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Vista Shipped On 39% of PCs In 2007
Stony Stevenson writes "Vista is proving far less popular than XP did with new PC buyers during the earlier OS's first year on the market. This conclusion follows from statements by Bill Gates at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. Gates boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January. Based on Gates's statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC's that shipped in 2007. And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only outperformed first-year sales of XP by 10%, according to Gates's numbers, while PC shipments have doubled in the years since XP's release."
How many copies of XP shipped in the same period? Will still go to show dominance of Windows and potential upsell opportunity to Vista as time goes by. This is a blip in the product life cycle. They still call the shots, don't they?
Capitalism is the Opium of the Masses; Customer is King is the slogan.
1. Smart Microsoft employees design smart features.
2. Smart Microsoft employees flock to Google.
3. Dumb Microsoft employees can't implement the designed features.
4. ?
5. Profit.
For some reason, a lot of PC manufacturers don't give the consumer an option for a pre-loaded OS. For example, Dell Canada doesn't offer XP for their Inspiron line (although Dell USA does offer XP, for some reason, Canadians get screwed), and almost all Asus laptops come pre-loaded with Vista. I think it's the same BS for consumer line HP laptops too. I ended up buying a business line laptop, which came pre-loaded with Vista, but came with Vista and XP discs.
It seems to me that Microsoft is strong-arming PC manufacturers to offer Vista only, so I'm surprised that number isn't higher.
I believe lots of companies get to use an older version instead of Vista even though they have a Vista license.
Microsoft gets to count it as a Vista sale (and brag), and Big Corp gets to use Win2K/XP.
Same goes for MS Office 2007.
Vista made me appreciate Windows XP.
I'm using Vista Home Premium on a laptop, and it keeps losing my wireless network settings.
I've lost count of how many times I configured my built-in wireless adapter for static IP, but it mysteriously comes back as DHCP upon reboot or upon reawakening from sleeping, hibernation, etc.
Super annoying.
If 39% of new PCs initially Shipped with Vista in 2007, what percentage were promptly un-boxed, reformatted, and then a *better* OS was then installed?
(I know of 2 new OEM PCs in my home business that were immediately 'Upgraded' to XP fresh out of their Vista promoting boxes in PY2007.) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/1944206
Hi, Mr. Ballmer! Nice to see you on Slashdot. *ducks chair*
I'm not going to install it myself unless I have to, but I fully accept that almost everyone else is going to have Vista in the next few months. Such is the current way things work.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
No kidding, try get a laptop these days without Vista already installed. The Dell XPS is a good example. Like buying a new car, its a mandatory extra. Want to boot linux? Still have to buy Vista anyway, yay!
How come Vista is less popular during the first year compared to the first year of XP? It sold 10% more if I read it right.
Or maybe they're still counting those pc that came with Vista Basic / Vista Starter editions that was willingly replaced with another Vista edition (x2 Vista sales) or a XP or a Linux...
What they should count is not the number of sales but the number of Vista machines pinging their update servers. (Well since most are connected now anyway, that could at least be an alternative way to count)
There's no doubting that the wintel duopoly is a cycle that's nearly impossible to break. As we see more and more services transition to the web, however, compatibility at the OS layer becomes less and less important. Five years ago one used to lament over how they would love to use a different OS, but "the applications I use" are Windows-only. That day has come and gone... these days many people don't even know that a computer can be used for things other than browsing the web -- heck even that term is out-dated, as today's web-based applications are far more sophisticated than simply browsing.
As a very biased Mac convert, I'm constantly amazed at just how incredibly crappy XP and Vista are. Tonight, in fact, I set up a new computer for my wife who is using XP on a brand-new Dell laptop. There were about 5 times during the setup process where I honestly had no idea which option to select, because the wording of the choices were either esoteric, or what I really wanted was a fourth option "none of the above" yet that option didn't exist. Then, after all was finally said and done, using the thing was an amazingly frustrating experience, with seemingly endless offers/popups, some masquerading as os-level services, some more obvious overtures to purchase 3rd party software.
I've never been more convinced that the market is ripe for a shakeup... and more specifically that OS X (and Leopard) have the chance to break the Windows monopoly. Once MS's marketshare dips into the 70% range, there will no longer be an assumption that you "have" to run Windows for any reason other than you prefer it -- and once that happens watch out. There isn't a sane person who can look at Windows and OS X side-by-side, for a mass-market consumer audience, and actually say that Windows is the better choice.
[Remember I said I was biased... the point here wasn't to chest-thump about the Mac, but to point out that MS's advantage of being the "default choice" might disappear... and if so we might see their marketshare plummet faster than you can imagine]
Since Microsoft is now forcing sellers to only sell Vista, Vista will be 100% in 2008.
On the other hand, Vista was under-developed, rushed, and had integral features removed. That last part is more significant than it might first appear. If you remove chunks out of the foundations of a building, you can expect the building to collapse. The same is true in software - if it's designed to be present, then removing that feature will destabilize everything depending on it. Yes, it was late. So what. The contribution Vista is making to Microsoft is negligible in terms of sales and disastrous in terms of PR in the European courts. Investing a year or two more work into the project would have been cheaper, produced a better product and generally given Microsoft a lot of plusses.
There was pressure for Vista being released. Yeah, and a company that can pay billions in daily fines without working up a sweat needs to pay attention to such pressure why? Due to lost market share? Lost to whom? Other OS' may be catching up, but it'll be five to ten years before they can capture significant marketshare. Three or four years more development would have kept Microsoft's lead and secured it with far less risk of legal retribution.
