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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."
Wow. Although quoting the statistics from "a survey reportedly conducted by a systems management appliance company" is mighty vague, I'll bet it's not far off. Add to that the rise of the netbook, and it's just looking better and better for Linux.
Caveat Utilitor
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.
'cause Microsoft still gets the $$$, no matter what OS sells more...
[insert lame sig here]
The majority of business software is compatible with Windows XP.
Oh Balmer, give it up already...
Caveat Utilitor
Beavis from an old Beavis & Butthead episode commenting on an artist of a music video, Microsoft "Probably went to a doctor to see what's wrong and the doctor said, "You suck"."
Yep. Vista just sucks.
measure is how many copies are being used.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
You're not doing it right! Look, you're not supposed to post anonymously. People will think you're a troll! No, you're supposed create an account, say some good stuff about Apple, get modded up, get good karma and THEN post our stuff! You're fired! *throws chair*
Astroturfers! Astroturfers Astroturfers!
Thanks,
Steve B
My blog
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.
I wonder what Microsoft's thinking. Vista does have _some_ nice features, but a very long list of things to worry about. Every one of my IT peers I've talked to (I'm a desktop systems guy) has said their large company is putting off Vista migrations and waiting for Windows 7. We are too, not because we hate it, but because it's just not necessary yet.
It's been a pretty bad combination of factors:
- Features cut from the original Vista release that might have made it worth the pain
- IT departments who just spent 6 years getting XP stable enough
- Bad economy means that IT departments are cutting back, so it's not feasable to implement Vista even if you're a volume license customer. No one has time to research it properly with a reduced staff.
- XP SP3 is out, and is looking really good.
- Just a general "Oh no, here we go with a new OS again" malaise across IT departments in general.
Small businesses, on the other hand, are perfect Vista candidates. 3-user companies who don't run anything more complex than QuickBooks are Vista's target market right now. And now that it's on every computer you buy at any retail store, there's no reason for a small business to switch back. Large companies are basically not affected by June 30th because we can just buy Vista licenses and downgrade, which explains the inflated sales numbers.
On the "big company" side, I have lots of fun stuff to deal with. Internal web-based apps that were written when ActiveX was king. Business critical software last updated in 1996 and sometimes even before that. A constant mix of brand-new and 8-year-old hardware. Plus a user population that's not necessarily the earliest adopters.
I really hope Microsoft has something big planned for the next release. Swithing to Linux or Mac is totally not feasable for us (again, when you don't have 20 years of legacy Windows code to deal with, it's definitely a consideration.) It would take another major flop on their part to even think about migrating some of our business apps away from Windows.
The quote in the summary misunderstands the slight-of-hand going on in an illustrative way. The controversy IN NO WAY casts doubt on how many copies of Vista have been SOLD. It casts doubt on how many copies of Vista are INSTALLED and being USED.
All the HP sales involve the sale of a Vista license. They're just installing XP instead of Vista (something the Vista license expressly allows). The customer's paying for a Vista license.
The clever marketing trick is MS would like you to believe the 2 numbers are similar, desipte significant evidence to the contrary. They want you to look at the big "sold Vista licenses" number and think "Wow, a lot of people are USING Vista".
Customers had to choose their OS.
Windows or Windows is not a choice.
Windows or Nothing would be a start.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
There is no real advantage to upgrading to Vista or BluRay for most people
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Who modded this insightful?
I suppose you believed Bill Clinton when he said he did not inhale (right) and that other time when it all depended on what the meaning of is *IS*...
I needed a copy of Windows XP for my Dell, but in compliance with Ebay's policy, software could only be sold with hardware.
So, I ordered a metal blank case slot cover that said Dell on it, and what do you know? It came with a free copy of Windows XP Professional SP2 for Dell OEM PC's...
Does this mean that metal case bracket sales are up? NO decidedly not.
Even if Microsoft shipped a glazed canned ham and a 6-Pack of Bawlz with a downgrade disk copy of WinXP, they still sold a copy of XP (and some other crap people did not really want). This would not entitle the canned ham department over at Microsoft to claim superior sales versus XP at this point...
-Nobody pays the premium OEM charge for their "downgrade to XP rights and media disk" unless they intend on NOT using Vista and only using XP...
