Slashdot Mirror
40M Vista Licenses in 100 Days
Gary writes "In the first 100 days since its launch in Jan 30 Windows Vista has sold an astounding 40 million licenses. Bill Gates gives the credit to accelerating consumer shift to digital lifestyles which has made it the fastest selling operating system in history. Surprisingly the more expensive premium editions accounted for 78 percent of Vista sales. With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users."
In other news... China sells 40 million of it's OWN copies.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Ah, looks like another game of 'defer the revenues from a more successful quarter to a less successful quarter'. Didn't yall get in trouble w/the SEC for doing that?
I'm betting they included "free upgrade to vista" offers for copies of XP sold for the year prior to vista. But how many of these people have actually claimed their free upgrade copy?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
who these licenses are being sold to. If half of them were sold to only two OEMs, its not saying much really. If even half of them were bought off the shelf at Best Buy or other stores, that would say something. So, exactly who is buying these licenses?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Since no one I know besides my oldest brother (who happens to have a knack for buying things that become duds) runs the OS or is even planning to upgrade.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I'm confused... I thought that the official Slashdot Group Think said that Vista was a failure? What am I supposed to believe: facts, or Slashdot FUD? Decisions, decisions...
I don't respond to AC's.
That's way more than I'd ever expect! Congratulations, Gates! You must be proud that your employees each own a copy!
I hate Microsoft as much as the next man, but I'll be entertained to see how some Slashdotters twist this into being "bad for Microsoft" or something. Every other day I see some comment like "The end is here for Microsoft" or "It's all over for MS" or some such nonsense. Let's see:
1) Record profits in the last year
2) Fastest-selling OS in history
It's only getting better for them, isn't it? We need another way to fight them...
how many of those numbers just came on the pre-built PC, and how many were from people who actively went out and purchased vista?
i'd like to see if they guess-timated / inflated the enterprise licenses number....
A: "let's see here....2000 companies with an enterprise license....let's count them at 10,000 individual ones"
B: "brilliant"
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
...to switch back to XP when they can't get it to work properly. Sheesh. Many of these sales are forced on consumers wanting the beefiest x86 hardware, aren't they?
u-bend
I, for one, welcome our new OS overlords. ... ...
Oh its Microsoft.
Does this include bulk sales to companies like Dell and Gateway that may or may not sell all of them right away?
So, did they just claim that there are less than 1.2 million Linux users? I call bullshit.
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
... but you do have to remember MS gave away Vista upgrade vouchers to folk buying XP through Q4 last year. I wonder how many of these 40M licenses are really XP purchasers claiming their Vista disks?
Anyway, if the claim is true MS must be breathing a sigh of relief, given all the "no one wants to upgrade to Vista" talk on the internet. (Of course, we heard the same during the 9x/2k->XP and NT->2k transition as well). Still, if you're a user with existing hardware and files, hold off upgrading! It's the sensible thing to do.
Go somewhere random
Since the original link seems to have been /.'ed, here is the Reuters story on it.
[alk]
Since the trade journals are all pointing to weak Vista adoption as the reason why MS has attacked the Linux patent base, we have to have an article about "how well" Vista is selling. True or not...
"With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users.." .. and a lifetime to remove the scar from those 40M users.. there are somethings that money cant buy, for everything else, there is MS
There are 170212.766 Vista users for each Microsoft patent being violated by free software.
"Fastest-selling OS in history"
That wouldn't have anything to do with having more computers in the world NOW versus, you know, any other point in history?
In other news, the world's human population is the highest it's ever been in history.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I bought an HP desktop recently to serve out music & TV shows to my Xbox 360 and it came with Vista. It offers some polish versus XP, but no more functionality, aside from Windows Media Center. At the end of the day, music still gets saved to the music folder and videos get saved to the videos folder.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It's a mixture of both. This is a press release by marketing to try to bolster stock prices. So when they mean licenses sold, that doesn't mean the same thing as copies purchased. It with all likelihood refers to the number of licenses they have sold to Dell and other major PC vendors, all of the free upgrade licenses from XP, all of the copies they sold to retailers (which the retailer may or may not be having luck selling), etc...
/. anti-MS pundits would have you believe, but it is a long way from the success that Microsoft's marketing department would have you believe.
Vista isn't the failure that
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"Bill Gates gives the credit to accelerating consumer shift"
Yeah, because when my neighbor down the street calls Dell to order a new desktop, the first thing on his mind other than "how the hell do I plug it in" is a demand for Vista and his digital shift. Let's see how many systems we're sold where people actually demanded Vista over XP and clearly understood the selection. The bank down the street from me still has windows 98 desktops on their desks! Digital shift my ass...
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Two data points are not enough to extrapolate a curve, but I'd guess that sales as a function of time is a logarithmic curve (based on early adopters) plus a near-constant (based on replacement cycles).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39 636
Given that 60 million PCs were sold during that timeframe, it seems a lot those came without Vista.
How many of these were bulk licensing deals with companies that basically let them run whatever OS was the latest?
How many of these businesses actually have moved their production systems onto vista?
How many of these were OEMs?
How many of those which were OEM have been reinstalled with XP (pirate or otherwise)
How many were free upgrade with XP systems?
How many of those used the upgrade and are still running vista now?
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
For all practical purposes you must buy a Wondows OS when you by a PC.
(Geeks can manage it but try getting a cool VIAO or ACER which isnt preloaded with Vista!)
The interesting statistics would be how may PCs sold with Vista have been back-graded to XP?
Judging by the various blogs etc. this would seem to be the only way to get your shiny
new box to run as fast as the old one.
Google "Vista The long goodbye" Results 1 - 10 of about 907,000
So thats 5% of Vista users hacked off about just one of the Vista bugs enough to blog or cry for help.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Gates and Ballmer bought just to get this figure.
No goddamn way Vista sold that many. Maybe bought by STORES to sell or preload on computers, but actual SALES? Not even possible.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
These are students from universities with a Microsoft partnership.
That's an easy way to add more official sales.
I'm not suprised. I know a pretty large amount of people that have upgraded to Vista, and many others who plan to. As many problems as it has it's actually a pretty solid OS, and if you don't plan on gaming, then it's got some really nice features.
The true tale of Vista will be in about 18 months (from release). I know for myself, I wouldn't touch Vista until the early adopters suffer the bugs inherent in any new MS release and MS fixes them, Ditto for all the missing drivers for hardware. After this time next year Vista will have ripened and be ready for prime time and we'll get an idea of what it can really do that makes a it worthwhile upgrade over XP. If it doesn't have any advantages by then, penetration will be largely limited to newly bought PC's and MS will have to do a rethink. If it does improve and become useful, then MS will continue on as it always has, and while some may not like that, remember that no one changes a successful behaviour. For them, it has been successful, like it or not.
and install XP. That's what my corp is having to do. Can't buy XP licenses any more, but Microsoft will sure let us buy the Vista license and install XP.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
You need to look at the ratio of number of licenses sold to the number of desktop computers out there. If you do that, you'll almost certainly find the ratio is right in line (if not a little worse) than it was in XP's time. The "record numbers" are just because there's more computers out there now.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
40 million sold according to Microsoft.
In other news, my "jump off a cliff onto a rusty spike" (JOACOARS) extreme sport has taken off - now enjoyed by tens of thousands! So many people think it's great that you're bound to enjoy it too - roll up, roll up!
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
... 95% of the world's lemmings have jumped off a cliff.
This is how it really works: Hilf: Linux is dead. Since I said Linux is dead, all the Linux users have to switch to another operating system. Therefore, since Vista is the greatest thing to ever hit a desktop, all (former) Linux users are now buying Vista! Ballmer: I could buy 40 million folding chairs!
How does this compare to how many Windows licenses they would have sold if Vista had never been released?
By polls I conduct and metrics I control I am the biggest hit with the ladies ever! I can count slaps as hits, right?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I work for a major international bank, in application testing and deployment. At the moment 99.9% of our new computers run XP and still come with an XP licence. We have a number of Vista test machines but that's about it. As far as I know most of the banking industry has not moved to Vista, and is probably a long way from being ready to make the move. My GF works for a large law firm (2500 staff across the UK) and again, their platform is XP and will be for some time. Just who is buying Vista?
