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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?
I don't know anyone that bought vista unbundled with any hardware, but I think it is interesting to note that of all the customers I provide technical support for, nearly 90% of them have all stated how much they hated vista. The consumers speak for themselves. Maybe they should be given a choice as well. Though, given the current trend and opinion, that may very well cause Vista sales to bomb.
I bought a copy for compatibility testing that I run in a virtual machine. A side benefit is that I get to compare versions of Windows side-by-side. It's enlightening. Vista is slower in every respect than its predecessors, and it's more difficult to use.
On the other hand, it is shinier.
Or at least that's how I understood the deal. Correct me if I'm wrong.
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I was forced to take Vista. I tried it. It couldn't find anything on my network except my fax machine and the user interface for a modular print server, but not the printer. I finally hard coded the address and then it had driver issues. The printer was a plain vanilla HP laserjet. I replaced Vista ASAP with Ubuntu which immediately connected to everything. I wasted 90 minutes downloading approximately 150 updates out of the box. I guess HP didn't care if it was current or maybe Vista has so many issues that it needed that many new updates during shipping.
I distribute a moderately popular software for windows (simple call recording tool for Skype called Call Graph). But from my stats, only 10 % of my users are on Vista. :)
No, that's not true. Really. Not only is Vista selling well, it also helps Win XP sales! Some people bought Vista with their new PC and then installed XP on it. That's 2 licenses of operating system per hardware! Never before in Microsoft history did people need 2 licenses for their brand new PC.
Vista is Microsoft's new windfall.
I order all of our new Business PC's with Vista licenses, however I then load them with my volume licensing copy of XP excercising the downgrade rights that come with the Vista Business edition... I figure I may as well get the newest license, does not mean that I'm going to use it, as much as M$ would like to think that I am.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
What does Vista do better than XP?
Serious question.
Every other Vista feature equals what exactly? I bought Vista on release day and also turned UAC off. The only other features of Vista I can think of that I vaguely care about are
1. Aero
2. The Apple Spotlight clone
3. The Google Sidebar clone
3. Windows Explorer now allows you to filter by file extension
Not worth the $220 and 10% to 15% performance reduction I paid. I recently reinstalled XP after using Vista everyday for over a year.
It is poorly implemented in that it doesn't have a grace period. As such every instance of requested elevation will hit a user instead of once in a reasonably short time window.
This is a real problem when people are initially bumping up against the new Windows 'feature'. When they buy a new machine and are installing countless pieces of software, it's like being hammered over the head with near constant 'cancel/allow' requests.
Once (if) the typical user gets past this initial Trial By UAC and aren't installing programs one after another, UAC is barely noticeable and is handy for the security it provides, but a user's introduction to the process is *extremely* negative and likely to sour them to the control mechanism, IMO.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I've seen way more high-end laptops on my campus than I have Macintosh laptops...but anyhow, the Apple statistics on "dominating" the $1000+ price range is skewed because most PC users buying above 1000+ simply upgrade their systems. If you're buying an Alienware, Voodoo PC, Falcon NW, Build it yourself or any other high end PC you're not going to just go out and buy a new computer, you're just going to slap in a new $600 video card and some new RAM for a while. Apple pretty much forces you to buy an entirely new system, minus a few upgradeable modules...I'm sorry but it's true.
Anyhow, I bought Vista Ultimate without it being bundled with the PC..I will admit it wasn't selling well though. The place I bought it from said I was the first customer to buy Vista Ultimate from them...-this was the first week of it's release though-...and that they actually only held one copy of Vista Ultimate in stock; I was pretty shocked. 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'll admit that I did hate on vista for a while before ever trying it, but when I got a new laptop with vista preinstalled on it, after removing all the garbage that vendors throw on there, the sheer sluggishness of it...
My old XP laptop with half the specs does things faster than vista. I had some hopes for SP1, but so far I've seen no real improvement... As far as I'm concerned, vista made things shiny, added a few handy but hardly necessary features, and slowed down my machine.
Ezekiel 23:20
I don't "hate" Vista, I just dislike it. For several reasons, too. For example, Vista is stuffed with all this DRM stuff and if I am watching DRM enabled video I'll need a monitor and graphics card which both support protected video path or it'll downgrade the video quality. IMHO that's pretty fucked up. If I have bought a movie then of course I should be allowed to watch it at optimal quality settings too no matter what monitor (and connector) I am using :O So, generally, I hate the attitude "protect media from users" rather than "provide users with the best you can give them".
