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."

Comments

XP Sales?

[reaktor]

What about sales of Windows XP?

Re:XP Sales?

[TheNetAvenger]

The problem is for myself and many many others, the downsides of Vista (hardware requirements, bugs in a zero revision OS, etc, etc) outweigh the benefits.


People said the same things about Win2K and XP. If you are a Windows user and like Windows and your system has 1gb of RAM and you can afford Vista, there is NO reason not to be running it.

The 'big' hardware requirements is 1gb for the sweet spot in terms of performance where XP could perform at about the same level in the 512-768mb range.

People install Vista and look at taskmanager and see that 40% of RAM is consumed, but this is what Vista reports if you have 512mb, 1GB, 4GB. And on a 4GB machine, I can guarantee the OS is not using 2GB to run, this is 'free' RAM allocated to the caching system, and Vista always uses 40% of available RAM for the OS and the Smartfetch caching systems.

Ironically, Apple's ads pushed the idea that Vista needed major new hardware upgrades to run more than anyone else has, and their new Leopard demands more in hardware than Vista. And with Leopard it is not even about the OS running slower, if you have an older Mac with a RAGE 128 video for example, several applications just fail to run at all.

Re:XP Sales?

[karnal]

The "afford" Vista would be the true reason I won't run it.

In addition, the only benefit I have as a person who runs windows (for games primarily) is DX10; even that at most is not all that compelling. Plus - for "ultimate edition" the price still seems over-the-top for my own needs.

On the laptop I'm typing this on - I dual boot ubuntu (90%) and Windows XP pro (10%) - there are only a few small apps that I truly need windows for. Emulators come to mind - since the Linux side of emulation seems less polished than I would like. If I could, I'd run Ubuntu on my gaming machine - however, my investment in Windows gaming necessitates Windows. And Vista just doesn't appear to add anything that I'd need. I'd be more than open to hear the benefits of Vista and decide on that, but it seems that most geeks that I run into (the group I would be considered in) don't see a good enough value in Vista either.

So, in short, it's not worth the $$.

Re:XP Sales?

[TheNetAvenger]

I'd be more than open to hear the benefits of Vista and decide on that, but it seems that most geeks that I run into (the group I would be considered in) don't see a good enough value in Vista either.


Sadly this is all too true, and not because Vista lacks features, but they are so poorly marketed by MS even 'tech' people don't realize what features are in Vista.

Pick your biggest Windows Fan Tech site and read a review of Vista, they mention less than 10% of the features of Vista, or why the new architecture of Vista does benefit users even if the workings are transparent to the user.

Someone should start an indepth site for tracking this information like Mark Russ. use to do before he went to MS. He still puts out a few good reads on Vista, but other than him, very little is mentioned about the features or inner workings of Vista that showcase some of the technologies it uses that truly are more advanced than most geeks realize.

MS's horrible marketing has really failed on Vista, especially when you see them tout features like Glass and Flip3D as 'wow'. When there are major things like pre-emptive GPU scheduling so you can run multiple 3D games and applications at the same time without a performance penalty that are 'wow' features.

I hope you find a good OS solution for your needs. Take Care...

Re:XP Sales?

[kimvette]

People said the same things about Win2K and XP.

People said no such thing about Win2K. The only real complaint was it required more memory than Win98, but it was considered a tremendous upgrade over Win98/98se, Me, and even NT 4.0. In fact it was such a HUGE improvement to the NT Family of operating systems that NO ONE missed NT 4.0, except perhaps a few paper MCSEs who loved that NT was sometimes a pain in the ass to add hardware to and were in fear of their jobs.

No, Win2K was a HUGE upgrade and no one had any real complaints about it compared to previous Windows versions. Likewise, aside from a few Activation concerns, there were few complaints about the Win2K3 upgrade. XP and Vista on the other hand, offered little in exchange for eye candy and DRM.

Re:XP Sales?

[TheNetAvenger]

NO ONE missed NT 4.0, except perhaps a few paper MCSEs who loved that NT was sometimes a pain in the ass to add hardware to and were in fear of their jobs.


Oh how quickly people forget. I remember having to fight tooth and nail to get servers moved to Win2K.

Also if you look back to the articles from the time period, everyone was relunctant to move their servers from NT 4 to Win2k, and much like today, all the non Windows server geeks were championing alternative OSes, and saying that this is the first good chance to get everyone to move over from NT back to Novell, *nix, OSX Server, etc.

Things don't change much, just the memories do.

Re:XP Sales?

