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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[gEvil (beta)]

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

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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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 ?

[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.

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

[u-bend]

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

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.

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?

[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?

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.

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.

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?

[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:Thus Sayeth The Marketers...

[heinousjay]

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

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

[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...?

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."

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.

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?

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.

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 ?

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: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.

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"?

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...

[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: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: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.

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.