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One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the if-only-they-could-just-be-not-bought dept.

CWmike writes "More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"

16 of 617 comments (clear)

  1. Not exactly surprised... by smitingpurpleemu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ordinary users expect stuff to work easily. Vista has an awful reputation in this regard, and it chews up more processing power/RAM and is slower than XP.

    1. Re:Not exactly surprised... by peragrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      that's because marketing keeps changing history to suit their needs.

      It is one thing about linux I like. you can see the progression of change in the software. everyone else tries to hide what horrible things and stupid ideas they tried in the past. In 6 years time people are going to go there was Vista?

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Not exactly surprised... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They should have just slapped the Aero GUI on XP and called it Vista. It'd Just Work(tm) and it would still consume much less resources than Vista does now. Vista didn't even deliver most of the stuff like WinFS that was supposed to make the upgrade headache worthwhile. It did, however, include the latest and most virulent DRM as well as other non-critical crap.

      Again, Microsoft, just put Aero on Windows XP as service pack 4, and then you can pretend that your customers really, really do prefer Vista over XP.

    3. Re:Not exactly surprised... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it.

      It's a canard to say that the problem with Vista is that "the hardware is not ready for it".

      If Saab made a car that could only run on some super high-test gasoline that is not sold in gas stations, would you say that "the gasoline was not ready for it" or that "it was a stupid design and poor business decision to release it"?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Not exactly surprised... by Hyppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wouldn't go that far. Almost everyone has a friend who "knows computers." Many tech-oriented people hate Vista. When Joe Sixpack asks his tech friend for advice on purchasing a shiny new laptop, chances are the geek may say something akin to "Avoid Vista like the plague." And, if you've ever met Joe Sixpack while working a retail or support job, one-line quips from his geek friend are the infallible word of God.

    5. Re:Not exactly surprised... by slig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Throwing more hardware at a problem is far from an elegant solution. For all the bloat, what exactly does it accomplish which warrants such a massive hardware investment?

    6. Re:Not exactly surprised... by Chyeld · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a canard to say that the problem with Vista is that "the hardware is not ready for it".

      If Saab made a car that could only run on some super high-test gasoline that is not sold in gas stations, would you say that "the gasoline was not ready for it" or that "it was a stupid design and poor business decision to release it"?

      If, for instance, Saab released a new hybrid car which ran on hydrogen, and there was no infrastructure in place to supply that. I would not call the car stupid design because there was no infrastructure in place. I could, if I believed (or in foresight knew) that someday there would be, call it "Ahead of it's time" or "We just weren't ready for it".

      However, that has nothing to do with Vista, because it was stupid design. And while the hardware still isn't ready for it, even if it were, it'd be a stupid design.

      I don't know if the people making decisions on Vista just weren't all on the same page or what, but Vista is a pile of poorly planned half implemented aborted attempts at doing what the marketers over sold it as being capable of doing.

      That has nothing to do with hardware other than the fact that having a beefier machine might, might, mitigate the issues the same way an elephant gun might do as a fly swatter.

    7. Re:Not exactly surprised... by Allador · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If Saab made a car that could only run on some super high-test gasoline that is not sold in gas stations, would you say that "the gasoline was not ready for it" or that "it was a stupid design and poor business decision to release it"?

      How could you possibly suggest that what you've written is a valid parallel.

      You're suggesting that hardware didnt exist that would run Vista decently. This is obviously and trivially not the case.

      A better analogy was to say that Saab release a vehicle that claimed it ran fine on 87 octane gas, but in actually, it ran like crap all the time, unless you used 92 octane gas. (ie, a parallel on the Vista Ready campaign).

    8. Re:Not exactly surprised... by Z34107 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes because we all know, a magazine that makes its payroll off advertisements from the very companies its suppose to be reviewing, makes the best choices in hardware

      Sigh. Because, yes, every magazine with advertisements is completely untrustworthy. Like, not one would have separate marketing and editorial staffs. And you would never see an editorial absolutely slam a product, followed by an ad for said product...

      Actually, you would. And it's pretty funny when it happens. Besides, a magazine supposedly on the dole from advertisers would be recommending more hardware than you "need," would they not?

      But, as you say, it's all a matter of expectations. Knowing that that extra 10% goes towards things like superfetch (instantly launching applications is nice), or file indexing (I think it's pretty cool being able to instantly search music and photos by tag and queue up a playlist from within a naked explorer window), or shiny things like generating proper icons for video clips, or defragging my disk - and not gowing towards "nothing" - is pretty nifty. Also, little things like the new "background" task priority, or that "save" dialog boxes remember the original file name after typing in a path, are pretty cool.

      Now, if I wasn't gaming, and I already had XP, I probably wouldn't upgrade just for the UI and some niceties. But my original point is that 2 GB isn't "barely enough" to run Vista; it's enough for "serious" gaming.

      --
      DATABASE WOW WOW
  2. And the rest simply don't know how to. by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    90% of users are Joe Sixpacks, and still 35% of them jump through the hurdles to drop Vista. It's hard to imagine what Microsoft would need to do to fare worse than this.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:And the rest simply don't know how to. by eln · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Only in the short term. In the long term, it entrenches the idea in peoples' minds that newer is not necessarily better when it's coming from Microsoft, which is not a mindset MS wants people to have. The debacle of Vista makes people more wary of new offerings from MS, and will harm them in the long run.

  3. Re:laptops by Hyppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And apparently Toshiba's only honouring the warranty now if none of the original bundled software has been removed.

    Dear [deity], what?!? So, even if you remove the crapware trial software, upgrade to an open driver, remove crap Windows services, etc, you're screwed?

    If this is true, I think this point alone should be front page news.

  4. it's all a bit silly, really by unfunk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God, this feels horrible, but I have to defend Microsoft/Windows here a bit
    Windows 98 was slower than Windows 95, running on the same hardware
    Windows XP was slower than Windows 98, running on the same hardware
    Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP, running on the same hardware.

    Does anybody see a pattern here? Most people thought XP was rubbish for the first couple of years that it was out for, and now those same people are proclaiming it to be Microsoft's best OS to date.
    Vista does a lot of things right, and improves on XP in many, many areas, it's just dogged by this idea that it's crap because you can't run it on your P3-800 and it won't work with your dot-matrix printer from 1977.

    Ugh, that felt terrible, I need to go play with Ubuntu for a few hours now....

    1. Re:it's all a bit silly, really by duckInferno · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Win 95 -> Win 98: Slightly slower, but also slightly less painful experience for the end user

      Win 98 -> Win XP: A fair bit slower, but holy crap it doesn't crash any more!

      Win XP -> Vista: Extreme slowdown and you don't get a lot out of it beyond viral DRM and all your shoddily-written software causing that annoying permissions box to pop up.

      Every iteration of windows has been slightly slower but also better than the previous version... until Vista.

      --
      Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
  5. Re:Non-Compatible Laptops by sortia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You sure its not a sata driver problem? XP doesn't have sata drivers by default, try slipstreaming the sata drivers in to your XP disk.

  6. Catching up by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Try shutdown /a (run shutdown /? to see all options available) from command prompt. Not tried on vista, but at least on 2003, that's the command to abort a system shutdown.

    On Linux, you need to know advanced terminal commands to do things like force the system to shut down.

    On Windows, you need to know advanced terminal commands to stop the system from doing things to you...

    Sounds like Linux is finally catching up by having Windows drop down to its level and heading the wrong way past!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley