Vista's 40 Million License Sales In Context

Overly Critical Guy writes "Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers. The myriad of factors involved in determining success in the market makes Microsoft's constant comparisons to Windows XP less reliable as a growth indicator — particularly with Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses. 'HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ... If Microsoft wasn't so hung up on XP comparisons as the benchmark, it could really demonstrate that Vista sales are increasing. The first 20 million figure really represented four months of sales, and that could have been positive data because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments. For free! Instead of making that point, Microsoft got carried away with making comparisons back to XP.'"

Comments

Did the world end ?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I have one thing to say for microsoft selling 40 million vista licences in a week :

Well done

Because it is well done. I'm sure they're not playing entirely fair, but still, it's their success, they built it, they earned the reward for it. And it does look nice. Let them have their reward.

I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be new around here

Re:Did the world end ?

[vivaoporto]

I have one thing to say for Microsoft selling 40 million vista licences in a week:

Holly crap!

Re:Did the world end ?

[nutshell42]

And the harder MS's PR department spins the figures to proclaim total success, the less people will believe Steve (Chair-throwing Steve, not Turtleneck Steve) when he calls for more DRM to stop the rampant piracy of MS intellectual property which threatens the very kind of revolutionary innovation we've seen in Vista (like a 3D accelerated Solitaire).

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft.

WTF? This is Slashdot DAMNIT!

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

It wasn't well done, or earned. It was blackmail pure and simple. Look, in the course of contract negotiations, all of the major PC vendors want the best possible price for an OS license. In order to get that best price, Microsoft has, in the past, forced the vendor to purchase a license for every machine sold, regardless of the OS to be installed. Even if you ordered your Dell or Gateway with RedHat/Ubuntu/whatever pre-loaded, the vendor would have to purchase a Windows license for that machine. If they didn't agree to those terms, they didn't get their price break, and may have been threatened with being left out of the OEM program altogether, meaning they'd have to buy full retail versions for each machine. No vendor could survive having to pay $200-$300 for Windows, and more for Office to include on their $600 pc.

Re:Did the world end ?

[eln]

You know who else didn't care about bashing Microsoft? Hitler.

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

The above information was obtained directly from an ex-employee of an OEM that was involved in the contract negotiations with Microsoft.

Re:Did the world end ?

[loconet]

"I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft."

As a Linux user, who also makes a living out of using Linux as a tool every day, I don't find myself sharing the same feeling. When Microsoft threatens not only my work, my income, but also my way of life, I can't help to see the need to see Microsoft completely destroyed. It's a funny thing, this "evolved" survival instinct. It is hard to ignore.

Re:Did the world end ?

[nine-times]

I don't feel that Microsoft needs to be destroyed, either. It'd be nice if they started doing some useful work, though. Or at least quit sabotaging other people's work.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Gablar]

I have a vista license. Microsoft together with my school were so infinitely gracious that they decided to give away 200 licenses for CS students( keep in mind that my school payed for those licenses, they were not gifts, they were just highly discounted). Not that I know all two hundred students but the buzz is that vista is crap, and I personally don't know anyone who installed it and didn't revert to XP.` SO of those 40 million copies, how many are real users? I can't help but to wonder.

Re:Did the world end ?

[heinousjay]

If you're really that unable to adapt to your surrounding, evolution didn't really work with you.

Re:Did the world end ?

[aarroneous]

>>I have one thing to say for microsoft selling 40 million vista licences in a week : No one said anything about selling 40 million licenses in a week. Stop starting idiotic rumors. The 40 million number is total number of licenses "sold" since they started last year, including all the free upgrades. The truth is that Vista is a flop, and no amount of spin will change that fact.

Re:Did the world end ?

[WhiplashII]

As a human, we are finally able to force our surroundings to adapt to us, rather than us adapting to our surroundings. As nature gave us this, it is natural - and shows a marvelous work of evolution (or god, if you want).

So seeking to destroy Microsoft when it is being annoying is completely natural, and in line with the actions of a highly evolved being.

Makes me worry about you, frankly...

Re:Did the world end ?

[someone1234]

>But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft. Me neither, they'll destroy themselves. I don't know if the 40m is good or bad, and i don't care at all. I care with this new fangled patent threat, it shows that they feel cornered and unsatisfied with their Vista sales.

Re:Did the world end ?

[loconet]

Nice try but no.

Evolution does not happen in a human being's life time. It takes thousands to millions of years. Litigation with enough money can take a few years (maybe months given the right $ figure) and so it will affect me and my children. The natural reaction is then to see that threat destroyed.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"or god, if you want"

Not really, god isn't a synonym for evolution. It's a synonym for make believe.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one thing to say for microsoft selling 40 million vista licences in a week :

Well done

Not really. These are OEM licenses, not consumer sales. As the submitter stated, Microsoft won't even tell us how many actual Vista activations there are, which would really tell us the Vista userbase size.

I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft.

They want to destroy Linux. They're current plan of attack is through patents. You'd better wake up and start fighting, or they're going to roll right over you.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, if all PC manf. (or even just dell) refuse to play with MS, MS is *screwed*. You can have points from both angles.

heh, just imagine all PC vendors force feeding linux to the general consumer, like MS has been doing for so long.

Re:Did the world end ?

[heinousjay]

I didn't say it happened in your lifetime. I'm saying you're a product of it. I understand your position. It's scary knowing you're so rigid you couldn't possibly be any other way. You'll do anything to keep things like they are, or tilt them more in your favor. I would react with the same fear if I were the same way.

Re:Did the world end ?

[gEvil (beta)]

Wow! Does Holly do that on demand? She could have a pretty lucrative film career...

Re:Did the world end ?

[Wicko]

While I have my doubts about MS's reports about Vista, I'm still glad to see some Linux users aren't anti MS.

Re:Did the world end ?

[MazzThePianoman]

Not to mention DOS, the foundation of a lot of what MS is today was bought from somebody else for only $50k. Smart business but without social and moral responsibility it is really something to cheer about?

Re:Did the world end ?

[jellomizer]

Um no... I could see Dell selling Linux only PC. It would be a PR Nightmare for them.
Why Doesn't this device work. How come I cant run this application. How do I do this simple job...
On my old system I use to be able to do this and now I can't...

In the short term it will kill any company who tries on this scale. People will tolerate viruses and spywhare just as long as there is a CGI Puppy folloing their mouse cursor.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Wicko]

This is just plain dumb. Why lower yourself to their level? Doesn't solve anything.

Re:Did the world end ?

[nschubach]

keep in mind that my school payed for those licenses

You do realize it was you that paid for that license, don't you? They probably increased everyone's tuition and included that to try to sell the school as "giving students the tools". On that note, your school most likely also signed a deal with Microsoft (like a certain former school I went to) that stated something like: "If you want this discounted software, you have to remove Macromedia ___ from all PCs on campus."

Re:Did the world end ?

[Reliant-1864]

I bought a pre-installed Vista machine and replaced it with XP. Being a monopoly on the PC, sales are bound to go up for Vista simple because people are buying PCs, and Vista is coming with it. That their Vista sales are lower than PC sales, in addition to counting the sales, shows just how many PCs are shipping without Vista, the supposed default. When Microsoft has a 94% market, why are their Vista sales only accounting for half of the PCs?

If you want to see numbers on popularity, try and get the numbers on people buying boxed Vista, and compare it to people who bought boxed XP. I seem to remember boxed XP flying off the shelves for people wanting to upgrade, but who's buying boxed Vista? Microsoft won't release those numbers because it will show how much of a flop Vista has been, and its only because of their monopoly that it's getting sold at all. Vista is a huge example on the amount of damage Microsoft is inflicting on the industry by having a stranglehold on the OS that ships. They're forcing people to pay for an inferior product on purchasing a PC, then charging them for XP when they want to replace it

Re:Did the world end ?

[l3mr]

Evolution does not happen in a human being's life time. It takes thousands to millions of years. Actually, it does. Now, maybe not human-detectable evolution in humans, but cycles are much shorter for bacteria or so...

Re:Did the world end ?

[Bamafan77]

It wasn't well done, or earned. It was blackmail pure and simple. Look, in the course of contract negotiations, all of the major PC vendors want the best possible price for an OS license. In order to get that best price, Microsoft has, in the past, forced the vendor to purchase a license for every machine sold, regardless of the OS to be installed.

I never quite understood this bit of criticism about Microsoft. Blackmail is when you threaten to tell someone's spouse that he/she cheated on them unless they give you a million dollars. MS signed a contract saying that they'd offer discounts IF they didn't sell competing products. There is nothing evil about this. If you don't like the terms, walk. If you can't survive without the price breaks, why is that MS's problem?

And why are we feeling sorry for people like Michael Dell, again? Lest we forget, this man became a multi billionaire largely due to the "blackmail" contracts he signed with Microsoft. Gateway also made billions in sales from MS contracts.

Re:Did the world end ?

[dpilot]

You missed his point. He feels his current livelihood is threatened by Microsoft and his practices. Wishing to see Microsoft destroyed is an interpretation of protecting himself.

Next you say, He should be able to adapt the the changes Microsoft causes.

The simple reply is that it's like moving from a tropical paradise to a desert. Microsoft has impoverished the software landscape. Sure, in a Microsft world there are others, but they turn out to be minor players heavily rooted in a Microsoft sofware ecosystem. The diversity is gone, the lushness is gone, except from the Redmond campus.

One could just as well as why can't Microsoft adapt to free software, instead of resorting to FUD, patent threats, etc.

Re:Did the world end ?

[gerrysteele]

The digg.com fugees must have came here too

Re:Did the world end ?

[dpilot]

Then you've just proven his point.

>It'd be nice if they started doing some useful work, though. Or at least quit sabotaging other people's work.

In many, many years they haven't. The software landscape is littered with corpses, some put there legitimately by plain competition, but many put there by FUD, dirty tricks, etc. If they can't play right maybe they SHOULD be destroyed. At this point the ball is in their court to prove that they shouldn't be destroyed, IMHO.

Of course they're not listening to me, though. My free $peech i$n't a$ powerful a$ their free $peach.

Re:Did the world end ?

[rm999]

I am really happy to see someone on Slashdot being mature about this. Yeah, most of us are against Windows, but when people claim that 40 million sales are a flop (just because it is MSFT) - or display any other form of sour grapes - it makes us look bad as a community.

Wishing that Vista was a failure does not make it so.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Wicko]

I wasn't thinking of adapting to the changes. There are more than just destroy or submit in this scenario. I understand what you mean about his interpretation, but for a lot of people, its what they would do if they were actually given the opportunity. I find that absurd.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Kuvter]

Good way to put it into perspective. Also any new features Vista has over XP the more potential for Linux to adopt it.

Re:Did the world end ?

[nanosquid]

And why are we feeling sorry for people like Michael Dell, again? Lest we forget, this man became a multi billionaire largely due to the "blackmail" contracts he signed with Microsoft.

Dell is rich because they are selling good products in a competitive market. Gates is rich because he managed to establish an illegal monopoly and continues monopolistic practices.

And this isn't about "feeling sorry" for Dell, it's about the fact that he is trying to offer alternative products that people want to buy, and Microsoft is trying to prevent him from doing that. The people we feel sorry for are the end users who don't get to make a choice based on quality and technology.

MS signed a contract saying that they'd offer discounts IF they didn't sell competing products. There is nothing evil about this.

If you have 90% of the market, that kind of behavior is pretty much the definition of "evil" in a free market system.

Re:Did the world end ?

[dpilot]

I'd like to see what happened to IBM happen to them.

I'd like to see them have to document all of their "public" interfaces and file formats, make that documentation freely (I'd have no objections if they charged for dead-tree, but NO fishy licenses.) and readily available, and either stick by those public interfaces themselves, or publish the changes in a timely manner.

Oh, and this one goes for Intel, too. I'd like to see an end to any sort of "loyalty discounts." The courts took away Microsoft's per-cpu licensing, but Microsoft managed to get the same effect with other terms.

Level playing field. Let them compete on features, security, and quality. Screw this crap about lock-in, exclusive distribution contracts, etc.

Re:Did the world end ?

[HermMunster]

Microsoft is a self-destructive organization. What I mean is that their whole company persona is one of negativity and threats against their users, and those that don't use them. Only one type of company threatens those that don't use their product--a self-destructive one. It would be like the gas companies calling you thieves because you use the gasoline of another company that maybe copied your process for processing gasoline (which by the way you probably copied years ago). With the new rules for determining prior art for patents much of what Microsoft says is essentially toothless, but it does damage--it harms the reputation of those involved in something great--Linux.

Microsoft is where it is because of some rather unsavory tactics and now they are using those same deceptive practices to make it seem like their product is more successful than it is. As well, they are trying to create a fervor in those that might be looking at others and want to be like them. They are creating an artificial fervor in order to create a "I want to be like the Joneses".

In reality what should be happening is that people should be using the products that protect their privacy, products don't spy on them; and never will. This invasion of privacy, the threats against consumers, the lies about their success, and the constant theft of IP from other organizations is just a bit too much, and if the average consumer understood what was happening they would not be buying Microsoft products.

With their veiled threats against Linux users, which is being done to extort companies into cross licensing of IP is nothing more than them trying to steal their IP without outright stealing it and then ending up in court. They are threatening the community to force certain companies that would never cross license with Microsoft into giving up their IP--and in reality that's just extortion and an attempt to get the IP they normally would have just stolen and fought about in court. But since they loose so many cases they had to change their tactics. As well, since the new Supreme Court ruling on what is included in how to determine "prior art" Microsoft is about as desperate as one would guess. They are not an innovative company, they just don't innovate.

This is a very self-destructive pattern for them...

And to hear a Microsoft cronnie claiming that 2007 is the year of the death of Open Source is just pathetic. That individual would have been dumped by a regular company but instead he's paraded about inside Microsoft as some master tactician.

2007/2008 will show growth in Linux and Open Source equal to or better than all prior years of its growth. He can take that to the bank.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP used the wrong term. Evolution is more or less over a long course of time. I think the author meant "Adaption", which is a perfectly valid argument.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if Holly's a dog. Pretty limited market there, I'm afraid.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Wicko]

Now that would be nice, wouldn't it? :) If DX was cross-platform, I would be in heaven.

Re:Did the world end ?

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft.

I generally prefer Macs for desktop usage and linux for server needs, and I totally agree with your point about MSFT. As long as browsing the web with Windows is as safe as having unprotected sex with a different partner every day and 80-90 percent of surfers are doing it, I feel pretty safe browsing with a Mac and some common sense.

Although there is that "less malware, viruses, botnets ... good for the whole internet" point to be made if the vast majority of surfers weren't using a single-user desktop OS wearing ill-fitting big-boy pants.

Re:Did the world end ?

[fyoder]

I can't help to see the need to see Microsoft completely destroyed.

Given the number of entities that depend on MS software, this would not be a good thing in the short term. But since it's highly unlikely, I won't lose any sleep over that possibility.

What would be good is for MS to gradually decline to just one provider of operating systems amongst several, all with similar market share. That would compel them to honestly pursue interoperability with other platforms. I think that scenario is one which we can hope for over the long term.

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

MS signed a contract saying that they'd offer discounts IF they didn't sell competing products. There is nothing evil about this. If you don't like the terms, walk. No... You got that wrong. MS Refused to sign a contract allowing Dell to buy MS products at substantial discount, unless they signed saying they WOULDN'T sell competing products. See how changing the wording makes this evil... If Dell hadn't signed, they'd have been forced to one of 2 things.. #1) Don't provide any MS products #2) Raise product price by $300+ to be able to include MS products. What would that have done to their bottom line?

Re:Did the world end ?

[Mdentari]

I don't think maturity is even a question here. Microsoft has demonstrated practices as a corporation that morally I can't justify. Maybe you have no morals, some or morals or whatever and this is just Microsoft doing business it's way, but as a "community" I can't stand back and say congratulations even on my most generous days. "Morality.. filters both ways."

Re:Did the world end ?

[rolfwind]

Have you been hiding in a hole in the ground? Dell is going be selling Ubuntu Linux PCs....

Re:Did the world end ?

[Bamafan77]

Refused to sign a contract allowing Dell to buy MS products at substantial discount, unless they signed saying they WOULDN'T sell competing products. See how changing the wording makes this evil... If Dell hadn't signed, they'd have been forced to one of 2 things.. #1) Don't provide any MS products #2) Raise product price by $300+ to be able to include MS products. What would that have done to their bottom line?

I repeat - Michael Dell is a multi-billionaire. Why the concern over his company's bottom line? If he hadn't signed those deals with MS, perhaps he'd only be worth a few hundred million or maybe just one or two billion. At that level, I suppose he'd be in line at the soup kitchen. :)

Re:Did the world end ?

[lawpoop]

Because the contract was negotiated by a monopoly. You don't have a choice when you're dealing with a monopoly. It's not a free market scenario, because there is no competition.

In a free market, you can say, "I don't like the terms your offering me; change them or I will go with the other guy." In a monopolized market, you either get it *at their price* or you don't. There is no negotiation or exchange. It's a dictation of the terms. In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wahhhh.... I want my Windows 3.1 supported... wahhhh.....

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

How many millions of PCs were sold, when they can get their Windows for $10 or less, and Office for $10 or less, so let's say $20.00. Now, without those discounts, we'll say for the sake of argument, that the MS products were $300, (OEM purchased through a mass source like CDW or someone). The PC sold for $399.99 - $300.00, = 99.99 for the PC, instead of 379.99. if I've done my math right, that's a 74% reduction in return for the PC. I'm not necessarily defending Mr. Dell, however, I am criticizing MS's methods to profit.

Re:Did the world end ?

[petermgreen]

margins in the PC market are pretty thin, dell and the like only make the money they do because they shift huge volume. Having to pay retail or even white box oem (low end white box vendors make up for thier higher windows licensing costs by shipping whatever hardware is cheapest at the time regardless of how well it works together) prices for windows would force dell to either take a loss on each PC or price themselves out of the market.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are a monopoly and there is no competition, then what is linux? If linux is so much better than windows, and it is free, then how can microsoft possibly compete with that?

Re:Did the world end ?

[lawpoop]

Linux is not competition. People buy Windows to run Windows programs. Linux cannot provide the Windows API adequately enough to run Windows programs, therefore it does not compete with Windows.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP was saying that Dell can certainly do that, but they are still paying royalties to Microsoft as if the PC was pre-loaded with Windows.

I'm not sure how accurate that information is, but I can absolutely see MS doing that and enforcing it.

Welcome to corporate America kiddo, where every corporate tries to screw everyone (including other corporates) to make more money. No one is better or worse than the other, they're all out for the dough.

Consumers (and the small guys) are the ones that truly get screwed in the middle.

Re:Did the world end ?

[lawpoop]

The above information was reportedlyobtained directly from an ex-employee of an OEM that was involved in the contract negotiations with Microsoft.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course the people who make up Microsoft aren't allowed to have these feelings? To eliminate the threat to their lifestyle and wellbeing? So their consideration of the people who are violating their patents is totally out of line. But of course if they were allowed to have these kinds of feelings it'd be OK. Sure skippy.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Master of Transhuman]

"I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft."

Sure, Bill, we understand.

Now go find your cell, Steve is calling you.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

> There is nothing evil about this.

Actually there is which is why anti-trust legislation was created and MS has wound up in courts and been found guilty.

> why are we feeling sorry for people like Michael Dell,

No, we are not. We are feeling sorry for all the businesses that are ground into extinction by illegal practices that prevent them getting any business. And also for the customers who can't get better products, or who have to pay for products they don't want.

Re:Did the world end ?

[mazarin5]

It's buried deep in our physiology; that famous "flight or type" response. :)

Re:Did the world end ?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Bullocks.

Monopoly or no monopoly, there was NOTHING preventing OEMs from simply buying Windows licenses at the normal OEM prices (which are still much, much lower than retail prices). Microsoft simply offered discounts to OEMs that allowed them to obtain Windows licenses at prices lower than the normal OEM price. OEMs were not forced to accept these discounts. They accepted them, and went along with the terms that accompanied them. "Monopoly" has NOTHING to do with that.

Re:Did the world end ?

[lawpoop]

Monopoly or no monopoly, there was NOTHING preventing OEMs from simply buying Windows licenses at the normal OEM prices (which are still much, much lower than retail prices). You are missing the point. Monopoly has *everything* to do with it. In a free market, the market decides the *price* of a good, based on competition. Because MS has a monopoly, they alone can decide what the OEM price for their product is. It doesn't matter if you can choose not to buy. If you can't buy from someone else ( and no, MacOS and Linux do not count, because they are not the same product), you're not in a free market.

A free market has competition. If I'm selling apples, I have to compete with anybody else who sells apples. If I charge too much, either at retail or wholesale prices, nobody will buy from me. My prices will be determined by the market, not by me.

Say, however, I own all of the apple orchards, or the government has decreed that only I can sell apples. That means that I can charge whatever I want, because I'm not competing with anybody else. In those cases, I have a monopoly. You have to pay what I want, and you have no bargaining power or alternative source for apples.

Microsoft has a monopoly and there are no fair deals in a monopolized market.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Well what Linux does is worse! Dell didn't get a discount, they had to pay the street price for Ubuntu
for every machine they sold, regardless of whether it got installed or not!

Re:Did the world end ?

[mackyrae]

Like the summary said, nothing in there about activated licenses. How many people are replacing Vista with XP or Linux or BSD? How many still cling to 98SE? Dell had to start offering XP again because no one wants Vista. I highly doubt all of the licenses sold are actually in-use or even wanted.

Re:Did the world end ?

[mackyrae]

Monopoly doesn't mean no competition at all. It means no substantial competition. Gates does not live in fear that he'll wake up tomorrow with only 10% of the market. Linux and MacOSX are not substantial competition. They're minorities. Windows is on 90% of computers, and that qualifies as a monopoly. Also, as the other responder noted, the software you buy off the shelf is usually for the Windows API. I've never seen software at Best Buy that said it was Linux compatible. I've downloaded plenty of free stuff from the repositories, but most commercial games are Windows-only. Most very-high-end specialty software is too. MacOSX can compete when it comes to running specialty software. It can't on commercial games. Linux can't compete on either of those unless developers start paying attention to it. It can only compete on "general computer use" by which I mean things like chatting, email, web-surfing, writing up reports, balancing a checkbook, tracking a family tree, listening to music, etc. Most people only do that (or a subset of it), and could get along with Linux just fine. Try finding a Linux box on the shelf at a computer store though. They're all running Vista (or MacOSX if you go to an Apple Store). You have to order online if you want a Linux box, and most people don't do that. Yeah, Dells are almost always online, but even if they're the largest retailer (not anymore, HP passed them), when you split that even 5 ways (Dell, HP, Gateway, Toshiba, IBM, for instance), that just means "more than 20%," and that doesn't account for all the other retailers.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Daniel Phillips]

...it is well done. I'm sure they're not playing entirely fair, but still, it's their success, they built it, they earned the reward for it. And it does look nice. Let them have their reward. I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft. What if Microsoft intends to destroy Linux, would you be ok with that? And why do you conflate "competing with Microsoft" with "destroying Microsoft"?

Re:Did the world end ?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API.

Couldn't you adapt that statement to just about any other OS?

Re:Did the world end ?

