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Vista Sales Rate Fell Last Quarter
Microsoft is not directly mentioning Vista demand while they brag about how much money they made last quarter, because sales fell. "[Microsoft] shipped approximately 28 million copies of Vista in the latest quarter ended September, or 9.3 million copies per month. Though the Windows developer pointed to 27 percent growth in business licenses and noted that many home users were buying the more lucrative Vista Home Premium or Ultimate editions, the rate represents a decline from the 10 million per month reported early in summer."
That in the same time the BSDM fans number fell down also?
What about sales of Windows XP?
Did they increase?
I am beginning to think that Microsoft made Vista as crappy as possible so that whatever "new" version of Windows they come out with after Vista will look like...well, like something actually worth buying.
I come here for the love
Who Cares? We all know what vista is and what it is not. Just purchase or use what meets your needs. Why is this article even posted?
For sales of anything?
Followed by a hockey stick type pattern towards the end of the year?
P.S. I'm no Vista user and find nothing compelling for me to upgrade from 2003.
I would be willing to bet that over the counter sales of Vista, that is, upgrades and personal new system builders, exceeded that for those of any Linux by a fairly wide margin. Everyone cheers that Vista sales went down a bit, but honestly, I'd love to sell a few million units of just about anything.
Those companies that sell Linux's, such as Novell, are chump change compared to the Vista juggernaught. Novell did 21 million dollars of Linux for the 3rd quarter. Microsoft will blow through that in a couple of days of Vista sales... even excluding OEMS. Really, because Linux is open source, there's really no point to selling it at all.
One wonders, too, just how well Linux would survive an economic downturn. With mixed economic signs coming out of the west, one has to imagine that previously generous developers will descend on each other like wolves, when time comes to make mortgage payments.
This is my sig.
27 percent growth in business licenses? It's real easy to have a 27% growth on near-zero. I hate statistics.
Actually Vista was a secret plan to increase the value of Apple stock he quietly bought several years ago. He's wringing his hands at the thought of all the money he's going to make off the next service pack, cue evil laugh.
I have to ask: is that much of a difference statistically significant? 700,000 on 10 million?
Grammar Nazi
Ubuntu sales remained flat...
I assume those numbers also include the copy I received (and promptly wiped) when I bought my new Thinkpad.
I'm running Ultimate on a few computers and can't for the life of me think what features are worth paying the extra for.
Bitlocker - would love to use it but my laptop has a RAID-0 set of drives so bitlocker just hangs.
Dreamscene - movie instead of wallpaper. Shame I have to open windows that then obscure it *cough*
Texas Holdem - rarely play it
Language packs - yeah - dead useful
err... that's it.
Looking towards the ultimate site - nothing happening of note: http://windowsultimate.com/Default.aspx
Yawn.
> many home users were buying the more lucrative Vista Home Premium or
> Ultimate editions...
Obviously. The "Basic" version (which is still considerably more expensive than Mac OS X Leopard or certainly Linux) is crippled to the point of ridiculous. It doesn't even come with the ability to play DVD's; instead it will take you to a Microsoft page where you can buy the necessary plug-ins.
This is the way it should be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RsOIdF_DdY
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Vista is no longer "new", so obviously there is less demand. Those who want it already own it, those who don't aren't going to buy it, but it's still being shipped on millions of new PC's. This goes for pretty much any product, sales are strong at the beginning then gradually fade. I would expect Vista sales to continue dropping, with another spike after SP1 is released and more people feel like trying it out.
Apart from not being new, this also says nothing about the relative merits of Vista as an OS. In fact, if Vista sales had continued to increase right when people are saving up for the holidays, that would be extremely impressive, and quite unexpected.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
... film at 11.
Why is it not surprising that this is how the quarterly earnings report makes it onto Slashdot? The title could have read "Microsoft Reports 27% Revenue Growth; Fastest First Quarter Since 1999", or that Microsoft stock has reached its highest point it over 5 years. It might be notable that the Entertainment division was this quarter profitable, or that income in the client division still grew 25% (claims of slowing Vista sales notwithstanding).
As much as folks here love to think that MSFT is a sinking ship, it's having its healthiest growth in years.
Seriously, I am looking for the RTM ISO that is on MSDN. Filename is "en_windows_vista_x86_dvd_X12-34293.iso". I found a few relatively ancient torrents that have only one or two seeders and I only get about 10 kb/s. The only recent and well seeded torrents I can find are these hacked ISOs with all the updates and cracks built in; I am looking for an untouched ISO.
Sure, you sold them the stuff, but you can fool most people only once. As they say, you can sell bad milk at the normal price without a problem. But if you do that, *next week* you won't sell any milk, however good your quality is.
Maybe it fell a bit, but I would still consider selling 9.3 million copies a month pretty damn good. Say each sold for ~$100, since it doesn't state if they were OEM or Retail copies, that's still 930 million dollars a month in sales in just Microsoft's Operating System division.
Now, some of that breakage is the result of improved security, but our Windows driver guy tells me that the disruption caused by the security causes a lot of users to just disable the security.
