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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?
Even Time magazine has notice Microsoft is "an Empire in rapid decline".
Who's this message directed at? The last people he's going to fool are corporate users. Home users continue to avoid buying new computers because what they have is working just fine. Even if he could convince them to go buy, they have a giant selection of $500 and less Vista failure laptops to chose from if they don't just buy a $300 EEE PC with GNU/Linux.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
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.
Most PCs come with Vista by default (it is a bit of a hassle to buy without) so new PCs are sellng well.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
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?
If it sold more than zero copies, that qualifies as "incredibly well" for me too.
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.
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.
Not all business users have a choice. Dell gives you a choice. HP does not.
We're an HP value-add reseller and we can't get xw4400 workstations without vista. We had to request a downgrade kit (they will only give 1 to each business address, even though we order hundreds of these a year) and then downgrade them to XP.
I had some friends who have it on their new laptops...
If by bought you mean "downloaded from The Pirate Bay", then yes.
I know two people. One is now using XP, and the other got so mad he bought a Mac.
Saying Vista sells with new PCs is like saying people want junk mail because they choose to have a letter box.
PC Magazine's editor sure gave Vista the thumbs down. The only thing any of my friends ever tell me is that "It looks nicer" so they like it but they have more problems with it than XP. That kind of opinion does not make me want to risk buying a new PC.
Intellectual property was the desert property of the twenth century.
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.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
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
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.)
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 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 guarantee they're interested. They just can't compete.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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. :)
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)
All of them have their $4,000 laptops and Media Centers, but Apple sells twice as many as them combined. Tell me another good joke about vendors not being interested in high margin business and I'll tell you a good joke about a $400 OS and a $450 Office suite. Steve Ballmer is blowing smoke from his crack pipe.
It's remarkable how he can paint a happy face on the steepest decline in the history of the company.
If his figures are correct, the PC market just experienced the largest contraction ever and nobody noticed. Especially odd in that Intel's operating income is up 23%. Top PC seller HP's net income is up 16% on strong notebook sales and huge growth in emerging markets. Lenovo is reporting a 17% increase in sales on strong global demand.
Is anybody besides Microsoft seeing this decline? Is somebody lying to Ballmer? "Gee, no, Steve. Business is off everywhere. It's a recession. People adore Vista. You can put the chair down now."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Back in, oh, 1983-ish, I realized that PC stood for personal computer. Maybe Balmer will start calling Windows-based PCs IBM compatibles...that'll really show us how on top of the industry he is.
A polished, gold painted turd is still a turd.
You'll be stuck in engineering forever. With that attitude, you'll never make it into marketing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I order all of our new Business PC's with Vista licenses, however I then load them with my volume licensing copy of XP excercising the downgrade rights that come with the Vista Business edition... I figure I may as well get the newest license, does not mean that I'm going to use it, as much as M$ would like to think that I am.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
What does Vista do better than XP?
Serious question.
Personally, I think working in Marketing should be a capital offense.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
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.
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 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'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.
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.
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.
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.
Anyway here is the conversation I have been having Quite a lot lately:"Can I ask you a question?"..Sure,that's what I'm here for,shoot."I heard that you won't be able to get anything other than Vista come (insert wrong date,usually Xmas),is that true?"....Actually it is the last day in June,after that it is Vista only."OMG! My (insert cousin brother sister etc) got that thing and it REALLY sucked! Isn't there anyway YOU could get one after that?"....If you buy a retail or OEM copy of XP Home or Pro then I will be able to build you a new computer anytime you want and install XP on it."So it won't have to be an old computer? I can get a new one with Xp if I buy one of those discs?"....As long as you have me or another system builder put your system together you will be able to have a new system with XP. But you won't be able to just go buy a Dell or HP unless you are willing to get Vista."EEEW! No way do I want that! So,how much do you need to order me one of those discs? And I'll be looking for a new machine come(insert date,usually Xmas) can you take the disc then and make me an XP machine?"
Hell,I have been having that EXACT conversation over and over and over. I even have a little graphic artist who has been running WinME(EEW) all these years and he just handed me the cash to order him an OEM to go with the machine he just had me build because he was afraid he would get stuck with Vista. So Ballmer might as well accept the fact that even if Vista SP2 is the second coming, the word is already out there that Vista sucks and trying to change folks minds once they are made up is usually just a waste of breath.