[thayfen]

Interesting...Today, my Son and I were in BestBuy--just passing through--and I stopped to check out the Notebook computers. We were looking at an HP when one of the "Blue Shirts" walked up and began her speel. I asked about the new Intel CPU (The Duo Pro)...she had no idea what I was talking about and began to move off. My Son--all of 9 yrs. old--noticed the new Windows GUI, remarked on how he didn't like it and I told him I could Load XP on the unit if he wanted...whereupon the "Blue Shirt" said the following:

"Oh, you can't do that," She looked me dead in the eye, "There are 'Driver Problems' with the new systems and XP."

I took a quick look at the system info tab, and didn't see any new, cutting-edge hardware,

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know," Still looking me right in the eye,"...but there have been problems with XP."

"What about Linux?" I said, slyly.

"I don't know about Linux." Then she scooted away. ...Now why would she say that? Why would she care what O.S. I put on a unit I bought?

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Microsoft counted as Vista sales all the 'free upgrade' certificates shipped with systems from Dell ? I purchased a new dell system in early Jan 2007 before Vista was actually shipping (other than beta), and just received the Vista CD upgrade. With all the negative news about things not yet working, I put in a drawer for now. I suspect that by the time I'm really ready (or brave enough) to give Vista a try, I'll have to get a fresh new copy of Vista with all the fixes and new drivers & driver updates/fixes. It ll probably be Vista SP3 before 99% of the existing hardware and software will run on Vista without frustrating users.

Re:Did the world end ?

[lawpoop]

In our market, MS is the sole provider of a usable Windows API. Couldn't you adapt that statement to just about any other OS? Not really. If there were another OS that could provide the Windows API along side MS Windows, it wouldn't be the sole provider. Or maybe that's what you mean by adapting the statement.

More to the point, there is no competing OS that can run all Windows API programs. To use the car analogy, any car or truck from any major manufacturer works like any other car or truck from any other major manufacturer. The motor vehicle is commodified -- you can basically buy the same 'thing' from any competing manufacturer.

Back when there was only DOS, there were several DOSes out there that could do everything you could do with DOS. There was competition. Nowadays, there really isn't any other OS out there than can provide the environment that Windows does. There are emulators, but they aren't complete. The Windows API has not been commodified yet.

Re:Did the world end ?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

My point is that the OS can be seen as a package, just as a car can be. Sure you could buy Windows with optional extras like MS Office, or any other windows program, or you could "buy" the open source equivalent. If you decide to break it down further than that, many OSes out there could be considered monopolies. I say we call Windows a monopoly based on its market share rather than on its compatibility.

Re:Did the world end ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If PC vendors had any brains, they'd focus on their OWN Linux build and distribute that with their PCs. Image, Dellinux or something, so they know exactly what OS on what hardware they are supporting. Then, force that down the public's throat instead like they have been doing with Windows all of these years. Then, M$ would need to change their BS tune.

Captcha: probable :D

Re:Did the world end ?

[jellomizer]

Um no. I said Linux Only PCs Not PCs that are shipped with Linux. If you go to dell an look at any model you will see windows as the default OS. This is not a case about selling linux as an option but selling Linux as there business model for all units and systems with no windows option or with windows only on some models as a requested option.

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

Since I was the one talking to the ex-employee, it was correct in the first place...

Re:Did the world end ?

[GuyverDH]

lol...... you know, some MS fan-boys probably took that at face value...

7 articles on Vista sales

[suv4x4]

If my memory serves right, this is the 7-th article talking about Vista sales alone. Not Vista bugs, not Vista speed, not Vista features, just Vista's initial sales.

I think I speak for the majority of Slashdot's readers, that we don't fucking care about Vista's sales that much.

They mean nothing and the actual trend will be known in 8-9 months from now (you can be sure Vista will see decent adoption either way, because if it doesn't Microsoft will be forced to address the worst problems in a SP).

So please stop wasting our time with this. We can live on without reading yet again about Vista's sales, in context, or out of it.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[goombah99]

Time to say Hasta La Vista, Baby.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[heinousjay]

I'm with you, dude. This is beating off a dead horse.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[Shados]

People on Slashdot seems to care a WHOOOOOOOOOOOOLE lot when the news is abotu Vista -NOT- selling, though...

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[Chris whatever]

They forgot to say that all systems comes with vista so is there a choice not to buy Vista with a new system?(except for dell as far as i know)

it is no great feat when you corner people into buying something.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[lilomar]

Agreed.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[u-bend]

Talk about niche pr0n. Horses are common enough, but dead ones? Whew, my world just got a little bigger.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for the majority of Slashdot's readers, that we don't fucking care about Vista's sales that much

Well, I don't care and it's obvious that you don't care, but majority of slashdotters? If the majority of slashdot readers don't care then how do these stories get through the firehose?

I do know that Microsoft won't get another penny from me, and the reson is their attipiracy bullshit that does absolutely nothing to combat real piracy but is a royal pain in the ass to me. The only reason XP is still on my PC is that I have two drives, a 20 gig and an 80 gig. Microsoft fuX0red up the 80 gig drive so that Linux thinks its subdirectories are files, and I haven't figured out how to fix it. Well, that and Road Rash (that game's what, 12 years old?)

A little over a month ago the cat unplugged the PC as it was booting. I plugged it back in and it wouldn't boot at all, into either windows or mandriva. I got Linux working by booting it into "failsafe", but I couldn't even get Windows to go into "safe mode". The black screen with the windows logo and the "i'm working" moving bar would come up, it would blue screen for a fraction of a second and reboot.

I'd reinstalled once before because of some nasty infection (it's what I get for letting other people use my computer I suppose) and disabled networking in it after installation.

This time I didn't let it install networking at all, and had to call Microsoft's computer on the phone to activate it. It was the biggest, most annoying pain in the ass I'd gone through this year. After the ease of installation of Mandriva, which consists basically of pressing "enter" a few times and changing CDs and having a fully working system complete with software, having to "activate" windows is especially onerous.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who cursed Microsoft's damned synthetic voice on the phone to activate.

If normal, non-slashdot people only knew how much batter and easier their computer would be with an alternative, Microsoft would be in deep shit.

I might try Ubantu, you guys have got me interested. If it will read the big drive and Wine will play Road Rash, Windows will be gone.

-mcgrew

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post hit +5 rather quickly. This indicates that the masses seem to agree with you that repeated posts about sales figures are not relevant or news for nerds (I know, mods points are not supposed to be handed out based on agreement but sadly, they are).

How about /. throws up yet another story about potential sales of the iPhone (which is not released yet) and the story will be a hit. I've seen at least 50 stories about projected iPhone sales and current and past iPod, iTunes, and Mac sales along with the Zune as well. Those should be as equally news worthy as Vista sales correct?

I am doing nothing but pointing out an observation. You can review or index the past stories and comments on /. if you'd like to see for yourself. Mod as you wish are not going to change that observation. I am not for or against any one company over another one, I dislike them both (and many others) for the same reasons equally.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[suv4x4]

How about /. throws up yet another story about potential sales of the iPhone (which is not released yet) and the story will be a hit. I've seen at least 50 stories about projected iPhone sales and current and past iPod, iTunes, and Mac sales along with the Zune as well. Those should be as equally news worthy as Vista sales correct?

Not really. Thing is, I don't think people like reading the same thing over and over on whatever the topic is.

The fact that sites and magazines think recycling Apple and Microsoft news is very interesting, doesn't mean their readers think so.

You see, we care about *new news* from Microsoft and Apple, since those are two big companies with lots of impact in the industry. But we're not retards, we get it the first time it's written about.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[Anonymous Coward]

40 Million Vista licenses isn't really all that interesting in itself.

The interesting thing is that half of new PCs are being sold without Vista. Microsoft is heavily pushing Vista to OEMs, but customers are going out of their way to avoid it.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[Gilmoure]

What about Carmageddon? I think there's a Linux version.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[CrimsonScythe]

Well, the way porn seems to evolve, by now some probably even finds it mundane and only watch if the horse is wearing makeup and a tutu.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[l3mr]

Actually, I prefer undead ones. Zombie horses of carnal pleasure, mmmmh...

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[HermMunster]

Lol, but I sort of envisioned it as a Pig With Lipstick. Haha, Vista is a pig with lipstick.

Re:7 articles on Vista sales

[jollyreaper]

Talk about niche pr0n. Horses are common enough, but dead ones? Whew, my world just got a little bigger. For me a little part of my soul just died.

Uh, guys?

[Otter]

"Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers.

Ummm, the only reason anyone cares about those numbers is because of their impact when weighed against all the gloating from clowns who were estimating sales in the low three-digits.

Re:Uh, guys?

[jedidiah]

Force-fed OEM sales will garauntee millions of sales. So getting excited about how many units Microsoft pushes out the door really isn't very interesting. The collective reaction should be "so what?" or "how can people NOT buy the turd?".

It's been this way for more than 10 years.

Re:Uh, guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason people care is that Microsoft is bloating its sales figures solely to keep its already frustrated investors on board. They only trumpet OEM sales, but not retail sales (which are down 60% from XP), and they don't give out the number of real, activated Vista licenses which would put the whole debate to rest.

Clearly, actual Vista sales to consumers are disappointingly low, and Microsoft doesn't want you to know about it.

Re:Uh, guys?

[Otter]

Remember this? Or this? Or this?

Re:Uh, guys?

[ddocjohn]

Ummm, the only reason anyone cares about those numbers is because of their impact when weighed against all the gloating from clowns who were estimating sales in the low three-digits.

MS doesn't talk about its sales in China much.

Re:Uh, guys?

[R3d M3rcury]

Clearly, actual Vista sales to consumers are disappointingly low [...] Yeah, but y'know, operating system upgrade sales have always been low. I heard it took Windows XP over a year to hit the one million mark. That's not to say there were only 1 million people using Windows XP after a year. It's that only one million people went out and bought the upgrade.

The vast majority of Windows users don't upgrade their operating system. They upgrade their computer. If they want Vista, they go buy a new computer to run it on. It's alot easier than buying the upgrade and discovering that it either won't work or sucks on your old computer (and then you have to go buy the new computer anyway which comes with a copy of Vista, so you've wasted money).

Please Explain

[asphaltjesus]

Why the media takes Microsoft's word as reliable in any way shape or form?

Maybe it is just a matter of there appears to be little market for _actual_ news as opposed to what is fed to the media from corporate/government sources.

I'd like to hear some opinions because I don't want to be that cynical.

Re:Please Explain

[csguy314]

I wouldn't say there's little market for it, but there's certainly incentives for media companies to go along with those big corporate sources. Especially since those media companies are one in the same with the big corporate sources. And the line between big corporations and the government continues to become blurred, especially with the current US administration.

Re:Please Explain

[Deliveranc3]

These numbers are disapointingly low, Microsoft is spending a lot of money on advertising and people really have no conception of a possible POS OS from them so why are the numbers so low.

First lets assume, as you say, the numbers are possibly biased. Is Slashdot reporting lower numbers than the actual? Possible.

Have consumers become more educated? Unlikely.

Are the hardware requirements limiting OEM involvement? Likely.

I think /. eds are hinting that consumers are becoming more educated, unfortunately I think thats unlikely, WinXP is the standard in operating systems, there is little or nothing it can't do (From a common user perspective likely nothing) and computers from 2002 are still responsive with todays software, plus the big computer adoption period (Massive spike in mid to late 90s) are realizing that its an upgrade cycle, and probably not enjoying the experience if they only want to do e-mail.

Implying that consumers are more educated -- which is the least likely possibility -- is /. FUD.

But What about...

[overcaffein8d]

...the pirated ones? This is just a measure of copies of Vista sold. Loads of copies have been pirated (I think). Then again, XP was also pirated.

you sound suprised?

[hejog]

Marketing speak.

Microsoft (and all other companies) can easily turn a poor sales performance (eg, Vista) into an amazing, best ever, look how great we're doing! PR Message.

