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Vista Share Drops for the First Time In Two Years
adeelarshad82 writes "Windows Vista lost market share last month for the first time in almost two years, a sign that users are already abandoning the oft-ridiculed operating system in favor of the new Windows 7. According to Web metrics firm Net Applications, Vista dropped 0.2 percentage points during September to end the month at an 18.6% slice of the operating system pie. Windows 7, meanwhile, gained 0.3 percentage points, its biggest one-month gain since Microsoft began handing out the new OS to the public in January 2009. Windows 7 powered an estimated 1.5% of all computers that connected to the Internet last month, also a record."
This shows something, that Windows 7 is good enough that people are running the trial of it en masse. The date that will confirm this trend is when W7 gets released to the street for both upgrades and bundled with new PCs, on October 22.
you just wait for june next year when all the RC versions expire...
A lot of people realized from the start that Vista was rubbish. Unfortunately MS has been doing a lot of damage to itself of late. Most of their main stream products are a complete pain to use. Genuine advantage has run rife, and hinders legitimate users and pirates alike. The ribbon is an abomination and no amount of marketing or brainwashed hyperbole from idiots parroting the marketing is going to change my mind - yeah I can use it just fine but it eats up a lot of screen real estate and it isn't better - it's childish shit with no advantage. Not to mention dropping support for old formats. Some of us want to be able to read our old documents without resorting to Even in gaming they fucked up then shut down the Flight Simulator franchise, and Xbox 360 has its red ring.
The only things I've seen that aren't bad that have come out of Microsoft lately are some minor photo and file utilities from it's research labs.
Vista being a bloated slow buggy pain in the arse that permeates every part of the user experience just takes the cake though. Windows 7 is going to need to shine big time. So far it's looking better than Vista (but for that matter so is a turd sandwich). They can't afford to get it wrong.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You'd have been fucking stupid to buy a fucking mac as well.
... They can't afford to get it wrong.
I'm afraid they can. They can force it on every new machine, like Vista. They can pre-install their office suite. With their influence on the resellers, they effectively have a monopoly.
They can force DRM down the customer's throat, Make every new version a pain to rediscover where all the existing features are, and have customers look out for the new version, because "everything will magically be better in the new version".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Now, while I've always maintained that Microsoft is an evil bloodsucking corporation, gaming would not be what it is today without Windows 98. Being that I run Vista, and it is forever crashing me out of classic games such as Warcraft III and Sacred Gold, not too mention the core compatibility issues for certain games and their online features, I've often times looked to switching to a Linux OS. But, the problem there is Linux, quite simply, is not up to snuff on gaming as of yet. Sure, Wine made it much easier to play games on Linux, but the fact is, most people simply won't swap because of the simple fact you have to find the correct drivers for the OS your on for your hardware, you have to install and configure Wine, and even learn to use commands. Since most people at this point in time are so established in Windows, the number of Windows gamers vs the number of Linux gamers is obviously in Microsoft's favor. This is why they aren't overly concerned with Vista's shitty performance, and this is also why they haven't been breaking their balls trying to fix it. Yes, I know, 7 is their "fix", but you have to realize, Microsoft doesn't particularly care about us anymore.
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." -Archimedes
Sorry I didn't realise there was an actual release of Win7 already... it doesn't even have a fancy name. Not too bad for MS to have more market share than Linux for an OS that is not even officially released.
From my own stats, I'd have to agree with Win7's market share; I get about 1-1.5% too.
My web domain.
What will be most interesting is whether people will be willing to make the jump from XP to Win7. XP has held pretty steady since November last year at ~70% market share. Vista never even got to 20%.
Why is Vista "stupid?" Why do you think XP is better? Why didn't you buy a Mac if you wanted a Mac?
A lot of Vista's original criticisms revolved around drivers (since the entire driver architecture got re-invented). After a lot of the driver issues got resolved (*cough* Nvidia and Creative *cough*) the OS became no better but no worse than XP.
If I purchased a laptop today I'd rather have Vista than XP since I lose nothing but owning Vista but I lose a few things by owning XP (low privileged IE, UAC, et al).