Also, I understand that MS provided a version to a few top-tier OEMs that didn't require product activation by end users, so as not to annoy them. This resulted in a crack being written by the w4r3z community that doesn't require activation at all! (look for it on a p2p network near you.) The product activation is very sensitive to hardware changes, more so than XP, so that legitimate users get no end of hassle from Vista, while pirates aren't inconvenienced at all.
Surely Microsoft must have had some regular people beta test Vista. And surely some - maybe all - of these people must have told MS that Vista shouldn't ship in the state it's in.
My wife is thinking about getting a new laptop. I said to her "Make sure you don't get Vista, it's really screwed up" and you know what she said? "Oh, yeah I know. Apple runs these TV ads with a young guy who's supposed to be a Mac, and a guy who looks like Bill Gates who's supposed to be a PC. And whenever they try to talk to each other, this Secret Service agent interrupts them to make sure it's OK."
Remember the Twiggy drive? Apple tried to manufacture their own floppy disk drive for the Apple II. They were never able to get it to work. There was a big shareholder lawsuit. I could really see a shareholder lawsuit coming from Vista. Corporate officers have a fiduciary duty - that means they're legally obligated - to look after shareholder interests. And Billy and Steve Balmer really screwed up.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Something really does feel different from previous Windows OS introductions.
My nontechnical friends and acquaintance do make light conversation about things they've heard of in the news, and will ask me, as a "computer genius," what I'm using at work. Previous Windows upgrades got mentioned in casual talk. Usually there are a least a few people who want to be the first kid on the block with it.
Not this time.
People talk about the iPhone, they talk about their newly-installed Verizon FiOS, their iPods, what brands of Wintel computers I trust, whether they can run Windows on the Intel Macs.
I don't detect any consumer excitement about Vista. Nobody has asked me if they should upgrade. And a couple of people have asked me whether I agree with friends of their who told them to avoid it.
Unscientific sample? You bet.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Is Slashdot now trying to compete with the Wall Street Urinal for reporting trifling trivial statistics?
Try some NEWS: ie. Bush Planning To Bomb Any Country With A Democracy.
Thanks for nothing.
Cheers,
K. Trout
P.S.: Fuck Bush
What happens to linux during an economic downturn, what you mean like the one we had when the bubble burst? People all of sudden realized that no, you do NOT require expensive systems to run servers, you can do it with a whiteboxes running linux. You pick up sun gear for a song as all the dotcoms who had splurged on unneeded equipment went bust, while the likes of google (linux) continued on, because they kept their costs under control.
Your troll sounds reasonable, until you remember linux has been around long enough to have seen what you predict, and came out stronger then ever.
As for MS making lots more money, that is true enough (it is also spending a lot more) but if what you say then MS shouldn't feel at all threatned, so why is it acting like it is? You are sayinga mighty lion is not going to be scared by a little dog, while behind you that lion is trying to climb a tree to get away from it.
Most opensource developers already got good jobs, they do this on the side, because they want too. You are predicting that people will stop their hobby when the economy goes bad? A hobby that doesn't really cost anything except time? You got a weird view of human nature.
I got a next troll for you, linux will die when the developers discover girls.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In a world where the Microsoft hegemony determines the OS on your sub 800 dollar PC and the vasy majority have no choice but to accept the Windows tax (absolutely none of the desk jockeys sitting at any major company have a choice when the Mouse Clicking Solutions Experts continue buy nothing but Windows), I can't imagine anything more useless than touting Window's "sales". They have an illegal monopoly which they continue to squeeze for cash. The ridiculous prices and 7 version shell game that MS is playing with Vista is certainly enough evidence of Microsoft's greed, arrogance and marketing stupidity.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
For lack of space in the title, I should also add illegal downloads of (Windows and Leopard).
.... who'd pay full retail for the OS?
I think a fair assumption to make is that a large majority of Vista sales are on new computers. I think the interesting 'statistic' will be the number of Leopard sales in coming months as compared to Windows purchases (and downloads!). These purchases will likely be a part of a new PC purchase (or with some MS products) the purchase of hardware + OEM license
Anyways, with the new Leopard features, it will be interesting to see whose marketing non-geek consumers believe come time of a new computer purchase. And, whether some people choose the extra expense of buying new apps for a new Mac or choose to continue using XP for fear apps won't work with Vista. Or those that choose no OS on thier PC.
In the end, I think Vista's image is a bit tarnished in the media and word-of-mouth. I have used it. I'm keeping XP on my computer. I think a Service pack and a media campaign is what MS needs, to recover the public image, regardless of whether technically or not Vista needs it.
Now please wash your hands.
The business market has a little more choice available (XP is still being sold to businesses), and Windows XP is still the big seller.
So what does this tell us? When there is a choice, XP is purchased instead of Vista. Microsoft tis so desperate to make it appear as if Vista is selling, that they are counting the Vista->XP "downgrade" as a Vista license in use.
Who in their right mind would downgrade to XP on a brand new high end machine with a 6400+ x2 and a Geforce 8800? That would be retarded because you wouldn't get anything out of it, instead you would be shooting yourself in the foot with a downgrade to XP instead of running Vista Enterprise/Ultimate x64.