I think 20Million Licenses in 4 months is still pretty decent, doubt Microsoft is considering Vista a failure yet!

I guess it'll be a few more years (?) until Vista starts making a profit -- that is, when Businesses upgrade to it. I assume thats where they make all their money.

Re:you sound suprised?

[peragrin]

Actually Vista will be mostly profit for MSFT by the end of year.

40 million units sold of primarily the only two good versions business and Ultimate. So 40 million times $200 a piece, is 800,000 million dollars. MSFT is nearly at 1/5 the 5 billion they spent on creating Vista.

Yet Dell sells 14.4 billion dollars worth of physical hardware and makes a profit of just under $700 million.

Vista Sales for MSFT in four months is worth more than all of Dell's sales for a year.

Is Vista overpriced?

Re:you sound suprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

So 40 million times $200 a piece, is 800,000 million dollars. MSFT is nearly at 1/5 the 5 billion they spent on creating Vista.

Umm, no. The $200 is the retail price. That's after vendor and middle man profits. Hardware companies also get Vista for lots less because if the vendors had to pay anything close to a typical discount then they'd be out of business.

Which sort of puts your Dell numbers into another light. Even at $27 a pop for an OEM, the OS is still probably one of the most expensive components in a new PC.

Why is this here?

[gr8_phk]

Not many on slashdot care a whole lot about Vista sales.
Even fewer care what MS marketing says about Vista sales.
Nobody cares what someone else says about what MS says about Vista sales.

Re:Why is this here?

[thammoud]

Please mod parent up. I am equally sick of Vista sales. I hope that there are more interesting things going on out there. Please stop this boring crap.

Re:Why is this here?

[hejog]

Microsoft is a pretty large aspect of the IT world... and I think its pretty interesting to see how Vista performs - with the DRM and delays etc.

But thanks for speaking on behalf of everyone at slashdot!

Re:Why is this here?

[linguae]

Not many on slashdot care a whole lot about Vista sales.

I disagree. Since most of us are either students in computing fields, or work in some aspect of the computer industry, we are all affected by how well (or poorly) Microsoft sells Vista. If Vista sells well, we'll all have to use it, eventually, whether we like it or not. Microsoft still has that power. However, if Vista does not sell well, then a good number of us won't have to worry about touching it.

So, yes, the sales of Vista do impact Slashdotters.

Re:Why is this here?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

So that makes your post "what someone says about what someone says about what MS says about Vista sales", which makes my post "what someone says about what someone says about what someone says about what MS says about Vista sales"...

Re:Why is this here?

[Red Flayer]

Not many on slashdot care a whole lot about Vista sales.

That's funny, why then were there som many comments to the last Vista sales article?

Even fewer care what MS marketing says about Vista sales.

Agreed... except, of course, that what they say about their sales affects what other people think about their sales. Such as, for instance, the people signing the POs for new systems this year. Plenty of management types will isten to this, and assume that since Vista is selling so well, it must be a good thing (tm) and therefore will be implemented at their companies.

Nobody cares what someone else says about what MS says about Vista sales.

If that were so, no one would respond to comments to Vista sales articles.

Anyway, if you don't like these articles, why don't you:

1. Give 'em the old thumbs-down at the Firehose
2. Not bother reading them
3. Not bother commenting -- if it's the wste of your time that's got you so worked up, why voluntarily waste it so?

Re:Why is this here?

[Reality Master 101]

However, if Vista does not sell well, then a good number of us won't have to worry about touching it.

It doesn't matter how well Vista sells at the moment. It's inevitable that all new computers will sell Vista, just like it was inevitable that new computers sold XP. We had exactly these same stories when XP came out. After Vista achieves a critical mass and everyone is used to it, everyone else will slowly upgrade..

It is simply impossible in the current world that Vista won't eventually be the mainstream operating system, probably within a year, two at the outside.

Re:Why is this here?

[Floritard]

I for one do not care what you say about what someone else says about what MS says about Vista sales or about what MS marketting says about Vista sales. Now quake in the shadow of my apathy!

Re:Why is this here?

[amber_of_luxor]

>It is simply impossible in the current world that Vista won't eventually be the mainstream operating system, probably within a year, two at the outside.

You are assuming that the PHB will upgrade to Vista, because it is Microsoft.

PHBs may not understand technology, but they do understand Euros --- especially when the Euros are leaving the organization. Right not, it simply is not cost effective to upgrade to Vista. Furthermore, since MSO2007 does not create documents in the file formats that the government accepts, there is no point to using MSO2007. Combine those two factors, and there is very little justification to keep Microsoft as a vendor.

For the PHB, Red Hat, SuseLinux, and other distributions of Linux are good candidates --- and not just as a negotiation tactic in persuading Microsoft that $10.00 per seat for Vista Premium, MSO 2007 Enterprise Edition, etc (combined) is more than the going rate.

Amber

Re:Why is this here?

[Reality Master 101]

Right not, it simply is not cost effective to upgrade to Vista.

Oh? And why was it cost effective three years ago when XP came out? What's different? All the PHB needs to hear is "better security" (which is true, although not perfect).

Furthermore, since MSO2007 does not create documents in the file formats that the government accepts, there is no point to using MSO2007.

Au contraire, Office has a plugin for ODF.

Re:Why is this here?

[HermMunster]

What I care about is being called a thief for using gasoline purchased from another company because that company uses the same or similar process to refine the gasoline.

Effectively that's what Microsoft is doing. They are calling me a thief for using Linux on my computer because Linux may have used some of the same processes as Microsoft did. By the way, those same processes were probably copied by Microsoft some years ago (or as recent court rulings have been showing--stolen). Now they are trying to extort those companies they are accusing into giving them IP in exchange, which, by the way, will only indemnify the customers of the company they entered into the IP cross license. So they can just pick up the bat again and swing at another.

Think about this in real life terms. The car uses gasoline (the computer an operating system) so the car is just a pile of metal and plastic without gasoline (computer as well without an OS). So, some dominant Oil company (OS vendor) then decides to call *everyone* that doesn't use their gasoline a thief because you are using the gasoline (for computers an operating system) from another company because that other company may have copied some elements of the refinery process (in the OS some of it's IP), then tries to extort all major companies that use the cars (computers) into giving them some of their profits and some other valuable property (in computers other IP developed by the company). Then they won't even tell you what part of the refinery process was copied so the major companies can determine if there really is a fault or to let the other gas companies change their refinery process to not copy.

I mean, come on, you can't miss that point.

Re:Why is this here?

[HermMunster]

That is mostly irrelevant, at least it would be to me as a CS student (or student of the IT field) because as a student I would be essentially locked into Microsoft products. So, the only thing that would be relevant to me would be whether some other OS is up and coming to the point of providing me an alternative to the lock in I'm experiencing, or whether Microsoft is dying.

Largely the numbers of initial sales of a new OS in the early months are not relevant due to the fact that they probably are being intentionally quoted inaccurately in order to artificially inflate their value.

You should be more interested in the numbers presented by other organizations, the ones that attempt to show the real numbers. Certainly I would not be impressed by just someone's belief that he should congratulate Microsoft because he doesn't feel like holding their feet to the fire like everyone else.

Re:Why is this here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, quite a few slashdotters to "care"; the ones that have so little going on in their lives, that their self-worth is dependent on bad Vista sales. :(

Investors, CIOs, and CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft wants to look good for investors. They want to give the impression that Vista is selling well and Microsoft is expanding so investors buy Microsoft shares.

Microsoft wants CEOs and CIOs to believe everybody is buying Vista so they need to buy Vista or get left behind. That way Microsoft can maintain their strangle hold on the Desktop PC operating system market and keep generating revenue. Unfortunately for Microsoft, our CIO knows better and will not touch Vista for as long as possible; and our CEO listens to our CIO.

Re:Investors, CIOs, and CEOs

[jedidiah]

Which is of course pure bull...

Any Vista sale is just a sale that would have been XP anyways. If anything, Microsoft is losing money on this proposition since these are units they would have pushed anyways. When you're at the top of the hill, the only way you can move is down.

Microsoft is just trying to avoid the obvious conclusion that they are stagnating while milking a saturated market.

Re:Investors, CIOs, and CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Then how do you explain their huge record earnings for last quarter?

Any company in the world would love to be so "stagnent".

You are yet another FOSS ostridge...

Re:Investors, CIOs, and CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

>stagnating while milking a saturated market.

Curdling, perhaps?

Re:Investors, CIOs, and CEOs

[jedidiah]

They dominate a growing market. As long as that market grows, then their income grows. Their profit is nearly infinite since the marginal production cost of software is about 25 cents.

They're pretty much in the same position they were 20 years ago. The pie just got bigger.

Except now their biggest rival can't be bought out or bled dry.

Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Penguinisto]

Seriously - marketing gets paid to put a happy face on any sales news - be it wonderful, good, bad, evil, or SCO-Unix style.

Twisting statistics, taking 'em out of context, anything, anything at all to make things look good. IMHO, Vista sales aren't drastically bad, but they aren't meeting (let alone exceeding) the hype, either.

Thing is though, marketing could literally kill MSFT in the long run. Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all MSFT is spending cash on, and jettison all departments that aren't making money. Instead, we see MSFT believing its own delirious hype, and may well end up deluding itself clean into oblivion.

/P

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[heinousjay]

Clearly you have uncanny vision and a knack for running large companies few men could match.

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Timesprout]

Thing is though, marketing could literally kill MSFT in the long run. Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all MSFT is spending cash on, and jettison all departments that aren't making money. Instead, we see MSFT believing its own delirious hype, and may well end up deluding itself clean into oblivion.

I'll bet the headhunters are just breaking your door down now with requests to head up multi billion dollar corporations after reading your devastatingly brilliant analayis of what MS need to be doing right now. Who would have guessed it was all so simple.

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Penguinisto]

Who would have guessed it was all so simple.

In the large view - it is. IBM did it (and in some ways are still doing it), Novell had to do it, Apple had to do it... what makes MSFT so immune?

(so how about something cogent next time - or are sniveling attempts at sarcasm all that you're capable of?)

/P

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[orclevegam]

Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all MSFT is spending cash on, and jettison all departments that aren't making money. Microsoft has been a monopoly for so long they don't know what they do anymore. The whole business is built around the concept that they own the desktop and can just muscle anyone else out of the scene, rather than spending money to develop superior products. The problem is, some competing products have managed to squeeze in and provide people with some actual choices, and people have started to ask some questions about what exactly it is Microsoft is providing. Now, if Microsoft can recover from this or not is hard to say, they could be on a downhill trend (although it's a very big hill, so they won't hit bottom for a VERY long time), or they may turn around and actually provide some compelling reasons to stay with their software. Of course, in order for the later to become a possibility they will need to sink some more capital into R&D, but considering the amount of capital they have, that shouldn't be a problem. So, no, they should not jettison all departments operating at a loss, they should however ask themselves what the goal of those departments is going to be.

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Dan Ost]

Wait 'til he gets going!

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Timesprout]

Well lets see. You proposed a strategy for a new CEO and retrenchment. SOP for a company in financial difficulty. You bring a hachet man to break the company up, close loss making divisions and sack half the workforce to reduce costs. Its just astonishing to me that Wall Street does not concur with your vision of what MS needs but then they are ususally loathe to break up successful organisations with proven leadership. Perhaps you know something about Microsoft's accounts that no one else does.

IBM did it (and in some ways are still doing it), Novell had to do it, Apple had to do it...

Perhaps its because IBM, Novell and Apple had fundamental market change forced upon them while Microsoft are moving along quite nicely and the revenue keeps streaming in. Microsoft are in the business of selling software and judging by the fact they have shipped 10s of millions of copies of Vista in an acknowledged slow adopter market, that business appears to be going quite well for them.

