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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.
And in other news, President Bush says the War in Iraq is going "really, really well".
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.
I know two people. One is now using XP, and the other got so mad he bought a Mac.
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.
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.
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.)
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 $450 Office suite. Steve Ballmer is blowing smoke from his crack pipe.
A polished, gold painted turd is still a turd.
You'll be stuck in engineering forever. With that attitude, you'll never make it into marketing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I order all of our new Business PC's with Vista licenses, however I then load them with my volume licensing copy of XP excercising the downgrade rights that come with the Vista Business edition... I figure I may as well get the newest license, does not mean that I'm going to use it, as much as M$ would like to think that I am.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
Personally, I think working in Marketing should be a capital offense.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
You realize Apple are the ones most to blame for the resurgence of the PC=windows shit right?
Hi I'm a mac. and I'm a PC
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