I never heard of this Vista. I switched from AIX to Linux in the 90s. Are fringe operating systems like Vista really appropriate front page news for a respectable publication like Slashdot?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
A small company that my friend works for also preloads copies of XP and chalks up Vista sales. I wonder if Microsoft makes them do this or if there's some sort of incentive...
As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig but still nobody is going to want to kiss it. So goes with Vista.
Are there some kind of secret agreements between hardware and software developers that causes them to both make products that require the other side to develop products that require the other side to ... I'm sounding redundant.
I'm all for the progression of technology, but that doesn't mean 'more features without hardware usage efficiency'. The software being written these days is so bloaty that it requires hardware that hasn't even been produced yet.
And they're able to do that because people buy it. They're buying whiz-bang overpowered computers to run flashy OSes and bloated software just for the sake of the OS and software. It doesn't provide them with anything more than what they had before - just more bling.
Yes I enjoy a pretty interface and some animation on my screen. But after a couple weeks of that I just want it to do what I ask when I ask and quit showing me all that extra crap. I turn off all the animation and extra skinnings I can in everything I use - WinXP, OS X, Ubuntu. Why does a window need to animate opening? It just needs to open. Why does the menu bar need a gradient or transparency? It needs to be concise and legible.
It just doesn't make sense to me to use my computer's display as an accessory to my life, or decorate it like a room. It's like, ricing out a car. Why would you do that?
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Your numbers are only accounting for Vista and say nothing about XP. So, while Vista may only have 56% market share, XP is probably making up the other 30+% to keep MS near or possibly above the 90% threshold they tend to hover near.
Kindof ironic. Earlier this morning I got an e-mail from our IS people outlining the software policy of the school district (I'm currently working for a large school district).
IE7 was found to not have any compatibility issues with current software used so that is allowed but not mandated. Office 2007 seems to work ok, so they will be rolling it out or the compatibility pack updates "soon". And Vista was found to be not compatible, of little usefulness, and generally undesirable. Officially it is to be avoided and the district will look forward to upgrading to Windows 7 when it becomes available.
What this means to us, is that if a new workstation or laptop is requested by a user or their supervisor, and the district cannot procure a machine with XP, the request will be denied. Vista will only be allowed if the user submits a justification of why they need it (IE, have to run some software in the classroom as part of the curriculum that only works with Vista) and that justification is approved by their supervisor and IS.
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.
From the latest Valve survey (Windows only):
Windows XP ------------- 80.77 %
Windows Vista --------- 15.08 %
Windows Vista 64 bit - 2.68 %
Windows 2003 64 bit - 0.70 %
Windows 2000 ---------- 0.61 %
Other -------------------- 0.15 %
So even in Windows Gamer Country, Vista has reached only 15% market share...
C - the footgun of programming languages
Even if Microsoft shipped a glazed canned ham and a 6-Pack of Bawlz ... people did not really want).
So... if you're not going to eat the ham, can I have it?
Usually, I would say the reason for Vista not selling is that XP is just a very good and stable OS and there is no need. Unlike the switch from 95 to 98 to XP, which was needed because the former Systems constantly crashed.
The same strategy seems to work for many other companys though... e.g. who needs the latest Photoshop, when you can archieve the same functionality with some freeware-plugins? Still, it sells like sliced bread. What's the difference?
Playstation 2 still outselling Playstatoin 3
While it can't be considered a "sale of XP" vs. a "not sale of Vista", when I purchased a new computer for my office this last week, I inquired about whether I'd need to make sure the hardware was Vista-compatible. Our IT guy laughed, and said there was so much complaining about Vista in the corporate circles he travelled in, that they now were planning a 2-year upgrade cycle for Vista, instead of this fall, as originally planned. We're a company with probably 200 machines onsite, probably 95% Windows-based. So the shiny new machine I bought got a copy of XP Pro installed by the IT department, and I couldn't be happier. :)
My own personal experiance with Vista is quite small, and shall stay that way. My little sister bought a brand new HP notebook right after Vista came out. The day she got it home, IE started crashing randomly when she tried to download stuff (Yahoo Messenger, AOL IM, you know, the regular stuff you download onto any new machine), so she switched to Firefox (yeah, your right, ie DID crash EVERY SINGLE TIME she tried to download firefox, imagine that) Once I got Firefox going for her (from a usb drive) she was able to start browsing the web without cursing every few minutes, but within another day or so she had called me up asking me how to fix any number of other things. Within the first week she had more problems with her BRAND NEW notebook than I have in a month with my 6 year old, half dead, piece of junk computer (with all the guts hanging out in true geek fasion) I got when I graduated high school. Everything she did popped up an error, or a warning, or one of those damned "Are you sure you want to perform this totally trivial act of copying a file to a jumpdrive?" messages. They can pry my old busted copy of windows XP out of my old busted computers cold dead hands!
i have a roll of electrical tape.
