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Windows XP Still Outselling Windows Vista
nandemoari writes with an excerpt from an InfoPackets article that says "While Microsoft excitedly tries to sway public opinion by touting that Windows Vista License sales top 180 Million units, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was busy smacking Microsoft down — reportedly shipping PCs with a Vista Business license but with Windows XP pre-loaded in the majority of business computers sold since the June 30 Windows XP execution date established by Microsoft — casting a lot of doubt over how many copies of Vista have actually been sold."
It matters because MS spent alot of time and money developing Vista. If customers continue to demand XP and refuse to upgrade to Vista then that time and money was a waste.
While I'm certainly no MS fan I gotta admit that its sort of a compliment that people like XP so much they refuse to upgrade to Vista. Granted some of that is because of possible problems with Vista, but alot of it is that many people do not see the need to upgrade XP.
How exactly is having more business Linux users "better for Linux"?
OK, I'm a zealot, but if you mostly use a computer to browse the web and get email and write an occasional document buy a Linux computer.
Why not just buy a WebTV then? At least if you're running Windows you can go to circuit city or best buy and get some software for it.
Kudos to HP for still shipping machines with XP pre-installed; Dell requires the purchase of a $150 license with "downgrade" rights.
I work for a computer consulting firm, and we've known about this for months now. In fact, we've switched from selling almost all Dell systems to almost all HP systems because of it; our clients just don't want Vista, and this is a really convenient way to satisfy them. I actually thought HP was doing us a favor shipping the XP systems because we do so much business with them, but I guess it's standard policy!
I hope HP continues to offer this option, because if we're any indication, the OEMs and resellers *really* appreciate it.
Home customers feel like they just can't do anything about it. A lot of them hate Vista, I have heard people tell me that they got a new computer, and I asked them how it was and they said that it was good except it had Vista on it. And no, these weren't the people who know much about computers. They see that Vista is pathetically slow and they don't want it.
A lot would downgrade to XP if they had either A) the right drivers B) an XP CD and C) the knowledge to downgrade.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
the second link: http://apcmag.com/xp_still_killing_vista_in_sales_volume_hp.htm
the third link: http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/microsoft/2008/20080801_windows_xp_still_outselling_windows_vista.htm
these two stories are word for word, character for character, 50-70% identical. Yet authorship is claimed by two completely different sources.
This would suggest to me that _somebody_ is a shitty squat blog, plagiarising for page hits.
Vista comes with huge security implications (it that it has some), IE7 as mandatory, and therefore has large compatibility implications for large companies especially.
I know of several huge Microsoft customers that, despite being 100% MS based, still are in the testing/tweaking/certification stage of all their apps before they begin global roll-out. It's in the pipelines, but no one standardises on new workstation OS's until they can guarantee 100% compatibility - which can take a long time.
There's a scarily amount of enterprise-based IE6 only apps out there which alone makes Vista a difficult upgrade (IE6 not being an option on Vista). It's worth it in the end, as frankly, it's a better OS in the long-run IMO.
Gone are the days of writing to c:\windows without repercussion. Gone are the days of dropping kernel hooks in to get better app performance. Thank god.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Wimp. I have my 75 year old grandmother running Ubuntu and the only thing I've had to explain to her is how to get her internet connection working again (Shitty router that I'm thinking of smashing with a hammer next time I go visit her) by power cycling the router.
> Gamers stuck it out with Windows 98
Boy, that's sure not my recollection. I remember gamers coming over fast, way ahead of both corporations and casual users. XP was such a win in gaming: more stable, better task switching, great backwards compat. Sure there were driver problems, but not so bad, nor for so long. I don't suppose there's any data to really show how it went, prove either of us right.
Team Fortress 2 crashes on exit for me, every single time. Happened on XP, then on Vista 32, now on Vista 64. Meh, could be worse.
Rabid
The mininote has opened up a whole new front in the OS Wars.
Great point! I have noticed the Asus Eee and the Acer AspireOne are attracting a lot of attention. At the local Staples (the only electronics store of any note in my town) people are fascinated with them. They're small, quiet, powerful enough to play music and videos, have wireless access to the Internet and do basic office suite work for under $400. The ones on display are running Linux.
Granted, they also have the option of running a stripped-down (???) version of XP, but people I've seen playing with them seem to like the Linux interface and have no problem figuring it out.
Maybe the desktop is no longer the crucial front in the struggle to dominate home computing.
My laptop Sony Vaio came with Windows Vista premimum, and I downgraded with XP, and I am duel booting it with Linux/Kubuntu. According to Microsoft I am part of one of these 180 Million "Vista Users". Now most of you have heard this story before, but I'll add mine to the party. My friend bought her computer last year, and it came with Vista too, she asked me to downgrade it with XP. So, now you guys can see how Microsoft "add" these computers to their "Vista" numbers. Funny thing is that Microsoft itself admits that people don't like Vista! Mojave Experiment is an excellent proof. Now, of course Microsoft blames their "XP Users" for not liking it. The truth is Vista users like myself hate it. Even though I consider myself a Linux user, I was open minded towards Vista. I said to myself, well, I have Vista in my notebook might as well give it shoot. I tell you kids, it sucks. And I have a very good laptop. 1.8Ghz Pentium Dual Core, 2gig rams, and 200gig hard drive (now partition into four" two are ext3 & swap). Linux & XP runs so fast. Now, I can run ten different appliations, plus watch a video, download torrent, irc, and burn a DVD. My point is simple Microsoft so called Vista users are people like myself who bought a new machine, and it came with Vista. The good news is that my new desktop is Mac Mini -- this means Microsoft can't add it their growing list of non existance Vista users.