(so how about something cogent next time - or are sniveling attempts at sarcasm all that you're capable of?)

Cogent enough for you or do you just interpret all dissenting opinions as sniveling attempts at sarcasm ?

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Penguinisto]

Now, if Microsoft can recover from this or not is hard to say, they could be on a downhill trend (although it's a very big hill, so they won't hit bottom for a VERY long time), or they may turn around and actually provide some compelling reasons to stay with their software.

Inertia will keep 'em alive for quite a long time, and it's true that they may never really die off completely. Unisys once was an 800-lb computing gorilla. Towards the end, the most influence they had in the IT world was the GIF patent (among a handful of others), but aside from legacy systems here and there, no one gave a damn about them - they got passed by. What do they do nowadays? Tandem was once a big player, as was Amdahl, Cray, Wang, Texas Instruments, and lots of other companies who made their name off of business computing and/or hardware in the '70s and '80s.

Microsoft may well end up like one of those - a once big and proud company that drowned in its own hubris.

Of course, in order for the later to become a possibility they will need to sink some more capital into R&D, but considering the amount of capital they have, that shouldn't be a problem. So, no, they should not jettison all departments operating at a loss, they should however ask themselves what the goal of those departments is going to be.

Fair enough; prolly typed that in way too fast anyway when I wrote it. MSN could be kept, if the guys running that department can get off their butts and actually do something innovative with it, instead of just providing a money-losing "me-too" Google+AOL rig-up. X-Box is still losing money per-unit IIRC, though it prolly wouldn't take too awful much to make that department begin to break even, perhaps make a profit. Zune? Heh... should've ditched that bomb by now; if they got rid of the DRM and made the thing compelling, it might've had a chance (esp. with WiFi in it), but I don't see how they can recover it.

R&D I have no kick against - the home entertainment / content meme thingy they're working with looks promising (like ferinstance - what if X-Box had a TV tuner in the thing and some basic DVR abilities a'la MythTV? No more monthly payment to Comcast or DirecTV for that, and shows could be exported to the PC under WMP for later viewing on desktop or laptop. I know they got slapped down with "UltimateTV", but this time they can try to do it in a way that works w/o violating a half dozen TiVO patents, or at least license 'em this time?)

OTOH, 'Son of Tablet PC' is a bad bet - the market said "no!" twice to three times now; someone in Redmond needs to take the hint.

But yeah... somebody in MSFT has to stop sniffing the marketing gas and realize that they're about to get their collective lunch money taken by the competition. I'm not exactly MSFT's biggest fan or anything, but I do remember when they were still lean and hungry... now they just seem bloated and out-of-touch.

/P

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[Penguinisto]

Well lets see. You proposed a strategy for a new CEO and retrenchment. SOP for a company in financial difficulty. You bring a hachet man to break the company up, close loss making divisions and sack half the workforce to reduce costs.

Eh? When did I mention sacking "half the workforce"?

Its just astonishing to me that Wall Street does not concur with your vision of what MS needs but then they are ususally loathe to break up successful organisations with proven leadership. Perhaps you know something about Microsoft's accounts that no one else does.

I'm only looking at the basics - MSFT has exactly two money-making divisions - Windows and Office. Everything else is losing money to various degrees. R&D and new ventures I have no problems with, but obvious flops like the Zune? C'mon... you can't possibly justify keeping that thing alive. MSN Internet? Even AOL is getting out of that business, and if it weren't for Qwest and the likes of Best Buy dragging it along as a bundle or rebate bennie, it would've died a natural death years ago.

Perhaps its because IBM, Novell and Apple had fundamental market change forced upon them while Microsoft are moving along quite nicely and the revenue keeps streaming in. Is it? According to their marketing blather they're loving life and swimming in dough. OTOH, considering that PC sales have gone far higher (as shown in TFA), Vista should've kept up - it's been five years, and that R&D money they poured into the thing isn't going to pay itself back, you know.

Microsoft are in the business of selling software and judging by the fact they have shipped 10s of millions of copies of Vista in an acknowledged slow adopter market, that business appears to be going quite well for them.

"acknowledged slow adopter market"? Really? Then how come Macs are selling like hotcakes, and Dell decided that Joe Sixpack would actually go for Ubuntu on a Dell... let alone actually defy their lords and masters in Redmond and start selling XP boxes again in spite of being told not to?* Methinks the problem isn't people not willing to try New Things, but rather a large distaste of what appears to be a warmed-over bloated-out Old Thing.

...also, 40m copies of an OS, spread over nearly seven months (Vista launched in November 2006, after all), in a market where MSFT could literally dictate (until recently) what gets sold on the vast majority of OEM PCs? I'm almost willing to wager that RHEL would look good by that metric. According to TFA, only half of the PC's shipped came w/ Vista licenses... 50%. Compared to astronomically higher percentages of the whole for XP, Win2k, 98, 95...

MSFT isn't going to die next week, but maybe, just maybe, they should sit down and take a hard look at why their latest product isn't selling as well as previous ones.

Cogent enough for you or do you just interpret all dissenting opinions as sniveling attempts at sarcasm ?

Better; and no, I only interpret sniveling attempts at sarcasm as sniveling attempts at sarcasm. ;)

* Brings up a slightly interesting caveat: Dell (and most other big OEM) was forced to sell only Vista licenses on desktops and laptops for a huge chunk of the time period in question, which would naturally inflate the numbers a bit - Hobson's Choice is not exactly an indicator of success, y'know? Will Vista still sell at the same rates now that you can buy Dells with XP on 'em? And what happens when HP and Gateway follow suit? Taken together, I don't hold out much hope for MSFT in the long term if they intend to keep playing the same tunes, y'know?

/P

Re:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[HermMunster]

I don't perceive the issue of loss impacting Mircrosoft. It is their aberrant behavior that troubles me the most.

Having watched Ballmer and Gates over the past few years (actually Gates from the beginning and Ballmer once his head stopped shinning in my eyes) I have had (and have had it before and it turned out successful) that Ballmer has to go.

He's not extremely bright and he doesn't compose himself as a man you can trust. Gates either for that matter. He and Ballmer have managed to stay together through most of this so they are like peas in a pod, whereas Paul Allen has essentially done everything he can to divest himself of Microsoft and those two.

The attitude that starts at the top filters down to the rest of the executives and farther down to even the "day in and day out" managers. If the things filtering down were absolute positives then we'd be looking at a company willing and able to compete with innovation. Instead we have a company that has been resting on it's laurels and has been effectively saying: you can't compete with us because if you do we'll sue your customers.

Article from April 18th

[Tribbin]

Only 244 Genuine Windows Vista's Sold in China

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/151221 6

Re:Article from April 18th

[figleaf]

There was a subsequent story on slashdot which said that the article you linked was incorrect.

Oh, the irony.

[loafula]

Does anyone else find it ironic that they call themselves Microsoft? Every piece of M$ software I own is big, bulky and bloated.

Re:Oh, the irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every piece of MS software I own is big bulky and bloated"

Yea, but thank-goodness applications like Firefox are around to show how FOSS programs don't have that problem!

-AC

Are they counting my non-license?

[parvenu74]

Does that 40,000,000 figure count the license that was bundled with my Dell laptop? I bought my lapper in March and at the time Dell's website didn't have the option to have it pre-loaded with XP. The FIRST thing I did was wipe the hard drive and load XP, and I suspect thousands, if not millions of people have done that to the machines they've bought. Moreover, even if I wanted on my machine I would get an OEM copy of Vista Ultimate, in which case MS gets to show that they've sold two licenses to me. How many of the rest of you are in this boat?

MS is doing what they do best: marketing, marketing, marketing and not letting quality control or the facts get in the way.

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[Crispy Critters]

"Does that 40,000,000 figure count the license that was bundled with my Dell laptop?"

Oops. Apologies for the error.

Editors, please change the headline to "Vista's 39,999,999 License Sales In Context."

Seriously, Microsoft is probably not concerned about the tiny percentage of people who know enough to convert their machines to dual boot with Linux. They really don't care about people who pay for a Vista license and then use XP (you're still paying to feed the monopoly and still using monopoly software).

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[AutopsyReport]

I thought about doing the same thing when I bought a new laptop a few months ago, but then I realized Vista is actually a good operating system and there's no sense in taking a step back to XP. The security warnings get annoying quick, but a few minutes of searching on the Web took care of that. With Aero disabled, Vista looks almost identical to XP. And I'm certain few people have reformatted to XP given that they just paid for a copy of Vista.

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[parvenu74]

I thought about doing the same thing when I bought a new laptop a few months ago, but then I realized Vista is actually a good operating system and there's no sense in taking a step back to XP. The security warnings get annoying quick, but a few minutes of searching on the Web took care of that. With Aero disabled, Vista looks almost identical to XP. And I'm certain few people have reformatted to XP given that they just paid for a copy of Vista. You're not developing software for Windows XP platforms and targeting shops that have already stated they won't even think about adopting Vista until SP2. Windows 2000 Pro still has over 2 1/2 years of support left. Windows XP Pro is good until 2012. Why the hell switch operating system right now just because there's something newer available -- especially when the newer O/S is so well documented to not work with lots of mission critical software?

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[AutopsyReport]

I'm talking about regular consumers, not businesses. Your point is valid but out of context here.

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Ummm, they sold a license so I don't see how that impacts this news? License sold, even though not used.

I downloaded FF for my 3 machines about 12 months ago, but no longer use it. Does that mean FF no longer can claim my downloads?

Bottom line: they sold a LOT of licenses, and made a LOT of money off of Vista in a relatively short time. Fanboi as you want against it, but Vista is definitely a major income-making product right now, and 40 million licenses is quite an accomplishment.

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[westlake]

The FIRST thing I did was wipe the hard drive and load XP, and I suspect thousands, if not millions of people have done that to the machines they've bought.

Millions? Give me a break.

Walmart is currently trumpeting a "special edition" $800 Vista Premium laptop from HP.

It has an integrated webcam, Wi-FI, a dual-core AMD CPU. a gigabyte of RAM, GeForce Go 6150 graphics, a wide-screen display, a 120 GB HDD, a DVD burner and a wireless remote control for media play. Walmart will throw in a gigabyte of ReadyBoost Flash for $14.

This is entry level Vista as seen by the customers of the world's largest retailer barely four months after its introduction. They will not be going back to XP.

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a slightly nicer HP laptop I got a few months back. Not only is it beautiful, every laptopy function works perfectly. Sleep, hibernation, all the powerplan options, quickplay, media center. Vista is fantastic. I have ultimate, only cost 118 as opposed to 112 for home premium at the time which is now down to 99.99 for OEMs. Originally I'd planned to go back to KDE, probably mandriva or unbutu, but that's not going to happen. Configuring everything is effortless, everything is laid out far better than in windows past. By far the best computer purchase I've ever made. In fact it was so clearly a great deal, one of my friends went out and bought a similar model with the digital TV tunner. It's a fantastic desktop I can take with me anywhere, and Vista seems bulletproof. Moreover, the big surprise is how much better IE is. So much of the clutter is gone, yet all the options are still convient to access, it's amazing, and it even has something it'd be nice for firefox to have. Even the people who went back to XP, eventually, they'll choose Vista. It really is too good to not succeed.

Re:Are they counting my non-license?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what though,
regardless of what you are running, or countless others are... they still sold you a copy of Vista. And thats what matters to the shareholders. Yes, the lack of a userbase is a problem to MS and the shareholders, but come SP1 or SP2, I am guessing you and just about every other holdout will assimilate onto Vista. And even if you don't, you are still using Windows.

Also, remember you have the ability to reinstall an OS. The vast majority of computer users don't know how to do this, or are too lazy to, even if they didn't really like Vista all that much.