I doubt there is much doubt about Vista's actual sales figures. You know they think you are stupid. Never doubt it.
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();
Vista kicks. I love it. If you actually know how to operate an operating system you don't have these hater troubles. XP was a lot cleaner but I haven't had an issue with Vista period and I've got mine trimmed down and rocking product.
WinXP is no longer for sale, so how can it be outselling anything?
" 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 â" casting a lot of doubt over how many copies of Vista have actually been sold."
While there may be doubt over how many have actually been sold, what this datapoint highlights is not how many copies are being sold but rather how many are being sold but not used.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
i LIKE Vista. It automatically found all the drivers it needed for my peripherals (and some were obscure, like the Dream Cheeky missile launcher), has really fast searching, boots faster than XP, and the aero stuff looks pretty good.
I, for one, welcome our new born-knowing-Windows with-mouse-in-the-hand overlords!
> 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
all of the above
This is a good reason why copyright laws should be restricted to, say, 5 years (at least for software). This way, Microsoft would actually be forced to create a good OS, since it would have to compete with itself - since WinXP would be free to download then, Microsoft would have to give customers a good reason to buy their new OS.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
What makes anyone think that Windows 7 will be an improvement on XP or Vista?
I just bought a PS2 so I have a new DVD player.
Any more non-news about yesterday's X outselling today's overpriced, oversized, less than useful Y?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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.
I'd wager XP is also pirated far more than Vista too.
> Also, the longer the market stays in XP...
But just how much longer can that be? How long can stupidity like 3GB memory specs on new PCs last? Of course the nasty secret is that Vista doesn't solve the 4GB limit either. Ok, it does but so can XP, problem is nobody in their right mind will install either product's 64bit flavor.
Microsoft botched their 64 bit migration totally, unlike Sun, Linux and Apple. Installing a 64bit Linux just means a few glitches, almost all of which are long since solved problems. Apple & Sun seems to have handled the issue by just installing a 64bit kernel and leaving almost all of userland 32bit, which sounds like a bad idea but actually works very nicely in practice. Microsoft on the other hand..... XP was only formally released in 64 bit at the very end of it's run so there are gaps in driver coverage that won't ever be filled. Vista took the 64bit migration as an opportunity to X-Box the platform with all closed and signed everything, plus lots of apps break.
Democrat delenda est
If someone were to request a Mac to use with an XP license (either in virtualization or via Bootcamp), would that be approved? If not, why not, since it would be running, when needed, the approved software?
1. Produce crappy OS.
2. Produce crappier OS.
3. Sell lots of the first OS.
4. Profit!
The ??? have been revealed!
Ok, so I recently bought a new computer. It was about time, as my old dual-boot machine was getting rather long in the tooth. I shopped around and settled on a Dell machine that was on sale, and it came pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Edition.
All along I figured all the bad press about Vista was mostly hype. "I'm a system administrator after all, I should be able to sort it out", or so I thought. . . .
The list of things that suck about Vista goes on and on, but I'll just mention the one thing that I found most annoying: the new UAC (User Account Control) "feature". Every few minutes there is this extremely jarring, annoying screen fade and pop up dialog asking me if I'm REALLY sure I want to open a program, etc. Thank God I found a way to shut it off.
So I've tested Vista for about a month and am seriously considering going back to a dual-boot XP/Ubuntu system. So if you haven't tried Vista yet, don't make the same mistake I made. Yes, it does suck that bad. The only reason you need it is if you want to play DirectX 10 games.
It is like asking how many tax returns did the IRS "sell" last year.
We have MSDN subscriptions for development and testing work. How are MSDN subscriptions counted for the purpose of this PR? Is each subscription counted as 10 Vista licenses since each subscriber can install 10 concurrent instances (for the use of that subscriber)?
How are the Action Pack subscription counted? Are they counted as 10 licenses per subscriber, or as one?
How are evaluations counted?
How are software assurance licenses counted?