A lot of people who continue to bash Vista are just sheep that have no real clue why exactly Vista was bad or why Windows 7 is better (hint: Vista paved the road for 7).
Considering that Vista's share is less than 1/3 of XP's share (72% vs 19%), Microsoft will be more worried about getting people to move from XP to Win7. The 19% who have Vista really won't (can't, to be more precise) stay with Vista for too long. They will definitely "upgrade" (let's hope it's really an upgrade, not a regression).
Microsoft surely doesn't want XP's ghost to haunt them like IE6's ghost has.
What's with all the M$ stories lately...?? I though /. was about Linux! just saying whats everyone's thinking....
Having just gone through the corporate PC purchasing vendor circus once again, I find it interesting that you can currently purchase a PC with an OEM Vista licence, which Dell/Lenovo etc will happily factory-downgrade to XP for you. As an added bonus you can also upgrade to Windows 7, for free. Yay! 3 licences for the price of 1, sort of.
I assume this is still counted as a "Vista" licence in the statistics as that's waht it was sold as.
I predict a big jump in Windows 7 licences as all the corporate PC OEM and volume licencing moves to the "Windows 7" licence with downgrade rights, as that's the only way you'll be able to get XP. I'm guessing at least 80% of those will still be downgraded to XP for at least the next year. Makes the stats for Windows 7 look good, though.
Btw, I like Windows 7, I use it at home. All our work PC's are XP as our "enterprise-ready" software won't run on Vista. One vendor recently installed their latest document management system onto our Windows 2008 server, only to discover the indexing service had been replaced by "microsoft search". They hadn't tested it on anything beyond Windows 2003/XP as "that's what everyone else runs". Yay for corporate software!
When I used it, it really wasn't that bad. I'll grant that UAC was most definitely annoying and in its infancy, but other than that, it was pretty stable for the time I used it. The only services which affected stability were the Desktop Search and DWM, which is often impacted directly by the quality of the video drivers driving it.
Lots of people gave Vista a bad rep because -- get this -- they didn't know how to use their damned computers! Projector not working? No, it can't possibly be that you forgot to hit Fn+F8; IT MUST BE VISTA! Stuff running slow? It's certainly not that a GAZILLION processes are running at the same time, along with the spyware you've accumulated from using IE to surf for porn and free stuff; IT MUST BE VISTA! While a lot of the Mac vs PC commercials that Apple ran dealt a lot with the usability differences, in reality, a prime reason FOR those issues in usability is because lots of users don't know how to actually use them properly.
I've been running Windows 7 for quite some time now, and it has definitely eliminated the need for Windows Server 2008 or Windows XP running on any of my systems (except the legacy servers that I have, which both run Server 2003...but will be upgrading!) The killer features for me are the new tricks in Aero (the maximize and minimize features are solid) and the refinements done in wireless networking (which finally feel as integrated as wired has been since forever). Despite these, Vista was the pillar which helped set this up. Without it, we'd still be stuck in Longhorn-land (I'm talking about the Longhorn BEFORE the big codebase swap, which was more or less XP with some bells and whistles).
Well at least you can use your computer. If you had bought a Mac it would be in for repairs all the time.
In other words, Windows Vista market share is falling before it ever hit 20%, and Linux has more market share than the latest version of Windows. ;-)
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1
IE: -1,26%
FF: +0.77%
Safari: +0.17%
Chrome: +0.33%
Opera: +0.15%
Everybody's taking a piece of Microsoft. The version graph is pretty interesting too:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=3
While IE is switching from versions 6/7/8 at a glacial pace, Firefox users are upgrading rapidly. Since May with 20.03% vs 0.44% for FF 3.0 vs FF 3.5, it's now 9.62% vs 12.65%. That means you can much more rapidly rely on Firefox being a recent version and not dealing with supporting ancient versions.
Why do I care about that? Because browser stats drives most the ways I have to interact with the world. Linux has 1% or whatever, but what matters is how well it works together wtih the other 99%. Therefore, death to IE :)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
These are percentages. If Win7 is growing quickly it could be coming at the expense of XP. Vista might still be growing, but dropping as an overall percentage.
