!!!! I freakin HATE MS for this kind of stuff. Did you know that you CAN NOT downgrade Vista Home(any version) to XP - BUT the business versions are ALL downgradeable. You wouldn't want FORD to not buy windows because they have to use the CUTTING EDGE CRAP that we will be QCing for them for the next six months. BUT its OK to screw joe user at home!!! I dont know why they would even make some one PAY for an OS at home.... I guess that 70trillion dollars a year from the businesses just ins't enough.

I would love to load BSD/ubuntu/etc... on my pops machine - I really would. But he's 60ish and NOT a geek and its just not there yet.

Yea M$ sales are up and they should have a column on the sheet that is headed "Customers outright screw and we still made money."

Geesh, I should learn how to write code so I can contrib...

Duke

Re:Might not be ALL real numbers....

[petrus4]

I would love to load BSD/ubuntu/etc... on my pops machine - I really would. But he's 60ish and NOT a geek and its just not there yet.

Can you tell me more about what he uses the machine for? You mention "photo stuff." Can you be a little more specific?

Re:Might not be ALL real numbers....

[KillerBob]

BUT IT JUST SUCKS!!!! I freakin HATE MS for this kind of stuff. Did you know that you CAN NOT downgrade Vista Home(any version) to XP - BUT the business versions are ALL downgradeable.

In order to downgrade Vista Home to XP, it'd have to actually be a downgrade.... but nope. Vista to XP is an upgrade. Hence them wanting more money. :)

Re:Might not be ALL real numbers....

[javaxjb]

My dad's almost 70 and a few years ago, after constant problems with Windows, he decided (on his own) to buy a system with Linspire. He loved it! He called me and was very excited about how easy it was to download all kinds of useful applications, but the one piece that was still missing was an accounting package that he liked. The accounting was for my Mom's business (she uses a Mac Mini, but the accounting was still handled separately on a Windows system).

Recently, somehow (despite numerous precautions on their part) malware still made it onto the Windows system. He reformatted the Windows system, reinstalled the accounting software, disabled networking and changed all of his online passwords (just in case) and transfers files via disks. I told him he ought to just get a VM, run Windows on that with networking disabled and use a shared folder to transfer files. The only choice left is whether to use Linux or a Mac (I think he's leaning toward the Mac because their TV just went out, he wants to get HDTV and hear about the Apple TV). I probably won't hear about it again until he's got a new system configured VM and all. There was a time years back when I was constantly handling his tech support.

Just goes to show that you're never too old to learn. And studies have shown that it improves one's health, too. Of course, it helps that he started his career working for IBM. He always liked idea of PCs but hated the implementation (probably explains his attraction for Linux, even though had never used Unix).

Re:Might not be ALL real numbers....

[altek]

Well dude, try calling them back. As of last Friday, they are going to allow Windows XP to be purchased on certain models. Maybe you can exchange or something if you are adamant. Here is some info:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/free-go+backs- dell-to-reintroduce-windows-xp-253953.php

I had a friend buy a new PC a few weeks back and I spec'd it for him, and I told him to call and place the order online and demand XP instead of Vista. They refused. Then of course a week later, I see that article. Arrrgh

Re:Might not be ALL real numbers....

[stubear]

"No driver for the printer, some software he uses won't work, had trouble with the camera etc..."

And this is Microsoft's fault how? Linux must be a complete and utter disaster for most then based on this criteria. Developers knew well ahead of time that the driver model was going to change (for the better) and that software would need to be rewritten (at the very least to stop requiring the Admin accont - again, for the better) to take advantage of new features and changes of architecture in Vista. Since Microsoft isn't writing the drivers or developing the software (and when they do slashbots invariably ask why they needed to duplicate someone else's application or that they're violating anti-trust laws or other such crap) they can only notify developers and answer questions when they arise. To my knowledge they have done so thus far so I ask again, how is this Microsoft's fault?

Re:Might not be ALL real numbers....

[Dystopian Rebel]

I would love to load BSD/ubuntu/etc... on my pops machine - I really would. But he's 60ish and NOT a geek and its just not there yet. I don't know about "etc", and I certainly would not recommend any BSD for your father except perhaps PC-BSD.

