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Ballmer Says Vista Selling Really Well
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling 'incredibly well,' he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today. 'Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,' the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on '45 percent of all of new business PCs.' Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice." Anyone know anybody who bought Vista except as bundled with hardware?
Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice
Not true at all. Business users are the ones that are most likely to not get a choice. The IT department will choose for them based on what they feel like supporting. A large portion of IT departments are run by slashdotters who are fed "Vista sux0rz" nonsense, so this is completely understandable.
And in other news, President Bush says the War in Iraq is going "really, really well".
Note that he didn't say that he's proud of it because it's good software, but because it "has had a good unit volume market reaction." In other words, he's not proud of his programmers, he's proud of his marketers.
Absolutely not! This isn't an either or choice. Your customers want both! That's why, many of your customers are moving to patforms that offer both. 45% businesses choose Vista? What about the other 55% of businesses?. What did they choose - hmmmmm?
of all the customers I provide technical support for, nearly 90% of them have all stated how much they hated vista
so... 90% of them have stated whether or not they hate vista? You do realize that your phrasing would include satisfied people in those 90%. But I'll assume that you meant that 90% hated it. You are providing technical support for those people! Of course they aren't happy with something. They screwed something up on their computer, and they are blaming Vista for it.
I don't know anyone who actually bought Vista unbundled, but I know plenty of people who got it pre-installed and kept using it.
They experience Vista's problems and huge system requirements, but they keep using it anyway. Maybe it's because they don't want to admit to themselves that they indirectly bought garbage. But I think it's because they want the newest, shiniest product, regardless of whether it's better.
Fact: most people are MORONS.
Saying Vista sells with new PCs is like saying people want junk mail because they choose to have a letter box.
I bought volume licenses of Vista. Of course I promptly installed XP on all the boxes the licenses were for.
Same goes for Server 2008. I bought a Server 2008 open license edition and promptly installed server 2003. I needed it for an accounting app, but I wasn't going to install 2008...I don't trust it. Besides, servers should NEVER require activation or validation! EVER! That's a deal-breaker IMO.
(Don't worry, that server 2003 instance is only a VM running on a linux box.)
So what have we learned? That just because their FUCKED UP licensing model REQUIRES you to buy the new license in order to use the older, more functional versions doesn't mean that the product is a success. That ambulatory heap of festering dogshit that calls itself "Steve Ballmer" really has nothing to crow about.
You're using her as bait, Master!
HP and Dell are both willing to sell you a business PC with a Vista Business edition COA label on the side thats preloaded with XP Pro. Since the Vista Business and Premium edition EULA allows this "downgrade", its a pretty good deal all around. Business customers can get XP out of the box, but have the option to re-image the PC with Vista down the road if they feel the need. I'd guess that Microsoft still chalks up the sale as a Vista machine, so they can continue to spin the PR story of Vista's success.
Never thought I would see the day when PC Magazine was help up to be a reliable source of information on /.
My reasons for hating Vista?
- User control sucks, and it sucks to code for. Yeah, it can be disabled, but you can't count on that in your apps - and it's a bitch on older software.
- Many apps and games are broken. Obvious point. - It takes damn-near twice the processing power and memory that XP does, no matter how you look at it.
- They're artificially forcing it down people's throats by trying to restricting software to be Vista-only when it'd run fine (possibly better) on XP.
- Mostly all the menus and configurations were changed. I say changed and not improved, because they haven't improved (from my point of view).
- Many misc UI changes. See previous point.
Short summary, there is no good reason for me to be wanting Vista, aside from the fact that MS and other companies (most likely for extra money from MS) are trying to force it down my throat. (Besides, the effective forcing [and quit the "you have a choice" crap - that shit doesn't apply in the real world] sounds like monopoly abuse to me. -- And for the record, I don't even hate Microsoft. They *can* make excellent software, and I use Windows XP Professional exclusively.)
Yes because guy's like me who purchases new computers for our company who are forced to buy Vista, don't just reinstall XP once we get it.
Sure you sold a copy of Vista, that doesn't mean were using it.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
You turned off UAC? Why not turn off aero as well?
What is the point of upgrading?
And, more importantly, by doing this, your experience is not a typical vista experience for the average user.
I guarantee they're interested. They just can't compete.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I've been using computers in business for 20 years now, and I was what is commonly defined a "power user"
Why am I using the past here? because, for the first time since I started 20 years back, I see absolutely no use changing to a new machine. I use Excel. I use Access.there are some other apps that work well on XP. my machine is 3 years old, in the prime of an optimized and no nonsense life. I do not play big computer games at work. THAT's the real problem with Vista. Users have to change/upgrade machine to use Vista. what for?