I'm shocked, you're saying, in a sense, a copy of Vista to every citizen in Michigan each month (Appox 10 million people in Michigan). How many copies of Ubuntu are downloaded each month? Even if sales dropped to 1 million per month thats like selling a copy of Vista to each citizen in New Mexico each month.
Sigh. Vista sales only went down because it's buggy, slow, and upstaged by Leopard. I mean, for an OS that drains battery life 50% faster, what could you possibly expect?? Stop bashing Microsoft all the time!
It will have XP as an option or just come with XP
I just bought a Dell. They sell the same laptops as "small business" machines that they sell for the consumer market, for about $200 less if you count the service contract - in basic black instead of shiny mac colors, and XP is one of the features they're pushing. They know businesses don't want Vista that will break their programs with those new security features.
You know, if you write an OS that refuses to run any programs at all, then you're perfectly secure.
You would need to establish a null hypothesis first, ie. what distribution you expect the figures to follow if there hasn't been a real decrease. Perhaps a normal distribution centred around the previous figures? Then you have to determine a standard deviation, and I have no idea what to pick there. Perhaps a statistics expert can help. I'm an undergrad maths student, but avoid stats where possible, so can't help much.
;-) Unexpectedly, the stats class I had in business school was better than the stats class I had from the math department as a CS undergraduate.
Nevertheless, I'd expect a 7% drop to be statistically significant given any reasonable assumptions. It's not, however, very surprising.
Your methodology is half way there, don't avoid stats.
You don't know if the drop is really 7%. Raw month to month or quarter to quarter data can be misleading. At a minimum you need to seasonally adjust the numbers. You may also want to compare the adoption rate of Vista to XP.
Vista helped Microsoft, yet again, beat wall-street expectations (the people that are paid to know about these things) - http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/26/microsoft-q1-profits ...and it's sold 88 million copies so far. Not bad for an operating system that "doesn't work".
throw new NoSignatureException();
All sales go down over time, of everything. Slashdot, please report real news.
Apple sold 2.1 million macintoshes last quarter (and therefore 2.1 million copies of OS X 10.3) -- more than 20% of Vista's sales. With 10.4 having been released 3 days ago, this quarter's sales numbers should be interesting.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
God?
Superman?
Harry Potter?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So basically, sales volume dropped 7%. They *only* sold 9.3 million copies, instead of the 10 million they sold in summer. While this article is an attempt to go "ha ha" to Microsoft, I think that's pretty darned good.
Also consider that a rather large shopping season is right around the corner. Consumers will be rushing to upgrade their computers for the family, and businesses will be looking to spend some cash to get bigger tax breaks.
Microsoft also cooled it on the advertising for the last quarter. They have a new campaign which is just now starting, and I predict the money they *didn't* spend last quarter will be given to the Q4 advertising budget.
-David
They shipped more copies of Vista in the last QUARTER than there are TOTAL number of users of OS X combined. Not too shabby for an OS that "nobody wants".
MS will always make Vista look "better" then OS-X, Linux, BSD, GNU, *insert non MS product here* and can do so with WGA. For example, if I buy a computer from a physical location (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc.) chances are it will have either Vista or OS-X, even if I want to put Linux, BSD or another operating system on it, it registers as a "sale" for Windows and not to mention how ridiculously complicated it is to refuse the EULA and get your money back, some companies even prevent you from doing that!!! So unless you buy a Dell with Ubuntu or another vendor with Linux pre-installed it comes out as a "point" for MS, and even more if you get Vista, buy a licence for XP and run XP, it counts as 2 sales for MS. It is this that is creating a monopoly for MS, a computer sale is a Windows sale, and if someone wants to tell me how easy it is to get Linux pre-installed, tell me of a physical location that is a nationwide chain that sells Linux pre-installed, the sad fact is you can't, and when you ask for advice to their store "computer experts" if *insert hardware here* is compatible with Linux/BSD *insert distro name and kernel version here* you get a blank stare or a "Sorry I don't know much about Linux" it is this why MS has such a great market share, the stupidity of the typical customer to anything not MS and to know not much about "computers" as "Microsoft products" it is that why technology is moving at such a slow pace lately.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
October 25, 2007: "Microsoft said sales of its Windows Vista OS experienced double-digit growth through multi-year business contracts, and demand for Microsoft Office, Windows Server and SQL Server was also high."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138958-c,companynews/article.html
9.3 million a month! Nope... still sounds like a lot to me...
And that is screwing up?
Microsoft making what everyone agrees is a bad product, selling millions of it, making money off of it despite the bad publicity...
I don't see what the shareholders would have to complain about.
If Microsoft was Coca Cola, stores would be full of untreated sewage packed in Coke bottles and people would still be buying it.
"Yeah, it tastes like shit, but what can I do? Its the newest thing. You don't expect me keep drinking that old stuff, do you?"
Microsoft sold millions of Windows Milleniums. Just think of that for a while.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I've been using Vista for a few months now, and besides some older games that won't work, I actually much prefer it to XP. Networking is better, hardware support has been fine, and with Comodo's firewall installed, I've been able to disable UAC and windows firewall and still have good protection without all the annoying pop up's. I haven't noticed a slowdown, and if anything, I actually get better battery life on my laptop.
Nobody knows if they're cooking the books. Wall Street insanity is what it is.