However, PC-BSD pales in comparison to Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a great OS experience. I'm interested in knowing what you think your father won't be able to do with it. Is he one of those World Of Warcraft obsessed sexagenarians?

Excuses, Excuses

[N8F8]

The rumors of Vista's demise are greatly exaggerated.

Remember

[geekoid]

accounting is funny stuff.

This goes for ANY company:
When a company seems to be doing better then the market indicates, look at the numbers very closly.

Were there 'expectations' lower than reasonable? Are they counting units moved to outlets, or the unit's then sold?

What is there deal with outlets? can they return unsold stock*? How many lisenses did DELL purchase that it's not using?

Re:Remember

[Lord Bitman]

Recent versions of firefox/iceweasel include a built-in spell-checker.

Windows is for sissies

[messner_007]

Windows =computer.

There will always be a lot of sissies, that use "computers". And computers are those with this cute start button in the left corner, right. The reality is, that those are the majority of the people. This is a fact.

So there was this previous Wins family and there will be the Vista generation. Very few will actually pay for it (predominantly those who must), but most of earthlings will use it. What can we do about the stupidity of earthlings ? Do we have to do something ? Maybe we should.

Oh.....nevermind!

[notaprguy]

Guess the several individual /. posts about doom and gloom for Vista and MSFT may have been just a little overblown....

Re:Oh.....nevermind!

[notaprguy]

Total nonesese from someone who knows nothing about accounting. It is a common practice to defer income...Microsoft has been doing so for years. If it were somehow nefarious then it would have caught up with them by now. People can reasonably accuse MSFT of many things but of accounting tricks. Microsoft, many might argue, is overly conservative in their accounting practices and always have been. Take a look at reports from any big brokerage/analyst firm and you'll see they say the same thing.

Doesn't he do that all the time?

[kiwimate]

I seem to remember reading somewhere (on Slashdot, in fact) that he regularly sells off lots of shares in order to (amongst other things) prevent speculation and/or distress if he were to sell them off sporadically.

Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected

[darjen]

Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected

Expected by who - the Slashdot crowd, or the rest of the world?

Re: Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected

[Dystopian Rebel]

If you take the blue pill, there is no other world.

People Calling People Idiots --

[gadlaw]

Should look in the mirror if they're looking for idiots. You don't have to get Vista with your next computer. Did you read about how Dell was pressured by customers to provide XP as a alternate instead of the buggy, DRM laden Vista? Microsoft pressures, companies cave in- customers pressure and companies go back to being a customer service company and providing freedom of choice not just freedom of Microsoft's choice for you. Enough people complain and don't like a product and it will not succeed. Look at Windows ME, failed in the marketplace. Look at Vista, failing in the marketplace. And I've seen the Office 2007 for sale for 79 dollars. The whole thing. Yup, they're pushing this steaming pile hard which shows how badly it's failing. The story is what we call SPIN. You don't expect them to come out and say, 'yup, this is a real bomb and selling this Vista pile of steaming crap has been difficult.' - do you? And if you don't like this or any other article that is on Slashdot, change your preferences or better yet, just don't click on them.

Re:People Calling People Idiots --

[westlake]

Did you read about how Dell was pressured by customers to provide XP as a alternate instead of the buggy, DRM laden Vista?

Yeah.

I read about it on Slashdot and only on Slashdot.

Microsoft isn't marketing Vista to the Geek and neither are Dell or HP.

If You Lie, You Die Inside...

[SixFactor]

...that's what we've drummed into our kids.

If MS is lying, or even overstating its earnings, it will be just a matter of time before bad things catch up with them. Witness the Apple CFO mess.
On the other hand, if their earnings reflect the positive reception of Vista, then good for them. As far as I'm concerned, the more OSs there are to play with, the merrier any geek will be (by discovering something new and shiny, or by making $ from fixing people's machines because of various OS "features").

It's all fun.

Re:It is strange how

[UnknowingFool]

It wouldn't be the first time that MS has manipulated sales numbers. They had to settle with the SEC back in the late 90s. Apparently they were deferring sales from one quarter to the next to smooth out the normal seasonal fluctuations. The effect was that it looked like they had constant sales numbers when in actuality sales were fluctuating from quarter to quarter. For example the first few months of the year show less sales than the beginning of fall (school season) or holiday season.