How many folks have ended up 'downgrading' back to XP that are included in that license count? My wifes laptop came with Vista preloaded, but after a few days of her yelling at it, I reloaded it with a copy of XP. Heck, maybe MS knows they can make double money from us when we have to go buy an XP license too! Vista should be okay, but right now it isn't. Simple fact. I despise Microsoft and all, but someday it may actually do well. It's just that right now, I do believe that these numbers are odd. I would love to see the sales of actual retail sales and such as opposed to the numbers here, which include all those Dells, Compaqs, etc.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
...smoke rising from the rear of Bill's trousers when he announced these sales figures?
running Vista? I know three people who have tried it and dropped it. I myself have a legal copy which I do not intend to use.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I am just about to start installing XP and Feisty Fawn in a dual boot config over the Vista Ultimate that came with a warranty replacement Dell laptop. I've had the machine for a couple of months now, the bugs are getting worse and I've had enough. It's now time for me to have another foray into the Linux world with XP as backup for the programs where the equivalents in Linux are still not quite there.
Vista is a great opportunity for Linux - already 40 million disillusioned potential new converts.
...just how many copies of AOL are in circulation. Surely, the fact that it's included with just about every new PC proves AOL is a stellar success.
Kythe
When the beatles first record was released, their manager reportedly bought 10,000 copies so that it would make it into the charts. I wonder how many copies of Vista were purchased by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I dont think the numbers are that high because people *want* Vista, but because any PC you buy now adays comes preloaded with it. I'm still fighting to exchange Vista for XP for my uncles laptop. To many problems with it so far, and all he does it use Streets and Trips (he's a trucker). If when you walk into Walmart/Best Buy/etc you could choose XP or Vista, I'd bet those numbers would be a lot lower.
Fortunately, there are articles that take a more rational view of how many copies of Vista are actually being sold.
The headline is simple, 40 million copies sold. Wow, we rox0rz! This is twice as fast as the XP adoption rate. What he didn't mention is that sales of PCs have more than doubled since XP came out. Silly Vole, no statistical cookie. The problem? Well, PCs sell at about 60 million units a quarter, and everyone we talk to expects sales of around 240-245 million units in 2007. Vista went on sale at the end of November for corporate customers, and one would expect a fair chunk of sales there from pent-up demand.
Official MS press release here.
I'll note that they specifically state "nearly 40 million Windows Vista licenses have been sold as of 100 days after its January launch."
I'm pretty sure that accounting rules don't let them claim upgrade certificates as "sold," and revenue recognition rules probably don't let them recognized shipments to resellers (which can be subject to return) as "sold," either.
I'm sure MS would never do anything illegal or immoral, such as pumping up numbers in a press release in violation of Sarbanes-Oxley or SEC, so those numbers must be correct!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
This probably won't survive a spam filter...
jan-07 Windows XP 896100 78,30%
jan-07 Windows 2000 76054 6,60%
jan-07 Windows 98 31422 2,70%
jan-07 Windows Me 9672 0,80%
jan-07 Windows 2003 6794 0,50%
jan-07 Windows NT 4180 0,30%
jan-07 Windows Vista 1075 0,00%
jan-07 Windows 95 370 0,00%
jan-07 Windows CE 113 0,00%
feb-07 Windows XP 860436 71,00%
feb-07 Windows 98 121822 10,00%
feb-07 Windows 2000 77930 6,40%
feb-07 Windows Me 7977 0,60%
feb-07 Windows NT 5978 0,40%
feb-07 Windows 2003 5063 0,40%
feb-07 Windows Vista 1446 0,10%
feb-07 Windows 95 442 0,00%
feb-07 Windows CE 174 0,00%
mar-07 Windows XP 1288545 74,90%
mar-07 Windows 2000 101035 5,80%
mar-07 Windows 98 83397 4,80%
mar-07 Windows Me 12390 0,70%
mar-07 Windows 2003 7020 0,40%
mar-07 Windows Vista 5091 0,20%
mar-07 Windows NT 4545 0,20%
mar-07 Windows 95 277 0,00%
mar-07 Windows CE 63 0,00%
mar-07 Windows 3.xx 1 0,00%
apr-07 Windows XP 1170028 76,10%
apr-07 Windows 2000 82087 5,30%
apr-07 Windows 98 25694 1,60%
apr-07 Windows Vista 8821 0,50%
apr-07 Windows Me 7704 0,50%
apr-07 Windows 2003 6798 0,40%
apr-07 Windows NT 2097 0,10%
apr-07 Windows CE 234 0,00%
apr-07 Windows 95 191 0,00%
apr-07 Windows 3.xx 1 0,00%
may-07 Windows XP 542208 75,00%
may-07 Windows 2000 45535 6,30%
may-07 Windows 98 13740 1,90%
may-07 Windows Vista 12114 1,60%
may-07 Windows Me 5571 0,70%
may-07 Windows 2003 4549 0,60%
may-07 Windows NT 800 0,10%
may-07 Windows CE 65 0,00%
may-07 Windows 95 47 0,00%
These are the hits on a server,
with US accounting for about 55%.
The user base is global.
Hey,
The "free" upgrades cannot be stated as sales. The discount coupons sold can be stated as sales this year -- and they were. Total deferred licensing (Vista + Office 2007) was around 1.64 Bn for Qtr 1 2007.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Not talking about Apples=Macs... The Article is just not fair... Are you talking about market share... (we know the dirty reasons ms has the market share... giving the OS for free through manufacturer partnerships and stuff). when you have a way to compare the TRUE adoption (adopt because you want or you actually care) come and write something!
The sales numbers include upgrade vouchers and workstation counts for volume license holders like schools and Enterprise customers. Of note, after the first month Microsoft claimed 20 million Vista licenses sold. That means for each month after 10 million licenses were sold (half). I should also note that of the Volume license customers, almost no one is deploying Vista. I have been to various tech conferences the past few months where this question has been posed to various business attendees. Everyone says they aren't deploying it for at least a year. I know of one small liberal arts college that is the exception to this. I should also note that many enterprise and especially education customers are ordering lots of PC's with Vista licenses attached. They then image them with their XP image via Ghost, Zenworks, LanDesk, etc. If vendors were allowed by Microsoft to sell PC's with Linux or without an OS you would see this number much smaller. I should also note that Microsoft's Volume License agreement doesn't allow you to install your volume licensed copy of Windows on a computer without an OS or with Linux. This means when a school who has purchased Windows Volume licenses from Microsoft is required to purchase PC's with a Windows license included. This amounts to Microsoft selling two copies of Windows per Volume license seat. As to the statement that most licenses sold have not been Home basic, almost all PC's are shipping with Home Premium and volume license customers are getting Vista Business or Vista Enterprise licenses.
Who Cares? I mean frankly, if you don't plan to buy or run Vista any time soon than why predict that it will fail?
I, for one, could really care less if Vista's selling like hotcakes. I will continue to use whatever flavor of linux I deem appropriate for use on all my home servers and workstations and (grudgingly) use my pre-installed Windows XP on my business Vaio laptop which could probably run linux, but frankly my dear, it's just too much of a hassle to have to re-install *any* operating system on my business machine (which just needs to run day in and day out) because I can't afford down-time. And yes, I back this sucker up weekly.
Transcript: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/billg/spee ches/2007/05-15-2007WinHEC.mspx
We all know it's at least 90% OEM license sales. Businesses aren't buying them, they've just upgraded to XP. Consumers aren't buying it, that's why Dell had to offer Windows XP again. This means that they've made the majority of their sales already.
239 million PCs sold last year (from Gartner), that's an average 20 million a month, so 40 million is 2 months worth of average PC sales. Presumably the sales figures include the Christmas Vista vouchers.
So Jan Feb, March, and part of April, and the Christmas vouchers.... results in 40 million units. About 50% takeup on new PCs.
Is this correct? Vista's shipped on 50% of new PCs?
That would fit the story from Feb that shrink wrap sales of Vista were about a third less in revenue compared to XP (higher price, lower volume, overall worse):
http://www.crn.com/software/197006491
This includes every corporate PC purchase. Corporate PCs come with Vista pre-installed, and companies just wipe it to put their own SOE (normally XP these days) on instead.
Home users are not purchasing Vista. In record numbers.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
...OK, --from some press outlets I hear that Vista really isn't selling very well, that Dell started selling XP again, and that the only people that buy it are those buying a new PC. Then I also hear from certain press outlet (strangely, they usually involve statement from MS) that Vista is wildly popular and blowing the competition out of the water.
Who's wrong?
I work support for a company with about 1100 customer sites, with perhaps an avg of 100 users per site. Number of calls I've taken for users running Vista in the past 5 months? 5. Yes, 5. Nothing to see here people.
I'm impressed - slashdot's trying to roll all sorts of excuses into the news, but it's difficult to dismiss 40 *million* sales of anything. I'm not a Microsoft fan, per se, but I also am one of those aging slashdotters (31) who used to build his system, used to download slackware over dialup and contribute to one of the thousands of washed up OSS projects who's 15 mins of fame were long gone by 2000 - today I've got a wife, a kid, a decent enough job and a mortgage: if I everyone's happy at home with the computer, I'm happy.