All in all, Vista's release marked very poor marketing decisions, not just very poor technical ones, although it need not have been that way.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...will ultimately be whether Apple is willing to sacrifice its high margins to gain optimal market penetration before some *nix derivative succeeds in being easy to use and "good enough" for most people. I'm glad to see Apple systems gaining ground - diversity of any kind is entirely welcome after seeing everything get eaten up by Microsoft in the last fifteen years - but Apple seems awfully content to exist as a relatively high margin, low unit number OEM. Also keep in mind just how far Linux has come in the last three years... What's clear is that something is going to move into the vacuum opening under Vista. What that will be isn't as cut 'n' dry as assuming that products manufactured by a company with no prior history of conquering an entrenched market sector will satisfy that requirement just because they're pretty and well-designed.
ian
The sales figures quoted are not comparable. The XP figure quoted was for 14 months while the Vista sales period was less than 12 months. The launch date of XP was October 25, while Vista was launched January 30 - yet both speeches were made on January 8. That's three months of sales that XP had over Vista.
To be honest, I am surprised that Vista has sold as much as it has, considering that the upgrade from Windows 9x to XP was a much bigger step than from XP to Vista. But based on the figures given, I would say that the Vista sales were pretty much on track for Microsoft.
Most computers running Win98SE would also run XP, if maybe a bit slow. Vista requires a major hardware upgrade for most people to run acceptably or at all. For example, I was developing on an XP machine, and it performed acceptably if not exactly snappy. But it won't run Vista... at all. So what do you get for that major hardware upgrade? Better performance? Nope. Vista often runs more sluggishly on the new machines than XP did on the old. Graphics? Well, maybe a little. But OS X and Linux are adding that, too, without all the extra overhead. Freedom? Not on your life! One of the major performance-robbing "features" is that DRM has been "built in" at a very fundamental and low level. So everything you do on the machine, you are being checked every which way to make sure you are not doing something "wrong"! Why would anybody spend that much money for something that hardly benefits them at all, but benefits "the industry" a lot? When you can figure that out, then mayby you can sell Vista to them.
It takes a CRAY to run it, and it is buggier than an entomology lab.
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
The thing that no one, here especially, wants to admit is that the problems with Vista are going to start disappearing real soon. Disappearing in the way the problems with XP have disappeared...you're still using Windows after all.
When you buy a new computer with Vista it's going to be so powerful that the bloat that's been added since XP (and this isn't a Microsoft problem, OSX and Ubuntu all have gotten bigger) wont be noticed, or even noticeable. You could make the argument that there's no reason a home user needs a dual core processor and two gigs of RAM but that's what is being sold. If the upcoming service pack does most of what MS claims it can do the differences between XP and Vista will be even further reduced. Hardware and software compatibility is a big problem, but it's one that MS has dealt with before. XP had the same issues. Eventually software got updated or replaced and it isn't a problem. It's the same cycle as last time. Machines get faster and software gets updated. The new MS OS goes through some growing pains but eventually becomes accepted. XP was too slow, no compelling reasons to upgrade, 2000 was good enough and faster. Now the lines are: Vista is too slow, there's no reasons to upgrade, XP is good enough.
If you remember back when XP was released it did suck compared to 2000. 2000 was the mature product. You want a fair comparison you'll need compare Vista now to XP 1 year after release. Or compare XP SP2 to Vista SP2, but since we can't look into the future we'll have to settle for the first option.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
It has it's upside, it has its' downside. I haven't had any serious problems with it since I bought my computer back in october.
I really don't get what all the bitching's about.
We get computers in the shop all the time with XP on them and people wanting them reloaded - machines that surely didnt come from the shop with XP... hell, some of them probably didn't even come with ME.
Not to mention all those Vista machines of late that folks want reloaded with XP or ubuntu.
LOTS of them. They might have shipped Vista at 39 percent, but I bet the number still using it after a month is less than 35%.
Finally something realistic said about Vista. Google for reviews of early XP vs. 2000 and they are largely the same as reviews of Vista vs. XP now. Consumer hardware always catches up with Windows eventually as the public are accustomed to buying a new PC every now and then -- businesses of course realise there's no benefit and don't bother. The point is whether Vista is 'a good OS' or not won't matter in a couple of years (and Microsoft trades on this).
I call bull. Those numbers are worthless since most consumers didn't have a choice in getting Vista with their new machines. I think a more important fact is that this is the first version of Windows where users have demanded either an alternative or just to keep the previous version. If they really want metrics, make all the running copies of vista for 3 months phone home and then count how many are still in use. I don't think my debian lappy will be responding to them.
I hate these kind of comparison articles because they make the assumption that all things remain equal. I have Vista, no major problems for me, but in the spirit in being objective... don't people buy more computers today than they did when xp came out meaning that of course even with the horrible marketing and bad decisions regarding Vista more copies would still be sold. However, it also points to how much Vista is struggling because I am sure if we do a more comparative analysis we would find that actually less copies were sold. I also expect Apple to release figures next week of fantastic sales of what is definitely a better OS with its own teething problems (though not nearly as bad as Vista and we can always forgive Steve) without taking into consideration that macs are becoming much more mainstream and garnering bigger sales than when Tiger was released.
End of line
has anyone considered that this whole 'vista' thing might be a brilliant move by microsoft to break its own monopoly.
when Linux and *shudders* OSX gain a higher market share, M$ won't be the monopoly they once were, and they can get out of paying all those fines.
i'm sorry. I just typed 'brilliant move by microsoft' and almost kept a straight face. someone throw a chair at me.