RTFM

[geekoid]

If you read the article, you will note that the only way they did this was by pushing expenses off to 4Q.
Clearly this is an invester hand job* . lets see what the end of Q1 has to say.

*actually MA term. seriously, I hear it all the time.

Re:I can see...

[Vexorian]

Breaking news: Monopoly allows a company to create a totally deficient product and still sell it!

The only "Vista Sales" story

[Lord Bitman]

I've only heard one story of "I bought Vista", and I've heard it repeatedly, and I've witnessed it first-hand:
My Boss bought a new laptop. It came with Vista.
There was not one 3rd-party thing we were currently using which worked on the laptop.
There were several Microsoft Products which did not work on the laptop. (read: everything that came pre-installed seemed to be working, nothing we had, and required (like Office and Visual Studio) worked.)

So he installed XP and everything works now.

Vista "sales" numbers are not an indicator of Vista's performance. I expect those numbers to dive when others follow Dell's lead and start offering XP again.

Re:The only "Vista Sales" story

[W2k]

Fine, here's another story: At work, we upgraded each and every workstation to Vista and Office 2007. Mostly laptops. None new, each one was previously running XP SP2. Driver hassles have been limited to one HP printer (the driver would crash repeatedly), but it was fixed quickly thanks to a quick Google search. All in all, Vista has been a very nice upgrade, and I've personally started using it at home as well. Sure, it doesn't quite have the maturity of XP SP2, but it's also a big improvement in many key areas. My guess is most people puking over Vista here at /. have never actually used it, or are blaming Microsoft for the lack of mature drivers, despite the fact that third party vendors are providing the drivers for the most part, not Microsoft.

Maybe a simpler explanation?

[goombah99]

I'd be surprised if the OEM cost for the new vista was the same as for XP. I bet there's a premium. Which means that even if all the sales were OEM and the OEMs were selling the same number of computers they would see a big bounce. Now one also figures in the release of the pent-up demand for a new computer--people hung onto the things a tad longer because they knew vista was coming. Indeed MS encouraged this because of they kept postponing it's release, and because the uncertainty that any newly purchased computer would actually run the fothcoming vista release.

Thus a 30% bump in revenue seems kinda low to me.

Am I reading this right?

[UnknowingFool]

Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system. Excluding this figure, client revenue totaled $4.1 billion, 30 percent higher than last year.

MS is counting Vista upgrade coupons as sales? If IIRC, if a customer bought a computer in the holiday season, it came with XP and an upgrade coupon for Vista. Did the customer have to pay more for the upgrade coupon or was it included in the price? If it was the latter, then how can MS count that as a sale in terms of monetary value? It would figure into the total number of installations of Vista but not in terms of $. That sale should go to XP. Also what if the customer never upgraded to Vista?

Re:Am I reading this right?

[UnknowingFool]

Perhaps you should read my comment again and maybe RTFA./p>

Microsoft started selling its newest operating system, Windows Vista, to consumers at the end of January. Its 'client' division, responsible for Windows, brought in $5.27 billion in sales, 67 percent higher than a year ago.
Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system. Excluding this figure, client revenue totaled $4.1 billion, 30 percent higher than last year.

The question is whether they are counting Vista sales when they derived no actual money from the transaction. Whether it was deferred or not, they still counted it towards this quarter's sales and not last quarter's. Again, if a customer buys XP and gets a free Vista upgrade, how are they counting that revenue as from Vista? That revenue stream should count towards XP. Overall the total revenue from Windows client version was $5.27 billion. With that exclusion they are saying $4.1 billion is XP. However my contention is that the distribution should be different.

what I find funny (MS still doing quite well)

[dAzED1]

