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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.'"
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.
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Only 244 Genuine Windows Vista's Sold in China
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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/15122
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
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
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.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
>>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.
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.
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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.
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.
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"?
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.