Because it's bloated as all hell and only runs decently on the 64-bit version. I'm writing this from a high performance gaming computer I built last week which has an OEM copy of Vista installed for the sole reason of getting the free upgrade to 7. It's bad enough without the crap that vendors pile onto their computers.
Vista has it's high points, for example I really like the volume mixer (a feature I've long wished for in XP), but the general bulk of it all outweighs the positives. Windows 7 on the other hand ran fantastically from the first build I had access to and I absolutely love it. It actually ran faster and smoother than my Ubuntu install!
I want to point out that I started using Vista without any preconceptions, and slowly grew to hate it from day to day use.
Ezekiel 23:20
since I lose nothing
except ram and clock cycles
Yes. Good job Microsoft. You have successfully beta tested a version of Windows and actually made money from it too by selling it to your customers. You got all the negative feedback that you need to improve it, so now you get to charge all them poor saps all over again with Windows 7! I despise this company, but I gotta admit. They are business geniuses.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Why on earth was parent modded troll?
What - you can still get XP on a Mac?
I've noticed some great deals on computers lately but, with all the grief surrounding Vista, I just could not be bothered to by a new PC or a laptop. I supposed I could have just blown away the OS and reloaded XP, but I honestly just can't be bothered to piss away a day trying to do this. And Linux is not an option because some of the apps I'm using are not available on Linux. I wonder how many people have felt the same way.
But Windows 7 is the fucking shiznite.
It is truly awesome. My XP based machine performs BETTER after the upgrade .... There are more bells and whistles, the entire UI is rendered on my video card, the OS finally makes use of the hyperthreading, and the performance is BETTER! Unbelievable.
It outperforms Ubuntu on my netbook. The Linux community lost its 'personal computing' niche before it even recognized what it was!
"a sign that users are already abandoning the oft-ridiculed operating system in favor of the new Windows 7"
I'm amused that this is twisted to be a bad point, against Vista. When Vista's uptake was seen as slow, it was held up not as a sign that XP was just too good, but as a sign that Vista was bad. When Apple fans are queing up to get the latest OS X release, or the new Iphone, it's not taken as a sign that the old OS was bad, or that people were desperate after not having ancient features like 3G for so long, but as a sign that the new products are great. But now that 7's uptake is fast, it's held up as a sign that Vista is bad...
Still, at least it correctly notes that the share is going to 7, as opposed to the fallacy of "Vista is losing share, therefore it must be going to OS X/BSD/etc".
One vendor recently installed their latest document management system onto our Windows 2008 server, only to discover the indexing service had been replaced by "microsoft search". They hadn't tested it on anything beyond Windows 2003/XP as "that's what everyone else runs". Yay for corporate software!
That's nothing, one of the clinical systems in use within the NHS at the moment (iSOFT's Premiere) only supports running on Windows 2000 (Which is now out of Microsoft extended support) on the server end; apparently the new version out later this year will add support for Server 2003 (Yes, 2003). They're actually still providing HP G4 servers to GP surgeries because they can't get supported Windows 2000 drivers for current hardware.
I'm sure MS will spin this in a positive way but let's face it. This just goes to show how shit Vista was.
Everything has its limits
The reason microsoft and windows have been so successful has been because their software has been so friendly to use.
Its so easy it attracts developers, that make applications for the platform, which attracts end-users, some of which go on to become developers.
Its a self-feeding cycle, which is why microsoft has been so successful, and its also where linux is starting to show real growths.
Now your saying MS can give its customers anything it wants and they'll eat it. You might be right, but only in the short term. Longer term, a small amount, lets say that in frustration/annoyance 5% less developers drop windows vista, and start using using linux instead.
They go on to develop apps that DON"T work on windows but instead on linux, these apps appeal to other users who go on to get linux instead, and the linux cycle grows.
Those few developers, taht tiny market share, is all it can take to crush the windows monopoly. And without the monopoly, or ease of use, why would you pay money over a linux distribution which is free.