Vista works, we can browse the web in relative saftey behide a NAT and firewall and the new Office is surprisingly easy to use. Yes, I'm very aware of DRM and the compromises I'm making each time I load my wife's iPod up over iTunes with some random track I caught her whistling when we were out walking - I've just got more important things on my mind, like her happy smile when she discovers that new song the next time she goes to listen. If I had to pay each time to see that, well - gladly. I know it's not virtous in this community, nor even on the whole, and I accept your scorn.
I'm sure the license that came with my recently bought HP notebook is among those.
Too bad I had no choice in this case, if I wanted that computer I had to buy it with Vista.
Anyways, less than 24h after I brought it home, it was already reformatted with Ubuntu.
This really isn't a battle, as both "sides" of the argument can be more or less correct at the same time.
Vista might be the most problematic upgrade cycle ever in the history of Microsoft, in terms of slow user adoption.
However, the market continues to grow and has grown a lot since the last upgrade cycle, and the vast majority of desktop general purpose computers run Microsoft systems, and the vast majority of new systems will soon or already do ship with Vista pre-loaded. Therefore, Vista will soon be a raging success for Microsoft and within a year or two the majority of Windows systems will be running Vista.
The more interesting question is how successful will the spammers and botmasters be at migrating to the new platform? Will the Vista migration result in a reduction of rootable home user systems on the net? Will the percentage of email which is spam decline, or continue to rise?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
There is little doubt to me these are inflated numbers which are probably counting 10-30M licenses to Dell/Gateway/HP which haven't even been sold to consumers.
t _share.html
"Vista's market share, meanwhile, more than doubled in the past month to 2.04%"
http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/04/os_marke
Waddaya mean 'sad' news?
So not only are the stats utterly unsuprising, but when you consider that the biggest surges in computer sales happen in the vicinity of christmass then 40 million copies of vista is severley lagging what one would have expected just from new computer sales alone.
It's interesting to note that the large fraction of pro-edition sales. This suggests IT department purchases or pro-user purchases. These are the early adopter crowd. Logically, this early adopter crowd is a one time surge.
Thus the the 40 million is under-following the general trend in New PC sales. Infact there's negative growth since something is offsetting the expected plus up in the early purchase rate one expected from early adopters and christmass sales. The logical conlcusions is twofold
1) corporate fleets are not adopting it or are otherwise delaying new computer purchases.
2) essentially NO ONE besides the early adopters experts is buying this to replace XP on existing machines.
Since Vista is supposedly harder to pirate than XP it wold seem that this can't be blamed on piracy either.
in short 40M/100 days is absysmal.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oasis' Be Here Now is the fastest-selling album in the UK (at the time of writing), still not that good an album. Selling well doesn't make it decent, unfortunately.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
A quick google shows a prediction for total sales of desktops, notebooks and x86 servers of around 200 million in 2006. I doubt that the number for 2007 will be lower than that.
200 million units times 80% of the market times 0.25 (100 days is just over a quarter of a year) makes around 40 million sales of Windows systems in those 100 days.
=> It is hard to see how Microsoft could _not_ have reached this milestone in that period.
According to Gates, over 80% of Vista sales are the premium versions. Why? Maybe because the premium versions come with "downgrade" rights to use XP. Corporate licensed product also includes "downgrade" rights to use XP, etc. I am a consultant and have yet to see a single copy of Vista in corporate use. OTOH, in the small business space I've had to REMOVE copies of Vista because basic things taken for granted in XP don't work. Things like Office/Outlook 2003 applications, even with all the available registry fixes & tweaks, etc. I've talked to techs at a Best Buy and retail copies of XP are selling like hotcakes -- customers are buying machines preloaded with Vista, can't get them to work, and then are buying retail copies of XP and wiping out Vista. Talk about a profit racket -- Microsoft's sales should be through the roof, selling 2 copies per PC instead of 1.
For those wanting an OEM copy who want to run XP now & Vista if/when they fix it in the future, only Vista Business OEM & Ultimate OEM have "downgrade" rights. Vista Home & Home Premium OEM users must buy a copy of XP. Many will probably buy XP so they don't have to deal with MS licensing hassle to get their "downgrade" rights or because they don't know it is available.
...cockroaches breed at far faster rates than humans, and Chevys outsell Bentleys by a huge margin.
Many have said and ill repeat it, every system ships with a Vista license. So the question is what else are they counting? If they need to count anything else.
;)
How about the MSDN Subscriptions? That would be the total number of MSDN sales X 5 as there are 5 licenses for each product in the MSDN. Nice and easy number padding.
I don't know anyone that is running Vista, the ones that I know that upgraded to it have gone back to XP, changed to Linux, or installed both on the PC. I am curious as to how they came up with the numbers. Maybe they are including all the Linux installs that they got paid for from Novel. Think about it, with all there patents involved, Linux really is there OS and it should be counted on Micro$ofts books. With out an option for Linux they just had to select the closest thing they could and Vista (in Micro$ofts opinion) is close enough.
The article is not available as I'm writing this comment, but what numbers are they counting? OEM licenses? If they are counting OEMS, then I think they are merely catching those that needed to upgrade hardware (like myself) and were merely waiting until the new OS was on nearly everything.
Also the fact that the availability of XP in the consumer market has dropped to nearly zero at most retail venues is a huge contributor...again if they are counting OEM, which I bet they are.
And that skews the whole idea that people are 'choosing' Vista greatly.
Whether bought at Best Buy or sold to OEMs it is still a copy and should count.
How come when Mozilla (or whoever) quotes number of copies downloaded (to imply users) we never say a word or dispute the figures but when MS gives figures then is no end to the outcries? Of course there is marketing BS but everyone does it. OK so cut that number by a third. Still good numbers.
I must have download FF at least the number of versions it has since day one but only 1 user.
Microsoft managed to sell 40M licenses in 100 days. There's a subtle difference between that statement and "40M licenses were sold in 100 days."
Anyway, this is hardly surprising, as the world still views Windows as the only show in town, and vendors therefore install it on virtually all of their new systems without thinking and without giving consumers a choice. We could just as easily have asked how many new computers were going to be sold around the world (mostly to consumers) during the same period.
The question now is, how many long-time Windows users will continue to put up with Microsoft's solutions? I've no first hand experience with Vista, but from what I've heard it's less stable than XP, often way too slow, just as susceptible to infection, and often incompatible with older software. IMHO, Vista's reputation is well-deserved and can only serve to erode M$'s overall market share.
Steve Balmer bought 39,999,000 of those licenses and gave them away to
Developers
Developers
Developers
Developers.
"4 days to exceed Mac sales." Lets not compare apples to... lemons.
Accept or Deny?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
These things were being discounted at up to 70% off in Omaha. My Dad bought the full blown professional version for $100.00. He doesn't even know what he's going to do with it.
I purchased a new PC less than 2 months ago and I requested Windows XP. They also sent Windows Vista Premium DVD as free upgrade, which I have not used and I won't use for another year until at least SP1 comes out. I'm sure lots of people are in the same situation. Vista is not popular, it's just being dumped on people, not the same thing.
I don't know ANYONE with a Vista license. Hell, I don't even know anyone thats using a pirated copy for that matter.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
But i wonder if microsoft are using the binary M or the storage-vendor M?
40,000,000 v's 41,943,040.
To be totally honest, i hate microsoft with a passion but it would be nice to know some real facts and figures. I find it hard to believe 40mil is correct but I wouldn't be utterly surprised to find out it wasn't hugely inflated.
If you read the TFA carefully, you notice that they speak about "Vista license sold".
Not "Vista License currently used to run the OS" or "machine currently running Vista in the wild".
Almost any of my non-Linux-using friends that I know to have recently changed their computer, got it with Vista pre-installed by default and had to either go through the "can I swap it for a Windows XP if I send you the media ?" procedure with the machine manufacturer or dig out one of their one "Win XP Pirate edition".
They are counted as "sold License". They don't run Vista any more.
So my interpretation of the data is :
40 * 10^6: Number of time Microsoft *sold Vista* (pre-installed on some machine at a time when the manufacturer didn't propose alternate OS)
4 : Number of users currently running Vista (and still waiting for their legal WinXP install media that they claimed from the manufacturer to come in their mailboxes).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I mean, there's a lot of sells with new machines, and there's a lot of people that just delete it, so this statistics includes new machines with explicit obligatory/needed/if not your system will blow/ windows?...
ghostbar page.