-I only code in BASIC.-
4. Chairs spotted on Earth orbit.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Microsoft doesn't care about making good products, they just want to sell what ever crap they can. Look at Windows ME. That thing was a piece of sh*t; BSODs all the time. Microsoft isn't about making great products that meet peoples needs, they're all about making stuff that sells.
Microsoft's motto: if it runs like crap we likely made it.
39% is plenty. As OSes mature, improvements are gonna be evolutionary at best. To be able to achieve a 39% adoption rate over a relatively stable OS (XP) is pretty good. No, in fact, it's a very good result considering the bad press MS has been getting lately. I for one wouldn't consider 39% to be a failure given the quality of the product.
Extrapolating the figures given in the summary, we can assume XP has a take-up rate of 60~70%ish within the same period of introduction. That's when most computers were still running on crappy 98 mind you -- hence accounting for the greater adoption rate due to the significant upgrade.
So no, saying it is far less popular is a stretch. 19% would be far less, not 39%.
iirc, Jon Stewart paid the writers out of his own pocket which happens to be allowed according to the union rules.
-chris antixogh@gmail.com
I'm picking up a little vibe here that Slashdot editors and readers don't like Vista.
Has anyone else noticed or am I just imagining it....
You can see MS compounding their errors here, by spinning Vista's successes, and not facing honestly up to the things that people don't like about it, and coming up with solutions.
Customers says, "We don't like Vista!" and MS says, "Yes you do!"
If that doesn't prove that they have a monopolist's attitude, nothing does.
I just wondered what will happen to the slashdot MS-icon http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicms.gif now that Billy is gone...will it be replaced by a borgified version of Ballmer?
/me shudders...
When you buy a new computer with Vista it's going to be so powerful that the bloat that's been added since XP (and this isn't a Microsoft problem, OSX and Ubuntu all have gotten bigger)
The Ubuntu comment caught my attention. I run Ubuntu/Linux Mint/PCLOS on my Dell C610 with 256mb ram, PIII 1ghz and 16mb ATI with Beryl/Compiz/Compiz-Fusion. Fancy desktop effects aside, I'd love to see how anyone can clump Vista and Ubuntu/Any Distro in the same camp as far as bloat is concerned.
Right now I am using only about 170mb ram while I am typing this.
You could make the argument that there's no reason a home user needs a dual core processor and two gigs of RAM but that's what is being sold.
The question is WHY. WHY are those spec machines being sold? Because Vista needs it. If Vista did not need such a lot of stuff to carry it, the average home Joe would be able to get away with half the specs you quoted.
Machines get faster and software gets updated.
Yes, there is that law about processor speeds doubling every 18 months or so, in this case MS has released a product that makes even the fastest machines just good enough. It would almost seem as if they are purposely pushing the specs...
MS just blunders ahead and everybody tags along because of the old analogy: Microsoft, because it's there.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
more pathetic than firstposter-racer is not be the first.
Looser.
I wonder how many people like me were forced to buy it only to wipe the drive and install XP and Ubuntu. There are plenty of companies like Dell where you can't unselect the Windows Vista option when buying their laptop. I know several other people whose computers also came with Vista without them asking and unlike me they actually gave it a fair shot. They all ended up reverting back to XP.
I'd be interested in knowing how many of the 39% actually wanted Vista in the first place and how many kept it.
There's no doubt Vista will improve with time. Microsoft will be recieving alot of user feedback and will know what they need to do to improve their software. Upgrading to a new operating system is never a pleasant experience, just ask any Mac or Ubuntu user who has had problems with the upgrade process. So, Microsoft will make the improvements they need to make and the Windows user base will be happy. Yes, I know alot of slashdot users use other operating systems and that's fair enough. Keep on using whatever operating system YOU like the best, that's what everyone else does ;-)
Was that a retorical question?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
"Then, after all was finally said and done, using the thing was an amazingly frustrating experience, with seemingly endless offers/popups, some masquerading as os-level services, some more obvious overtures to purchase 3rd party software"
I'm sorry - but you are, then, saying that XP sucks because of (as far as I can tell) third party stuff?
Windows XP, without any fancy OEM stuff tacked on, doesn't nag you with seemingly endless offers - the only popups you'll get are the to some annoying 'help bubbles', which others find helpful, and you can turn off either way - the rest of your comment seems to entirely point to third party elements.
That's like saying OS X sucks because after you bought QuickTime 6 Pro and upgraded to OS X Tiger (which has QuickTime 7), QuickTime will once again nag you to upgrade to Pro every first time you run it - and while it's running, taunt you with greyed-out options that were once available to you but are no longer so... until you purchase the Pro upgrade -again-.
( For the curious - back up QuickTime 6, install Tiger, restore. Old stuff, but gosh - if we can blame third party solutions for XP 'sucking' then we can certainly blame same-party solutions for OS X 'sucking', no? )
Windows, in general, has plenty of attack vectors available to you to point out how crappy it is; there's really no need to drag third party stuff into the discussion.
While I've been strong armed into running XP on some of my machines for hardware/software compatibility, all of the older computers I have are running 2000. In my mind 2000 is simply the best version of Windows made, bar none, it's got a low footprint, runs on nearly anything at decent speeds and isn't all "macified" like XP/Vista are. I've looked at 2003 but it's intended server use makes it a little less desktop friendly especially on older hardware. What I would really like Microsoft to do is release some sort of basic FLP style version of Windows to consumers, it's not just businesses using older hardware, in my mind if the machine works it can be used for something. I have tried Linux in the past but it just didn't click, same with MacOS, theres just always been something about Windows that I like, something I don't quite feel with Vista.