What?
If Vista sales were really as bad as Slashdot and its readers would like you to believe, then Microsoft would have been hammered by Wall Street.
Think about it. A massive percentage of Microsoft's revenue comes from Windows. (With most of the rest coming from Office.) If Vista sales were bad, or even a just a little under what was expected, Microsoft's stock would take a hit.
But, funny enough, that's exactly the opposite of what happened last week. Microsoft's stock is up about 10%. And that's a HUGE deal for a company as mature and with such a huge market cap as Microsoft.
Now, granted, Vista sales aren't the only thing that can affect Microsoft's stock price. There was lots of good news for Microsoft. Windows Server market share is increasing (at what just so happens to be almost exactly the pace at which Linux server market share has decreased in recent months), their "entertainment" group (aka Xbox) posted their 2nd profit (thanks to Halo 3), and Office sales are awesome.
But the fact remains that Vista sales are meeting or beating expectations. Virtually all Vista sales happen via new PC purchases, and those were higher than expected for most of the year... thanks to, you guess it, Vista.
Since we're just pre-holiday season right now, PC sales tend to drop a bit... and that's what happened. (And please note that the sales RATE dropped, yet overall sales are still higher than last year at this time.) To say that this drop was caused by Vista is, put simply, retarded.
You know... Apple sold 2.1 mil. in the entire quarter. MS sold 9.3 mil. LAST MONTH. They've sold 28 mil. copies of Vista in the last quarter.
That comes up to about 7.5%. About just where it should stand with that 5% of computer market share.
Oh... and MS sold 88 mil. copies of Vista so far. That is 88 mil copies of a piece of shit OS.
And even without silly commercials where one annoying guy is Vista and other irritating guy is something else.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Vista juggernaught"
You use that word "juggernaught"... I don't think it means what you think it means.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The sales figure I'd really like to see is how many copies were sold to end users who installed it on their own PCs themselves.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Vista is no longer "new", so obviously there is less demand.
So what does that do for all those OEMs and Vendors with a shop full of new PCs and Vista? Customers don't want Vista and already have XP, oh no! What can you do to get your customer wow that works and move those computers out the door?
if Vista sales had continued to increase right when people are saving up for the holidays, that would be extremely impressive, and quite unexpected.
I suppose you have never heard of "back to school" sales.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I wonder if this is XP Backsliding or Linux Uptake. The optimistic person in my says this helps Linux, but the pessimist in me says people are digging their heels in XP.
I'm amazed all of you see this as such dire news for Microsoft. 10 million copies a month. Wouldn't Apple just LOVE to sell 10 million computers a month? That's quite a sales figure for ANY vendor.
Karma: Neutered
http://slashdot.org/~twitter/
:)
Eek, modded down so many times! And you almost have a 5 digit user id, so you must have been doing this for a very long time! Well, you're certainly persistent! Have you considered a career in Jehovah's Witnesses? They keep coming to my house and I can't seem to get them to give up. I think you and they may have a lot in common, with the obvious exception that you're slightly more fanatic about your beliefs.
Check the parent poster's history before you call him a "M$ Fanboy".
Then again, there's no room in the Cult of Twitter for wishy-washy rational arguments. I guess he really is a "M$ Fanboy" because he isn't complete and perfect in his hate.
Your irrational behavior makes the rest of us look bad by association. You have negative karma for a reason, and it's not the "astroturfers" of your paranoid delusions.
Microsoft has had a lot to say about Vista and the market has been listening.
Gobsmacked. That's what the Brits call it when something jaw-dropping happens and you can't think of anything to say. Microsoft's blockbuster quarterly results kind of fall into that territory for me. The cash river keeps on flowing
Someone out there - or 88 million someones - bought a copy of Vista, 28 million of them in the last two months. This brought $4.14 billion in revenue in the quarter, making the Vista doom mongers look a tad silly. Sales of high-end Vista SKUs were the most popular. Vista helps Microsoft's quarterly profits rise 23 per cent"
Microsoft's chief financial officer said the company "outperformed expectations pretty much across the board." But it was led by robust performance of the company's PC software products. Sales in the Windows group rose 25 percent to more than $4.14 billion, while its Office division reported a 20 percent increase in sales to $4.11 billion. ...Growth was highest, he added, in international and consumer markets. ... Microsoft also sold a higher mix of its premium-priced versions of Windows and Office than a year earlier. And Mr. Liddell said the company's anti-piracy efforts were particularly successful, increasing desktop software sales by as much as 5 percent from a year earlier. Microsoft Earnings Send Stock Soaring
The company reported "robust demand" for Windows Vista, Office 2007, Windows Server, and SQL server. The combined revenue of Microsoft's client, business, and server and tools divisions grew by more than 20%. Revenue in the company's video game division soared by 91%, driven primarily by the success of the launch of Halo 3.
Microsoft said Vista sales have been increasing since the release of the Windows operating system to consumers in January. "Customer demand for Windows Vista this quarter continued to build with double-digit growth in multi-year agreements by businesses and with the vast majority of consumers purchasing premium editions," said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft.