But how can anyone estimate the number of Linux desktop users? As a case in point, at home I have three cased PCs and two laptops. One of the cased PCs is a Linux server, one of the laptops runs only Linux, the other three dual-boot Windows XP and Linux. I have three OEM Windows XP licenses so someone somewhere knows that I account for three XP installations.
However, I run five instances of Gentoo Linux, all originally installed from a single installation CD that I downloaded from the Gentoo web site. I have no purchased/licensed Linux copies from, say, Red Hat or SuSE/Novell and since I use Firefox as my main browser on all the machines, find it difficult to believe that web server stats might indicate what OS I might be using at any moment in time.
Since I assume there are a lot of Linux users like me using downloaded installation CDs, whether it's Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc, how can the number of Linux users be reliably estimated in the first place? Admittedly, I work in a techie environment but most of the people I work with are at least giving Linux a try as a dual boot or on an older PC even if they're not running as a main OS.
I don't mind estimated numbers, provided there is some basis on which those estimates were made - but in this case it seems to be just a number plucked from the air.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"The only thing that can rival Microsoft's FUD, is the fud coming from thousands of geeks banded together :)"
Microsofts position when it comes to technical matters is even worse. Geeks are good at tech, but not much interested at FUDing.
My faith is expressed through Nihilism. Do you understand?
Microsoft probably factored in Volume Licensing/Software Assurance customers into this to fudge their numbers. Just because a license is bought, or "bought" doesn't mean that people are flocking to Vista. In fact, I see quite the opposite in the IT sector.
The universe of computers out there is far higher than 40 million. So how are they arriving at that number? I'll explain it for you.
It's all OEM licensing on new machines. But people like me who purchased within the last year or so aren't upgrading. In fact I know too many people that have recently bought machines with XP as opposed to Vista because some of the apps they use WILL NOT work with Vista. AutoCAD and AutoDesktop are two such products that are very OS specific. I actually know of a few people who received Vista desktops and laptops and Dell or HP sent them the XP install disks when they complained about Vista.
I think we're starting to see the end of Microsoft and management there knows about it. A co-worker and I were talking about it just today. XP wasn't bad and they could have gone forward on that. Similar to how Apple does it with OS-X, charge $30 here, $70 there for incremental upgrades. But Microsoft wants to do it whole hog.
Ignoring your argument about drivers, which is flat out wrong, I'll bite....
100% of the failure of linux is that it doesnt do anytthing (thats sort of an intelligence test, if you argue that linux does do something, you fail)
Define "do anytthing" [sic]. What does Windows "do"?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Few MS products look good out of the gate. Then they do what we do: they listen to their users and improve their product incrementally. Same thing FOSS devs do - but we don't like to admit that because MS are evil and their products don't live up to our standards. However, they make a shit pile doing it. A company with 20 something billion in reserves and no debt is not going to go down anytime soon folks and its foolish to underestimate a juggernaut with their resources. I'm not a fanboi and I could care less how well they are doing and its silly on our part to fixate on how poorly we would like to believe they are doing. It makes us look foolish. Let's fixate on improving our own dogfood instead of listening to our own make believe FUD. Let's not stoop to their level.
"He's using a quantum encryption scheme! That'll take hours to break!"
What am I supposed to believe: facts, or Slashdot FUD?
Facts? You call what you get from a Microsoft press release facts? And since when is /. in the business of spreading FUD? Who was it threatening to sue Linux users for patent infringement? Sounds like fear mongering to me. Trying to undermine the certainty of Linux IP. Let's see fear, uncertainty...hmmm, looks like it's coming from MSFT!
That must mean the facts are coming from elsewhere...
I'm confused...
We definitely agree on that part.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You must be new here.
"accelerating consumer shift to digital lifestyles"?
Did anyone else get a chill down their spine when they read that phrase?
I'll be entertained to see how some Slashdotters twist this into being "bad for Microsoft" or something. ... Fastest-selling OS in history.
I'll be happy to entertain you and it's easy to do. Vista is not the fastest selling OS in history because M$ is lying as usual.
Really, look around, do you see any Vista boxes? I don't, not nearly even a tenth of the number of Macs. Let me put it to you another way, I don't see any at all. M$ hand waving is not going to change the situation.
How's this bad for M$? They have stuffed their channels and are losing credibility. Vista not selling is a loser for everyone stuck with the coppies, the money is not flowing in. For the channels, it flowed out so fast they are talking about selling GNU/Linux. In a quarter or two M$ is going to collapse in an Enron style accounting scandal.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
'nuff said
The Linux kernel has more drivers than Microsoft Vista kernel.
Linux distributions come with more software than Microsoft Vista distribution.
Openoffice.org is a very capable replacement for Microsoft Office. Yes, some things are easier in Microsoft Office. And I would expect that -- after all, Microsoft Office costs a whole lot more.
Yes, Firefox "does something". So does the Linux kernel. Specifically, the Linux kernel manages hardware resources. Mark me as failing your intelligence test.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
1001001110100111000111000110!?!!?
Well, I don't know how I failed that test... I guess being my router, my media/tv computer, my dev machine, my kitchen computer (for the recipe database), as well as running on every laptop/desktop I own to get things done counts as failure of linux. I guess I'll just have to go back to my Atari 800... And what driver is it exactly that's lacking on my 20 computers?
SamI think the fact that you can't see any Vista boxes is more to do with your eyes-shut, fingers-in-ears style of OS assessment.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Poor Microsoft. They ignore fact that the larger market demands more sales and lie about time scale. That means Vista is even not doing as well as XP did. XP took years to equal all their other versions and was their slowest forced upgrade to date. Meanwhile GNU/Linux continue to errode their total share. Looks like trouble to me. Sooner or later these games are going to blow up on them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
40 mil license including the FREE licenses they are giving out to students? i just received a free version of Vista Business Edition today from an event hosted by Microsoft in my university (there were over 500 copies) and from what i know, they are having that "event" around my country. Is this how they fake the numbers of "sales"?
Even claiming a box is "sold" in retail is iffy. When Best Buy buys a palette of Vista and puts a box on the shelf to sell, as far as Microsoft cares those boxes are "sold". These are also extended to packaged computers and laptops sitting in stores where the vendor (like HP) buys a license, sticks it in the box with the laptop, and shows up at Best Buy is consider "sold".
I feel the situation is so muddled we have to fall back to indirect measures like Web site traffic. I would like to see a report from a platform agnostic servers on client usage.
As the long-standing local PC-repair geek for friends and family, compare this to 4 months after the launch of XP just about everyone who came to me with a PC problem was running XP.
I'm in a techie environment at work and (apart from the MS developer), none of my colleagues are running it.
In the local PC stores, copies of Vista are being sold at discount and the shelves always seem full of Vista boxes.
It doesn't "smell" like a success from this end...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I think the fact that you can't see any Vista boxes has more to do with your eyes-shut, fingers-in-ears style of OS assessment.
So, where do you see Vista? I'd like to know where this "fastest selling windoze evar" is going and stay away from it.
I work at LSU. People buy new computers there all the time and I'd tell you if I saw Vista at the Union where I eat every other day. I see lots of Macs but almost no GNU/Linux. If Vista was really selling and people were using it, I'd see as much or more of it than I see Macs because more people at LSU buy PCs than they buy Macs. Given the M$ Ambassadors program, I'd expect to see at least one or two paid showings, but I don't.
The same kind of thing can be said everywhere. Vista is not really being used.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
What I see is Walmart selling a wide-screen HP Vista Premium laptop for $800. AMD Dual-Core CPU. 1 GB RAM. 120 GB HDD, GeForce Go graphics and a DVD burner. HP Pavilion Entertainment Laptop
Someone elsewhere pointed out that since Vista was released there have been approximately 50 million PCs sold. So, selling 40 million Vista licenses isn't that great.
Look, if you want to be an anti-linux flamer, fine. But please stop using arguments from 10 years ago.
My wireless mouse, wireless gamepad, digital camera, digital video camera, printer, wireless network cards, graphics cards, and sound cards on five machines all work, flawlessly, out of the box, on almost every Linux distro I've tried for the past 12 months. Right now, Linux supports more hardware than Vista.
There are plenty of good reasons to criticize Linux, but complaining about drivers just makes you look like an idiot.
Maybe not
My first thoughts: How many of those licenses represent Vista licenses bought to run XP on corporate systems only because the corporate contracts don't let them buy XP licenses but do allow downgrading a Vista license to XP? And how many represent bunching of the sale of an entire year's worth of licenses to companies like Dell and HP into the first quarter to make the numbers look good?