We recently bought a low end hp laptop, since i was in charge of debranding it of windows live mail, office 2007, and most of the drm apps etc means Vista is a Microsoft brand feel good exercise (sod the the tco arguments.)
Being the first new Vista box in the office (mostly linux here)- the only thing i cannot do is print to the cups server or to the office samba box because Vista uses smb 2 protocol (thats love isnt it when they hate there competition like that).
The box needed more memory it crawled in a 1gb ram, and once 'Open officed', and Firefoxed seems reasonable enough but it took some time to do without a central image. My conclusion was the brand is more important than the technology for Microsoft.
While somebody in Microsoft loves the brand, Not all of its unwilling customers desire it and since it is a reality that HP would not refund the windows tax, its nice to know that if Vista foo bars even simple stuff like network printing [even to hp printers] then its fair to say that the laptop is broken.
Not much brand value there for hp i think. but then printing might be deemed a drm breach soon if Microsoft have there way.
Do you really think those machines coming in with xp on them were purchased? No, most likely they reloaded the machine and used the xp license key off their old machine. And, last I looked, MS don't get a penny for Ubuntu.
Speaking of the 99 bucks though - emachines with vista ships with an "enhanced" DVD they invite you to install with no explanation. Do that, and you have to call them up and pay 99 bucks for the upgrade in order to get a license key that works - and the only way to uninstall is to reload the OS from scratch (ie bye bye data). I'm still not clear on exactly what it is, but I do know how much it costs because I was the one who called them about the "problem."
39% of new PCs shipped with VISTA - but how many (like mine) quickly got re-installed with e.g. an XP? Can't be few! Anyone got a number on that? theV
The same goes with Windows. What if their GPS, camera, cellphone, PDA etc don't work in Windows, what do they do? Remember, you stated that the Joe Bloggs doesn't know anything. Maybe they could go to their 14 year old cousin but maybe their 14 year old cousin knows Linux!
37% seems very high to me for an OS no one wants. The impossible seems like it will happen : Vista will become the most used OS in spite of the fact that no one wants it.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
whats more pathetic than that is not only are you a ball-less AC, your an ignorant one as well.
looser?
the significance of a signature is insignificant
That's exactly why Vista was such a cluster (and not the compute or failover kind). Microsoft can't modularize, strategically. They ran into trouble with Internet Explorer way back when, and ended up dispersing its functions across a bunch of unrelated modules so that it was impossible to remove and still have the OS boot.
They've been adding complexity while, at the same time, increasing the incestuous and promiscuous interrelations between their components. OSX & Linux and most other sane operating systems break things, insofar as possible, into unrelated modules with limited and defined interfaces. (See, e.g., here.) That's because humans can't manage a 50+ million line codebase without strict modularization. Microsoft discovered about halfway through Vista development that even their huge resources couldn't overcome exponential growth in complexity, so they had to throw out much of what they'd done and start from scratch with significantly more modest goals.
I've said before that Vista is Microsoft's "PS/2" moment. IBM discovered that they couldn't take back the PC market. They came out with the PS/2 and the Microchannel bus - and fenced it 'round with patents, and wanted to charge big bucks for others to play there. Third-party companies and consumers failed to beat a path to their door, and used alternatives like EISA until the roughly-as-good PCI came out. Microsoft figured they could just dictate where the PC market would go, too... but the alternatives are getting to be (frankly, have gotten) 'good enough' for the majority of purposes.
The hardware market changed out from under them, too... we picked up a $450 Dell desktop last year, because it was (or should have been) enough for my wife to run the MS Office she's hooked on. It came with Vista Home Basic and we could not believe what a pig it was. I dropped it back to XP at her demand and things are much nicer. People don't spend thousands on single computers anymore, and they badly misjudged the hardware requirements of Vista - it takes a $2000 computer to run well, from what I've seen.
Then there's the whole DRM fiasco... it's a 'perfect storm' for MS. They'll ride it out, like IBM did, but in ten years MS will be one option among many, not the colossus astride the PC market.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Fast, stable, no DRM, low hardware requirements, runs everything I want to run, works with all my hardware, and no fisher-price interface.
No way in hell will vista ever catch up with 2k.
>>In my mind 2000 is simply the best version of Windows made, bar none
Agree 100%.
Hundreds of millions is a bit vauge to say that its 39% it could be anywhere from 100,000,000 to 999,999,999 which based on the analisis is anything from 39% to 390%. This article is pure BS.
Actually, I think Joe Bloggs will attempt to buy XP given the choice. I state this because I have run into no end of clueless end users with no Vista experience who have told me, "Man, Vista sucks! You shouldn't get that on your new PC." I ask them if they've ever used it. "Well, no..." Can you tell me why it's bad? "Well, not exactly..." Have you ever even seen more than a screenshot of Vista? "Well, no..." Do you know anything at all about computers, and do you have any experience more than just basic usage? At this point they usually attempt to give some answer to justify themselves, but it's always really "No." And then you ask them why, having no experience and having not used the OS, they think Vista sucks, and they always site some relative or random thirdhand source like their brothers friend who told them it sucked. From what I have seen, I believe that most of the anti-Vista sentiment today is actually being generated by ignorant users posting 3rd hand rumors on sites and passing stories around from person to person. Whether or not Vista is terrible is an argument for another day, but I think low sales and persistent complaining have more to do with ignorant rumor mongering in the masses than actual product flaws.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
These figures are not very surprising. As operating systems mature generally and hardware becomes more capable, you'd expect fewer folks to upgrade and everyone to upgrade their whole PC less often anyway. WinXP represented a much bigger jump away from the Win9x userbase (home users) than Vista does over XP. Vista comes with much less pressure on anyone to upgrade.