A strong global PC market helped sales of Windows Vista and Office 2007 considerably. PC shipments worldwide grew by 15.5% in the third quarter, according to IDC. Much of the growth occurred outside the United States, where PC shipments increased by only 4.7%.
Chris Liddell, CFO for Microsoft, said sales growth was strongest in the international markets, such as Brazil, China and Russia. The fact that Windows sales grew faster than the PC market was an indication that customers were upgrading their PCs to Vista, and also buying the premium edition. Three quarters of Microsoft's customers bought the more expensive version. Microsoft Earnings Boosted By Windows Vista, Office, Halo
The more expensive versions of Vista and a new Office 2007 package also are spurring a larger than usual number of customers to renew three-year licensing agreements, according to Bellini, Institutional Investor magazine's top-rated software analyst. Microsoft earnigns expected to rise
cause, its kinda hard to buy a new computer without a copy of Vista
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Example: Install Apache HTTP server, edit the config file httpd.conf with vim and try to make it stick. (at least under Vista Ultimate with default settings).
Of course - you are running software not approved by M$ - so of course it doesn't work!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They'll include every thing they can to pump up the numbers.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Read my comment history.. do I look like an MS fan boy to you? No, quite the opposite.
You! on the other hand is the reason the Linux community looks so bad. You're an overzealous asshole that blindly attacks people and doesn't fact check at all.
Half a year passes after an OS release and the sales are decreasing. Unimaginable!
Oh wait...
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Microsoft has fallen into a rut where they are telling the consumer what the consumer wants. Microsoft is no longer listening to what the consumer is telling Microsoft. Microsoft knows best. The problem is that this time, the consumer isn't happy. They don't like all the control, invasion of privacy, DRM, heavy burden on the hardware and many other things.
The consumer wants their XP and, twice now, Microsoft has had to offer it. Even today, they refuse to admit that they missed the mark with Vista. Now, the tech community has spread their opinion of Vista wide and far and it will take Microsoft a while to recover from that. Maybe by SP 4.
Me? I'm still running Windoze 2000 Pro and am very happy with it. ALL my applications run. No DRM or other weird limitations. I've changed almost all the hardware (CPU, mother board, power supply, CD, DVD, Memory, Video Card, Sound card, network card...) and the system just prompts for news drivers...a reboot...I'm up. No reinstalls in years. Why would I change? Everything works. I am not aware of anything that XP or Vista gives me in added functionality, stability or compatibility. Other than eye-candy and a few bells and whistles, there is nothing that I'm aware of that XP or Vista gives me that I need or can't do with Win2K. If it ain't broke -- don't fix it.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
do I look like an MS fan boy to you? No, quite the opposite.
No friend of free software ever called me a troll. Saying bad things about editors is another identifying trait. If you don't like my stories, don't read them. If you have a real problem, say so.
You! on the other hand is the reason the Linux community looks so bad. You're an overzealous asshole that blindly attacks people and doesn't fact check at all.
The community looks great to me. Go fuck yourself.
That's not factually true -
Apple hit 10 million users sometime in 2004 - http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/06macosx.html
As of March 07, there were about 22 million OS X users - http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/03/02/mac_install_base_estimated_at_22_million_pre_leopard.html
And last quarter alone, Apple shipped over 2 million macs - http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=3502&rfp=dta
Oh yeah, and Apple is #3 in laptop sales behind only Dell and HP.
Yes, still more Windows users (ZOMG! I can't believe it!), but c'mon, give OS X credit where credit is due - it is definitely selling, and selling pretty well.
When volume sales are way way down. But for you market watchers pointing out that MS hasn't been crushed in the stock market, allow me to point out that whatever MS has done since mid 1999 (that's 8 years) hasn't done anything positive to the stock either. The stock market likes Microsoft's cash flow but hasn't seen fit to reward them with higher prices either. Microsoft is a cash flow driven safe utility like bet. Worse even than utilities because they don't pay dividends. So in the 1st calendar qtr 2008 you WILL see a big backlash against MS when it has become clear that the Great White Hope of Vista has not panned out the way they expected. It will at best, be another lukewarm Win98/ME.
Over at Casa de Gelfling, XP will in fact be the last turn of the Windows crank. I may not even patch it SP4 because SP4 is probably no more than a collection of patches already there + some unwanted DRM crud I don't need. I'm thinking that since I will keep XP running a few more years, by the time it's time to upgrade, it will also be time to upgrade the hardware and that means either Apple hardware or a nice Ubuntu or Linspire box.
I'll give you an analogy. I was in Footlocker yesterday. They were running a 2 for $79.99 sale. I had one pair of the 2/79.99 and other pair marked $39.99. Same price different deal. They would not honor the 2 for 79.99 and wanted to charge me 39.99 + 79.99. So I put one pair back and bought only the pair marked $39.99. The cashier was actually shocked, that I would not pay full price as if this one pair of shoes came with super powers, unlimited free supermodel sex and immortality. That's what I think Microsoft is doing. They're offering weird deals that are not that good and then they are genuinely amazed that customers aren't biting.