If the 40M numbers are correct and the 78% figure is correct for the premium version, then most of those must be new computer sales as many of the premium features won't work on dated hardware. So, that would mean that somewhere between 31M and 40M new computers have been purchased in the last 100 days. And yet, I wonder why the hardware manufactures aren't reporting these record sales? Maybe it's because they don't exist!
Microsoft has the habit of including licenses shipped to manufactures, even if they haven't been sold, along with the free upgrades for those who purchased computers with XP and all the corporate sales with Vista installed that were wiped and had XP reinstalled. In other words, their numbers are meaningless.
Microsoft is just trying to convince people that Vista is doing well. However, all one has to do is track their stock price over the last 100 days to see that it is not the case (taking into account the blips whenever they make an announcement like this and then the price settles back to where it was pre-announcement). The financial analysts who buy major blocks of stock aren't swayed by these kinds of reports. They look at data that can be substantiated.
Microsoft can report whatever they want in press releases, maybe they really are selling 40M new copies of Vista, however, if they are, it hasn't added much to the worth of the company's stock. Microsoft's numbers might be suspect, but the stock value is a pretty good indicator of what the real impact of Vista has had.
Then again, maybe Microsoft was using Vista to tabulate the data and just discovered a new math bug. But really, if people want to believe the numbers that Microsoft puts out in press releases, well all I can say is that I have this bridge for sale in Brooklyn, if anyone is interested.
I purchased 2 copies of WinXP MCE to 2 HTPCs that I built. These both included a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium. I filled out the paper work and have received both copies of Vista Home Premium, but have not installed either one. Both are still in the case and one of them hasn't had the shrink wrap removed.
I wonder in MS is counting these along with every other copy that was acquired in similar fashion, but has not been used.
Funny, I looked around at home, saw 3 vista boxes and not one mac. I guess Apple should just call it quits since it's obvious they haven't sold a single computer.
How many of those licenses were purchased not for Vista, but to install XP because they won't sell XP licenses anymore? My company has ~300 Vista licenses. We have 5 systems running Vista. For testing. And we have like 19 critical programs that do not run in Vista. I never will understand MS's desire to force crap down our throats. Vista will be awesome once everyone gets their stuff running with it and MS releases a SP or two. Until then, it will not be deployed in our production environment.
"The will to be stupid is an incredibly powerful force." -- Miles Vorkosigan (Lois McMaster Bujold)
"With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users." .... and only one day to find out it barely installs on their 3 year old Dell that was "certified Vista ready" by the Vista readiness tool, and one hour to rip out half of their hair installing it.
brian botkiller "Condensing fact from the vapor of nuance" - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
"it never was, never was meant to be and never will be a mass market operating system used by the naive users."
I believe a few million children will soon be disagreeing with you
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8 weeks to beat Mac users
Then they'll spend another 8 weeks clicking [C]ancel or [A]llow? popups
... smart enough to know that by "sell", Billy-Bob meant shipped, or dupilicated, or licensed, or any combination thereof.
I'm guessing his 40 million sales include:
- retail boxes
- pc manufacturer burns/ships
- company used copies
- VLK's
- any other outlet for which they may have received at least 1 cent in revenue from.
The bigger questions for me are:
- What % of Microsoft's employees use Vista at work on a day-to-day basis?
- How many PIRATED copies are in use?
I bought a new laptop back in January before Vista was released and was given a coupon for a free "Vista Home Premium" upgrade. Needless to say, some lucky bacteria/worms in a landfill somewhere will be having a tasty snack at MS's expense.
IMHO, no one would post this article for any other reason than to whip the slashdot crowd into a frenzy. No one can verify the 40M number so it's not even useful information. Give it a rest!!!!
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
What I see is Walmart selling a wide-screen HP Vista Premium laptop for $800.
Great, but is anyone buying it? Once they buy it do they keep Vista? The answer looks like no and no. Vista is bad and M$'s push is hurting PC sales.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm not a lover of MS, but I'll give them credit, Vista is a damn good OS, much better than that POS XP, which was by far the worst iteration of windows ever made. Of course, it took MS an extra 5 years to get Vista out, so they have no excuses for buggy crapware. In the 6 weeks or so that I've had Vista running, it has not crashed once. Every now and then I have rebooted because a program required it. But no crashes. It runs fast (with 3.6 gigs of ram), clean, smooth, and does what it's supposed to. My old XP couldn't even delete files without crashing. I'm sure other people are having good experiences with Vista, too. Sure some software is not compatable, but that will be fixed soon, and everything you truly need works just fine (except Peerguardian2). So, I'm glad it is selling. When society has an OS that doesn't crash every few minutes, it stimulates the economy and lubricates the mechanics of commerce. Hell vista might even pay for itself out of an increase in GDP if enough people replace their XP with it.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Update: As Endpoint Technologies Associates analyst Roger Kay notes, the 40 million is the number of copies Microsoft sold to the channel, not the number of copies sold by the channel and directly to customers. http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=438
Record profits in the last year were not because of Vista or their OS division. As for fastest selling OS in history, would depend on how you measure it. Even if the 40M is true, what is that as a percentage of installed computers, since the larger installed base would mean more upgrades and replacements, too. It's like saying a movie is record breaking, however there are 4 times the screens today than 20 years ago. So how do you compare?
To really check the impact of Vista, one only has to track Microsoft's stock price, which is the true value of the company. While up, it's nothing spectacular which would indicate that Vista isn't doing as well as Microsoft is trying to make everyone believe. Investors don't buy hype, they look at results and if the results aren't there, the stock price shows it.
Based on stock prices, it's not really getting much better for them, at least the investors don't seem to thinks so (at least not to the extent that Microsoft's marketing department likes to paint).
thats funny if you take into consideration all those posers that state Vista is bombing. ROFLMAO more like, "I am too stupid to learn to adjust and have too much prejudice to even try"
Surprisingly, my first Vista related experience was to install the Business upgrade over one of the more basic Vista packages already installed on a client's machine. But I couldn't. It said that, despite this being an upgrade for 2003, XP, and VISTA, her version was not supported for the upgrade (the box neglects to tell you what exactly is compatible.) So, my client had to purchase Vista Ultimate. Surprise surprise: "the more expensive premium editions accounted for 78 percent of Vista sales [because trying to get the other versions to play nice was too much hassle]" - fixed
The Microsoft Technet covering comments on what the register calls "Vista's Long Goodbye".
Being a purist, I always considered Windows to be an "Operating environment" as it was once marketed rather than an "Operating System" because an operating system comes with a functional compiler. Certainly though, you don't have to be a purist to think that an operating environment should be able to move or delete files to be considered feature complete.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Assuming $50 income after all the costs taken out, that is $2 Billion in 100 days. Double it if the income is $100 per license. Anyone has an idea how much MS makes per license of its OS sold?
Remember, every PC sold by most of the major vendors include a license (regardless of the OS eventually used on it)... What would be more important is the numbers of unique activations.... Where's that number? 4,000? 40,000? 400,000? Let's see that number (with the info to back it up)... Otherwise this is just optimistic marketing drivel.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Still, I think the sobriquet "groupthink" is demeaning to the slashdot culture and the people who create that culture. It implies that weak willed people are swayed to think a certain way by the group. The truth is that people who think a certain way choose to stay and contribute more frequently than people who think oppositely. Few here express opinions just to fit in, rather, they had those opinions already and have stayed at a place where those opinions are welcomed.
Perhaps that is all that is really meant by "groupthink." But the connotations of the word are different. Let's analyze this according to the causes and symptoms of groupthink as listed at wikipedia.
Untrue. Slashdot is not cohesive. the members are not particularly close.
Untrue. Outside experts are welcomed and rewarded consistently for their contributions.
Strong Leadership? Don't make me laugh.
All completely untrue. The leadership is nondirective, our backgrounds and ideology are diverse, and the site is about outside sources of information.
Point 1 doesn't exist here. Point two happens on occasion, for instance warnings about Linux or Mac security might be met with skepticism. Point three happens on occasion i.e. "Information wants to be free and so does my entertainment." Point four, well, I can't decide. Are Gates and Balmer as evil as people here make them out to be? Maybe I'm already too influenced by groupthink to make an unbiased judgment here. Points five & six are the points you propose to address in your experiment, and I think you may be right, moderation acts as a pressure to conform and may shut down ideas that deviate from the apparent consensus. I don't think there is any illusion of unanimity here, not least because of all the shouting about "groupthink." I also don't see anything much
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There are FOUR Vistas!
Id like to see some proof of actual sales, not some estimated value.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Microsoft doesn't reveal consumer and retail sales of Windows licenses, only license sales to OEMs. They did the same for Windows XP. Microsoft doesn't want people to know that retail sales are down 60% from Windows XP and that Vista demand is so low, Dell has reinstated XP as an option on its machines.
