Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

17 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 McFortner · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not even a first. Anybody remember Windows ME? Redmond is forgetting their history apparently....

      --
      Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
    2. Re:Not exactly surprised... by smashin234 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A larger OS will of course use more resources. This does not surprise me in the least anyway since I am sure close to 1/3 of the people who buy new PC's get 1GB of ram or even less nowadays....and with less then 1gb and even 2gb of ram vista will bog down the system when running anything but word processing/email.

      I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it. Many people may say it does nothing to improve computing, but I just think its a little before its time... (probably a first for MS anyway.)

    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 morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      Isn't that kind of a lot for a duck to say?

      --
      My blog
    7. 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.

    8. Re:Not exactly surprised... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Marketing is changing nothing. Now I hear this new Windows Mojave rocks! I can't wait till it gets released!!!

    9. Re:Not exactly surprised... by wintermute000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Add me to that chorus.
      I have two laptops through work (contractor, on-site managed services).

      My parent company laptop - which I don't actually need for my day to day (as I use the customers laptop) - is Vista Business Premium - Core2Duo 2Ghz, 2 Gig RAM.

      Tried it, didn't like it. Apart from security, I fail to see any real advantages, and they also decided to shuffle all the menus and options around just for fun. All I notice is that stuff is slower esp file copying (yes SP1 is patched).

      Aero? pffft have you ever tried compiz-fusion or any of the derivatives on any modern linux distro?

      Desktop search? addons for XP and linux available.

      DX10? 5% extra eye candy for 10% less performance = bad deal in my book. Of course this situation will change. Also irrelevant for busineses

    10. 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).

  2. laptops by Cyrena · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It boggles the mind why anyone would want a low to mid range laptop to come with Vista preinstalled. And yet that's the only way to get them (reasonably).

    And apparently Toshiba's only honouring the warranty now if none of the original bundled software has been removed. So a friend of mine ended up buying a cheap Toshiba, with the understanding that it functionally has no warranty, since he's immediately nuking Vista off of it.

  3. Non-Compatible Laptops by Renraku · · Score: 5, Informative

    I bought my laptop with the intention of downgrading to Windows XP for increased stability and performance.

    I was shocked, on the other hand, to find that there were no Windows XP drivers and that inserting the Windows XP CD and booting from it caused a BSOD before the installing starts. I have an HP Pavilion DV5-1002NR.

    Do not purchase this laptop if you want to use Windows XP on it.

    --
    Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
  4. how about the new version of Windows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How come no one is talking about the new version of Windows called Mojave? It looks great, and has little utilities called gadgets ... I love Windows Mojave. I give it a "10"!

    ... er, what's that you say?

  5. 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....

  6. It's not a hardware problem. by RonTheHurler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I downgraded my Vista machine to XP. A critical pice of software I use was dog slow on vista. Dead-dog slow. By accident, i found out how to speed it up considerably - I unplugged the network cable.

    No, this was not a network app. It's a CAD program. It does absolutely nothing over the network. Whassup with that? Unfortunately, I need the network, and after much fiddling and tweaking the network settings (I am qualified...) There was no change.

    But, every time I disabled the network, my CAD program sped up. Until I wiped out the HD and installed XP. Now it's always fast as ever on my vista-class hardware.

    VIsta gave me absolutely no benefit over XP. What's the reason for this OS?

    --

    http://www.rlt.com/14100 See our newest perpetual motion machine (as designed by Leonardo DaVinci)

  7. 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