No microsoft can't afford to stuff up windows, its the cornerstone of all their software, everything is dependant on it, it just takes time (read: years) before screwups play out fully.
Heres a small post showing that MS's vista screwup has cost them dearly, the Mac's web presence nearly doubling from 4 to 8%.
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2008/06/macs_web_footprint_growing_at.html
It'd be simlar with linux.
Just wait a few years, and the results will play themselves out.
Don't even get me started on the fact that the netbook market is cut-throat pricing wise, MS are already having a hard time jusifying the cost of windows (to the point where they cut prices on windows oem to stop being excluded from that market)
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
I will probably be modded into obscurity for this, but hell, I have karma to burn.
I would venture that many of the Vista Haters have never really spent any time with the OS. A poster above commented that the initial release was flawed, primarily due to crappy driver support (and I was burned on the nVidia chips in my laptop), but by the time that the first SP came out, it was solid, reliable and, dare I say it, almost a pleasure to use.
My new job demanded that I go back to XP, and it reminded me of how much I prefer Vista over XP.
The true test will be how long will it take for major corporate IT uptake in Win7. Perhaps the learning curve of watching Vista and the polish that Win7 has added will begin migration plans. I sure hope so, 'cuz I can't stand XP.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
So, XP fell 0.2%, win7 rose 0.3%, but OS X rose 0.25%. Considering that the source for their data, hitslink, doesn't even have OS 10.6 up on their survey yet, I'd say the interpretation that Windows 7 is the one eating Vista's market share is unfounded, it's much more likely that it's a combination of losses to apple and win7.
Moreover, if you look at other stats like statcounter, the monthly data shows no decrease in Windows Vista adoption rate (i.e., still increasing usage share), but still shows OS X increasing its market share.
Basically, there's just as much evidence that it's snow leopard that's eating Vista's lunch as it is win7. Win7 installs could easily be coming from people who skipped vista.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I sympathize with you. And to avoid that hardware compatibility trap, you might consider simply using virtualization: a several year old hardware platform, such as the HP G4, should be reasonably equivalent to a virtual environment on newer hardware. And you can use the newer hardware's base OS or another client OS to provide read-only access to the client OS fileystem to run anti-virus scans, and provide a more clever network security toolkit with the virtualization server or another system as a proxy and file-service compatible firewall.
A corporate partner of mine just did this very effectively for some old Win98 tools they have to keep around for legacy data access reasons.
Did it lose users in an absolute sense, or relative to the number of computer users? If the latter, then the absolute number could have stayed the same or even increased, if the total number of users also increased. That is, (x-1)/y x/y but also x/(y+1) x/y.
Though I usually only lurk, I have to jump in and agree with you there.
There are all kinds of hype, and people just tend to convince themselves that vista sucks. A guy on a blog says so, the macheads say so, the media also says so, slashdotters also say so... And yes, why would people spend time using something that they believe sucks?
I can personally testify from having used various versions of win 7, that it offers no real reason for me to upgrade from vista. In fact I laugh at a lot of people who are praising win 7 (cool visuals, wth?) , but thought vista was the worst thing in the world. Hell, everything in win 7 seems to surprise them, while I just stare, disinterested.
*AHEM*
Pardon Me.
A lot of people who continue to bash Vista are just sheep that have no real clue why exactly Vista was bad or why Windows 7 is better (hint: Vista paved the road for 7).
Let me address those for you.
Why was Vista Bad.
Right, about $200 or more for an OS. That's it. That is not a technical fault of the OS mind you.
It suffers from a lack of performance. To get anything like sane workable performance out of it you need a machine with at least a dualcore plus 2gb or RAM and a proper Graphics card. When Vista was released that was in the upper spectrum of Laptop specs. Heck laptops with dedicated graphics are STILL in the upper spectrum.
It suffers from Chronic slowdown. How many laptops have I come across that have this problem? They run fine one year, just good enough with a newish processor and one gig ram. A year later you have to add another gig of ram in order to get some of the original performance back, which is still worse than that of XP.