As for "beating" Mac numbers, Britney Spears also sells more CDs in a year than Mozart concerts do. If that's the kind of victory that Microsoft fanboys want to trumpet, go ahead. Meanwhile, Vista is a flop.
"Sufferin' succotash."
They gotcha by the hook! Don't let go now! Reel 'em in boys.
How many Microsoft funded performance studies show Windows faster than everything else on the planet? All of them you say? Hmmm...
Keep eating that cookie, boy.
They did't "get in trouble" since it's not an illegal practice, the SEC just announced the fact that they noticed Microsoft was using the practice.
I forgot to mention this. Microsoft refuses to give out the figures for Vista's WGA activation. That would give a good estimate of the actual number of users running Vista. I know Microsoft enthusiasts are absolutely desperate to spin any positive press for the Vista debacle, but it just doesn't fly with people anymore.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I own a computer store where I do installs, upgrades, repairs, custom builds, etc. On my main machine, which people see day in and day out as they enter my store is a wide screen high def 24" LCD flatscreen. On that machine I have Ubuntu linux with Beryl. Every customer that comes into the store gets a little treat of eye candy and then are told that Ubuntu is free and so is all the software installed on the computer.
I also have an Microsoft Action Pack Subscription. I need XP for certain games. In the subscription is a license for 10 xp pro 64 bit, 10 xp pro 32 bit, and 10 Vista business. Now the Vista business licenses are upgrades so I'm expected to upgrade each of those XP boxes. The reality of it is this. It isn't going to happen. I'm not going to upgrade those XP boxes any time soon and most of my 20+ computers are going to stick with the OS they were sold with unless I need to change them and in that case they'll get Ubuntu installed on them.
I upgraded a single computer with Vista only because I need to know about how to resolve issues with Vista when a customer brings their machine into the store. I also need to know how everything is organized. Other than that I have no need for those Vista licenses and they'll probably remain unused until the subscription expires--which will be in 6 months or so.
Microsoft was so cheap they couldn't even give me the Ultimate version in the action pack subscription unless I was willing to dish out 50% more for the actual subscription cost to upgrade. Then when the subscription expires I loose that money as well.
Of the machines that come into my store I have only seen a total of 3 with Vista in the first 100 days. I have had customers ask me about Vista and I explain what the WGN and WGA facilities are and how it equates to spying on them and then I make sure they understand the analogy of "walmart employees knocking on your door to search your home for paid for goods that you purchased at their store since you may be a regular customer". When they understand that analogy that's usually curtains for any Vista sale. I then tell them about how they drafted the hardware manufacturers into implementing this DRM technology and how the DRM is a locking mechanism to keep them from buying or investing in other systems. I give them the example of Apple's iPod and the music bought through iTunes. When they understand that they understand I'm trying to protect them and their privacy.
I assure them that Linux is the only product that will forever ensure their privacy and will never be used as a tool to lock them into a specific vendor.
Microsoft has been acting up. They've been a bad fat bully and people are really starting to despise them. You don't reward a fat bully by giving them candy and patting them on the back. You take out the strap and you don't spare the whip.
Microsoft knows they can just ignore any attempt at correction because they have certain politicians in their back pocket. They also know that they are a monopoly and no one can challege them in any short period of time. But sooner or later all these things are going to backfire and they are going to run out of new ways of getting around the laws. Sooner or later alternatives such as the Mac or Linux will pick up steam and Microsoft won't be able to stop the ball from rolling.
When the courts force Microsoft to disclose which IP is in question then we'll have that 800 pound chimpanzee off our backs and we can move on so that regular people can use Linux to do those things they want to do.
And frankly the guy that stated that Linux does nothing is so full of shit. When I read that I was like: what planet does this guy come from? What have they been feeding him there? He has no clue where Linux is and he's still opening his mouth. I wonder if he understands the difference between a copyright and a patent.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
... did not contribute to that number.
Oh I feel so lonely using linux... Am I the last linux user?
Bill, you're full of shit.
Your company has a monopoly. That's the reason.
Nearly all vendors of computer hardware but Apple force Vista down the throats of users by making it the only operating system available on their new machine.
Just try and by anything from dell, HP, Gateway etc without Vista on it. Especially a laptop. None of the new laptops will let you pick anything else.
Question everything
Two months ago I was working as a consultant with a Durable Medical Equipement company. It's a small business, 7 employees and about a 800k in sales a year. Their computer system and software was still running on DOS. (at least server end) and as they were going for new accredidation they realized the old software just wasn't going to make the requirements. The software company was still in business and we chatted with their support team a couple times and they expressly told us "THIS SOFTWARE WILL NOT WORK WITH VISTA". This was back in January. They liked dealing with Dell. I'm a Mac guy myself, but in these kind of situations, one is stuck with the option of windows...or windows. They were a small business and about half their sales is through public aid. Anyone dealing with the government knows that you'll get your money....eventually. They were waiting for a payment to come in before they had the extra cash to purchase the server, two new workstations, and software. In total it was about $15,000. ($10,000 of that being the software). They didn't get their check until March. By then Dell wasn't selling anything but Vista on their machines and the software vendor hated dealing with HP (so much so that they simply don't.) I don't do service contracts. I simply provide advice acting more like a CTO to small businesses helping them sort through the FUD and answer any questions...and tell them when the sales people are full of *#$&#. Personally I told them to go with DELL because they were the only ones I knew would still be around in five years to offer support. But what was the install options on the new workstations? Well Vista and um....vista. So we ended up buying the entire system through Gateway. Not my first choice for several reasons, but they still offered PC's with XP pre-installed. Install went without a hitch and we sent the old box out to the company's lab to recover all 20 years worth of records and it was the first time I have ever done a major system port without loosing a single record. Frankly that was one of the smoothest transitions on that end. But still Dell was doing their same old game of "Only the latest Operating system from MS." and that cost them a sale. I got a lot of calls from businesses asking, "Do I need Vista?" With the chances that some of their software won't run, my answer was (and still is) no. Stick with XP at least for another year. You don't buy an MS OS until Service Pack 1 is released. It's just like my true mac head friends that want to preorder the iPhone today or purchased an AppleTV. There is no way in hell I'm buying the first generation of anything Apple. (That being said, I've been using a Mac Mini with LCD TV since it has a DVI plug in for almost a year now). I've been cut enough times, that I stay behind the bleeding edge these days.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I must admit I am not the biggest fan of Microsoft's historic dodgy and wholly untested releases but you guys seem to have a real problem with Microsoft. I like anyone else enjoy and wholly support open source progression but i fail to understand the constant barrage of criticism against the MS OS's. Why? If Linux was so successful then it would be competing at the level that MS is - it has improved, is more user friendly and more widely supported and handled by private companies such as Red Hat but still MS are the top dog. Has it ever occured that if other OSs had the same level of usability and usefulness as XP/Vista etc then free market force would have come into effect and they would be competing? The fact remains that MS OS's are the best across all areas of the computing spectrum - that fact is plain and simple. Half the guys on this site have the approach of a poor politician by trying to potray factual figures differently. Even if 50 million PCs have been deployed since the sale of 40 million lienses and MS has a monopoloy - they had to get there from scratch in the first place - much where Linux is now. You all sound so incredibly jealous of MS's success yet have no factual basis to support any of your claims. Why is it that everyone is obsessed with MS bashing?
Remember, these are sales of OS versions.
Everyone who, like my entire shop, buys One Linux License and installs the same configuration on all 100 servers, counts as One Sale.
Everyone who buys a Windows laptop and then installs Ubuntu Linux on top of it, counts as a Windows install, but NOT as an Ubuntu sale (since most just got the disks from cheapbytes.
Everyone who buys a Mac laughs at the Windows installs, since they live virus-free anyway.
Those who believe statistics without analyzing the underlying precepts, are doomed to live in an artificial world that does not resemble reality. Have fun with your pretty unicorns, but don't be upset if I harsh your mellow.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... 40 million PC users re-install their old XP licenses or Linux after either missing out on the Vista experience (due to 512MB main memory, 32MB gfx card) and Vista disintegrating while trying to install a driver for hardware older than 6 months ...
Good points, but how to put the kibosh on Vista?
Have it date my ex-girlfriend Stacey. If she doesn't destroy its confidence and turn it into an alcoholic, nothing will.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Count me as one less Vista license. I'm still using Windows 2000 out of protest. My next planned upgrade will be to Kubuntu.
BFD, we all know Microsoft has a monopoly and controls the PC distribution channels. Did anybody think Microsoft would not require OEM's to pre-load MS Windows Vista?