[paganizer]

Sorry, got to rant.
I do animations semi-professionally. I work with a lot of media clips, do a lot of encoding.
If my system is running DRM, it uses more CPU power when I do anything with video. So i use Win2k on my render machines.
I also like to play games. The less bullshit my computer has to deal with in the way of DRM, non-needed glitz & glow, the better it will run games. So I use Win2k for games, and sometimes run them on my Windows XP MCE laptop.
I've got a pretty nice laptop, a HP DV8230US, running, as I mentioned, XP media center. It's got a decent PVR capability, and is "Vista Ready". I tried Vista on it. My nice snappy laptop started acting like the P120 laptop I gave my 4 year old to play with.
Essentially, unless you have a 64-bit processor or an older "Hyper-threading" CPU, you will be better off running Windows 2000 than XP or Vista; your system will be able to work better and will give you less problems.
If you have a 64-bit CPU, an older hyper-threading processor, or want to save a little effort, WinXP will do everything that actually matters better than Vista on similar hardware. Everything. no exceptions.
I just can not fathom why anyone would accept a computer with Vista if they had a choice; how is Aero going to help you do anything? neither XP nor vista out of the box is more secure than Win2ksp4 running a free copy of Tiny Personal Firewall & Spybot, and every other new "feature" that it has either hurts your performance or cripples fair use.
I'm really serious on this question. All the Vista defenders I'm seeing in this thread, are you running it by choice? what is it doing for you that Win2k or XP or Debian couldn't do better?

Re:XP Sales?

[Thangodin]

I've heard that the problem with Vista is not one that can be patched; the kernal has built in DRM, and the DRM is performing background checks every time you stream or play anything (even while you play games.) In other words, the flaw is by design, and will never be fixed. This would certainly explain the problem where playing music drops network bandwidth to ten or twenty percent. Apparently, if you buy Vista, you get to be screwed by the RIAA at clock cycle regularity.

Can anyone confirm this?

I'm looking to buy a new computer, but at the moment Vista is a deal breaker. I'd even be willing to buy a legit copy of XP for it, but the copy protection is too onerous--I can change my hardware configuration on a desktop machine five times in five minutes, and I'll be damned if I'm going to call Microsoft at 2:00 AM to ask permission to use MY computer. (It's not a problem on my laptop.)

By the way, I'm a little suspicious of some of the pro-Microsoft apologists here, especially after reading posts on discussions about the XBox 360 vs. PS3, which bear no relation from what I'm hearing from owners of those consoles (in some cases with the 360, former owners.) I suspect we have a few people from Microsoft's marketing department lurking here, so take at least some of the glowing reviews of Vista here with a grain of salt.

Re:XP Sales?

[DAldredge]

From you links "Despite even this level of throttling, Internet traffic, even on the best broadband connection, won't be affected. That's because the multiplicity of intermediate connections between your system and another one on the Internet fragments packets and slows down packet travel, and therefore reduces the rate at which systems transfer data. The throttling rate Vista uses was derived from experiments that reliably achieved glitch-resistant playback on systems with one CPU on 100Mb networks with high packet receive rates. The hard-coded limit was short-sighted with respect to today's systems that have faster CPUs, multiple cores and Gigabit networks, and in addition to fixing the bug that affects throttling on multi-adapter systems, the networking team is actively working with the MMCSS team on a fix that allows for not so dramatically penalizing network traffic, while still delivering a glitch-resistant experience. "

Re:XP Sales?

[TheNetAvenger]

Disable Aero and go back to classic interface.


I know a lot of people disable Aero, thinking they are speeding up Vista, but the composer technology used by Aero adds API acceleration in addition to shared 3D surfaces.

What this means in 99% of all applications, and even GAMES running in a Window, it is faster to run them with Aero On, than Vista Basic or Windows Classic.

I think there is even an Tom's Hardware (or other review site) that was testing how much Aero killed performance, and came away shocked that Vista was consistently faster with Aero on in all appliations, and even more shocked when they got a few FPS more in games out of Vista with Aero on.

PS I like your list, good points.

Re:XP Sales?

[digitalchinky]

Nobody actually cares which acronym is working for which other than marketing drones and Microsoft employees, the simple solution is just not to penalize network traffic at all, then have that solution out the door yesterday. Don't you think the user should have a bit of a say on where and when throttling occurs rather than just hard code the numbers?

Re:XP Sales?

[kimvette]

"Despite even this level of throttling, Internet traffic, even on the best broadband connection, won't be affected. That's because the multiplicity of intermediate connections between your system and another one on the Internet fragments packets and slows down packet travel, and therefore reduces the rate at which systems transfer data.

No kidding. However on the LAN the slowest point is the switch, which should never, ever throttle traffice by an order of magnitude or more. It should throttle only latency, and by 3ms at the very worst if you have an uber-crappy $30 switch. So, in the SOHO environment and certainly in the enterprise environment, this "minor" bug can have tremendous detrimental effects on usability.

And don't forget this is just the DRM bug, let alone the running out of memory when copying files bug.

Re:What about XP sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat (can't go into details)

The general trend you see here is still going strong: http://www.bbj.hu/main/news_31746.html

Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined

[Pedrito]

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.

Perhaps true, but as someone who writes software for Windows for a living, I managed for about 2 days with Vista before I was overcome by the overwhelming urge to replace it with XP. It is, by far, the suckiest POS OS I've ever uses and I will do everything I can to avoid ever having to use it. Most people I know have had a similar Vista experience. I don't know a single person who has said, "Wow, Vista has really made my computer so much better." On the other hand, a lot of people who upgrade from Windows 98 to XP did say that about XP.

Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined

[symbolic]

With all the nonsense that Microsoft pulls with its OEMs, one would also have to wonder what qualifies as a "sale". And, just because someone buys a box with Vista installed, doesn't mean that Vista stays installed. How many eventually choose to upgrade back to Windows XP?

The lack of "buzz" is noteworthy

[dpbsmith]

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.

Re:The lack of "buzz" is noteworthy

[moosesocks]

I would peg this on a few different things:

1) Vista was late. Really late. Many of the 'killer' features were torn out, leaving an OS that had very little new to offer. Apple's list of improvements between OS versions is very specific and tangible, addressing individual concerns. Time Machine sticks out as being a good example of this.
2) Unlike Windows XP, which was a significant upgrade, and replaced an OS (98/Me!) that many consumers were unhappy with, people are generally still happy with XP. For the most part, all of the complaints people had with 98/Me were solved by XP.
3) It was marketed poorly, and as I've already mentioned, it didn't have all that many tangible selling points. They could have put a huge emphasis on its supposedly improved resistance to viruses and spyware, but this would be admitting that XP was deeply and fundamentally flawed, which probably wouldn't sit too well with consumers either. This was a lot more noticeable against the backdrop of Apple's marketing campaigns. Apple's had arguably the most successful marketing campaign of any company in any industry over the past few years.
4) Many consumers felt abandoned by Microsoft, after they stopped improving IE, and did virtually nothing to stop the pandemic proliferation of viruses and spyware until it was far too late. The fact that they strongly urge customers to purchase a 3rd-party AntiVirus reeks of incompetence, even to ordinary consumers.

Come to think of it, Vista is probably the best thing that's ever happened to Apple.

Re:What about XP sales?

[thrash242]

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of Microsoft in any way and prefer Linux as an OS. My below post is being unbiased and discussing Vista purely as a mainstream, consumer OS.

Ahem.

Except it's not crappy. It's a perfectly fine Windows OS. It's better than XP in every way I can think of.

The problem, I think, is that it doesn't really have anything to get people who are content with XP to upgrade. That combined with all the FUD about Vista makes for poor sales. I got it because I built a new machine, mainly for gaming. My old machine still had Win2000 on it as I wasn't a fan of XP. Now it has Slackware.

Re:Vista Sales Numbers

[canuck57]

I assume those numbers also include the copy I received (and promptly wiped) when I bought my new Thinkpad.

Yes, you know it does. You also know it includes those that got wiped for XP or Linux. What would be a good indicator is how many have shipped versus how many "called home" last week for updates. The actual numbers of running Vista instances is greatly exaggerated.

My guess is Microsoft will keep that number very very quiet. If Vista was a car, it would be known as an Edsel.

Re:What about XP sales?

[Rascale]

We run XP Pro Corporate edition at work, which allows distribution via disk imaging. When we needed 50 new XP licenses, our distributor told us XP Pro Corp. is no longer available, but we could buy Vista licenses, and "downgrade" to XP. We have absolutely no intention of running Vista.

I bet a large proportion of the increases in business licenses are companies like ours who need just need more XP licenses.

Re:Still outsold all Linuxes combined

[shaggy43]

The Vista Media Center experience is a *lot* better, but it's still the only part of Vista which got better. :)

For those of us with MCE's as our Tivo, and some specific problems with MCE2005, it's a good upgrade.

Re:What about XP sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if a practice like this should catch the attention of FCC? After all, shareholders are being mislead by reporting of the sales figures of specific products. Especially, if the sales report is basically falsifying the sales of a new product, which is always crucial for market valuation purposes.

Re:Vista Ultimate

[MrKevvy]

Artifical-Market-Segmentation

Interestingly, "Microsoft Vista" is an anagram of "Cost Favoritism", and "Microsoft Windows Vista" is an anagram of "It Wows Avid Conformists." I believe that these are original.

I think the latter needs an animated GIF, and is a great comeback to the "well everyone else is upgrading so you should too" nonsense. ;^)

Re:What about XP sales?

[colonslashslash]

This is exactly the same where I work, and has been ever since Vista went gold. I work for a fortune 10, so there's potentially thousands of Vista licenses sold just to us that are being used for XP.

If as I suspect this is a Microsoft thing rather than our anything to do with our respective software distributors, then yes, there is probably a significant portion of Vista corporate licenses sold being used solely for Windows XP. I know our IT department have absolutely no plans to move anyone to Vista, they are avoiding it like the plague for the forseeable future.

Re:What about XP sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if a practice like this should catch the attention of FCC?

I suppose you mean the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) rather than the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

Re:The only reason Vista is selling

[Tablizer]

The business market has a little more choice available (XP is still being sold to businesses), and Windows XP is still the big seller.

It may be hard to get accurate stats. My co's contract with MS allows us to install either (we have an internal baseline). MS may count those as Vista sales because it is technically a Vista license, but it is also an XP license.

Stop Feeding The Troll

[asphaltjesus]

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.