I "bought" vista but I don't use it

[gvc]

I bought a new computer the other day. I wanted something that would "just work" so after a couple of hours of screwing around with Vista I installed Linux. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the resize on the Vista NTFS partition rendered Vista unable to boot.

No loss. I have my Linux system and it just works.

I would've probably stuck with XP had the computer come with it. Adapting to the gratuitous changes in Vista was way more effort than I wanted to invest. Aside from everything being moved around, Vista had security pop-ups every time I tried to do anything. I don't believe these pop-ups really add security as they give you no meaningful option other than to say "OK."

But they sure do get in the way. Especially if you want to do unattended or remote operations, as I do frequently. Now I understand that with a few more hours research I could've probably found workarounds, but I could not get VNC to work in server mode, or sshd to install as a service.

I did not *ask* for a new, incompatible, version of Windows. It was forced on me.

Ironically, the expedient choice has now changed -- at least for me -- from just accepting the pre-installed system to installing Linux.

Re:I "bought" vista but I don't use it

[EveryNickIsTaken]

It was forced on me. Nothing was forced on you. You purchased the package that came with Vista pre-installed. If you're posting on slashdot, I'd imagine you know a thing or two about computers.. and you also likely know that it's often cheaper to get a 3rd party to build a computer to your specs, with the OS that you want. Of course.. assume = ass you me, yadda yadda.

Re:I "bought" vista but I don't use it

[gvc]

There are several options I might have taken, all involving more work and delay, neither of which was an option in this particular circumstance. I used to buy greybox computers but now the package deals at box stores provide better value, fewer headaches, and are available for cash-and-carry. In order to avail myself of those particular boxes, I was forced to buy Vista.

That's what a monopoly is all about. Making alternatives sufficiently unattractive that they are no longer viable choices in a large number of circumstances. That's the sense in which I use the word "forced."

But the bottom line is that Microsoft lists me as a "sale" when I found the product unsuitable for its intended purpose and do not use it.

Re:I "bought" vista but I don't use it

[SEMW]

Now I understand that with a few more hours research I could've probably found workarounds Or you could just, you know, switch it off. 10 seconds at most.

I don't believe these pop-ups really add security as they give you no meaningful option other than to say "OK." ...No options other than OK -- apart from 'Cancel', you mean? I'm not sure what other choices there could be, either you elevate the process or you don't...?

File this under 'duh'

[moderatorrater]

Windows market share has always been new PCs ever since they took the market from Apple (which, as I remember, means that they didn't convert people from apple, they just made sure the majority of new computers had windows). Next you're going to tell me that the majority of new cell phones are bought when the provider subsidizes the purchase.

Because it's a public company

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the media takes Microsoft's word as reliable in any way shape or form?

Microsoft is a public company, meaning that its shares are traded by members of the public and therefore is regulated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Therefore, Microsoft has an incentive to tell the truth about things like revenue, which would affect its stock price. If it knowingly lied, people would go to jail.

Numbers

[techsoldaten]

Damn, I hate Microsoft and wish they would go away and all, but 40 million is an impressive number for 4 months of sales. As long as they are not making it up, that is a respectable achievement regardless of how it compares with sales of other operating systems.

M

Re:Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering their most recent quarterly report, I'd guess they really did do fairly well. *shrug*

I for one (not what you think!)

[Vexor]

have been down rating these stories on the Firehose.

Re:I for one (not what you think!)

[cparker15]

Thank you. Really, I mean it. Isn't Slashdot supposed to be a member site of the Open Source Technology Group? What is it with all of this news about Microsoft?

Marketing etc.

[Sase]

You know, a couple of things that would make this a bit clearer while trying minimize the confounding variables..

1. Sales vs Marketing dollars spent. (in contrast to XP,)
2. Sales vs Computer OEM / bundled licenses
3. General sales vs. MS Software assurance purchases? Does that figure include SA? hmmm.

I also find it interesting that Vista is hitting the market so hard in consideration of the hardware considerations. That's limited my corporate corner with Vista. Also, I know personally that I'm not about to install any major MS product in a production environment until SP1 or the equivalent comes out... That includes my home PC / laptop (well, maybe the laptop for kicks..)

-paul

Often "Marketing" == Lies

[Futurepower(R)]

From the story: "Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses..."

It often seems to me that the entire job of some marketing people is to be deceitful. We can be SURE that if the number of actual activated Vista licenses was high, Microsoft would be talking about the number with everyone.

We can then suppose that the number of people actually using Vista is very low. Probably companies are buying new computers and installing their old corporate licenses of XP.

It was enormously expensive to our company to deal with the bugs in Windows XP until Service Pack 2 was released. (The cost of ownership of Windows XP SP2 is still many, many times higher than the cost of a license.) We have been burned by Microsoft many times, and are not about to get burned again with Windows Vista, so we are waiting to consider it until the second Vista service pack is released.

I'm not the only one who thinks that Microsoft is abusive, of course. Woody Leonhard of Windows Secrets, in the most recent paid edition, called himself a: "card-carrying member of the 'Association of Windows Victims' ".

Two words:

[peacefinder]

Software Assurance .

How many software assurance accounts are active for Windows XP Home or Pro? If I'm not mistaken, every one of those would provide an upgrade license to some flavor of Vista. That in turn would, I'd think, be counted as a "Vista license sold."

Re:Two words:

[ralphdaugherty]

Software Assurance.

How many software assurance accounts are active for Windows XP Home or Pro? If I'm not mistaken, every one of those would provide an upgrade license to some flavor of Vista. That in turn would, I'd think, be counted as a "Vista license sold."

      yeah, I posted the same thing in the last thread. This is immediate across the board "sales" for all desktops on Software Assurance, just by edict. It's what Software Assurance was supposed to provide, and now does. There's your huge source of beginning numbers from Microsoft for Vista, which is much more of an impact on the numbers than actual sales of PC's since Vista was released.

      But as I also posted, this isn't the biggest startup sales of an OS in history, it's the slowest upgrade of an OS ever promised and paid for.

      Software Assurance. 40 million served, finally.

  rd

Re:Two words:

[peacefinder]

"yeah, I posted the same thing in the last thread."

Oh! Good. I meant to do that, but as it turned out I didn't even get to ready any of the comments on that one. I'm glad someone pointed this out in there. Thanks!

I honestly don't know anyone who runs Vista

[lena_10326]

All 6 of my co-workers run XP, and the remainder of my friends run XP or Linux. We're not exactly running old machines (well, I am sorta with a rebuilt PC). We just picked up new machines at work (all with XP). I don't personally know anyone who's running out to buy Vista.

It's like that old TV show TJ Hooker. It played for years so someone had to be watching it, but I never knew anyone who did. I never figured that one out.

Re:I honestly don't know anyone who runs Vista

[molarmass192]

I'm with you ... I know 1 (that's one) individual who runs Vista. Everybody else in my circles and my company run either XP, OS X, or Linux. On top of that, I work in high tech where most of the early adopters are. The interesting thing about that 1 install, is that it's running in Parallels on OS X, not natively. So, I'd like to know WHERE those 40 millions licenses went considering that by all accounts 1 in 10 people should be running Vista but I'm hardly seeing about a 1 in 200 adoption rate. BTW, that person with Vista doesn't even reside in the US. I think OEM sales are the VAST majority of that 40M and that non-OEM sales are in the hundreds of thousands range at very best. Of course, we'll see the adoption rate rise by force when MS desupports XP in a little less than 2 years.

Re:I honestly don't know anyone who runs Vista

[bmajik]

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

I'm runnng Vista on 2 work machines and 2 of my home machines. It needs more ram than XP. It's prettier. My Hp 7150 doesn't work with Vista. Getting CCCP setup in Vista media center is easier than it was on XP Media Center.

My 4 year old work laptop sleeps/wakes/hibernates faster and much more reliably than it did under XP.

None of my Vista installs were OEM. The two home machines are stuff i built out of newegg orders.

I'm sure none of my Vista installs count in the "40m sold" figure, since I'm an MS employee.:)

That said, Vista does show up in retail boxes on store shelves at places like Best Buy, and it does sell.

I think it's worth mentioning that during the latest earnings disclosure, part of our increased (beat the street) numbers were due to better than expected vista sales. You can be as cynical as you want, but at some point, stretching the truth too much gets you in trouble with the SEC, and the guys that sit on the golden toilets at wallstreet are at least as good as the average slashdotter at wading through the marketing to pick out the reality.

Re:I honestly don't know anyone who runs Vista

[lena_10326]

I'll let you "early adopters" work through all the bugs first. Meanwhile, I'm giving it a couple more years before updating. XP works fine (for the most part). I have no desire to plunk down cash for something shiny and new that I don't need.

If MS plays its cards wrong, I will update to Mac. As long as it runs Adobe Suite I don't care what the OS is. The only reason I haven't switched is due to my software investment. Updating to CS3 could be the time to switch to Mac. We'll have to see.

If you're really a MS employee, you should be working to convince us users not to switch. I'm the one holding the cash and I'm willing to walk. Heh. Heh. Heh.

Re:I honestly don't know anyone who runs Vista

[bmajik]

If you're really a MS employee, you should be working to convince us users not to switch. I'm the one holding the cash and I'm willing to walk. Heh. Heh. Heh

Marketing works to convince people to switch. My interest is in making software as free of irritating defects as possible (and which is why I have plenty of work left at Microsoft ;)

My "pro Microsoft" posts here at slashdot revolve around correcting misstakes or clearing up misconceptions people have. It's easy for generally bright people to let their zeal get out infront of their critical thinking skills, and it seems to happen a lot on Microsoft stories.

Theo DeRaadt doesn't try and convince me not to use Windows. I won't try and convince you to use something that isn't right for you. However, if you've got questions or concerns of a falsifiable nature, I can try and help with them.

Vista sales: One big fat yawn.

[ip_freely_2000]

If they sold 40 million, 30 million or 20 million...who cares? I don't. I would probably care if they sold 56 copies, because then I could point and laugh. But seriously, I don't think too many people care about how many they sold versus XP sales when market size is factored in.

Yawn.

Tell me something interesting. Like that the Sens will beat the Ducks in 5 when they meet in the final.

Re:Vista sales: One big fat yawn.

[eteepell]

yes. the sens will beat the ducks in 5. I can personally attest to that. absolutely. without a doubt.

Rumor at the time was...

[localroger]

Bill Gates named the company after his manhood.

Badda-Badda-BING.

Re:Rumor at the time was...

[loafula]

I just gotta say that made me laugh out loud. Thanks.

Two things to consider

[nickull]

First, Mac has been steadily eating into the PC market for the last 3 years with notable gains in Laptop share. Tim Oreilly stated (for better or worse) "watch the Alpha-geeks". The Alpha geeks at RSA, Java One and other conferences are largely using Mac laptops. At a recent code challenge at Java One 2007, my observation during one heat was all but one of the contestants were on Macbook Pro's.

The second item is a statistic I read somewhere stating that in the next decade, about 50% or more of the people connecting to the internet for the very first time, will do so via a wireless device as opposed to a laptop, desktop. MS has made huge strides into the portable device market but has serious competition there.

Me? I want my iPhone the day they arrive in Canada.

Fake Numbers

[kboodu]

Unfortunately, you can count me as one of those numbers. Yes, I bought a laptop with Vista pre-installed. That is one sold license. HOWEVER, I removed Vista and installed Kubuntu 7.0.4. Why? It's more stable. There is no DRM. And I am in control of my own destiny with it and not reliant on what Microsoft feels is in my best interest. I wonder how many others have removed Vista and installed Linux, or downgraded to an earlier version of Windows. Once again, it's only a statistic, and it's not REALITY. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

How many were Free Upgrades (TM)?

[jsewell]

If you remember, between the time Vista was released to enterprises in the Fall of 06 and release to the public in early 07, most computer vendors offered "Free Upgrades to Vista" if you bought a PC with XP. I'd like to know how many of these "40 million licenses" were paid for and how many were free. Was MS charging a higher price for OEM XP if it came with a free upgrade to OEM Vista? Or were you getting two OS licenses for the price of one?