I suspect that in addition to the Vista sold/XP installed sales, the number is vastly inflated due to non-retail and non-oem licenses.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This does not imply that they did not sell an XP license. It does imply that Microsoft can claim to have sold a Vista license... it just so happens that they also sold an XP license at the same time. The trick is, Microsoft can't tell which OS the user is using (without other metrics like website reports, automatic update records, etc).
Finding the right drivers is often a big issue for those who want to downgrade or help others downgrade
here in the electrical engineering department at the university of manchester most new machines get set up by the IT guys with XP before they are allowed on the network. Unfortunately while they try to encourage people to buy standard machines for which they have drivers and images ready they can't force them to do so. Worse some of them buy machines that the vendor doesn't support XP on (most notablly machines from dells home lines).
Usually they manage to find the drivers in the end at least for the important hardware but even for experianced IT staff who do it day in day out it is time consuming. Most ordinary users wouldn't stand a chance.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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!
If it is one of those XPS laptops the XP drivers are out there just search a bit more. They are not from Dell mind you. But they are out there. We installed XP on 11 XPS 1330, and 1500 series laptops. They are fast little machines with XP on them.
Vista does not bring anything worth the effort, expense and hard work of implementing it at a business. If you have spent four years working the worst kinks out of a platform its really not that fun implementing a new one that isn't any perceivable improvement.
The only security enhancement comes from the fact that any security related decision is lumped onto the lap of your average corporate drone.
Its incompatible with scoures of business applications and some webapp vendors even tell their customers to use firefox on Vista instead of making them IE7 compatible.
If you have an older client enviroment that runs pretty well on XP you can rest assured that imlementing Vista will demand a rip and replace of most hardware.
The drawbacks are big and the reward is a step back in many areas without any benefit business wise. For most its a matter of holding out on Vista as long as humanly possible in the hope that Windows 7 will be right. Like a step back to let say a polished version of W2k8 for desktops.
The sad part for Microsoft is that they can only finetune what they have and lag behind everyone else. Any major mucking about in the spaghetti they trapped themselves in will b futile.
HTTP/1.1 400
Yeah oddly enough the less informed the general public is about a product, in terms of real technical understanding and full awareness of all alternatives, the better companies like Microsoft will do in terms of sales. This is really a commentary on the average "consumer"**; the ony thing it says about Windows is that it's within the threshold of how poor the quality can be before people get so irritated that they will buy something else no matter what. That's not nearly the same as excellence.
** I'm not fond of the word "consumer" and in fact it does not apply here. The term comes from arrangements like free broadcast television: the advertisers are the TV station's customers, the viewers who pay nothing to the TV station are the consumers. A paying customer is emphatically not a "consumer". I can see why marketers like the term -- the ideal consumer eats products and shits dollars and generally takes whatever they're offered. I do not see a good reason for why everyone keeps parroting the term.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Here in the US though, unless you buy your box online (which, granted a lot of people do), you are stuck with Best Buy or similar which will look at you blankly if you say you don't want Vista or you use Linux.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This is not really surprising. Gamers stuck it out with Windows 98 long after XP Pro became the defacto corporate standard. It took a good 3 years for XP driver support to get to the point where XP outperformed Windows 98, and I expect nothing less from Vista. The thing that should drive Vista is DX10 and future implementations of DX, and that really falls on game developers before it will drive OS sales to gamers.
By the way I am a gamer, I use Vista, and while performance is not on par to XP on this computer, in most games it isn't bad enough to be noticeable or at least not to warrant a reboot into XP.
Parent post is spot on. This is something so many people forget when comparing Vista with XP now. Many of the people complaining about Vista are home users who didn't get their first PC until after XP SP2 was out. They know nothing about XP's first few years.
And in case you're wondering, no I'm not a Vista fan. For the moment, I still hate using it. I'll probably switch to it when it's been out a few years - just like I did with XP. But facts are facts, and rose-colored glasses don't change history.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I believe the number of Vista sales is ridiculously inflated as the only choice the everyday customer has is to purchase a Vista PC at their local big box store. Had a choice for XP been available, I'm sure the 'sales' numbers for Vista would take a beating - majority of these sales IMO are customers taking it down the throat as majority of them don't know better and don't have another choice. Business OTOH have alternatives, and hence the number of preloaded with XP units are high in sales.
