PCWorld Says Firefox is Strong, Vista is Weak

twitter writes "PC World has released their year in review statistics and 2007 was not kind to Microsoft. IE 6 users are equally likely to move to Firefox as they are to IE7 and no one wants Vista. 'How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first eleven months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002. In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com--more than 250 percent of the usage that Vista has mustered so far.'"

Comments

As for the Mac stat...

[stewbacca]

Wouldn't the number of people using Macs be lower than average, since they were measuring visitors to a PC-centric website?

Poor comparison

[RealGrouchy]

Assuming the summary is correct...

They're comparing usage based on visits to their website. Not only that, but they're comparing uptake of Vista in 2007 to XP in 2001. As a percentage.

I can't help but feel that a lot has changed over that time to make that method of comparison completely irrelevant, both in terms of MS's operations (like how Vista follows a fairly strong OS that has had years to take root, compared with XP, which followed Windows Me, which sucked in every possible way) and in terms of the overall PC market (like how Macs are much more competitive, and how Linux has matured, but mostly how so many hardware and software has been developed for Windows XP).

- RG>

Re:Poor comparison

[ConceptJunkie]

I used NT 3.51 and it was rock solid in my experience. So was NT 4, at least until SP2 came around. Windows 2000 was also reasonably stable and has proved to have great longevity... my kids still use it because the machine it runs on blue screens when trying to install XP. XP was better, especially by the time SP2 came around. The NT side of Windows never suffered from huge stability issues, and even when it did 90% of the time it was obviously and directly related to hardware drivers. No, the NT line was never perfect and there were features and bugs that would drive any user insane, but overall they were decent products that were worth the upgrades.

Until Vista came around, each new version offered significant improvements, required significantly more resources, added some quirky problems but was overall an improvement. The problem is that with Windows 2000, MS pretty much solved all their major problems (besides security, but that could be mitigated by a little bit of common sense, despite the horrible track record of security issues). By XP SP2, even security issues were starting to be not so severe. The biggest changes between 2000 and XP were minor UI tweaks (and the ugliest theme ever put on a GUI since Tandy DeskMate, but that could be turned off, and was turned off, by anyone who realized it could be), and support for new hardware, especially wireless, which didn't really become "nice" until SP2 came along. All Vista really needed to do was support the newest hardware, throw a little eye candy in (because you always need a little eye candy in a new release) and fix some of the many problems that will always plague any OS and it would have sold like hotcakes. Instead we got a Frankenstein monster of an OS that looks and feels like it was designed and written by Cold-War Era East German government employees, with more bloat than the U.S. Tax Code and fewer useful new features than the, well, the U.S. Tax Code.

IMO, Microsoft has been growing beyond their capacity to manage themselves since the early 90's and they have finally reached the point where they are so large they literally cannot do anything right. Just like the U.S. government, MS is so huge, bloated, mismanaged and downright corrupt, the only way it can possibly be improved is for 95% of it to simply go away.

oh look. twitter spin

[Ferzerp]

The same BLOG linked to also states that ie7 is in use more than firefox. However, the tagline for the slashdot story says "firefox is strong". In the time it has come out, more people have adopted that single version of internet explorer than are using all versions of firefox combined.

Only on slashdot folks.

twitter strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

From the original journal entry:

Vistit the article to see the pretty graphs and to spike PC World's statistics more toward reality. It's clear that computer enthusiasts are not going for M$'s current offerings, show them what people really like.

twitter also has another journal entry there, which is hilarious if not for the fact that he spends so much time arguing that Dvorak is an idiot when he says something about Linux twitter doesn't like.

For someone who has already ruined two Slashdot accounts with his misguided "evangelism" and is down to trolling AC, he sure has a lot of fun trolling the site.

twitter, please stop "helping" us. Free software needs people who can make intelligent arguments about why it is superior to closed-source gunk, not trolls who spend all their waking hours making up shit about Microsoft with liberal doses of infantile creative spelling.

Another way to look at Vista's adoption rate

[LaughingCoder]

According to this web site (http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62034821,00.htm), Vista, in less than one year, has many times the desktop penetration as does Linux (all flavors still constitute less than 1%) after 15 years. The article also mentions that many (most?) businesses are waiting for SP1 before even considering adoption. Given that SP1 is due in a month or so, I strongly suspect there will be a dramatic change in Vista's numbers in its second year of existence.