I think that business users might go to Linux, but what they'd really want would be to stay as they are for years to come.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Back in, oh, 1983-ish, I realized that PC stood for personal computer. Maybe Balmer will start calling Windows-based PCs IBM compatibles...that'll really show us how on top of the industry he is.
Vista is a fine operating system. Most people hate it for the same reason they hate Paris Hilton: When the crowd speaks, you must obey!
I run Debian, Fedora, and Vista at home. At work it's RHEL, XP, Fedora, and a bunch of other junk. This week most of my OS hate is for Fedora and Ubuntu -- I'm seriously pissed at all this beta crap. How bad is it? Enough to make me seriously consider Debian stable for an actual Desktop machine.
If you are a neophyte computer user, you'll have problems with Vista as you would with any operating system. If you're an idiot who has only used XP, but never a secure operating system like Linux or OS X, you'll hate UAC. If you're just kind of slow, you won't like how some things are now colored differently. Oh no, confusing!
Frankly, I am really, really, tired of all this Microsoft bashing. If it were real criticism, related to reality, they might benefit from it and come up with a better OS. It's not. Basically, it's a loud message to Microsoft: Don't innovate, we can't appreciate it. The color of the taskbar is more important that impovements like Start Window search, improved booting and recovery (that has saved my ass at least once), improved security, vastly polished system tools of all sorts; no, what matters is that not everything is in the some place it used to be. What matters is that there are a few geriatric scanners that nobody has released Vista drivers for. Good god, most of the people having problems with Vista shouldn't be using computers in the first place -- that's the real crime here.
UAC is amazingly useful if you run as a non-privileged user. Having an application ask to be elevated rather than requiring you to explicitly run it as a privileged user is pretty handy. I don't understand the hatred of UAC on a site that is teeming with UNIX users that routinely use su or sudo.
I can only assume that by 'selling really well' he means that commercial transactions involving Vista have a high probability of success, and not that the amount of such transactions is by any means impressive.
Personally, I think working in Marketing should be a capital offense.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
7 reasons a geek should buy OSX, off the top of my head:
- 64-bit OS in all flavors, also works with 32-bits programs/drivers and older machines without 64-bit cpu.
- Backup to DVD-R or CD-R since
- Cheaper than Vista, VPN integrated for networks.
- Time Machine. Much better than restore points.
- Full consistent UI and spotlight. Press Command-Space, type in then name of the file or some meta-data you can set or the content of it, and you get it.
- Full bash support from the ground up. Free developer tool-chain, with some tools (e.g. Dashcode or Quartz Composer) easy to use to the non-coder people.
- Expose, Dashboard, Spaces, iWeb, iPhoto, etc etc. YMMV on the usefulness of those.
- Support for Zeroconf (Bonjour), which is still not there on Vista.
I've been buying Macs for some times now, and haven't thrown a computer yet. All upgraded to Leopard and still fully functional in its full G4 glory.Of Code And Men
Well, I think you're asking a good question. I don't even have a problem with UAC; I think it's a good idea actually.
The biggest problem with Vista is that Microsoft was not up front about what you really needed to run it; many "Vista Ready" machines -- weren't. On top of that, Vista went out without drivers for a lot of things, which is a lot of the point of using Windows over something better -- better hardware support.
I think Vista is largely a mixed bag; it was released beta quality, which (in part) probably contributes to its heroic resource demands on hardware. Even the early MacOS 10 releases were pretty inefficient. But with respect to beta software being released as production ready, I'd the same thing about Ubuntu Hardy. It's not really release quality IMHO. However, its easier to take a few lumps on an upgrade if it is (a) free and (b) optional.
And that, I think, is a big part of the reason for Vista hatred. People have decided they don't like riding the upgrade merry-go-round. They got to the point they felt like they could live with XP; they'd probably pay good money for an improved XP. What they got was something which was not as radical as intended (no WinFS), but sufficiently radical to be noticeably rocky and resource intensive. Some of the changes in Vista are unqualified improvements, some of the changes are defensible with implementation faults (UAC and Windows File Protection), and some are there to support Microsoft's agenda alone (DRM).
We may be in an era where customers don't want to be dragged kicking and screaming into a vendor's vision for the future. They'd rather see consistent, incremental improvements. Even the minor changes Microsoft makes in situations like this are starting to piss people off, like renaming control panel applets.
