Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
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.
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.