You can still buy XP without hardware:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2060350368+1179212716&name=Professional
Nobody pays the premium OEM charge for their "downgrade to XP rights and media disk" unless they intend on NOT using Vista and only using XP...
Some OEMs don't charge extra to "downgrade" machines to XP. e.g. Dell. Also, with downgrade rights, you always have the option of installing Vista without an additional license.
So today, I can buy machines with Vista licenses, but with XP preinstalled for no extra cost. After I'm done with the current replacement cycle, all my machines will have valid Vista licenses, so if I wanted, I could choose to convert all of them for no additional license costs.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
(shh... don't tell, Mojave is really Vista)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 6765
.
MS Vista has twice the market share of OSX.
MX Vista has sixteen times that the market share of Linux.Top Operating System Share Trend
It interests me that when talking about Windows the Geek does not separate the kernel from the UI. The NT kernel of XP and Vista is fifteen years old. The LInux kernel seventeen.
The Mac's UNIX roots can be traced back to the NeXT system of 1985.
One of the big reasons that Vista hasn't rolled out to the enterprise is that most of the new manageability features in Vista require a Server 2008 back-end, and that was just released in February. So, in practice, organizations are just starting to have good business reasons to roll out Vista. Believe me, we will see large deployments now that Server 2000 is out. The new management features are pretty compelling.
Vista is slower than XP on the same hardware, is incompatible with a lot of existing software and offers little that people want (especailly buisness users).
Plus XP is what people have known for the past 5 years or so (XP came out in 2001 but took a year or so to become the dominiant version of windows). Buying a new machine with XP means buying a machine that works just like your last one except it is faster (XP flies on current low end hardware).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
What model is it and what hardware are you having trouble finding drivers for.
Just because dell won't supply the drivers doesn't mean they don't exist.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
1. Left click on networking icon in top right hand of screen.
2. Select the appropriate wireless network (shows SSID even if hidden).
3. Enter WPA password.
4. ????
5. Intertubes (and profit)
I've got WPA to work out of the box with both a Broadcom and Ralink (2500) chipset with Ubuntu 7.10 onwards. It has a shorter range than Windows but it drops out considerably less and doesn't do that annoying thing of pretending to be connected when it really isn't forcing me to reset the connection and not have it reconnect. The last time I had trouble with WPA was with Ubuntu 7.04, but this was fixed by manually putting the SSID and WPA-PSK into the interfaces file (instructions to do this can be found on the Ubuntu forums if you didn't already know) 7.04 is not what I'd call recent with Ubuntu's 6 monthly release schedule.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Microsoft products have sucked like a chest wound since way before windows,
Funny, I actually liked XP. Although I'm not surprised you got modded Insightful for an anti-MS rant.
I get the same thing, as the sysadmin I get other staff come to me and ask about buying new machines. They already know that Vista is a floating piece of crap and want to know if I can help them avoid it as all they have seen are Vista only PC's in box stores like Hardly Normal (Harvey Norman). I normally point them towards online retailers and stores that still sell XP pre-loaded PC's or build their own PC's with XP.
They still ask why they cant get the same thing from Hardly Normal because they still want their 2 years interest free. I try to explain to them that box retailers only care about moving stock and don't care about repeat customers or support, and returns are a bitch with that 2 years interest free that they've signed on for.. I also try to explain that computers are just as complex as cars and they wouldn't buy a car from a box retailer, many of them still stare at me blankly and blink at that point.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Actually, do you not mean Balmer thew chairs and broke MS Windows?
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
I'm a subscriber to a couple of PC mags here in Australia, and until yesterday I'd only seen laptop ads with 'Windows XP downgrade included'. Yesterday, for the first time, I saw pages of mid-range laptops with 'Windows XP Professional' listed under the features and NO mention of Vista at all.
It seems the market has spoken.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Solution: dramatically lower the cost of all upgrades. When the upgrade versions purchased by Computer Enthusiasts and students gets out, then positive word will spread, and people will want it more. Right now, Vista is too expensive, with too little new to warrant an upgrade in a tight economy.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
The adults are talking.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Whether more businesses use linux, or home users use linux, etc., is all pretty well a moot point, IMHO. I own and run my own business, and every computer I own has Linux on it (and none have Windows). Linux is good for my business, and for my ome/recreational uses, but how many other people use it pretty well means nada to me. When I started using Linux, I wanted to learn, and enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together again (still do), and, as such, stayed with Linux for many, many reasons (not just the price, the stability, the security, etc...but also the FUN, and the community). What's good for Linux is the Linux community. I wonder if overburdening user lists and forums with millions more clueless newbies is necessarily "good for linux". Mind you, everyone is welcome to come aboard, but, keep in mind we respect people who have a mind to think and the wherewithall to try and solve problems on their own, first, so, if you do come aboard, plan to participate constructively in the FOSS/Gnu/linux community...Because that's what's good for Linux. Participation in the community. Collaboration. Problem solving. Creativity. Ingenuity. But, volume of users or market share is pretty meaningless.