If anything, Microsoft allowed their Vista marketing to run away with them and too many people came to believe in the hype and the marketshare projections. Still, after reading a lot of naysaying, I've installed Vista over XP and have been pleasantly surprised. It is better than I was expecting, though the cruft has to be turned down or turned off. It's certainly "good enough" despite shortcomings, imho, which is what counts with Microsoft. So I imagine Vista will continue to make solid progress in the home and on pre-installs. The enterprise is something else. Besides, if it's known that a Windows 7 will appear in, say, 2009 or 2010, many outfits would elect to skip Vista as a matter of course, whatever it brought to the table.
Reinstalling my Microsoft OS has also reminded me how much good open-source software is now available on this platform. It's often said that a resurgent Apple is putting pressure on the market share of desktop Linux. I wonder whether Vista or in future Windows 7 plus a nice suite of the Open Office, Gimp and Firefox kind won't put on similar pressure from a different direction.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
This is what I can never understand. I see these posts all the time saying that Vista is not all that horrible. Wow! What a great selling point! I mean, if vista isn't all that horrible, I guess I better upgrade right away.
If I am going to spend good money to upgrade my hw and os, I want something that is *much* better, otherwise, why bother? I want an actual reason to "upgrade."
I am running a 5 year old PC that dual boots debian and w2k, let me know when there is an actual reason for me to uprgrade. I just do not understand the logic of upgrading for no other reason than another windows version happens to exist.
Seriously. Not everybody hates Vista, but practically nobody really likes Vista. Even the industry journalists, analysts, whatever who usually very kind to msft, are not exactly wowwd by Vista. Not from what I've seen. Maybe you know of some glowing reviews?
Most of the people I know who got a machine with Vista bundled on it rolled it back to XP without even asking my advice. If 39% of machines sold in 2007 had Vista my guess is that less than 10% still do.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
In a year when Linux showed no growth on the desktop whatever. OS Platform Stats
It was January 31st before Vista entered the consumer market.
Late spring or early summer before the first mid-line DX10 cards appeared.
OEM system sales have been strongest for Vista Premium and Ultimate. TouchSmart, the media PC, the high-end laptop. The product doesn't look like the generic XP box and it sure as hell isn't running on generic XP hardware.
Joe's new 17" widescreen laptop has a dual core CPU.
2 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, a Light-Scribe DVD burner, surround sound, a fingerprint reader, integrated WiFi, EVDO, a webcam and pretty much everything else that be shoehorned into the case - and all of it with working Vista drivers.
Joe isn't coming into your shop to "upgrade" to XP - or Linux. He's checking out of Best Buy with Office 2007 retail boxed. The Year of Office 2007
When is some group going to force Microsoft to show the code in windows thats base on open source GPL/LGPL code. A good percentage of windows is using open source code.
The question is WHY. WHY are those spec machines being sold? Because Vista needs it. If Vista did not need such a lot of stuff to carry it, the average home Joe would be able to get away with half the specs you quoted.
Bullshit. Those systems are being sold because of competition, plain and simple. If Gateway is selling a 3GHz single core, 1GB RAM, etc system then Dell has to beat them on specs or price or both in order to get the sale. And vice versa. It's the same for the component manufacturers whose products go into those systems.
There's no doubt that PC makers anticipate new sales with each Windows OS release and market their systems accordingly, but even if Microsoft and Windows had never existed we would probably still be close to where we are now in terms of computing power. The average consumer doesn't go into a computer store looking for last years model.
The percentage of PCs shipping with Vista is, of course, only part of the story.
I've seen anecdotal evidence that some people got new PCs late in the XP stage, with the idea of keeping them going until successor-of-Vista was available.
And, in my own case, I switched to Mac in large part because I have a use for a commercial OS, but wanted to avoid Vista.
Both of these strategies are effectively "lost" Vista sales that don't show up at all in the percentage-of-PCs numbers.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Twitter, is that you? Based on above posts by 'boldit', I'd say the Twitter worm is in a propagating phase.
There is one big difference between increases in hardware performance making XP usable and the situation now for Vista. The 32 bit memory limit has basically been reached. Where do PC makers go after 2Gb RAM is standard in PCs? 4Gb RAM just doesn't get along with 32 bit Vista. The only alternative is to go to 64 bit Vista which is going to be whole other world of pain, possibly worse than the transition from XP to Vista.
Here is the 2nd article on the subject from google:
http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-question-maximum-memory-in-32-bit-windows-vista/
--
Simon
MS is cutting off the option to get XP on new PCs at the end of June 2008. We're a local government who buys a couple hundred new desktops each year, replacing about 1/4 of our total desktops annually, for a total 4-year lifecycle on desktops, and our govt sales reps from all three major PC makers have informed us that MS is not flexible on this EOL date for XP. Come July 1st, you'll only be able to get Vista on new machines, period.
This doesn't mean a damn thing without the numbers.
How many Vista PCs have been sold in your market? Through direct sellers like Dell? The big-box retailer like Best Buy and OfficeMax? How many of their customers even know that you exist?