Operating systems are all becoming pretty much interchangeable and equally useful for the most part. And for the vast VAST majority of customers there is nothing in their application suites or capabilities that prohibit them from purchasing any of them. I for one would happily pay $50 to Linspire for a non-free copy of their OS. I would happily pay for a subscription for Ubuntu support. I would happily pay for a mini Mac or lower end Mac of some kind with a preloaded OS that does what I need it to do or I can download what's not included. I'm pretty sure I could get by. In a couple-three years I'm sure that there will be scanners, digitizers, print servers, NAS boxes and all the other oddball stuff I need today. And when that happens I will toss out all my Redmond OS CD's and never look back.
Keep hiding behind that keyboard, Twitter.
Or would you like to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the many Linux advocates you've slandered over the years with your psychopathic behaviour?
Captcha: childish. Oh, the irony.
Instead of modding down this obvious AC flamebait from twitter (don't waste points on ACs), or his main account (which is already at negative karma), instead just mod down posts he makes with his sockpuppet account. That way you'll stop him from trolling and gaming Slashdot.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
This time, it's a 9% drop in Vista sales. Got something useful to say about that?
Well, actually, I do. If you look at the actual figures you'll see the cycle...wait, I'm arguing with twitter...need to drop down a few levels.
You think M$ is teh ghay, but $$$ is in the M$ and they make $$$. No, you cant haz cheezeburger, not yours.
With any OS, there are ALWAYS two methods of sales/adoption of the new OS. The first and primary is having the OS pre-installed on computers sold. This number will fluctuate almost perfectly based on the number of computers sold during the period of time in question. You also have those who upgrade an existing computer or build their computer from scratch and need an OS to put on the new machine.
People have gotten the idea that if your existing computer can't handle Vista, don't do the upgrade. So, over the next year, the number of people who will upgrade to Vista will drop because those who COULD upgrade(fast enough processor, 1-2 gigs of RAM, and a decent video card/GPU) will have upgraded already.
So, why does it surprise anyone that the number of Vista sales will drop a bit until new Vista sales equal the number of new computers sold and built? No one expected the 1GHz Pentium 3 crowd to go to Vista, and even the Athlon XP/Pentium 4 users would probably buy a new computer rather than upgrading their existing machines to Vista.
I wonder why Vista sales remain flat, if not damn small, despite the gutsy efforts of Microsoft's marketing department. Surely a newly minted OS from the same folks that brought us notepad.exe would make consumers as excited as a new puppy.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
So basically what your stating is is that there is nothing wrong with MS Vista? It's the hardware's fault for either being too old, unsupported under an updated different HAL, power requirements, pinouts, jumper settings, and maybe a little dusty. Perhaps you're are write? Then all this hoopla about Vista is wrong and WE ALL need to plop down some cold hard cash on new hardware that will handle this new OS's hardware needs, right? I might be confused(it's happened before) but are you trying to get some type of work out of this by taking this stance? Yes, correcting and criticizing someone for errors is one thing but what's your true motive? This is people's real problem with Vista. IT"S HUGE! It needs new expensive new hardware to work right. It can only be run on one computer. It needs to validate it's genuiness to MS for support and updates. It comes in 5 FALVORS! Many drivers and older software don't work under it. Since people have already working existing achitecture there is no need to update especially to product that won't give you as much of a hassle. You're stuck in the nitty gritty which is fine but you've lost the big picture. It's all about choice! You put down lots of money on an item and you expect to do whatever the hell you want with it! That's the way it's supposed to be!! Not what Microsuck wants?!
I'd downgrade because XP:
1. Won't have as big a disk, memory, and processor footprint.
2. Won't require learning new gotchas.
3. Will work with my peripherals that already work.
4. Will be compatible with my office's software, guaranteed.
5. Won't constantly call home.
6. Won't DRM me to death as badly as Vista does.
And, most importantly, Vista won't do anything that I value better than XP does.
The problem with the whole picture is that Vista is designed for "computers of the future". See, I have a computer of "the present" and a few of the past. I'll be damned if I'm going to buy new hardware for a new system. Sure, after everyone buys a faster computer to keep up with the times, Vista will become more popular. One thing that confuses me though, I have a system with Vista pre-installed. I'm wondering, if it has almost 3 times the processing power and RAM as a computer I built 4 years ago, why is it slower than my grandma driving to church? Features this, features that. The fact is that Vista is slow. Not only so, but what about usability? It looks nice, it's marketed as a sleek looking system, does anyone care about performance any more? It's like taking a car, refining it to make it run more smoothly and efficiently, then giving it a shiny new paint job and throwing 800 pounds of bricks in the trunk. I went into 98 happily, XP with my eyes closed, and Vista ... well - I'm getting the hell off of this ride before it derails itself.
You can find all you'd ever want to know and more about Microsoft's financials at www.microsoft.com/msft/. If the person who posted this silly topic had bothered to check facts beyond www.electronista.com (huh?) he might have noticed that Q1 is a down quarter every hear for Microsoft overall. You can look at the last five years and see the same pattern. It doesn't seem particularly surprising that Vista sales would generally drop over the summer when corporate procurement and individual PC sales are lower. Then Q2 whichOct - Dec you'll see sales go up. Big deal. d
How in the heck is Fry's selling the "more expensive Vista Premium" along with $400 worth of parts retail cost for $349 if the OS is so expensive?