-- tonybaldwin.me
I tried gaming on Ubuntu and decided to dual boot Windows. I bought XP, even though they had 20+ shiny new empty boxes for Vista. What is supposed to motivate me to use Vista? I haven't heard 1 thing.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Our organisation of ~10,000 PCs will be upgrading our environment next year:
- XP sp2 to sp3
- IE6 to IE7
- Office 2002 to 2003 We move pretty slowly, but I'm glad. Stability & compatibility with existing applciations are prime requirements.
Personal note, I just installed new hard drives in my PCs (gaming) and XP went back on, no Vista for me.
Boolean logic: True, False, and File not found.
And sadly there are already more users running Vista than OS X and Linux combined... Ouch.
MS is only competing with itself here, doesn't anyone get the non-Windows market is only grabbing a tiny share of the 'new installations'?
From someone in Business, Vista wasn't planned to be rolled out at all in 2007 in most major companies.
The Reason? Windows 2008 Server...
Vista and Windows 2008 Server are presented as a package deal to business from Microsoft, as the whole integration and management features of each product are designed to be each other's bitch, and work well together.
Rolling out Vista on Windows 2003 Servers would have been a waste of time and resources. (It would be just as insane to deploy a new Windows 2008 Server with XP clients.)
Even the big business MS Fans get this and waited for Windows 2008 Server, as the new deployment tools alone are reason enough to have waited for Windows 2008 Server. (Literally, click policy rules, plug in new computer to network, click, done - add another new workstation, plug in, click, done.)
There are also the Vista features that just weren't designed to even enable or work in a Windows 2003 Server environment, from new roaming and profile technology, to search abstraction, down to even how Vista and Windows 2008 Server talk to each other with the new TCP/IP stacks.
Assessing deployment and testing timelines of many companies, the year 2008 will probably even give XP the edge over Vista, but by 2009, Vista will be installed everywhere on all the new Windows 2008 Server networks.
Because the real reason windows is such a bad product is that it tries to cater to people with your attitude.
The problem with that however is that computers are still fairly complex pieces of machinery. It is not so much that a computer is so complex, countless hopeless people use computers numerous times each day. I see people who have trouble opening a web page operaring unix machinery. Modern copiers for instance run on a unix system, factory machines rarely run on Windows.
The advantage with these systems is that they have one task and that task is the only thing they do and all their hardware is pre-selected and pre-configured.
Most of the trouble with PC's comes from the fact that so many people have different configurations and desires as to how they should operate. Easy of use goes out of the window when you want flexibility. Good luck programming a wizard that can deal with every network setup people have dreamed up in their homes.
At a given point, sooner or later the user when he is going to do something more then the most basic tasks on the most basic setup is going to have to get his head around more advanced concepts like IP address. So it is better if he is introduced to it gently overtime rather then having to learn it all at once when he has a task to complete.
Time for the famous car analogy. When do you teach a new driver how to break. When the car is standing still, when he first got it moving forward OR when it is approaching a concrete pillar at 120 km an hour in a snowstorm?
That is the entire idea between anti-slip courses, prepare ahead of time in a safe enviroment when the driver can take it slow and there is no real pressure so that when the time comes, he has some chance of knowing what to do. Sure, car dealers LOVE to hide the fact that their cars can slip, but a prudent driver nonetheless learns about it.
Same with OS'es that LOVE to pretend running a computer is oh so easy. Everything is automatically taken care off, you don't need to learn anything how it works. Until a virus destroys all their work, a failing drive that has been warning for months collapses with all their family photos on it, or they have to give up in dispair because they are trying to get a game to work and nobody seems willing to explain to them what IP means.
Most people have at decent enough intelligence to master any number of concepts, barring those suffering from a mental handicap, users can learn the basic concepts about computers and should do so, just as they learn the basic concepts of any number of things to help operate them efficiently.