I just bought a new Alienware laptop with Vista on it and I love it. I won't go back to XP. There's a few issues, but then again everyting has a few issues including Linux. I don't really care about what % of shipments or users use what. I knew I wouldn't get Vista until I got a new PC and that's exactly what I did. I'm sure 10 years from now people will be wishing they cold stay with Vista and not upgrade to next OS.
On a couple websites that I run, about 7% of all visitors are on Vista, and this is not increasing very much if at all AFAICT.
You should give windows 2000 a try, I believe is is the best OS Microsoft has produced. Upgraded only a few months ago to XP and it takes a while to disable all the "handholding" features (security centre, autoplay, error reports, hidden files, simple file search, personalised menus) but it does start up fast, have skins available (eg. Royale Noir) and can run multi-core CPUs if needed. I think Vista and XP cater too much to the middle aged newbie who is discovering computers for the first time. Anyone with some experience or aptitude wants the OS to stop getting in the way.
Good thing they have a lock on the OEM PC manufacturers otherwise they probably wouldn't even have those sales.
"Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."
- Henry Ford
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
way too many that I know could not purchase a new laptop or PC with Windows XP and were forced to take Windows Vista. So even with the forced OEM pre-loading, it only took 39% of the shipped PC's is an indication of the size and importance of the business/corporate purchasing departments. I do know that whitebox vendors are more than happy to install WinXP instead of WinVista and even one with no advertised Linux products was willing to install Ubuntu for free in a dual boot configuration. Free as in no charge for the installation and they even went and setup browser plugins.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I bought my current main computer from Dell a few months before Vista was released. As part of some promotion they were running, I received a copy of Vista in the mail a few days after it was released. It's not just an "upgrade" copy, either, it's a full-blown install with a license that I could use to install on any computer that I want to.
That box remains unopened. I've seen the problems that others have had with it, and don't want to mess with it myself. My school has switched over to Vista, so I've had some experience with it there, but I don't like it.
My main computer still runs XP. I don't think I'll ever switch it to Vista. I certainly won't as long as XP can do everything I want it to. Maybe down the road, when I purchase another new computer a few years from now, I'll get it without an OS preinstalled and use my copy of Vista then. Or, I'll get a Mac, and use Boot Camp to make it dual-boot. The only reason I have a copy of Vista is because I essentially got it for free. I don't think I'll ever spend money on it.
PS: Ironically, when I was previewing this comment before posting it, there was a Vista ad on the page...
Intelligent responses welcome, flames will be met with marshmallows.
Maybe it's me, but these numbers do not make any sense. Assuming for non-server machines (And I'm just pulling these numbers out of my ass, feel free to correct me): 39% Vista 7% Mac OSX 1% Linux - I use Kubuntu for the record. This leaves ~53% for XP to be shipped. Maybe it's me, but this doesn't make ANY sense. If you were Microsoft wouldn't you talk to the top 5 shippers of your product (Dell et al) and make damn sure every machine they did ship had Vista on it, even to the point of paying them to install them? Your mission is to utterly dominate the market within the first year. Let's face it: They're totally full of shit.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Numbers doesn't reflect anything, taking into account it's really hard to get a laptop with Windows XP installed you have like no option but to take "Vista". I know at least 3 people who bought a laptop in 2007 and when they got it, they installed Windows XP right away. But guess Microsoft still wins as they already sold a Vista license.
No matter how much anti-MS FUD the Lunix community spews, it just seems they can't increase their market share. Despite them trying in vain to make people think Vista is horrible (and failing), all they have done is convince people to not buy Vista, but to stick with XP.
So... the net loser is Teh Lunix, since they expended all that energy for nothing. At BEST all they did was convince people to get a Mac, which of course doesn't help keep L. Ron Torvalds in cars, blow, and hoes.
Keep struggling, guys. If you can manage to spew even more anti-MS FUD, and maybe convince a few more countries to force people to use Lunix, maybe you can get your marketshare to 1%. Maybe. Because we all know that talking to computer users and seeing what they actually want is far more difficult than spewing anti-MS hate speech and writing the another really great text editor for Teh Lunix.
I bought a Dell 720 XPS the day after Christmas. I was going to buy an XPS 420, but Dell is (or was) only offering XP OEM on the 720's. And if you want an Alienware with XP in lieu of Vista, you're going to pay extra.
-50 DKP for lame post!
As usual, the Slashdot community will jump any distance to the conclusion that Microsoft sucks.
First, this 100 million number is ambiguous at best. One might assume that Gates included all sales in that figure, including volume licensing deals. This, however, seems to conflict with numbers that have already been published. For instance, as of October 2007, Microsoft said they sold 88 million copies of Vista, in *addition* to 42 million volume licensing purchases. See: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/26/88-million-copies-of-Vista-shipped_1.html
The 89 million number cited for XP must have included volume licensing sales as well, because Microsoft's press release regarding the sales of XP during the first year of availability explicitly states that XP sold 67 million copies on new PCs *and* via retail upgrades.
In other words, XP was sold on, at absolute most, about 50% of new PCs in 2002. It was actually probably a bit less than this because the 67 million licenses *included* upgrades.
So, if we assume that Gates was talking about the sales of Vista on new PCs (not upgrades), and we factor in the 20% quarterly sales growth that Vista sales have seen since it was released, we get about 105 million units sold. This represents about 41% of all new PCs shipped, world wide. This number doesn't even account for the holiday season's affect on sales.