What I find funny is when people laugh and say it's indicative of a failure when Dell et al. start selling systems with XP again instead of Vista. Um, hello? So far as I know, XP is from Microsoft too. The failure I'm looking for is when Dell and such start selling systems with something not made by MS. And I'm not talking about the times they've charged the same (or sometimes, much more) for putting some random distro of Linux on the boxes. I'm talking about Dell putting their own little touches on RH-workstation, or Ubuntu, just like they do with Windows. Actually *selling* the systems, not just offering them on an obscure corner of the web page. Things like mentioning the extra virus safety inherent in the alternatives, for example. Or better, when someone like Sony stops using directX, and puts out all their games in OpenGL. Then, sells a single install DVD that will install on either windows or Linux, because fark, there's not *that* much extra they'd have to do to develop in parallel. Yeah, I know, Loki. Guess what, Loki didn't have the luxury of doing it side-by-side, they simply ported the games others made. I also think Loki would do much better in 2007 and beyond than they did prior to closing in 2001/2002. But yeah, back on point...XP still puts money in MS's coffers, and realistically, for most people the things that are slowing down tech purchases right now have little to do with MS. 1) stupidly power-hungry components, esp video cards and processors 2) blue-ray vrs HD-dvd war 3) availability of directX 10 cards (which should have happened by now, even if MS was slow giving out specs)

Re:what I find funny (MS still doing quite well)

[Coryoth]

What I find funny is when people laugh and say it's indicative of a failure when Dell et al. start selling systems with XP again instead of Vista. Um, hello? So far as I know, XP is from Microsoft too. The failure I'm looking for is when Dell and such start selling systems with something not made by MS. Well with WinXP not being licensed next year, anyone wanting to not have Vista will have to go with a Mac, or buy Vista and them install over the top of it -- unless Dell actually offers something with Linux on it. I suspect that with continued demand for XP, and MS saying they won't be selling it anymore, Dell is seriously looking at that option. My guess is they'll sign some sort of deal with Canonical letting them handle support. Next year could be interesting.

Re:Microsoft genius

[Jaysyn]

They hardly have a choice in the matter.

Vista Sales Higher Than Expected in China

[smitty97]

New reports show 247 licenses sold.

Re: Vista Sales Higher Than Expected in China

[salparadyse]

Wow - they sold another three copies.

Last I heard El Reg was reporting they only sold 244 copies. Word must be spreading!

Anonymous-Astroturf=0?

[haakondahl]

An anonymous reader writes "Despite reports, it seems Microsoft is not only alive, but has been thriving these last few months.

An anonymous reader from http://marketing.microsoft.com/Vista/PhaseII/Oh_Sh it.aspx ...

Re:Anonymous-Astroturf=0?

[badc0ffee]

I seem to not be able to load that page. I am using Firefox on Linux and I just hangs on Loading...

Is that an IE on Vista only page?

Oh, wait, connection just timed out. Never mind, must be their Windows server /.'ed.

Re:Anonymous-Astroturf=0?

[haakondahl]

Nice sig, badc0ffee.

... and dont need to purchase it every 6 months?

[Skapare]

... and dont need to purchase it every 6 months

Please don't given them any ideas.

Re:No! Microsoft runs 24x7 enterprises like NASDAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been hearing Microsoft is dying, and Linux will be #1 eventually for what? Roughly 14 years now or more??

Upon examination, year after year though in reality? Well, it's still "Windows #1" out there though, as the most widely used client-server Operating System platform, bar-none, in the home and on business fronts in department servers, right up to enterprise class ones!

(For example on that last account, business: NASDAQ runs its entire 24x7 operations on Windows Server 2003 SP #2 failover clusters + SQLServer 2005 as the db engine, & IIS 6.x for internet services for those former db engines, largely from what I last heard in the trade rags, and NASDAQ's getting 99.999 (fabled "five 9's") type of uptime & reliability using that setup and Microsoft wares to create and run it).

That's telling myself at least, that Windows is "not just for kids" anymore as 'wintendo', and Microsoft's OS + backoffice industrial apps (SQLServer & IIS) can do the job the "big boys" like IBM (AIX, & zOS midrange/mainframe series OS) and various UNIX vendors, including Linuxes & other derivants of NIX, can, and interoperate with them as well if needed, just fine (cross platform developer here since 1995 professionally, so I know this part works just fine and middlewares out there from IBM for DB/2, SQLServer, Oracle, etc. are mature at this point in time as well).

Still, Linux #1?

There's little question that Windows is more ubiquitous and flexible than NIX's are and certainly moreso than IBM's zOS series (line of business processing and batchprocess work is where I have mostly seen this in action over time).