Of course he isn't helping things by killing XP at a time when there are plenty of single core systems with only 512Mb of RAM being sold. By forcing them to run Vista Basic he is reinforcing the perception that Vista is a POS. I have yet to see Vista run as well on a single core as XP. And Vista should NEVER be run on less than 2Gb of RAM,ever! It is just TOO damn painful and thrashes like mad. He could probably IMHO turn it around if he kept XP home for the low end and XP pro for the corporates that have apps that won't play nice and push Vista as the new "elite" OS from MSFT. If he did that as well as get rid of so many different versions(I say Home Premium,Business and Ultimate for retail along with Enterprise for volume licenses) then he might be able to fix the Vista=suck in folks minds. But he isn't going to win by forcing Vista on crappy low end Dells and killing XP,which folks are more comfortable with. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
I've been using it regularly on a new laptop since January and I absolutely despise it. I'm also really sick of seeing people say what you did: just because YOU like it doesn't mean all the people saying it sucks don't really hate it. I'm sure there are some that bitch about it who haven't tried it, but then again I'm sure there are some who claim it's great who haven't tried it either so they balance out.
So why do I hate Vista? I have several very good reasons:
There are other things but they're more minor, the above cut into my productivity the most for no good reason. I've given Vista a chance but it's days are looking numbered, I'm probably going to go to XP Pro soon as I'm tired of Vista wasting my time.
- MSPaint now saves to JPEG as the default file format.
There you go.If you see a +1.2M UIN account posting the usual "I agree with you" replies to one of twitter's comments, chances are it's one of his sockpuppet accounts.
(I'll take my offtopic mod now)
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
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.
... 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.
PAE is a feature of the modern x86 architecture, just like MMX or SSE. It was introduced with the Pentium Pro in 1995 (13 years ago!), and has been standard since the Pentium II (1997). PAE increases the number of address lines from 32 to 36. It also adds a new mode to the x86 MMU (Memory Management Unit) which supports 36-bit hardware addresses. The new mode adds a third level to the page table structure, in facilitate a larger page table entry size.
Both Vista and XP enable PAE, but with a major caveat. Both avoid using any hardware address above the 4 GiB mark because it turns out a lot of drivers can't handle such. That includes drivers which ship with Windows -- and Microsoft takes on part of the support burden of those. (Microsoft doesn't support third-party (non-WHQL) drivers and never has.)
The reason both OSes enable PAE mode is to get NX (No Execute bit) support. (NX is used as a defense against code injection due via buffer overrun. Microsoft calls it DEP (Data Execution Prevention).) The NX bit is only present in the larger page table entries. So they enable PAE -- and take the performance hit of the third level of page table lookup -- but don't actually use the larger hardware address word.
So anyway, because the OSes can't use hardware above 4 GiB, they (re)configure all your peripheral hardware to exist within the 4 GiB space. That includes configuration space, ROMs, buffers, video memory, the AGP aperture, memory mapped hardware I/O (DMA), etc. Any RAM at those addresses gets "shadowed" and is not accessible to the OS.
Linux doesn't have this problem -- it's been 64-bit clean for years, and will happily put your peripheral hardware above 4 GiB. (One can still run into problems with motherboards, BIOSes, and/or expansion cards which don't support hardware addresses > 32 bits, though. Some motherboards don't have the PAE lines "wired". Some BIOSes just don't support it. And some 32-bit PCI cards don't support DAC (Dual Address Cycle), which would let them accept a 64-bit address.)
But to support a hardware address > 32 bits with Windows, you either need to run the x86-64 versions of Windows, or run Advanced/Enterprise Server. (The "Standard" version of Windows Server is limited in the same way as Win XP/Vista.)
Note that all of the above is about hardware addresses -- the actual address lines coming out of the x86 chip. The virtual address space is still limited to 32 bits and 4 GiB. And all software -- including the OS kernel -- use the virtual address space for practically all operations. But with PAE, you can at least have multiple processes which total to more than 4 GiB.
(There are also techniques which let a 32-bit process make use of more than 4 GiB of RAM, such as bank switching (memory windowing). But such techniques are cumbersome at best. Ultimately, a 32-bit process can only directly access 4 GiB of memory. You need long mode (x86-64/AMD64) to get a 64-bit virtual address space.)
(Windows further limits most 32-bit user processes to 2 GiB, reserving 2 GiB for the kernel. There's a BOOT.INI switch which changes that split to 3 GiB for userland and 1 GiB for the kernel. But unless a program was specifically compiled to support that, it will still only use 2 GiB. And robbing 1 GiB from the kernel can impact performance in other ways.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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...)