In order for sales to be identical to XP, we only need for 14% of people who bought XP during the first year to have bought it as a upgrade. I would say that's a pretty reasonable hypothesis. If you don't find that to be reasonable, PCs with Vista only need to sell at about double the rate during the holiday season as they sell during the rest of the year in order for Vista to hit that 50% mark. Either way, if you mix each of these factors, it becomes very easy for the Vista sales numbers to pan out in Vista's favor.
Furthermore, I was unable to find the data that shows where all those new PC purchases were coming from. The fastest growing PC market is Asia, especially China. Studies have shown that the piracy rate in China is over 90%. We have no idea how this information affected Vista sales overall. (Although, honestly, probably not much.)
It's certainly possible that Vista sales aren't as good as XP's, but we don't have that data yet, and it's definitely not the blowout that this article suggests. The data we do have suggests that Vista sales are about the same as XP as a percentage of total PC sales.
I'm sure they were all counted as Vista installs and not one had Vista on it when it arrived at the end user. I doubt this is uncommon.
If I could have gotten my Thinkpad without Vista, I would have. I just ended up putting Ubuntu on it, anyways. It just kinda sucks to know I've been bolstering their numbers as to how 37337 Vista is.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Where I work every single computer shipped to us comes with Vista installed. Except we are not deploying Vista, so every single one of those machines gets XP installed. I'm sure there are many other organizations doing the same thing.
...but referring to a product as "an Edsel" now is to call it a failure.
Googling "Vista Edsel" shows I'm not the first person to think of the similarities between the two: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/082307backspin.html
Point is, if they don't take steps to fix what's wrong with Vista and be very public about how they know there have been problems and they are working hard to fix them, the branding won't mean a whole lot.
Some would say it's already too late, because a year later SP1 has not yet appeared in Windows Update to fix the problems and even non-techie people are now at least dimly aware of the "Vista = bad" meme.... they may not know specifics, but they have heard that it's generally considered something to avoid if possible. That's a complete disaster for Microsoft, because their bread and butter has been selling mediocre product to those non-techie types via amazing marketing. If marketing can't dispel the notion those people have that Vista is a trouble-prone POS that makes new computers run slowly, Microsoft is in trouble.
~Philly
It IS an anecdote - the point being this is unusual. When XP came out there weren't people lining up to get it REMOVED from their computer because it was so bad. There were, however, lots of people who had just gotten saddled with machines loaded with ME who felt cheated - to the point companies like Dell and HP offered "kits" of new driver cd and os cds to replace the ones that came with their machine.
Everyone has noticed that Vista sucks, one wants it and is hurting PC sales, but this article puts it into perspective. Despite PC sales being double what they were in 2001, the Vista only sales hurt vendors so much that they had to offer buyers a difficult to find choice of XP and even more difficult to find GNU/Linux choice. Users then flooded into those hard to find choices. You can only wonder what sales would have looked like if they had not offered choices or if real choices were allowed.
Thanks again astroturfing trolls, for holding me a nice spot in this conversation. I don't like what you have to say, which is why I did not mention any of it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I bought an Acer Aspire LT310 between Christmas and New Year 0f 2007. It was shipped with Micro$oft Windows Vista Home Premium etc. etc. etc. I unpacked it - hooked it up to a tft, keyboard and mouse - shoved a Debian Net install CD in the slot at the front - flipped on the power switch - and of it went. Statistically this is a Windows machine - practically reiserfs killed Vista before it could even show its ugly face. Even the h/w was well worth the euro 450 (incl 19% sales tax) I paid for it, it is quite annoying that I have been contributing to the well-being of one of the worlds worst software companies ;-)
Other than paying $100 for a new copy of WinXP, is there an official way to swap the copy of Vista I got on my new-for-Christmas Wal-Mart laptop for a copy of WinXP?
Nobody said Apple software was perfect, just generally much better in terms of UI. Yes, grayed out Quicktime options are bad. I wouldn't mind seeing the Quicktime UI disappear, and have video playback rolled into Preview, using Quicktime as a back-end. They really need to differentiate QuickTime Pro from the simple video player most people want. if we can blame third party solutions for XP 'sucking' then we can certainly blame same-party solutions for OS X 'sucking', no? ) Who said you couldn't? You forgot iLife '08 nags as well. Still don't change much in a side-by-side comparison. Windows, in general, has plenty of attack vectors available to you to point out how crappy it is; there's really no need to drag third party stuff into the discussion. Why not? If you can't by a Windows PC off the shelf without it, isn't it fairly relevant? Macs do fine without half a dozen different 3rd party bolt on software components running at startup to offer you redundant methods of changing the volume, changing your display, wireless settings, mouse settings, etc, all with minor device/vendor specific settings.
Have you ever wondered why more of that garbage isn't centralized someplace, like, I don't know.. the Control Panel?? How did Apple manage to put "System Preferences" on every single user's dock by default?
Could it be that the Control Panel is too confusing, or hard to find? Microsoft can fix a LOT of problems caused by 3rd party software by fixing their own UI, or at least designing it with 3rd party developer's needs in mind. Microsoft is at fault for more than you realize. Again, Apple isn't perfect either. A average Mac user might think the Gimp is just terrible, but some fault might lie with Apple's X11 implementation.
They can't fix everything. Both Apple and MS have 3rd party software that suck in ways neither can effect.
I get your point, but there's little sense in comparing a new, out-the-box Mac with a Windows machine you had to wipe and reinstall. Whether it's Microsoft's fault or not, the OP is more or less correct. Compare an average PC to nearly ANY Mac, (let's keep the discussion to SW for now) and the PC gets spanked. Needless to say, there are a LOT of "average" PCs out there, and a good measure of them bought a Windows machine "by default". A 70/30 split with windows/mac would be enough to see quite a few more Macs at retail, with less pressure to pick Windows "because that's what everyone else uses."
