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Microsoft Sees Stronger XP Sales in FY08
Rude Awakening wrote with a PC World article, saying that XP sales will actually be higher next year than they were in 2007. Despite Vista's release, Microsoft admitted this week that it expects the previous version of its operating system to make up a larger percentage of its OS sales in 2008. "According to Liddell, Microsoft will generate the same revenue, more or less, under the new Vista vs. XP numbers, although there might be some slight differences because Vista sales have tended to involve more of the higher-priced versions, dubbed premium by the company, than has XP. The financial forecast didn't spell out that directly, however. The only clue was a US$120 million difference in what Microsoft pegged as the 'undelivered elements' it assigned to unearned income for the coming year."
Exactly. The corporate world is always miles behind. My company is just still malingering on 2K on a lot of boxes, just now getting to XP. Big companies are not known for leaping forward into new and unproven technologies, especially when most of the improvement is just user eye-candy.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I, for one, run Linux practically exclusively on my machines. However, my sister-in-law, for example, wanted to purchase a new laptop. Now, the particular model she wanted came with Vista, but I advised her to get the shop to install XP instead, for numerous reasons (the incompatibility with a lot of older programs, drivers, etc. (I'm too lazy to list ALL the reasons right now)), so she has followed my advice and is a happy person. The point of this post? Vista, in my opinion anyway, is rather like Windows ME of the past - a bit of an abortion from Microsoft - they have quite obviously released Vista FAR too early - it's an unfinished product, rushed out of the factory, because it perceived its competitor's products (Linux-based, OSX-based for example) being released with certain innovations which it wanted to claim for itself as its own innovations, and now because of that is paying the price of that rush. People percieve Vista to be what it is - a rushed out Operating System with many bugs, failed claims, and as a - to be extremely kind - beta quality product at the very most.