Perhaps Microsoft is now charging Frys and other OEM vendors basically the same price (at a huge discount) for both versions of Vista.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Regardless of the numbers, Vista has been a disaster for public relations for Microsoft. Customer satisfaction must be at an all time low with Vista.
I bought a new, decently specced laptop a few months ago that had Vista installed on it. When I installed World of Warcraft on it, I was so disappointed with the performance that I got from a 3-year old game; typically about 6 frames per second. So I partitioned the hard drive and installed Kubuntu on it, with Wine and reinstalled WoW. The difference was incredible, easily 4 times the frame rate.
This is a game running on a non-native OS at full graphical detail, outperforming the Vista install with all of the detail cranked down to the lowest level. If games companies get their act together and start supporting Linux, then the Microsoft proposition will start looking very shakey indeed.
Given the rate at which Linux distros are improving their user-friendliness, and the fact that more PC manufacturers will start shipping PCs with Linux pre-installed, what will be the main selling point for the next version of Windows? Anything short of a mind control interface will be a let down. My guess is that we'll get "even better security" and "an even better looking UI", same as we've been getting since Windows 95.
I'm not a M$ fan, but TFA was too biased even for /.
To counter balance, here's another article that is very biased in the other direction.
* Microsoft: 88 million copies of Vista shipped
http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/2255779/6331742/84837/2/
Microsoft: 88 million copies of Vista shipped
Eric Lai
Click here to find out more!
October 25, 2007 (Computerworld) Despite underwhelming consumers and being snubbed by enterprises, Windows Vista's numbers keep growing, with Microsoft Corp. saying Thursday that it has now shipped 88 million copies of the operating system, almost double the number of copies of XP in the same amount of time at its launch.
In late July, Microsoft said it had hit the 60 million shipment mark with Vista.
Microsoft had previously said that it had shipped 20 million copies of Vista in its first month and 40 million copies of Vista in the first 100 days.
Microsoft credited Vista with helping it beat Wall Street expectations and raise financial projections for the rest of the year. The company reported revenue of $13.76 billion for the first quarter ended Sept. 30, up 27% from the same quarter in 2006.
Revenue in its client segment, which includes all consumer versions of Windows, was $4.14 billion, edging out the $4.11 billion in revenue from the Microsoft Business Division where Office is produced.
CFO Chris Liddell credited strong sales in emerging markets, due in part to anti-piracy and legalization programs there.
Client revenues, however, did not top those of the first calendar quarter this year, when Vista was officially launched. Revenues at that time were $5.32 billion.
Three-quarters of the copies sold of Vista were higher-priced 'premium' versions, compared to 59% of the copies of Windows -- primarily XP -- available a year ago.
The 88 million figure mostly includes Vista-installed PCs bought by consumers and small businesses, as well as packaged copies of Vista sold in stores or online.
It does exclude the tens of millions of Windows corporate volume licenses. There, many enterprises continue to hold off on deploying Vista, acknowledged CFO Chris Liddell, though he expects them to start deploying it when Vista Service Pack 1's arrival in the first quarter of next year.
Nevertheless, revenue from companies renewing their volume licenses for Windows, which gives them the right to upgrade to Vista, was up 27%.
Other highlights from the statistics:
* Unit sales of Windows Server's premium enterprise edition were up 35% year-over-year;
* A release candidate for Windows Server 2008 has been downloaded more than one million times in its first month;
* Unit and revenue growth of SQL Server were both up more than 15%;
* Halo 3 generated $330 million in revenue;
* Xbox 360 console unit sales increased 90%, driven by a price cut in August and Halo 3-related demand;
* Client revenues, including those for Vista, are expected to grow 62-64% year-over-year in the current fiscal Q2, or 13-14% excluding certain revenue deferrals in the prior year;
* Microsoft Business Division revenues, including those for Office, are expected to grow 15-16% in Q2 after normalizing for impact of technology guarantees and pre-shipment deferrals in the prior year;
* A beta version of Office Communications Server has been downloaded 80,000 times;
* There are 10,000 customers in the Customer Technical Preview (CTP) program for PerformancePoint Server, its new business intelligence offering.
"ALL my applications run. No DRM or other weird limitations. I've changed almost all the hardware (CPU, mother board, power supply, CD, DVD, Memory, Video Card, Sound card, network card...) and the system just prompts for news drivers...a reboot...I'm up. No reinstalls in years"
I have the exact same experience. Win2K is also lighter than XP, and *much* lighter than Vista: 1ghz cpu and 512mb ram is plenty for Win2k. Also, Win2k doesn't have that awful fisher-price interface.
Most of the most recent windows software works with Win2K. The newest version of quicktime doesn't work. So I use VLC for quicktime movies. I don't know if msie7, or newest msft media-player, will work, don't care either.
The best anybody can say about Vista, it seems, is that it doesn't suck all that much worse than XP.
"Can you hear us NOW?"
Sales did not fall. Microsoft is still selling Vista hands over fists. It is only selling them at a lower rate than previous months, which is is (a) expected and (b) not significant.
While I agree with the idea the article is extrapolating one data point, the rest of the rant is nonsense.