;-)
It's pretty much the monopoly gravy train in action and if you looked at any other period in time who many PC's shipped pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows, you'd see fairly similar numbers. They might get some boost in sales considering they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars marketing this "new" version of MS Windows and we all know that there is a sucker born every minute... but where're talking worldwide so it's more like a sucker born every second IMO.
Let's see, a sucker born every second,,,,100 days....
100 days * 24 hours per day * 60 minutes per hour * 60 seconds in a minute....
That's 8.5 million new WinV suckers in 100 days. Sounds about right.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
[
]
It's some whitespace you can use in your next post. No, don't thank me, I've got plenty.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Why the threats against open source?
Seems like Linux and Open source have such a small share of the market and that software pirating is so rampant (two other articles I have read in the last two days...) - coupled with this glowing sales report should make Ballmer and the shareholders very happy....
So, how come Bill is saying everything is wonderful and Steve says there are pirates at the gate?
With Hilf talking about about how GNU/Linux does not exist, and Gutierrez and Smith spreading FUD about patent violations of free software, one might get the idea that Microsoft is having trouble competing.
So now they naturally put out their best spin on the Vista disappointment--what convenient timing.
> With around 400,000 licenses a day new Vista users will take 8
> weeks to beat Mac users [and] 4 days to exceed Mac sales
8 weeks = 56 days. 56 / 4 = 18. So there are 4 Windows Vista sales' worth of Mac sales (per year)? But it'll take 8 weeks to sell as many licenses as total Macs in use? Hence either Mac sales are dropping off rapidly the past year, or the average Mac user is using an 18 year old computer.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'd venture to guess most people just have windows + office. So it might cut into the new office flavor. What other software would your typical consumer buy? Games? Direct x 10 is going to force gamers to buy Vista.
I'm not really trying to argue as I'm more curious.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
As they say, this is another instance of lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The degree to which M$ has tried to juggle the numbers just shows how very desperate they are.
Upgrade coupons sure as hell are NOT legitimate sales, let alone legitimate installed copies, yet they include them in their reported numbers.
Outside of that, the vast majority of the remaining non-coupon copies are bulk sales to vendors, and even on that front, Vista is failing. The REAL indicator is that Dell has had so many requests NOT to have Vista that they recanted their switch to Vista-only sales, and are now taking orders again for new hardware with XP installed INSTEAD of Vista, when that's what their customers want.
Things aren't pretty in Vistaville, and this is just more lipstick for the pig.
All it takes is a quick look at the aggressively pro-M$ language of the story bullet to see this is clearly posted by a M$ shill, apologist, or brainwashed drone.
Did we really need the "Vista beats Linux in three days" bullshit?
We KNOW Microsoft has 95-97 percent of the market. So what the fuck else is new?
Finally, this is just Microsoft spin. We KNOW that Vista is selling like a dog. We KNOW that most of the systems out there older than two years can't run it well - unless you're running the Basic version.
So cut the bullshit please. Microsoft is desperate because Vista is a dog, so they're putting out FUD like patent threats and spinning the numbers.
READ MY LIPS. ANYTHING PUT OUT BY MICROSOFT IS A LIE. MICROSOFT LIES. EVERY ONE WHO WORKS THERE LIES.
Period.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I bought a Dell Inspiron laptop as a graduation present for my daughter precisely *because* it came with XP instead of Vista.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Ronald writes "In the first 100 days since its launch in Jan 30 McPizza has sold an astounding 40 million slices. The Cheeseburgler gives the credit to accelerating consumer shift to pepperoni which has made it the fastest selling fast food in history. Surprisingly the more expensive triple cheese editions accounted for 78 percent of McPizza sales. With around 400,000 slices a day new McPizza eaters will take 8 weeks to beat Dominoes eater, 4 days to exceed Little Ceasars sales and 3 days to exceed every deep dish vendor in Chicago."
Twitter, we all know this is you. Exact same writing style and you put a period at the end of your Subject lines. And yes, I am employed by M$ to stalk you.
BTW, M$ is making a cool billion dollars a month in cash profit. Sales/revenue are skyrocketing, both on the desktop and server markets. No amount of spin will change those facts.
Why do you post with different accounts?
I submitted this story, linking to a better article, yesterday but I guess Anonymous Cowards don't get much respect here.
Well, they WOULDN'T ever release a real (or even mildly realistic) number of genuine Vista purchases (i.e. retail vs OEM), in no form whatsoever, because then:
;)
* we'd see that retail versions are not being sold much, and out of the sold ones, a significant percentage end up NOT being used much
* we'd see that a vast majority of "licences sold" are actually OEM installs, and even those get "reverted" to XP or something else
I mean, WHO THE HELL, in his right mind, would willingly and permanently cripple his computer NOW, when:
* they know the system is still unstable as fuck
* they know the driver support sucks
* basically, they hear that Vista sucks from everybody that has Vista and his firends
* the only good reason to buy Vista was DX10, and THAT specific reason is (for better or worse) almost null and void nowadays, and might remain so
As for "promises made" vs "promises kept", pretty much each and every promise Microsoft made or at least implied it might have made has been broken to the Moon and back, and came back in a hellbasket to bite the user's nose off. Am I angry at Vista ? You BET. Why ? Because it DOES suck as much as everybody tells you it does.
Give it time to amass enough complaints, give it enough time to create huge outcries from people left and right, give it time to start getting replaced by alternatives that suddendly become appealing in comparison... basically, give it enough time so Redmond starts panicking due to overwhelming pressure, and ends up doing what it SHOULD have done since before launch day.
Sure, give it a year or two, THEN it might be worth buying.
But not today, you fucking morons.
Vista : just say NO... everybody else does it anyway
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I bet a lot of those licenses went to corporate OEM purchases.
We brought a shit load of Dell computers that came with Vista licenses. Microsoft got their money from Dell. All those purchases are on the Microsoft accounting books.
Then we imaged the new PCs with the the corporate XP license.
Number of Vista purchases: lots
Number of computers running Vista: 0
Ability to buy a Dell system for corporate use without any OS license: pipe dream
with those 39,999,000 copies of Vista.
2) More PCs sold. How many copies of XP were sold last year. Extrapolate it to this period, and see if it's more. If not, Microsoft aren't "getting better". They're standing still or losing out whilst Linux and Mac are catching up on them.
Seriously, how many people do you know that have bought a copy of Vista? Either an off-the-shelf copy, or a new PC because they really wanted Vista? I know 1 person running Vista, and he likes it. Everyone else I know that's seen it running is sticking to XP.
"...8 weeks to beat Mac users, 4 days to exceed Mac sales and 3 days to exceed Linux desktop users." My website statistics puts the number of Linux users ahead of Mac users by more than 66%, so I found it interesting that it will take less time to exceed Linux users than Mac users. However, my website primarily promotes hardware that is more likely to be Linux compatible than Mac compatible, so it would follow that my numbers are eschew.
Oh dear. It doesn't matter how many drivers are "in the kernel" (NetBSD may have even more than Linux at this point).
It matters if a typical user can buy a new piece of hardware, take it home and have it working via a driver CD.
What happens in Linux land? "Oh, that hardware is supported in kernel 2.6.20. What are you running? Ubuntu 6.06? Well, you'll have to update your kernel then. No, you can't just update from Ubuntu because they only issue security patches for 6.06's 2.6.15 kernel. Instead you'll need to go to www.kernel.org and... tarball... extract... make menuconfig... a billion other arcane instructions."
Do you see? The lack of a stable binary ABI in the Linux kernel causes major problems. I've seen the above scenario countless times. Sure, the absolute latest released-yesterday kernel may support the new gadgets on the shelves, but if you're using a distro from a few months ago, you're screwed, unless you have the ability to roll your own kernel (not practical for most normal users) or your distro magically produces new kernels for all its old releases. Or you're going to suggest upgrading the entire OS? Yeah, businesses and home users love doing that every six months...
This is the problem. Your comment doesn't make sense in the real world. If you actually go out and see Linux used in businesses and homes, you'll see that *this* is a major hindrance in the adoption of Linux.
I thought there was also this thing called "popularity contest"? I'm not sure how that works, but I hope it's more than just updates through the automated system. I hope this because if so, every apt-proxy I setup only counts as one Linux installation for however many debian-based (or ubuntu-based) systems it fetches updates for.
Offtopic question: My apt-proxy seems to have a rather annoying bug where it hangs when more than one client attempts to do anything with it at once -- which kind of defeats the purpose of apt-proxy, and makes me want to go to a more generic proxy like Polipo or Squid. Anyone know an easy fix for this?