Also along these lines, I know quite a few people who are getting Vista on their new home machines, and have been, for the most part, favorably impressed. This, over time, will also translate into increased adoption in the business world. Like it or not, Vista will become the pervasive desktop in the next 2 years.

Re:Another way to look at Vista's adoption rate

[westlake]

Vista, in less than one year, has many times the desktop penetration as does Linux (all flavors still constitute less than 1%) after 15 years.

You see the much same thing in the w3Schools OS Platform Stats.

There are, by some estimates, one billion Windows users.

To claim 14% of a market that size in one year would be pure fantasy in any other context.

MS Vista was the only OS showing significant growth in 2007. Linux has gained absolutely no traction in the w3Schools stats in the better part of five years.

Vista's strength has been in OEM sales of Vista Premium and Ultimate in the consumer market.

That is good news for Dell, HP and the big box retailer.

The el cheapo $200 Linux box - the "network appliance" - makes headlines on Slashdot. But that isn't the only price point that interests Walmart - or the Walmart shopper: HP TouchSmart Desktop PC

Not only that, but the brand name multifunction color printer-scanner with a Vista driver will set him back less than $50. HP All-In-Printer & HP 21 Ink

The Geek tries to frame the "Microsoft Tax" as a percentage of the price of the computer. But the ordinary user - the middle class buyer - is looking at the price of the system bundle, the cost of services and consumables.

OEM Vista is a one-time expense.

The ink jet cartridge or the monthly bill for Roadrunner won't come any cheaper if he migrates to Linux.

Re:benchmark?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't find that Vista is a sluggish piece of crap? With 2GB of RAM, a damn fast Core 2 Duo, and a 256MB G70 video card, I find the interface chugs along after installing a few perfectly normal programs. XP is a dream in comparison.

If Linux had 14% usage in 11 months

[Skuld-Chan]

We'd all be decrying the downfall of Microsoft. Does anyone realize how much 14% is? Its huge!

Not reasonable comparing XP to Vista

[garry_k]

It's not reasonable to compare how many people are upgrading to Vista from XP. XP is a far better OS than say ME was, so not as many people would want or need to upgrade to Vista. It kinda funny listening to all the yahoos whining about Vista (same as when XP first came out, same as when ME first came out, etc, etc). It's also interesting to hear Apple nuts carrying on about Vista security, when it's been proven that Vista is more secure than Apple. It's especially interesting now that Apple is actually managing to get 10% of the market and the morons who write virus/malware are starting to target Apple. If people would start to understand that a more secure, more sophisticated OS needs better hardware to run as fast as an older less secure system, then it makes sense that Vista will run slower. Yes, Vista will bug you to OK changes (just like most add-on firewall programs do if they are really any good), so what do you want, less security or more speed? You aren't going to get everything and speed, unless of couse you use a more powerful computer to run it. I've seen many, many customers runnung Vista with no problems (so long as they didn't buy an underpowered system), and yes, Microsoft needs to have a few years to tweak Vista (read fix stuff), but what system doesn't need fixes in the first year. I've heard about Leopard having problems losing files, security flaws showing up, etc. Firefox said they didn't have any bugs and techies were running around telling everybody they should use it, now they have fixed 300 hundred memory leaks with the new beta. Get real people, nothing is perfect! But I'll bet that in a couple years Microsoft will still be the top selling Desktop operating system and it'll be Vista.

Re:benchmark?

[ShieldW0lf]

The fact that the market forced vendors to begin offering XP as an option after they had shifted support to the new version of Windows is unprecedented.

This would be a pretty strong indicator that the market is not "satisfied that Win XP is good enough for their needs" like the article suggests, but that a significant segment are actively rejecting Vista as a bad product even on a brand new computer.

Which, of course, it is. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall, and they cashed in their chips. Which means, they saw that it was time to sell their install base out to third party interests instead of trying to keep hold of them.

We've all seen situations where the value of a good name is measured in how long it's purchaser can sell substandard goods at high markup before the name isn't good anymore.

That's what this is. The industry decided to back "Trusted Computing" despite it being contrary to the interests of consumers, and no one wants to buy it. That's why the new drivers don't work, why the old software is buggy, etc. The common person doesn't know why, but they know it's not working right, and they don't like it.

Re:benchmark?

[peektwice]

It's unfreakingbelievable to me that you consider it normal for your CPU to idle at 11% usage, whether it's XP or Vista. I know it's not a direct linear translation, but think of it this way: 330MHz of your 3GHz CPU are being wasted all the time. Why anyone settles for this type of mediocrity or accepts it as normal is beyond me.