Here's a little dose of reality:
Your source is Bill Gates at WINHEC. You are the pot calling the kettle black. You are as guilty of spinning as the summary's author.
While you personally may believe what you wrote, it's impossible to know what the motivation is. Microsoft rewards you for evangelizing their stuff? Or perhaps you enjoy living in a Microsoft jail. Or maybe you haven't been burned yet.
Please reconsider because it's time for a reality check.
If there was some actual change in the market share of Windows OS licensees who spend every month fighting for Microsoft's table scraps versus Apple (who remains in the top 3 brands) versus Linux you would see resellers changing their offerings in the marketplace. And that is exactly what's happening. Dell is shipping Ubuntu. Other resellers are sure to follow.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
The 'Vista Sales are not Good' stories are delusional because they suggest that somehow market forces are at work with Microsoft and that is not correct. No, Vista is not a very good iteration of 'Windows' and yes, there are some very good reasons to stay with XP or Win2K or whatever, while waiting for the next iteration or service pack. But...and this is the key...the Windows API is absolutely dominant worldwide and seems very likely to remain so for the forseeable future. This means that new computers will all continue to ship with Windows of some sort, unless you buy an Apple, and Microsoft has a lot of leverage on Intel who supplies the cpu for the Mac so don't look for Mac market penetration to increase a lot. Does Microsoft care if you pay them $204 to buy XP on your computer or pay them $204 to buy Vista? The same kind of views were expressed when XP replaced Windows 98 but there are not many people still using Windows 98 today because Microsoft just stopped supporting it and forced people to use XP.
I know this is Slashdot, and we all really, really want to believe that MS is the Titanic, but its not. Since no one has wanted to believe me in other threads when I have pointed out the large similarities (both in sales and public attitudes) between XP and Vista during their respective first years, I decided to do some digging this time. Here is an excerpt from an article written in 2002, when XP was almost exactly the same age that Vista is now.
So, you think Windows XP is a flop? Not according to Microsoft. It says Windows XP is the fastest-selling version of Windows ever, with 32 million copies sold to date. Of course, that figure includes both OEM PC maker sales (probably something like 90 percent of the total) and retail sales. Many people buying new PCs probably would have bought Windows 98 if they'd had a choice. Most PC makers do offer a choice: Windows XP Pro or Windows XP Home. And, of course, both versions are included in the count.
The 32 million sales number also includes corporate sales of Windows XP, although by most accounts, corporations have not adopted XP in droves. But it's possible they might do so beginning next year. Larger companies that have volume licensing arrangements with Microsoft don't have to deal with product activation. And you can bet they don't have to pay $399 for a full version of Windows XP Pro either. It's consumers who are taking it on the chin with Windows XP.
But even in a year when PC sales are off, Windows XP is doing quite well. The new Windows sold 17 million copies through the 2001 holiday season -- the biggest selling season of the year. Since then it's sold another 15 million copies. And that's the strongest indicator it's doing well. The second quarter of the year is traditionally slow for PC and operating system sales. Yet XP is doing well. But that doesn't really surprise me.
So to summarize, even if you don't remember it, XP was not always the golden boy; many people hated it when it was young; in fact many of the comments I read about Vista parrot those about XP five years ago. Vista's sales are not scaring MS because Vista's sales are pretty close to what XP sold during its first year.
Very few people want Vista, but very few wanted XP either. The only thing that has changed in the last five years is that OEMs now have more leverage; this doesn't help Vista, but its not going to kill it either.
No, it's actually you. There are a lot of people that have the same views of Microsoft as you do here, yet you're the one with the negative karma. Your sockpuppet account keeps getting upmodded for posting the same useless invective. The difference there is that people haven't wised up to the fact that it's the same person. Thus, you are being modded down, not your opinions. But I guess you're just too stupid to realize that. It's so much more convenient to hilariously blame Microsoft.
A drop in a number that according to you should not even exist to begin with, at least according to your funny "failure log". I wonder what's wrong?
Microsoft sold 28 million licenses of Windows Vista last month. Their stock is up 10% and they're beating all Street expectations. Do you have something useful to say about that? I reckon not.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Almost a year after introduction, Vista has less than 7% of the desktop market and sales are slowing. Where's the spin in those facts?
The spin is all coming from Redmond. They have claimed "strong" Vista demand, but Vista has not even done as well as XP and may be the worst selling version of Windows ever. They are talking about "boom times" and partying like it's 1999, but it's just not so. Vista and Microsoft have significant and successful competition. Apple has greater marketshare than Vista. GNU/Linux is just starting it's rise and all the major vendors are taking it seriously. Worse, many of those vendors have taken big losses due to Vista's poor sales and are pissed at the high cost of supporting what little they did sell because it's been full of bugs. Microsoft would like you to forget all of that and think that it's 1998 again and everyone is making money on the lockstep transition to the next version of Windows. Fat chance.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Your little rants are amusing, as always. I guess there's nothing else for someone like you to do but to just go down babbling about how it's all a big pack of lies and offer up some more salacious dogma, spin and FUD for popular consumption.
ROFL! I'm sure you were just about to post a source for that. I'd love to see it.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
no one wants to hear how your twitter's dicksucking stories.