I will admit, imo @ least, that the closest competitor in terms of flexibility Microsoft's competition presents imo, is Linux. It is getting better & better over time, but is always a step or two behind Microsoft's Windows. This is what "kills it" imo. Or rather, holds it down, just being a BIT behind all the time!

(HOWEVER, from what I understand? Some areas Linux excels in over Windows though! Not many but some, possibly, like beowulf clustering being better than Ms' failover clusters, or even possibly their Compute Cluster Edition of their OS & also defintely, as far as portability to more hardware types, but this was a conscious decision by MS because NT 3.5x was portable to around 3-4 platforms (in MIPS, x86, Alpha, etc.) and Microsoft stopped doing that for some reason (concentrating on the most used platform there is in x86 most likely imo). I can think of no others though where Linux shows superiority technically. Perhaps others can add more things Linux is 'better at' than Windows is for me, thanks).

However, again, we've all been hearing this for 12-15 years now, that Linux is going to be "number #1 next year" and it never happens. Never hurts to have faith, but how long do you do so, before you find out you were championing the one that never won period?

m0n3y 0wn5 y0ur 50u7

[Skapare]

Subject says it all

So your a hedonist

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

and until the fire comes raging to *your* door, why worry about firebreaks? That'd just cramp your style.

Vista sales up, usage DOUBLED

[guruevi]

Now a whole 4 people are using it! In related news, the sale and downloads of XP have gone up proportionally with OEM Vista.

Ouroboros

[ozbird]

How many copies of Vista did Microsoft buy themselves to bump the sales figures up? Just askin'.

If Microsoft buys its own CDs, Does it count?

[zukinux]

If Microsoft buys its own CDs, Does it count?
Otherwise, I cannot see how Vista's selling is good... in-fact, I don't know anyone who bought it already, do you?

great news!

[chinard]

now i dont have to feel guilty for stealing it!

Interesting?

[LifesABeach]

My orientation to Microsoft is its Functionality, not its Sales. I find myself wondering how I could moderate the parent submittal as, "Off Topic". If Microsoft wants to impress the unwashed like ME, do not Lie, Cheat, or Steal; Instead show me a Benjamin Franklin chart of Functionality compared with competing products.

"You have become a Pirate" - Wendy

Windows ME and Vista CANNOT be compared

[trimbo]

Look at Windows ME, failed in the marketplace. Look at Vista, failing in the marketplace.

The marketplace had nothing to do with ME's failure. Microsoft killed ME by choice.

Windows ME was an iterative release of the 95/98 branch to appease all of the people who wanted to stick with it for games. Releasing ME wasn't about long term support, it was about trying to get a few extra bucks from that crowd. Microsoft already was pushing to get everyone on the NT branch at the time it was released. W2K was on shelves and XP would be out only a year later and most '98 folk would move to that. ME was simply a money grab; saying it a was a failure in the marketplace shows no knowledge of what Microsoft was doing at the time.

Vista is the next iteration of the NT branch -- their main branch. Unless there's an alternative branch that Microsoft is working on and not telling us about, this is the version (or Vista 2.0, like XP was W2K 2.0) that 100% of Windows machines will be sold with in the coming years. It won't fail because Microsoft doesn't want it to. That's the benefit of being a monopoly.

Re:Deferred REVENUE not EXPENSES

[dwpro]

You are right, it is revenue, and money is money, I'm sure all investors will like that. However, they claim it is "vista" revenue, which it is not, exactly. It is OEM revenue that the customers really have no choice in paying, almost an MS tax, and whats more, it isn't even vista, its XP with a free Vista upgrade. So this does speak well to their current ability to make money, but I don't think it is a long term indicator of increased adoption of vista.

Check this graph.

[jotaeleemeese]

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=GOOG&l=on&z=m &q=l&c=MSFT

Now tell me, which one has been crawling for 5 years and which one is growing exponentially?

Re:Check this graph.

[MyLongNickName]

Wow. Compare the growth of a mature company with that of a company in its infancy. You are quite the brilliant finance guy.

And when did Google get brought into the discussion. The point is Microsoft is not dying. They are a large company that is looking to maintain itself. Bring up Google's charts in another 10 years and you will see the same.