Creating an OS that pretends you don't need to know anything about computers to use them, don't need to think is the same as producing a car that pretends it can never loose traction. Of course, that is not good marketing. But everytime you read a story about some car being wrapped around a tree when there was no reason (no alcohol, no excessive speeding) that is what caused it. A driver who thought his car would magically stick to the road when it didn't.
Same with every "my soundcard don't work in X", "I can't connect to Y" complaint. Do you realize how silly it is to just go out, pick up the first soundcard you find, plug it in and expect it to work? That would be like just buying a random piece of electrical equipment and expecting you can just plug it in, from the net (get it? Different voltages exist around the world and it is thanks to regulation and basic education that people 'know' this and can expect stores to carry the right equipment.)
Do you need to know what voltage your radio uses to listen to it? No, not directly, but those who do know are better of from not frying their equipment on holiday or buying dodgy gear.
Ubuntu is a nice version of GNU/Linux, it doesn't use GNU/Linux it IS GNU/Linux. The notion that you need less knowledge to use it then other versions is dangerous, it may work fine for a pre-installed system being used in a way someone else predicted and catered
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Funny, I actually liked XP.
Wait 5 years, and you'll see that exact quote. Just like when XP came out and a lot of people preferred 2000 or 98. Or when 95 came out and a lot of people preferred 3.11 (Yes, that one is pure madness).
People will get used to Vista, and drivers will get better. Meanwhile I'll stick to Linux, of course.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Actually I made the switch ASAP because 98 was a piece of shit that constantly crashed.
That's one thing that might force people to drop XP. The question is where to go from there?
My best guess is that most will grudgingly go to Vista or Windows 7, but some will find that Linux with WINE does everything they need. For me personally, WINE is not quite there, the biggest obstacle being the weak Direct3D performance. But I could imagine it shaping up enough within one or two years. At that point, my Windows partition will be seriously in danger of getting wiped...
C - the footgun of programming languages
With this article to pop up now, http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/08/1155208
I would hate to think that M$ would even consider taking xp off the market so soon.
Its the only thing still making them any money
Just like when XP came out
It's been one year and a half since Vista came out. And I don't people getting used to...
Maybe in 2010, when Windows 7 will be out we will still start liking Vista and regretting it, 'cause you know, that old version was so much better than the new one... :)
--- Bouh !!! ---
I did. However the WHOOSH was over _your_ head.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I can understand uniformity in hardware. But do they really have that buying PC's? Unless your organization has a specific build agreement with their vendor, you can't even get consistency from order to order. And now that Macs use the same primary components that the rest of the world is using, it is likely any different in hardware changes than different orders from the same vendor and certainly no different than say ordering some machines from Dell, some from HP, and some from Lenevo.
Even on the software side, I can't see much of an issue, unless there is a cost issue with having to purchase a separate Windows license. But, since organizations that are as large as your sounds to be usually have site licenses for any box they buy, it would seem that that would not be an issue either.
The only thing I can legitimately see would be that if the machine does not fit inside some budget limit and the machines that are currently being purchased, with the same required features, costs less. Now that would be an issue.
Soâ¦I can't see the hardware/software issues. It would seem that FUD or political bias is a more accurate term if those are being used. But, the price point could be a legitimate one.
The way you say it, you make it looks like those mistakes are a new thing.
Rethinking email
Since HP appears to only offer their business machines with XP Pro pre-installed it makes their XP outselling Vista statistic completely meaningless. Horse drawn carriages would outsell cars 2-1 if the major dealers only allowed you to buy carriages.
We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas. - Ned's Mom
The Vista usage stats are definitely inflated.
At my old company Vista was so problematic with our apps that the decision was made to keep XP. So every year we bought hundreds and hundreds of Vista licenced machines and then write our custom XP version onto them for actual use. They counted as "Vista" sales but were never used that way.
I'm sure you can multiply that by thousands of other companies.
Ubuntu, Linux for Human beings.
How does that make Ubuntu perceived as something different from Linux? I think you are running with your own warped perception of Linux/Ubuntu and going of on a trip that nobody else is making.
Read the forums, use Ubuntu, it never ever pretend to be anything else then a Linux distro. It isn't Linspire or pulling an OSX where you have to go dig (not that deep) for its BSD roots.