People may not be happy about having to pay for MacOS upgrades, but they're getting incremental improvements on a known quantity. Likewise, I think Ubuntu Hardy is a bit rocky, but the changes are intended to be much the same: incremental improvements on a known quantity. And it's asymptotically approaching that point.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I believe part of the hatred comes from the fact that Microsoft don't seem to listen to their customers. Instead they, time and time again, try to convince everyone that Vista is the right way to go, even though only few people seem to agree. It's the Microsoft way - or the highway. The same thing can be said about most of Microsofts techs. What's the point of building an operating system which is a grand system hog as Vista is and at the same time don't deliver any significant changes compared to XP? Luckily Microsoft is slowly loosing their grasp on the market, and people are beginning to see that there are in fact alternatives that might actually be better than what they are used to. Here in Europe i almost daily see local headlines like "Hey, open source is actually pretty cool!". And those headlines go all the way to the people who never cared about it before. We're talking government officials. It's a relief to me that Microsoft is getting some competition. In the end it will be extremely healthy for the entire industry, and it's already starting to show when Microsoft is actually talking about being more open. Hell almost froze over and pigs were flying the other day when i read about ODF and Office 2007. Anyways, to me, Vista is a complete failure. The second coming of Windows Me if you like.
I can only agree as I have helped several people to change their system from Vista to XP. One of them bought a ThinkPad for 2000â, booted it up and said something like:"Yeah, but does it run XP?" In my opinion Microsoft just exercised some bad timing with Vista. It's a shiny OS for people who like shiny Software and have high resolution screens and fast computers. However, most people's hardware, even if bought brand new is not ready for it yet, as the average user will not have a high-end system and the result suboptimal performance. Just look at the "Vista Ready" case. It will eventually catch on as buget PCs get fast enough to run it, which is happening as we speak.
But for nerds (especially the ones on /.) speaking up against the crowd is considered to be cool.
Vista sucks. Maybe they added a few improvements here and there, but overall, it is not as good as XP. In no way does it justify seven years of development. Look at what Ubuntu was seven years ago (oh wait, there was no Ubuntu seven years ago, well, then look at Debian). But this is no surprise. Monopolies do that. They churn out crappy products. No surprise here.
On the contrary, I would guess that most *nix-using Slashdot-readers would normally run as unprivileged users, and only elevate their privileges with su/sudo for special tasks. Why would that be so bad for the Windows-using Slashdot crowd?
The MSFT shareholders, of course. If your company is mucking around the idea of buying a smaller company, and the release of your flagship product is panned in the press, you'd be getting your marketers to come up with some spin to keep your job.
If anything, this reminds me of someone sticking a Post-it saying "Everything is fine. Nothing is ruined." on a BSoD.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
I think you missed my point.
Vista was developed not as an OS to give customers a better experience, but as a DRM platform. This is rather evident in the final product.
The DRM is a large cause of the sluggishness and poor driver stability. Not to mention it drives up the cost of hardware in general due to Microsoft now dictating certain aspects of hardware design to satisfy the DRM requirements. And what about when it breaks?.
I would say it is most relevant to me regardless of use. The OS is full of code designed specifically to deny my use of it. It doesn't matter that I "might never trigger it". What matters is that it's there. It's like having a bucket of acid over my head with the guy holding the chain swearing he won't let it drop unless I misbehave. Where is the sense in me paying a guy to do that?
Alright, I'm no fan of vista for many reasons, but this is just flat incorrect. If you don't assume that your user has admin rights they need never see a UAC prompt from within your application. The actual rights required for practically every system API are extremely well documented; if you fail to read that documentation you can't blame the OS.
Fact is, UAC is forcing lazy programmers to actually pay attention to the code they're spewing out. It doesn't take a lot of effort to avoid UAC in your app -- just a little extra awareness of what you're doing.
Bah. I would never use nice and new in reference to Vista. Digital rights restriction crap. :P
My sister was looking at a few Vista computers and asked my advice. I bought her a Mac.
Of course Ballmer is going to say Vista is selling well. What TF else is he going to say? He has to lie to his shareholders to keep the stock up, or else they'll run out of funding and won't be able to crush their competition.
If Microsoft had to survive on the merits of their products, they'd have been gone a long, long time ago.
blog
This is not a bad approach. Now:
Then you'll be almost as secure as OS X. No OS is 100% secure. Good administration and usage matters far more than the software package. That said, yeah, OS X and Linux both don't have any extant viruses in the wild and most distributions don't have any exposed services or Flash by default so they are inherently more secure than Windows. Not as secure as BSD, but pretty good.
We may be coming to a time when no OS is considered secure unless it's booted from read-only media from a known good image. That'll be a sad day.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... I do however like Vista, and find that most people who make fun of it, or hate on it, have actually never used it. I've used it, and while I don't hate it, it is far more complex to use, far slower out of the box and far more expensive than XP. Turning off all the crap that slows it down, like shadow copy, indexing and aero, leaves you with a piece of crap that makes you realise you wasted your money.So speak for yourself. Many people hate it, and almost no companies are upgrading.
But for many of us half-decent isn't good enough. I'd rather save and get something as good as I can possibly afford, on most all items of my life. Half decent sounds like half assed to me, and I try not to settle for anything in life. Life is too short just to 'get by' on everything.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........