Bottom line is you cannot grow at a large exponential rate forever. At a certain point there are limits and the best you can shoot for is to maintain your dominance. The chart you showed indicated MSFT has been doing this well.

Not true.

[jotaeleemeese]

Look at this graphic:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=GOOG&l=on&z=m &q=l&c=MSFT

where is the baboozlement there?

MSFT share price has been pretty flat for the last 5 years.

Check the other company in the graph to understand what bamboozlment means.

Check their share price.

[jotaeleemeese]

Compare it with Google's for at least a couple of years.

MS: flatlining.
Google: exponential growth.

Whoever says MS is not dying should look at that (and remembere that MS does not dish out dividends, so the question is: what is somebody investing in MS gaining nowadays?).

Re:Check their share price.

[Metaldsa]

MSFT does pay out dividends and MSFT is close to a 52 week high. Its doesnt have GOOG's strength (or apples) but its not exactly heading down either.

Re:I can see...

[Vexorian]

who the fuck cares about mod points? I bet you do since you used AC to post that, hehe.

Re:... and dont need to purchase it every 6 months

[Adriax]

You kidding? They've got a huge shrine in their offices built around a diamond encrusted sign that says "Our Goal: OS Subscriptions". Even has a sacrificial altar, which last I saw had a struggling Clippy tied to it.

it is not money that puts food on the table

[Jasper__unique_dammi]

So basically, you chose your own welfare over that of others. Even if it luxery welfare. (How The Fuck is a hummer usefull for you, over more efficient cars? I hope it is not status..)
I use, and am all for and use GPL-ed/forkable software, and will also be for anything else that is forkable. I sure as hell am planning to work for things usefull, and seek others that do too. Things developed in a way many people can freely use is and will be a great good for humanity. I believe we should not be all-selfish, for i believe that other people have feelings too. There is a reason the more colaborative beings have taken over the world. (Multicelular life, ants, humans) After all, it is not money that puts food on the table, it is manipulation of the world, in a way, it is idealism. Folowing the money is not nessesarally for the good of things, it is just manipulating the returns, of what everyone produces. To many people justify their actions saying "the market" will automagically do the right thing. There is no system that can regulate society, we will have to think and act morally ourselves.

Re:65 Yr Old Grandma's Opinion

[majortom1981]

Thats probably driver problems. I have am using two dell comps with vista and an acer laptop with a pentium m and 1 gig of ram and all three dont have any problems with vista. MY parents, both who are computer illiterate both like vista better then xp.

Re:Microsoft genius

[vindimy]

(1) Create a crap OS. (2) Force people to buy it (3) People can't stand it and buy a second OS (4) Crow about sales being up

(5) Profit!!!

The predictions of the Slashdot hivemind...

[Rotten168]

Have these fools ever been right? Linux was supposed to have completely overtaken Windows by now. Didn't ESR predict in 2001 that Windows would be dead in 18 months or something? Why would anyone listen to any prediction the Slashdot hiveminds were ignorantly spouting anymore?

Slashdot is going completely to shit

[drinkypoo]

You can't even express an honest opinion without being marked troll any more.

Is it any wonder that some of us have lost all pretense at politesse?

give them a little credit...

[bushoncrak]

it takes a lot of hard work to generate record sales when you have a monopoly. Instead of copying 50 million lines of old code they could have just taken the easy road and forced everyone to buy furry monkeys. Dammit Microsoft, I don't need this ass software. Make me buy a monkey! I WANT MY MONKEY-MAN!!

I'd heard others opt to wait on PC/Laptop purchase

[Locutus]

last fall, I'd heard a few in some development meetings say they'd be waiting until Windows Vista shipped before upgrading their systems. IE, waiting for pre-installed versions of Microsoft Windows Vista.

Again, BFD, it's pre-installed versions of Microsoft Windows one way or another. It is probable that Microsoft can now charge more of a Windows-tax now that they supposedly have a "new" OS out. You know Windows XP licenses were getting sold much cheaper leading to the end of 2006 and with increased fees for MS Vista, a bump in profits from pre-installs should be expected. IMO.

LoB

What about those earlier reports?