Straight from the front page of ubuntu.com "Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more."
You want to believe people who use Ubuntu care about brand perception. Nobody cares about that and all the users I know that use variour forms of Linux can ultimately boil their choice down to, this was the one someone else introduced them too.
Go ahead, sit on your marketing cloud, but I have yet to come across a single Ubuntu user (well apart from you) who is under any delusion that there is any difference. Hell, most Ubuntu users are very well aware that they are really using debian.
But you confirmed once again to me that all people who use marketing terms in general conversation should be shot on sight.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...I understand the need to develop new products...keep up with the growing needs...etc... but at what point to you allow your customer base to choose what works for THEM. I dont have Vista... because I dont need to HAVE vista....hope to never need to upgrade to it.
Joe Investor
by Schmyz (1265182) Alter Relationship on Friday August 08, @11:29AM (#24527225) Homepage ...I understand the need to develop new products...keep up with the growing needs...etc... but at what point to you allow your customer base to choose what works for THEM. I dont have Vista... because I dont need to HAVE vista....hope to never need to upgrade to it.
--
Correction: hope to never need to downgrade to it. :)
We've been buying mostly HP desktops, most of them are the same per series. That's the uniformity we desire and they deliver quite succesfully so far.
We get them at a fair price as well.
Since we know these machines and their quirks, it also takes less time to support them and to fix them.
Multicasting a ghost image to them is also a timesaver, I don't know if there is such an easy solution for the Apple machines and if there is, if we would have to invest in more hardware for that as well.
One question about your FUD sentence, was that aimed at me? Because I don't see anything in my response that would suggest any FUD or political bias. I have repaired Macs in the past and like them a lot, especially since OSX was released.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I know of nobody that refused to upgrade from 95, 98 or ME.
Now, 3.11 was on some aspects better than 95 (at least it was DOS, some people liked that), and there is no compeling reason to migrate from 2k into anything else. But MS was never (ME doesn't count, since it was replaced quite fast) in a situation that most of their users have reasons not to upgrade.
Rethinking email
WinFS?
That one was promised. The following are my pipe dreams:
Gui base scripting language that ties together different applications. (GUI adaptation of the unix idea of many small tools tied together to do a job).
Ship a couple programming languages with it. (What happened to every computer shipping with basic?)
These go together:
Cluster based computing with process migration.
Getting rid of the need to save your work to not lose it during a power outage.
2 second boot time. (Ok, that's 90% a hardware thing).
A real distributed filesystem
And last but not least:
Keep the start menu looking exactly the same, and all the shortcuts working exactly the same way (as they were in 2k). I want Windows, not some new tart with a pretty face that doesn't know what to do when I push her err its buttons.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Certainly for any business over a very small size.
The OEM license for Windows forbids you using it for any sort of imaging or mass deployment unless you are the OEM. (Seriously, go read it some time). This artificial legal limitation doesn't exist in the corporate site licenses.
Therefore, any organisation which doesn't have a volume license for Windows falls into one of the following categories:
No! Not aimed at you. It was a generalized statement based on my experience with large IT departmentsâ"again, in general. It may not apply to your department.
You see, I've been in meetings where IT staff have blatantly lied to ignorant management. They were playing on the ignorance of the management for a variety of reasons. However, in some cases, it was the ignorance of the IT staff by speaking about things that they really did not know. But, considering their job is to look out for the best interest of their organization and to know their craft, neither reason is good.
So, forgive me if my comment looked targeted at you. It was not.
No problem at all, just wasn't sure, I have taken no offense :)
I know those kinds of IT people, fortunately we don't have those at the moment. :)
We just have a board of directors whom do not listen at all, but that's a different problem all together
This is the sig that says NI (again)
So,
M$ did not expanded on the eye candy. Fixed some bugs. Backported some kernel features to replace known flaky ones. Improved support for HW as it came along. Updated some bundled software to latest versions and fixed usability issues in a number of wizards. Repackaged bug-fixes in a monolith updates to ensure reliable baselining of installations. ?
Saddest part is that we have been conditioned by now that list above should be a new product. Every single item there can be tracked back to something that was a known issue at a launch and quite a lot of them - "we'll fix it soon, just buy" kind of things. So, basically, it all boils down to M$ being a good citizen for a change.
There is nothing wrong with vista. It's just that investement required to master any OS these days does not match the benefit.