Even veals have more autonomy!
the deadline for switching is 2014
Interestingly, XP will be as old then as Windows 95 is now.
My desktop came with vista preinstalled and I kept a dual-boot when I installed Fedora. It isn't bad at all - on a quad-core 2.6ghz with 4gb ram.
However, I know about 6 people who use vista on recently bought laptops. Of the six, three reinstalled XP after a windows update bricked their system. Two others still use vista but have almighty trouble connecting to our wireless access point (an unencrypted linksys with default configuration) when all XP, OSx and linux computers connect without a problem.
The sixth person, well we'll wait and see...
Me, I'm sticking to linux.
Here's another article with some survey data on Vista adoption vs XP. It has a few interesting bits, one being The really bad news for Microsoft: the number of business PCs running Windows XP increased from 2007 to 2008â"three times the increase in the percentage of PCs running Vista. and the other the comparison of Vista to the high school slut. Pretty, but no substance. http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/vista_doa_in_the_enterprise.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535
*Sigh*, the Vista FUD is really getting old. As my 750 up-hour (last reboot was by choice) never-a-blue-screen-in-eight-months HD-DVD Blu-Ray playing lagless Vista x64 desktop attests to, a good drivers and no OEM crapware make all the difference.
Vista isn't bad at all, its all anti-hype, OEM crap, and FUD. (runs and hides from the ensuing Karma-bashing)
Blog
Oh really?
I'm still waiting for 64-bit Windows drivers for my laptop's sound card, wireless card, and Web cam - all of which worked out of the box with 64-bit openSUSE and 64-bit Kubuntu.
And you brag about an uptime expressed in hours...? :)
I've got an openSUSE 10.1 box that's been running nonstop since a few days after the release. Uptime is better than 750 days.
Thanks for a most excellent morning chuckle.
How does Microsoft define a "PC"?
I've upgraded my current machine twice since installing WinXP -- replacing the mobo, cpu, hd, cables, network card, sound card, video card, cd/dvd drive, power supply, all the fans... everything except the case.
Nonetheless, this machine serves the same function that I originally got it for, and I consider it to be the same machine. I wonder if MS would disagree with me.
So let me get this straight... the fact that there are people out their that perceive Linux and Ubuntu as different brands has nothing to do with whether or not they are perceived as different brands, computer OSes are easy for non-technical users to use unless they do something which is not easy and don't expect any old sound card to work. How does that have anything to do with my attitude and how does my attitude have anything to do with the product development of windows.
If you are drunk or stoned, that's cool, just try re-reading my post when you aren't. If you're one of those knee jerk reactionary open source zealots, don't bother re-reading the post and also please avoid user forums frequented by noobs and also avoid technical positions where your clients are non technical unless they are insulated by an experienced business analyst. You re-enforce a couple of negative perceptions of the Linux brand.
My post was purely looking at things from a branding point of view. I am one of those technical users who switched to Ubuntu because it has great hardware support and defaults to something closer to what I want than others I have tried including several years of Debian unstable. I still go in and change things because I know how, I build some of my own drivers and I help friends who are less technically savvy. I enjoy that I can install a powerful system with defaults I mostly like and then customise it in a matter of hours instead of the days it used to take me which is of course all down to personal preference.
So My attitude is not about shielding users from the system completely, but about providing a friendly experience to those who are not confident with a powerful back end system. Ubuntu has that BRAND PERCEPTION amongst a load of people I know while Linux has the BRAND PERCEPTION of being difficult. Understand?
Next time you have a build up of energy, try wanking in private. You'll enjoy it more, and you won't annoy others.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Windows Vista is just renamed Windows NT6
There comes the Windows 7 codename because it is 7th OS release of Windows NT.
Microsoft has done great job by rebranding Windows NT to years or new names like XP and Vista and people really believe that those are different OS's than Windows 2000 or Windows NT4, while they are just newest versions of same OS.
Just like Linux 2.6.x is same OS than Linux 2.4.x but just different version...
But, Vista (NT6) has be out only a over year now, Windows NT itself a much longer, since 1993 so it is now over 15 years old OS. ;)
Windows NT is not same as MS-DOS (MS-DOS 1.0 >> Windows ME) what would be now 27 years old OS if Microsoft would not end it's development 2000
Windows is one brand what just has multiple different OS's under it, like Windows Mobile and Windows NT currently. So just saying Windows == Vista is wrong because Windows means other OS's too.
Linux is from in active development since 1991 so it is over 17 year old OS now, older than Windows NT ;-)
Mayby we should build Linux from scratch ;-)
In many ways Linux is actually easier to learn because nothing is hidden from you.
This is the main reason I switched. I wanted to study OS's and see what made them tick. With WinXP i hit a brick wall and was frankly pissed off. How dare MS keep me from seeing something I (well the Mrs anyway) had paid for. Then I realised that we didn't own it and that we only leased the license to use it.
Then I started hearing about this magical system that can update without rebooting and when a program crashes, only *that* program crashes, it doesn't take the whole OS with it, that it was constructed in a logical and hierarchical way instead of the GUI being mashed in with the OS, how I could enjoy *years* of uptime etc. But the real clincher was that it worked "out of the box" on a no name machine I dubbed the "Johnny Chinpo 1000" with my wireless kit and averaged broadband speeds of 1.5-2x what I maxed out on with WinXP. I was sold...but it was free!...and then there were the desktop effects...my oh my, someone out there cared about the end user and cared that we could play with the desktop while doing large downloads...the OS as entertainment... That OS was Ubuntu 7.10 and altho I had a few hiccups upgrading to 8.04, I would never go back and cringe everytime I have to use windoze.