[mschuyler]

Gee, something must be wrong. Surely those earlier slashdot reports letting us all know Vista was a failure couldn't have been wrong. Reminds me of Millennial Fever. The world is going to end in 2000, really! Oops, slight miscalculation. It will be May 5, 2005, really! Oops, slight misclaculation. The new date of destruction is 2012. Yes, that's it! 2012!

Re:Microsoft genius

[Dystopian Rebel]

Oh come on. If it really were crap, then you wouldn't have 99% of major commercial software vendors targeting it as a primary platform. That is a poor, unthinking argument.

Commercial vendors target the most prevalent OS in the hope of selling their product. They don't really care if the target is good or not. In fact, some companies, such as anti-virus vendors and firewall makers, ~depend~ on the target OS being crap.

Popularity may be an indicator of possible quality, but it is not a proof. What popularity does usually indicate is a subject of reflection.

Microsoft is inventory stuffing

[Overly Critical Guy]

Microsoft won't reveal actual consumer sales of Vista, nor will they reveal WGA activation figures. They only reveal OEM license sales which give a mistaken impression that consumers are buying up Vista when they're not.

After all, Dell just reintroduced XP on their machines due to popular demand!

with raid

[unity100]

, yes.

what about with serial ata ?

mmmhmmmm

[pak9rabid]

Yea...this coming from a company who's had a history of fudging their income statement numbers by taking revenues from a strong statement, hiding that sum somewhere, then appending it to statements with weak revenues in an attempt to fool their shareholders. As Cheif O'Hagen would say, "I'll believe it when my shit turns purple, and smells like rainbow sherbert".

Not duh

[tabdelgawad]

In the market, everything is relative to expectations. The point here is the Microsoft did much better than expected. The stock market rewarded them with a 4% increase in their stock price today. For a roughly $300 billion mature company, this is a HUGE jump in value - it amounts to an increase of about $12 billion in market cap.

stop with the vista sales posts

[odigity]

I read slashdot every day, but am driven to post maybe once a year. This is one of those times.

This is Slashdot, News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters. Not the fucking Microsoft sales dept. Stop it with the daily, contradictory reports about Vista sales in various areas. I don't care. No one cares.

Just shut the fuck up already, so we can move on to something interesting. You know, something That Matters.

-ofer

Re:... and dont need to purchase it every 6 months

[FrangoAssado]

Heh, I think it's very cool, too...

If I'm not mistaken, it's right up to the 82nd decimal place...

Speak for yourself.

[Daniel Phillips]

as someone who likes money and lifestyle, who likes eating, who likes playing, who I choose to go where the money is. Idealism is fine. Personal crusades of windmill tilting are fine, Don. But, in the end, they don't put food on the table, they don't pay for the Hummer, they don't allow you to jet to Fiji for a cool vacation

Really? Speak for yourself. Some of us are able to remain true to our morals and live well at the same time.

Hmmm, Shista, who cares....

[tek_heretik]

I just feel sorry for all those unsuspecting consumers out there, installing or installed Microslop spyware and virus host on their shiny new computers (after all, you need a top of the line computer just to boot Shista). What's that old saying, oh yeah, "ye who doth protest", in other words, things aren't so rosy so we better spin come bullshit for our stock holders. *rolling eyes*

Vista Sales STRONGARMED into being higher

[vidaddy]

A couple months back it was nearly impossible to by a PC without having to purchase Vista. Then the rebellion started in corporate ITs, and with manufacturers like Dell announcing the sales of "naked" PCs which allowed the user to choose their OS. Linux is making giant strides and MAC is consolidating it's gains. Adobe (the number 2 software manufacture) is in locked combat with Microsoft to protect its domain in graphics, photography and videography. Vista is a giant horrible joke! It is code heavy, non-intuitive, hardware impaired, and will go the way of Millenium Windows, C format videotape, Betamax, 8 track and other "standards" that manufacturers tried to shove down the throats of consumers in my lifetime. More on this coming soon at www.vidiots.us

IBM the largest revenue? No.

[puck13]

According to google finance, last year IBM had less than 1/4 the revenues of ExxonMobil. Not sure if ExxonMobil is the largest, but I suspect it's in the top 3.

Not the largest! IBM is #23

[puck13]

Looks like IBM is down at #23, with Wal-Mart, Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron comprising the top 5.