I do, except where I can use Linux for games. I like making sure all the shiny Half-Life 2 effects work, so I use Windows for Steam games, but I like not having some Windows keylogger intercept my MMO passwords, so I use Linux for any MMO I play.
Interestingly enough, I find that if you can get users to stick with it long enough to make a fair assessment -- figure however long it would take them to really get used to OS X after using Windows, or vice versa -- they often come away with at least a few features they really like about Linux. This happens no matter who they are.
That may or may not make Linux better in their eyes, and many go back to Windows, but to suggest that it has nothing to offer a "naive user" is just as stupid as to suggest that Wine works for everything.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
s/melamine/rice/g
How many of those licenses are due to people buying a new Dell and deciding to go with Vista, rather than purchasing XP retail?
I mean, yes, they are forcing it on us as best they can, and there are still enough people who don't like it that Dell is giving us XP again. I really don't see a better time for Dell to ship Ubuntu, either. My recommendation to many people is: "Vista is likely to piss you off at least as much as Ubuntu is while you're learning it, and while people are rushing to release Vista-compatible versions of everything. If you're so determined to put yourself through the pain of a new OS, you may as well install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu), so that at least the next time around, you won't be paying for an upgrade."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
One can always hope that at least a few developers are going to flip MS the bird and go to OpenGL instead, where they can gain all the benefits of some next-gen graphics library (OpenGL 2.0?), but instead of forcing users to upgrade their whole OS, they'll only need to force us to update our video drivers.
Not likely, I know, but we can hope...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Okay,
Of the 40m licences how many are licences which came with a new PC?
Of the ones supplied with a new PC to firms how many firms left Vista on rather than reverting to XP?
Of the remainder how many still have an MS OS on them (we recently had about 10 PC's for a client supplied with vista, they left with Linux on them - I know we could have got them barebones pc's but they wanted a named (not dell) brand)?
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
I am so fucking tired about hearing how Vista is a failure on Slashdot. Vista is here, it's here to stay, and most of us will probably be running it at home or at work in 3 years.
It gets old. Really old. It doesn't matter how much you hate the product. I don't fucking care what you think, I use the product on multiple systems every day and it gets the job done.
Don't like Vista? Use Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, XP, 2000, 98, or whatever else you want. But the product has been in development for over 5 years and it has been on the market for over three months. Stop bitching.
Windows Me failed because it used the crappy old Windows 98 kernel and was released at the same time as the much more reliable Windows 2000. It was on the market for a total of 13 months before XP was released. You may think Me was a flop, but it wasn't by any relaistic metric. Me was a stopgap product designed to fill the gap between 98 and XP, and Microsoft made plenty of money on what was essentially a warmed-over Windows 98.
There's no OS that's coming out in 10 months to supplant Vista. There's no new "business" OS that it's competing against. It's only real competititon is Windows XP, and XP sales to OEMs end at the end of 2007. Like it or not, if you want to buy a PC with Windows, soon it will only be available with Vista.
Trash the numbers all you want. But when was the last time that another software company sold 40 million copies of ANYTHING in 3 months?
ITriedToUseTheWhiteSpace,ButThere'sNothingBetweenT heBrackets.NowWhatDoIDo?IfYouSayYouAreGoingToShare ,YouShouldKeepYourPromise.
I don't know a single Vista user........and Bill knows so many.
I feel sad.....
now tell me, how long will it take to have 40 billion vista users?
well, in another 52 years you might be ready to learn about logarithmic functions which describe windows adoption better...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Maybe we should have a survey to see how many people have Vista or know 1-5 ppl with Vista, 5+ ppl with vista etc.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Then you better get on the horn with RMS and tell him he's won the OS wars, because I just got back from a testing lab where I was surrounded by IBM ThinkCentres running Fedora Core, and the only Windows box in sight was my XP laptop.
Of all the lame arguments you've used to rationalize Microsoft's impending doom, I think this one takes the cake.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Clueless Windoze user Macthorpe writes:
I'm surprised you could find the four you claim.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I've never needed or been tempted to use another account on Slashdot (or anywhere), but I'm thinking either you are simply not competent enough to tell them apart anymore, or shilling is just too damn difficult. Which is it?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
The far more interesting number would be, how many of those licenses have been activated?
Vista is force fed to people buying a new computer. Now, when you cram something down someone's throat, it's easy to sell him even crap. IE/OE, anyone? But how many of those licenses have actually survived the first hour after powerup?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My company ships Windows as part of our products. At first, MS was forcing us to upgrade whether it was good for our business or not. Now, the renegotiated agreement with MS requires us to buy Vista, even if we later "downgrade" and ship the same XP code as before. MS gets the number, and we get left alone. It's like a protection racket.
How do you expect people to believe that you could type out that huge comment, but was unable to ask Google how Ubuntu works wrt. partitions and dual boot?
It's not as though there aren't enough answers:
Results 1 - 10 of about 573,000 for ubuntu dual boot ntfs windows. (0.08 seconds)
Do yourself a favor and do a tiny bit of research and I'm sure that you will be able to set up that ubuntu dual boot.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
You know reading through this I must admitt I'm a little ashamed of my slacker/hacker brothers. No matter how you look at it, vista sold a lot of copies. Now I know a large portion of us on this thread are off in our own OS world. OS's we chose for one of many reasons. Now if I were a Plan 9 user, linux would seem mainstream. As a linux user myself, Mac users seem more major market to me. But guess what, Vista will own 90% of the market in a couple years. Why, cause they are bitches. As are dell, gateway, hp and whichever other companies don't have the balls to do anything but swing from microsoft's nuts. When joe computer buyer (mind you not joe user) goes to buy a computer he's going do as the market tells him to. He'll get home and plug everything in himself or maybe get one of those $8/hr geek squad guys to come over. Then maybe he'll install that office package he paid another couple hundred for. Soon he'll find some porn on his ie7, and probably actually pay for it.
Now why do any of you give a shit that this guy isn't picking the same product as you? Guess what, he also doesn't watch the same tv shows, listen to the same music, read the same books if any at all, christ the fucker doesn't even speak the same language. Microsoft is part of the american consumer landscape. Guess what, slashdot is not. Even if a linux distro popped it's head out of obscurity, none of us would be using it. Now you mac guys are your own breed which predates my kind, so sorry if I have no analogy for you. I guess my point is that we are neither validated or invalidated by our slice in the market. On the same note microsoft is not now validated because everyone uses them. Mcdonalds is not lobster in Portland, Maine; Pepsi Cola is not a North Californian wine; Micosoft is not innovative software. Nothing for us to be insecure about.
It's important to understand that Microsoft's customers are the channels. That is, the end-user is NOT the customer. The customers are the OEMs that install Windows on machines prior to sale to end-users, some wholesalers who sell shrinkwrapped boxes on, large corporate customers who buy site licences, etc.
In the computer industry there is a well trodden tradition of boosting sales figures by stuffing the channel. What this means is that you sell copies to the channel, and these are registered as sales, but many of these end-up in warehouses, not with end-users.
The article is very unclear on whether these numbers represent end-users - i.e. activated copies - which is unlikely in my opinion, or licences (which may well be sales to the channel).
There's little doubt that in the medium term - over the next 2 years or so - Vista will be successful. That's because service pack 1 will iron out teething problems and XP will be retired. However, in the short term, most indications, except for these dubious sales figures, seem to indicate that Vista is not selling like hot cakes.
I always like to think of it as whether products are like colour screens or colour printers. When you had a black and green screen, the benefit of colour screens were obvious - if you could, you went and bought a colour display. In contrast, colour printers are not that much better than black and white. Most people replaced black and white printers with colour when they bought a new computer.
Vista isn't a colour screen.
At least in the german state Thuringia state-owned universities have to buy vista licenses for use of new installed Windows XP. /downgrade/. ;)
A contract between Microsoft and the state gives universities the right to
The last 5 licenses we bought this year to install Windows XP on computers which had been Linux-only (going from serious workload to typing work only
were Vista licenses.
If it weren't for openoffice-incompatible MS Office documents (approx. 8 out of 10) sent by academics we wouldn't be using windows at all.
Systemadministrator
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
A major hinderance?
Mice, graphics, networking JUST WORKS. You may not benefit from the "whiz-bang 3D super gaming feature". On the other hand, if this IS a concern to you, it puts you in very rarified company. Indeed, most people just use light word processing, maybe a digital camera, webcam, the web, and email. They want to play music and DVDs.
AND THAT'S IT. Are you wondering why Microsoft and others are planning "software as web service"? I will let you in on a really dark secret... Windows 98 would be "good enough" for most people, coupled with Openoffice.org (or Office 97) and Firefox, if it is behind a NAT router.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061