Re:How many were Free Upgrades (TM)?

[sprior]

I think you're close to the mark, but just missed it. I'm sure every one of those upgrade certificates have been counted as a sale of Vista, but of all the machines sold with those certificates what percent do you think actually got the upgrade discs, and of those what percentage do you think actually broke the shrink wrap on the discs? Look around your office, what percentage of the folks you see would actually perform a system upgrade like that?

In comparison to Fedora, MS isn't in good shape

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to have forgotten that Fedora was crowing about 7 Million actual verified installations recently. This was of Fedora Core 6 (from October of last year to March, IIRC).

Suddenly, that 40 Million number doesn't look so good. Even if you give MS the widest possible doubt and assume that there were 40 Million Vista activations (ha!), gosh, that means that Fedora alone has about 20% of the new O.S. market.

And that's not even including Ubuntu, Suse and the other distros.

No, when you start looking at the numbers for new systems, it looks like Microsoft is in deeper trouble than they are admitting.

And this probably explains why they are panicing and starting their Patent FUD campaign.

Just wait...

[thanksforthecrabs]

...until they sell 40 million SUSE licenses!

PS to the mod: the image/word to confirm /. comments violates the ADA as it doesn't accommodate the blind.

Re:Just wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, according to HTML 4.01 strict, the CAPTCHA image should have descriptive ALT text, like "The word 'chocolate', spelled in non-aligned characters, with some lines and markings obscuring it". While you might argue it defeats the purpose of CAPTCHA in the first place, if the ALT text is random enough but still descriptive, it could work just like mangling email addresses now, immune to robots but still accessible to the blind.

Just a thought.

The new headline : 40 Million people wasted money

[zukinux]

see why : Linux Isos . Nothing more needs to be said.

GG WP no RE!

Microsoft so called sales not really true

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the man said, micro$$$%^&&%$&* is not releasing the actual numbers of activations, and this really tells the tale, and a sordid one indeed. Years ago their was a game called 'Frogger'. A simple game, all it consisted of was a badly implemented software controlled joystick manipulating a cartoon frog crossing a busy highway on his way to becoming roadkill. The player always lost! Never mind the player taking more or less time to lose, untilmately the player always lost. Knowing this instinctively, the then semi-sophisticated buying public did not buy this insulting offering from the gaming monopolists. It sat on the shelf day after day, week after week. Not just a few copies either. This is a Wal-Mart store where this game sat unloved and unsung. What a surprise to read in the computer gaming mags that this game was 'really popular'. The game was a dog. It was so bad that the smell of death emanated from it through all the plastic wrapping that all the 'RFID chips' in the world could not mask. What was happening was that major stores were using their money to create false 'market winners'. They bought the game and stored it in warehouses, out of the way stores, anywhere! The game was not selling to consumers! The false sales figures based on wholesale transactions were mis-reported as actual end user sales when nothing could be farther from the truth. The stores had to get some money from somewhere in order to handle this elaborate falsehood, as places like wal-mart do not act out of love no matter how big you are, so some executive or account manager get some big paychecks out of it. The games themselves sat on the shelves in their tens and hundreds, and in backrooms and warehouses in their thousands for years until eventually they made the bargain bins. Even there they did not sell. They stunk! pure and simple! just like Veeesta! I did not buy frogger even though wal-mart did. Having spent billions of dollars on a real stinker, now obviousely micro$$ wants to pull a 'frogger' on us and lie about their failure.

Logical Fallacy

[asphaltjesus]

Therefore, Microsoft has an incentive to tell the truth about things like revenue, which would affect its stock price. If it knowingly lied, people would go to jail.

You must be new here.

The "truth" you speak of is a Accounting/Finance obligation, NOT Marketing. So, marketing can, and does frequently abuse the facts.

I'm not sure why it is you trust them, their security and interoperability proclamations have been complex lies for years. Their Vista proclamations are more of the same. At best they can be called misleading half-truths. Hopefully, the spirit of intentionally misleading consumers hasn't reached the Accounting/Finance department.

Re:Logical Fallacy

[bogjobber]

What planet are you from? Yes, they can say misleading things about security and interoperability, because those things are subjective. That's what marketing does, they try to make everything look as shiny as possible. But they can't lie about something that is easily and accurately measured such as sales figures. If they did that they would face some very heavy penalties, not only from the government but more importantly from the shareholders.

Who cares?

[kennylogins]

Oh that's right, institutionalized schadenfreude, yawn.

Can I ask you a question?

[Overly Critical Guy]

I think I speak for the majority of Slashdot's readers, that we don't fucking care about Vista's sales that much. [...] So please stop wasting our time with this. We can live on without reading yet again about Vista's sales, in context, or out of it.

Then can I ask you something? Why did you click the Read More link on the front page, read the summary, click Reply, and type out an entire post if you don't fucking care? I have a much more effective solution to your problem--use the scrollbar on the right side of the window to move right past the article you don't like.

You're welcome!

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[suv4x4]

Then can I ask you something? Why did you click the Read More link on the front page, read the summary, click Reply, and type out an entire post if you don't fucking care?

I provided "feedback", in the hope it improved Slashdot. If we all just ignore the noise, a point comes where the noise completely masks the useful articles. Then what do we do?

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Your feedback would be more effective by ignoring the articles you don't want to read. All you did for Slashdot was give them more page views and a higher comment count, proving the article was worth posting.

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[Scottoest]

Actually, another read into this, would be that it proves the stance held by some, that the majority of Slashdot commenters need their daily Microsoft "two minutes hate", and will traverse deep into the land of redundancy to get it.

"Using your commenting dollar" to provide feedback, is also interesting, because it insinuates that Slashdot is ultimately just about increasing page views and unique hits, and not about trying to be a good arbiter of what "tech news" is.

The 7th take on Vista sales, featuring more brainstorm conjecturing by Some Guy, is no longer tech news. It's an obsession.

- Scott

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[suv4x4]

Your feedback would be more effective by ignoring the articles you don't want to read. All you did for Slashdot was give them more page views and a higher comment count, proving the article was worth posting.

Oh yea, solid logic there. DIGG should've kept erasing comments of their users then, that generated quite some traffic to their site.

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[mcrbids]

Then can I ask you something? Why did you click the Read More link on the front page, read the summary, click Reply, and type out an entire post if you don't fucking care?

- ahem -

It's the "totem pole" effect, often called the "social ladder". By feigning a lack of care, a human can insult another human and make like he/she/they are better than the party being insulted. Other examples of this type of behavior:

If a guy dumps a girlfriend, he's automatically "one up" the social ladder from her. Conversely, if she dumps him, it's the other way around.

If a guy quits a job, he can be one-up. If a guy gets fired, he's one-down.

Quiz question: I've been a Linux user since 1999, and have had Linux as my primary desktop since about 2001. Where does that put me on the social ladder with respect to Microsoft?

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[heinousjay]

Absolutely nowhere. You aren't on the same ladder as Microsoft.

Re:Can I ask you a question?

[Overly Critical Guy]

What does Digg have to do with your repeated posting to a story you claim not to care about?

SO DON'T READ IT OR POST TO THE FUCKING ARTICLE

[Overly Critical Guy]

Why do people whine about stories they don't like IN THE COMMENTS FOR THAT VERY STORY? If you don't want to read something, fucking scroll past it on the front page!

Many people care about this because it's a sign of Microsoft's downward spiral and their inability to release worthy updates to their flagship products. We sat through five years of marketing promises, and now we're sitting through months of sales promises, all while this company is threatening us through non-specific patent claims. And you want to brush it under the rug?

Nice sample size!

[mattgreen]

Re-read what you just wrote. Step back a little, if you have to. You're a CS student, and you don't see anything wrong with generalizing results for 40 million copies based upon how it was received by 200 computer science students? What sort of logic is that? Just because it matches up with your perception doesn't make it sound.

Re:Nice sample size!

[Gablar]

I agree the sample size is ridiculous,I didn't mean to imply that the 40 million copy sold is not a valid number. It's just that I find it highly unlikely that mine was the only school in the world to receive a deal similar to mine . What I really meant to say was that although they have sold 40 million copies it doesn't mean they have 40 million users, which is the benchmark they are really after if they want widespread adoption. The example was bad.

40 million licence sales?

[Ant P.]

You mean like how Sony sold 500000 PS3s a few months back?

Vista is the best OS to date

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite all the FUD Vista is still breaking sales records.

Suck it haters.

Here is what my developers did.

[accad]

I got two brand new machines with Vista Business for 2 of my developers.
What was the first thing they did? They installed XP on the 2nd disk, called Microsoft and asked for an activation key based on the Vista license they have.
Yes you are allowed to "downgrade" to an older version of Windows if you have a legitimate copy and an authentic media of the old/other OS you want to install.
If you don't believe be read the EULA.
How many people did that? Bought a brand new machine with Vista, downgraded..etc?
Looks to me that Microsoft can claim $40M in Vista "sales", but can they report on "usage"?

Re:Here is what my developers did.

[JustNiz]

They don't care if you actually use it or not. They've already got your money.

The PC world still turns...

[mollog]

Microsoft selling software is like Exxon selling gasoline. Except that Exxon has better sense than to brag about their monopoly.

But this is a case of "...methinks the lady doth protest too much..."; Microsoft is worrying about losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers) and better software (Apple's OS). The louder they talk about market share, but more suspicious it looks.

To me, there are some other pretty important developments that have been going on, such as yesterday's report here on Slashdot about the NYSE replacing IBM mainframes with IBM AIX and with Linux.

I don't know how many people were around when Microsoft successfully spiked the Unix market with their FUD about workstation NT running on RISC processors. At the time, the Unix server and workstation companies were talking about converging their various flavors of Unix. This would have allowed more and better cross-platform compatibility of distributed application software. Microsoft countered with a campaign to run Windows NT on RISC processors as an alternative. DEC, HP and others squandered resources on this effort and the Unix market withered. Microsoft's campaign even had consulting businesses like Gartner Group predicting that NT would replace both Unix and the mainframe in a few years time. HP even went so far as to try to munge its PA RISC processor with the Intel x86 processor (Itanium) with the goal of running both x86 and Unix code on one platform. Intel never delivered on the early promises of that project, but they got HP's processor technology for their troubles.

Looking back, you have to hand it to Microsoft for the brilliant way they marginalized Unix. Problem is, they never did supply a replacement server platform except for some lousy versions of NT on Intel processors (And into that void slips Linux.)

I'm guessing that Windows XP represents the peak of Microsoft's work. Vista was years late, and the future of processors; cell, multi-core, distributed computing, internet-based applications, cell phone computers - will be beyond Microsoft's narrow, one-user/one-cpu, world view. Office productivity software has matured, gaming programming is moving onto GPUs and Microsoft's operating system is becoming less and less relevant.

Re:The PC world still turns...

[cthellis]

Microsoft selling software is like Exxon selling gasoline. Except that Exxon has better sense than to brag about their monopoly.

ExxonMobil is huge, exerts much influence, and makes dickloads of profit, but they have nowhere NEAR the stranglehold Microsoft does.

Re:The PC world still turns...

[SparkyFlooner]

Vista was years late, and the future of processors; cell, multi-core, distributed computing, internet-based applications, cell phone computers - will be beyond Microsoft's narrow, one-user/one-cpu, world view.

Because after all, Windows Vista only uses one core if your processor has more than one. Any other cores are secretly used by the OS to generate pure evil.

Re:The PC world still turns...

[dn15]

Because after all, Windows Vista only uses one core if your processor has more than one. Any other cores are secretly used by the OS to generate pure evil.