I installed Vista 64 ultimate recently on my 13 month old home machine. The machine is a Core 2 Duo 6600 with 4 gigs of ram. I rum VS 2005, VS 2008 and do some development work from home. I have a Qaud Core 6600 with 4 gigs of ram at work and the difference when using visual studio is like night and day. I am counting the days until I can install Vista 64 at work. XP is just too old to take good advantage of the most recent hardware. Not to mention the fact that 32 bit windows can really only use somewhere around 3 gigs of ram. All my old and new games that I have tried also work. Company Of Heroes still runs at max settings like it did on XP. The only thing that doesn't work is my Canon G3 camera, but I blame Canon for that, though there is supposed to be a workaround with the old twain driver. Maybe my experience with Vista has been so good because I waited a long time to install it. It definitely feels a lot smoother than windows XP and has no swapping everytime you come back to the machine. I have also run Linux on and off for years as a home server, so I am not a MS fanboy, I am just telling it like it is. Vista 64 bit is excellent.
I'd like to see stats on how many machines shipped with Vista only to be re-formated with XP, or in the case of myself and 2 co-workers, our favorite Linux distro. No way to really get that info though as few folks (myself included) bother to install Linux Counter on their PCs. I still have it running on a bunch of old servers, but haven't bothered to install it on any new laptops. I know more and more folks are wiping Vista off and going back to XP, including several of my customers.
I know my logic was I would just make a Ghost image of Vista before ever booting it up (since nothing these days ships with the media), and at some point someone else may get this laptop and I can put Vista back on it for them, but at this rate our office may be using XP for a long time.
Let's face it. Vista is XP: Reloaded. Or XP: Millenium Edition. Except that it has more problems than any of the XP service packs ever introduced. Like browsing file shares or using wireless networks? Not if you have Vista. Those things are relatively impossible to operate correctly.
I hope Vista users love being Microsoft's shortcut for Quality Assurance. Why pay a million people to test every facet of your code, when you can get a million people to pay you to do it for free?
What's that you say? Real people with real use in business don't use Release Candidates or Betas? That's just nonsense. Of course businesses will love to put "candidate" code on production servers to test things--this is America, and we *all* live dangerously here! And we all love Microsoft so much, that we'll religiously use the questionably-valuable, first versions of their products, while the rest of you pussies wait for the first Service Pack. This is real business, and I thank God that PC manufacturers like Dell *FORCE* you to use them on new systems, *FORCE* you to use alien code in established environments that poor, dear-old Microsoft couldn't possibly have simulated (e.g. transferring files from network shares on Windows 2003 domain systems--I know what you're thinking, "That's unheard of!").
Welcome to the revolution of the digital age, friends! Everybody gets to be a guinea pig! No waiting! Sign up today!
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
As most of your post hinges on the following...
"Can you buy a new Windows PC without the crappy 3rd party software he talks about?"
yes, yes you can. However...
"it doesn't change the experience that the bulk of PC users have"
Seeing as most people do indeed actually purchase those PCs that have a crapload of OEM stuff tacked on - no, I can't change that experience.. they could, if they shopped for such.
"Could it be that the Control Panel is too confusing, or hard to find? Microsoft can fix a LOT of problems caused by 3rd party software by fixing their own UI, or at least designing it with 3rd party developer's needs in mind."
This I can agree with, to an extent. Microsoft don't, unfortunately, have the luxury of doing things right from the beginning; just look at how many people complain about bits and pieces of Vista not working exactly like XP. But they missed the ball on, for example, Security Center. Although it will show you have anti-virus installed and working, it doesn't offer any 'Settings' button that will take you to, say, a list of common settings and an 'advanced settings' option that would take you to the vendor-specific configuration dialog.
However, even if it did, gut feeling tells me that i.e. Norton would happily integrate with that AND
1. add a taskbar icon
2. add a quicklaunch icon
3. add a desktop icon
4. add a start menu entry (top)
5. add a start meun > programs entry
6. add a startup 'welcome' dialog
and lord knows what else that thing might do.
Perhaps that, too, is Microsoft's fault - seeing as they don't have a centralized location/etc., developers sought out locations on their own and hey-presto. But at some point those developers have to realize that they're perpetuating a complexity that is at the heart of many users' complaints.. and that it's not (solely) up to Microsoft to change this.. and that might have to start with the users not pointing at Microsoft foremost.
Even though Windows does have a standard application folder at "Program Files", it's not quickly accessible via the shell, or explorer. Instead they implemented the task menu, and allowed application shortcuts on user desktops. Then they later added a location on the task bar for MORE application shortcuts. I think it's clear in this case how Microsoft set themselves up for it, and at there's least one proven way they could fix it. I'm really not suggesting they outright copy Apple, but they should copy the ease of use and implement it in their own way.
I think Microsoft stands to lose more by not doing anything than from a careful redesign. The absolute worst thing they could do is to keep all their old crusty ways, while tacking on even MORE bad ideas. *cough* UAC *cough* Well, at least they dropped Active Desktop.
.... but it is the fault of retailers selling you what MS claims are minimum requirements?
Bad, bad, bad retailers and PC manufacturers.
They have no morals.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When are you asked the priority at which each little piece of nagware should run?
Answer: never.
Why: bad OS design.
But it looks mightily pretty....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When are you asked about priorities when installing nagware?
Why is the default priority of nagware higher that whatever you are running ?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.