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

Naming?

[niceone]

Of course a flaming fox is going to be stronger than a view. MS should have thought up a better name than Vista. Something that could beat foxes and fire - how about: Ice weasel?

Re:Naming?

[NotAgent86]

I always thought it was an acronym - Virus Infections, Spyware, Trojans and Adware

recession

[BobZee1]

Could the United States being in a state of recession have anything to do with Vista's slow growth? Just kidding, I know Vista is TERRIBLE. My karma is bad and I wish it wasn't. I don't want to have bad karma. I am a good person.

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

[TheNetAvenger]

They all were great within the time the lived. XP was NEVER a decendant of ME. Learn your OS history, please.

Although you are 'technically' correct that Windows 2000 was released between WinME and XP, what is being missed in this argument is that WindowsXP was the FIRST version of the NT based OS that was focused on and designed to specifically replace the consumer level DOS/Win9x OSes.

You are correct that XP is not descended from Win9x or WinME in any way, it is an NT based OS with NO code used from the Win9x era of OSes. (It is was as much of a jump from Win9X/WinME as System 9 was to OS X).

In regard to the article, this is also why the uptake of WinXP was faster than even Windows 2000, as Windows 2000 was the successor to NT4 and was not pushed to home or mainstream consumer users. XP being the first NT version that was designed for and pushed into the mainstream consumer markets had quite an advantage even though Win2K users ignorantly thumbed their noses at it. In contrast to the generation of consumer OSes it was replacing, it was a massive difference in terms of performance and stability. XP not only ran faster than Win98 (the fastest of the DOS/Win9x generation), but it also was significantly more stable and secure than the previous OSes that had no knowledge of any type of security.

So for consumers and home users, XP was good jump, and even just upgrading Win98 or WinME to XP would not only increase the lifetime of the computer, but would fix technical problems in the installation wihtout having to wipe settings, and gave the users a virtually crash free experience.

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.

/. effect

[calebt3]

The chart occasionally shows Firefox having more hits than IE. Maybe those months had more /. articles pointing to PC World's website?

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:I've just upgraded one machine at home ...

[dprovine]

[T]hat'll be why people upgrade to Vista - difficulty in obtaining applications that still work on XP.

That may not happen very quickly: at least one developer I know is under orders to write only things that work under XP, and test them with Vista for compatibility. Anything that's Vista-only is explicitly forbidden, because Vista uptake has been so slow.

Economically speaking, if Vista can run XP programs, your market for writing something that runs on both is vastly larger than your market for writing something that only runs on Vista. If you sold software for money, would you write anything Vista-only?

Virtual reality check

[xant]

Those numbers are as made-up as the numbers you find anywhere else. My company, which hosts surveys and therefore sees a very broad cross-section of the market, collects web statistics. I just analyzed our logs and got these numbers, which I trust far more than thecounter, whatever the fuck that is:

IE6 (all operating systems) 35.22%
FF (all operating systems and versions) 18.35%
IE7 (all OS) 18.15%
Other.. the rest

Should I also remind anyone that IE8 is under progress, including new UI and engine that passes ACID.

You could, if you wanted to hear someone remind you that Firefox 3 is about to come out (far sooner than IE8) and also passes ACID, as if that were relevant.

Note, these are not the opinions of my employer, but they are the data of my employer. :-)

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!

Re:benchmark?

[Calmiche]

You know, when Windows XP came out, it was fairly slow and bloated. So was Windows 98. It wasn't the software, it was the available hardware. (Not that I'm defending Vista. I can't stand Vista. I've tried it twice now, the first for a month and just last month for two weeks with a new beta SP1. Nasty.)

I don't know if Vista is redeemable. I'm going to have to wait at least until SP2 before I want to try again.

That should be by late 2009. So, imagine double the processor power, with an 8 core processor, a solid state disk and at least 64 gig of RAM. If Microsoft gets their butts in gear and start listening to their customers, SP2 might be something worthwhile. We shall see how it works out.

Re:benchmark?

[andruk]

"If Microsoft gets their butts in gear and start listening to their customers..."

So, you mean, never?

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?

[daeg]

I'd love to see statistics showing the number of Vista purchases vs. Vista usage. I started my job about a year ago and we had around 10 machines purchased before I took over purchasing and they had Vista. Once I had time, I replaced them all with Windows XP -- I didn't bother trying to get replacements from our vendor, it was easier/quicker just to buy XP Pro outright from an OEM supplier. I know I'm not the only one that's replaced Vistas with XP.

What percentage of Vista sales aren't permanent users?

Re:benchmark?

[sarixe]

my boss has a dell running with a high-end intel core 2 duo (3ghz, i believe), 4gb ram, and ati x1k. it is a cheetah among computers, and vista makes it run like an oversized snail making its way across fields of molasses.

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.

Re:benchmark?

[Kalriath]

Not everyone does experience that. I have a 3.2GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and Vista runs fine with CPU idling at 0%-1% (although the 0% obviously isn't really 0%)

The poster you're replying to either has issues with their PC/setup, Norton, or mistakenly included the spike caused by Task Manager starting.

Re:benchmark?

[lxrocks]

I believe that OEM XP is out of production Jan 1, 2008. So if you want any more, you had better go an buy some quick. Have you taken a good look at the new Notebooks on offer ... I just got burnt with a Compaq v6620 - no XP drivers available. You can install XP, and it boots, but kiss the Lan, Wlan, Video, Audio good bye. No XP drivers - only vista and linux. So what does that tell you - Vista will be rammed down your throught whether you like it or not. Eventually, all new kit will be running Vista, because the Manufacturers won't be cutting any XP drivers for them!