Second thing I dislike about Vista...is that I don't have a single computer it'd run sufficiently well on. XP runs just fine on all of them, and so does Linux even though Linux does give me all the desktop bling, search and such that are the features that Vista is touted for. In essence: Vista requires much better hardware to run as well as either Linux or XP on my current hardware. And if I buy a new computer then I rather use the extra power it gives me to run the applications or games rather than the OS.
I seriously can't see a single upside in moving any of my computers to Vista. It doesn't provide any new feature that I can't already have with XP or Linux, and they even require less powerful hardware.
-Nita
On my Linux box if a website manages to get a popup window open without asking, that's a major security breach requiring immediate examination and correction.
On the average user's Window's box an unexpected new browser toolbar, websites that redirect to unfamiliar places and a short game of Kill the popups is such a common part of the landscape that people just don't notice them until they render the computer completely unusable.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I work for a software editor. Several months ago, we had to port a part of our software to Vista. Since our software is web-based, the only part at stake was an ActiveX.
It was the worst nightmare we ever had. After finguring out for several months what was going on, we came to the conclusion that it simply wasn't possible. To summarize (sorry for simplifying):
- UAC is the worst design/implementation ever. Windows has several execution environments (unlike UNIX, which has... 2: user(s) and root), and UAC asks you for permission each time you cross a fence ! (in UNIX, sudo at leasts reminds the password for several minutes or so)
- ActiveX are simply impossible to use under Vista+IE7. Problem is that Microsoft didn't care to offer a replacement technology.
The consequence of all this is that our application was no longer available under Vista/IE. It worked well under Vista/Firefox, though.
Finally, we hired an ex-microsoftie, who re-implemented the ActiveX part entirely, using MS _private_ APIs, and now it works - more ore less.
Going through all this, i wonder if the NT platform can be secured at all. Since we also have a support department, i can tell you that users have fare more problems with Vista than XP.
This is going to kill MS. Almost all techies i know, plus lots of "power users" are switching to Linux or OSX (even the ex-microsoftie we hired was using OSX as his primary OS). Only big companies are sticking to MS, because of the total lack of competence that reigns there.
In order for your comment to be true the exact opposite of what I illustrated happening in my post must be happening. Since I provided links, it would be fair to ask you for some.
PC sales are up in a big way in units, dollars of sales and dollars of profit. Windows sales are off by 24%. Make of that what you will. I choose to believe that Microsoft is getting a lot less for Windows than they used to especially in emerging markets, they're bleeding share on high end retail units and they've fully booked the sales under Software Assurance. I also choose to believe this is because nobody wants Vista, especially on the cost effective platforms that don't run it well.
We have run the circle:
We're back at nothing but XP for you. All your base are belong to XP. Now you just also have to take the Vista License so they can book another Vista sale for their marketeering. That way Ballmer can say stuff like "almost 100% of retail PCs are Vista." If you'll remember, Saddam Hussein also got 100% of the "popular vote" in the last election before his execution. At least they aren't making you take a SuSE coupon as well -- yet.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Large computer companies are always interested in any major market segment. Apple hasn't handed Balmer anything though. Apple is still small compared to Microsoft and unless Apple can ship a network centric product it won't take the business end of the market.
... But the truth is a little different. The large OEMs are selling computers with Vista Business licenses but are loading Windows XP on them as the downgrade rights allow. We have no intention of starting to even look at actually using Vista for more then a year.
The real thing is that Microsoft has become so disconnected and arrogant that it has put itself in a position that its customers are willing (and wanting) to find any viable alternative to their products.
I really believe that Microsoft believes their own stories. If you go to a computer/electronics store you won't find a choice between computers with Vista and XP. You will find Vista rammed down the consumer's throat. I think they really believe that the customers are really choosing Vista over XP even though they have no choice.
As far as businesses: The company I work for purchases lots of computers from Dell (100+ a month) and last week I changed our purchasing from ordering only machines with XP licenses to only ordering systems with Vista licenses...
I'm certain that Microsoft will lie to themselves and tally this up as a successful sale of Vista instead of a customer who wants no part of it but is going to pick up the license for the same price and hedge his bets.
When a company lies to itself and loses focus on trying to meet customer needs it is walking the road to failure. The only question is if there is a David out there that can capitalize on Goliath's faltering. (Can Linux pull a major rabit out of their hat? I just don't see it...)