As was the case with XP Home, Vista Home will only use one processor. It will take advantage of multiple cores on that processor, but ignores any more than one physical processor. That seems pretty silly to me since tons of free Linux and *BSD distributions will let you use multiple processors, and in the Mac world the same copy of the OS happily uses all your hardware whether it's a multi-processor, 8-core Mac Pro or an original Core Solo Mac Mini. This arguably doesn't matter to the average consumer but I don't like the idea of putting an artificial restriction on an OS so you can milk more money out of people who have better hardware.

Re:The PC world still turns...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any other cores are secretly used by the OS to generate pure evil.
So that's what the system idle process is for. Idle cycles doing the devils work.

Re:The PC world still turns...

[Bearhouse]

I was around at that time, and you're right. Not sure about "losing their monopoly to free software (linux, especially linux servers)", though. They've never had a monopoly on servers, although Windows server sales overtook those of Unix etc. in 2005 http://tinyurl.com/jqdxm

I have one

[nanosquid]

I got a Vista license with a new PC. I activated it, played at it, found it sucked, and installed Ubuntu over it. Another satisfied Microsoft customers.

Re:I have one

[ferrgle]

I'm proud to have lasted a whole 2 months using Vista until I got sick of all the problems. (That I've posted so many times before)
I'm proud about it because it was like an endurance test of - hmmm this isn't working, I wonder if I can fix it, oh it's a feature, damn!

I have also installed Ubuntu and impressed everyone with the spinning 3d cube desktop - Yes I'm a show off - It's great.

As a side note my father bought a brand new HP Laptop today with Vista installed - he will be installing Ubuntu tomorrow - another Vista "Sale"

I god one, but don't use it

[LorenzoV]

I bought a Toshiba laptop in April 2007. I had no choice but take Vista. I got the home basic version, the cheapest. Toshiba's terms of sale explicitly say that you cannot return the software for refund; the OS is explicitly mentioned.

When it arrived I booted it to Vista briefly out of curiousity, with the network disabled. I was not impressed. I did not register it.

I then installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it, wiping out Vista completely. So, here's at least one "sale" of Vista that will never run on a machine for which it was sold.

How many others might there be? I can personally count two "windows appliance operators" from my family and limited circle of aquaintances. They did essentially as I did with their new machines: wipe it clean and install Ubuntu. I gladly helped with the application conversions. Both are very happy with Ubuntu.

A side note: A few years ago, I quit providing "windows tech support" to all but my closest family. I'm convinced that by doing this I caused at least one former Windows user to abandon XP for Linux. I have now given notice to all my family that I will not provide any windows support after September 2007, including conversion support(!). I know with certainty that this will cause one additional Linux switch, the last windows user in my household. -- Coercion has an elegance all its own.

Re:I god one, but don't use it

[vuffi_raa]

I actually had to search like mad for a new laptop that would run xp (most have no driver support for xp)- got a lenovo that a compusa had sitting in the back for cost- still a core duo centrino with 2gb of ram - I use it for live audio so I needed xp pro. I was glad to find it since I thought I was going to have to either get an alienware or a mac and have it boot to xp. I was pretty lucky to get it- someone at best buy told me that the manufacturers recalled all of the xp supported machines.

Only Free Software is Inevitable

[twitter]

It doesn't matter how well Vista sells at the moment. It's inevitable that all new computers will sell Vista, just like it was inevitable that new computers sold XP. We had exactly these same stories when XP came out. After Vista achieves a critical mass and everyone is used to it, everyone else will slowly upgrade..

Ah, but the point is that Vista is not inevitable or even probable. XP took years to take up 50% of the M$ market and Vista is not doing as well as that. While XP had a minority share, it was safe to ignore. Vista is so disappointing that even the fanboys are ignoring it and sane people are forbiding it in their work places. No commercial software is inevitable and all of it dissapears in time. Only free software has long term credibility. Vista is a flop and will soon be replaced by something else, just like ME was replaced by W2K and W2K was replaced by XP.

This is good for everyone but M$. The more market rejection they face, the more fragmented their market is, the less power they have over the rest of us.

Re:Only Free Software is Inevitable

[Reality Master 101]

Vista is so disappointing that even the fanboys are ignoring it and sane people are forbiding it in their work places.

Where is this mass disappointment? It doesn't exist in the normal world. Sure, there's a lot of wishful thinking, but there's not exactly huge lines outside Best Buy returning Vista. Like I said, we had EXACTLY the same stories last time. "XP is getting slow adoption", "Everybody hates XP's new crayola user interface", "Even new computer manufacturers are offering Win/2000 or ME instead of XP", blah, blah, blah. I dare you -- look at some of the old stories on Slashdot and you'll read comments just like yours.

Only free software has long term credibility.

Software is software. No one in the mainstream cares what methodology was used to develop it, they only care how useful it is and what applications are available, and whether it's compatible with the software they already have.

Vista is a flop and will soon be replaced by something else, just like ME was replaced by W2K and W2K was replaced by XP.

Microsoft would take a "flop" like Vista every day of the week.

Speaking of Dell....

[Tmack]

HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ..

Its what HP is doing right... not being DELL.

Another Failed Assumption

[asphaltjesus]

But they can't lie about something that is easily and accurately measured such as sales figures.

Yes, they most certainly can. Marketing can call "Sales" whatever they want. Much like politics, some vague approximation of the truth legitimizes their behavior, but no one goes to jail for their crazy claims.

Accounting, OTOH, will report sales in a GAAP way, but that way is very non-specific and intentionally allows any company some secrecy balanced with accountability and transparency. The GAAP rules allow for some sales reporting complexity to manipulate tax liabilities so units sold never correlates easily with revenue on a quarterly basis.

I could go on, but it seems to me you have no experience in this area.

Vista was released earlier this year.

[eteepell]

Of course sales have been rather slow with Vista. Most people are broke after xmas. It wasnt even an option this last christmas. Prepare for this christmas. (say it aint so) http://badvista.fsf.org/

Because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday

[ShakaUVM]

"Because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments"

They did? Actually, they did a good job pretending they'd give you a deal if you bought XP over the holiday.

I ended up just buying Vista for less than what they offered through the well-maybe-it'll-be-free holiday-bought-XP to Vista upgrade path.

Don't kid yourself.

[fwarren]

Microsoft not releasing the activation numbers is a sure sign that they are not good.

Beyond that, things even look less rosy. Yes there are plenty of places that have Vista licenses and have not bothered to load them, xp woks just fine.

My own personal antidote, I deal with 4 machines (laptops) that came with Vista. My wifes laptop at home, she could only put up with it for about 2 weeks. She dual boots Ubuntu and XP. With the XP only used for popcap games.

At work, there is my laptop, which now runs only Ubuntu, my boss, who has called Dell, and got a license to run XP on it. There is one other laptop with Vista, we have just been to lazy to get a license for it, but if it does anything flaky, it will get a nuke and pave. Since then we have ordered 3 other laptops...all with XP.

So of 4 activated Vista systems, only 1 is actually still Vista.

So with people who are not installing Vista but have a license, people given the OEM coupons, and people who are leaving Vista for Xp/linux. I would not be surprised if actual Vista adoption is as low as 10 million.

Microsofts most effective antipiracy measure yet, has been the quality of Vista. People just don't want to run it.

The fact that people don't even want to pirate it is a bad sign for Micosoft.

Parent is "Godwin's Law"-Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Only nazi mods don't realize

In other words ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, it needs to to be destroyed -- cause that's the only way any of that will ever happen.

Vista is not ready.

[twitter]

The inaptly named "realty master 101" claims Vista is not a dissapointment:

Where is this mass disappointment? It doesn't exist in the normal world.

It's everywhere people have tried. Go to YouTube and look for the two minute Vista install. There you will find a guy that crams his Vista install disk into a shredder. He's not alone. The CCCC mail lists are full of people swearing at and off Vista. While I was sitting with the ACM at LSU's student fair, a stranger out of nowhere came up and told the group about how miserable his install was. Only one person I know uses Vista and he admits there are serious driver issues and that it's not ready for general consumption.

Re:Vista is not ready.

[dedazo]

Assuming you're not just making shit up as usual, I suppose we all have our own anecdotal evidence. Is yours more "truthy" than everybody else's?

Re:Vista is not ready.

[The Bungi]

Wow twitter, I guess I win because one of our client sites completed a 4,000+ CAL rollout of Vista Business and Office 2007 without much trouble a few weeks ago. Do I beat the "LSU Student Fair" with that?

Do you like insulting the average Slashdot reader's intelligence? That's the only thing I can think of when I read this bullshit. Do you honestly think some random techie is going to slurp up your "my cousin Joe Bob didn't like Vista, so it's a flop and everybody hates it" blabber?

I think at this point you're so desperate that you've pretty much managed to transcend the line that separates FUD and ridiculous stupidity.

Like I said

[Master of Transhuman]

Microsoft lies.

Period.

"40 million" sales in one quarter turns into 30 million - or less - in four months...

Can you say, "Bill is a lying piece of shit"?

I knew you could.

Besides which, sales does not tell the story. It's the customer complaints, security disasters, patch problems, etc., ad nauseum, which will tell the story by the end of the year.

FOAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know, there is actually no direct connection between what I can charitably describe as your optimistic wet dreams and reality. None whatsoever.

I don't know what hole you crawled out of, but you need to get back to it soon. Those of us who truly advocate open source are careful not to fall into this type of useless tripe. Please stop it or go away. We don't need your "help".

You remind me of a bunch of realtors...

[George Johnston]

When housing prices went up they said it was a great time to buy. When housing prices went down they said it was a great time to buy. On Slashdot, no matter how many licenses Microsoft sells it doesn't bode well for Microsoft...

This means nothing. Vista License = XP License

[Simulant]

If you buy Vista (and at most places and on most new machines that's pretty much all you can get if you are shopping for a Windows OS) you also get A LICENSE TO RUN XP.

Yes... The Vista license is backwards compatible. (Actually... I'm not entirely sure if this is true for OEM or retail purchases but it's definitely true for VLK purchases. It doesn't really matter... all the retail purchasers I know are treating it as such.)

So it makes sense for businesses (and possibly end users) to buy Vista. It lets them run XP for pretty much the same price and gives them the the option to upgrade to Vista should it ever become palatable.

That said... every single one of the ten or 15 people I know who have bought PCs with Vista have replaced it with XP.

I also know of many companies that made major Vista volume purchases simply because they needed more XP licenses. They have no intention what-so-ever of actually running Vista any time soon but they do retain the option.

I am still surprised that noone talks about....

[vuffi_raa]

I am surprised that it hasn't come out that the major retailers had all of their xp machines recalled from them and that for laptops everyone except dell took down all of their drivers or are not supplying them for xp- for current model laptops that are being sold. Microsoft is strong arming the market into using xp- you literally cannot buy a machine in a major retailer that has xp support unless you are lucky and get a machine that was missed in the recall.

Well done?

[jotaeleemeese]

This group of bullies just started threatening patent war agains the FOSS community and you have the face to congratulate them.

Honestly, I do not know in which planet you live, but surely seems to be one very nice to monopolists, bullies and unethical entitities.

In many locations that is forbidden..

[jotaeleemeese]

It is the sheer lack of cojones from the PC manufacturers what keeps the current situation as is, if one or two of them would come forward MS would be found, once again, lacking in the ethical and perhaps legal departments.

They are basically being owned by MS and they have no alternative but to trust their bussiness models to a 3rd party.

We only need to know 2 things.

[jotaeleemeese]

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

And that MS is turning to their legal department for new sources of income.

Flat share price for years paired with a new strategy to defend their "IP portfolio". MS can try to massage things, hide numbers, play hide and seek.

The reality is that the people trusted with making investments are not buying the MS food (and they have not bought the marketing for years now) and MS is beginning to act like a certain Darl who lives and "works" in Utha.