UAC. It is a horrible implementation of a good idea.
Basically what microsoft gave us was: A pretty new operating system that performs worse than the one it was supposed to replace.
There is a good reason that people still cling to XP in preference to Vista.
Now on to "...or why Windows 7 is better"
Who said Win7 is better? Sure you might have tried it, and it might seem spunky and quick, but ask yourself this - how much of what you hated or disliked about Vista has actually changed?
One thing that worries me is that one of the greatest flaws with Vista was how the driver stack was built. Now when WIn7 comes along the news is "don't worry, Win7 is compatible with Vista drivers!!!!111!!1!"
I am running Win7 Ultimate (the proper release not the RC) and let me tell you now - it is at best an incrimental, slight improvement over Vista.
The fact that it is an improvement over VISTA does not prove anything, is it an improvement over the other options that the market offers? Is the "new" interface, that only differs as far as the new taskbar goes (which borrowed elements from the Mac dock and the KDE panel), really better than MacOS, or KDE or Gnome? Or is it just different?
Will it prove to be as long lived as XP? Looking back over the last three years - when everyone cried "Yay we now have an alternative to XP" - Windows XP is pretty darn good enough for most people. Will Win7 be toXP what XP was to 98?
The real question is whether Win7 will woo people away from MacOs or Linux. For Microsoft to get people away from Vista to Win7 only proves that the previous version of the OS was worse than the current one, not that the new OS offers something new to the market that is lacking in the other offers out there.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Net Applications measures OS usage by tracking the machines that surf to the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a data pool of about 160 million unique visitors per month
It really doesn't matter how many are downgrades for the purposes of this article. This is actual use, not purchases.
I too would be interested in the number of downgrades, but Microsoft is the only person who could tell us (different OEMs have different target markets, so just one OEM wouldn't be a trustable number), and it would not serve their purposes to reveal this yet. They have refused to divulge any such potentially harmful information repeatedly.
An estimate in Dec. '08 from one OEM was 75%
http://www.crn.com/software/212501005
Obviously, I'm not "many" users. Certainly not a majority. But, I have installed every operating system that MS has offered since MS-DOS 3.1. Every single one. I've done every Windows version since Windows 1.something - I missed 1.0.
I will state bluntly here that WinME was the single worst abortion that MS ever put out, followed closely by Vista.
Windows 7 runs perfectly on the very same hardware on which Vista failed. Longhorn, in various versions, runs perfectly on the very same hardware. With some moderate tweaking, Win7 runs just as fast as XP ever ran, it's stable, reliable - it just works. Vista refused to work properly on any of my home brew machines. When it ran at all, it was a resource hog, and ran as sluggishly as Win98 would run on an early 386. No exaggeration.
I will allow for the fact that Vista probably does run decently on high-end equipment that was designed for Vista. But, where does that leave the rest of the world? And, how does that explain the fact that Win7 runs perfectly on hardware that Vista barfed on?
"The true test will be how long will it take for major corporate IT uptake in Win7."
I can agree with that statement, at least. And, I'm sure that the test will be passed. A mediocre IT dude such as myself will be able to migrate a small company from XP to Win7 (let's say 50 machines) in a month or so, with only moderate headache. (Yes, migration ALWAYS involves some headache.) You simply couldn't say that with Vista. It simply wasn't going to run on a lot of the existing hardware, and the boss wasn't going to spring for all new hardware.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
They've made a multi billion dollar business stuffing up Windows. They learned from Vista, but if you look at Windows 7 compared to Vista the biggest difference is that Vista drivers work in 7. That alone explains most of the instability and usability problems Vista had when it first got crapped out. A few more bug fixes for obvious issues and 7 launch will go smoothly, and you won't have the widespread fear-mongering everywhere. Poof, crap turns into a crap sandwich and people happily throw it down their gullets, thinking this time will be better.
The next version is always better.
Vista paved the road for 7 the same as CP/M paved the road for 7.
Vista was heavy, wouldn't run alot of software, the interface was counterintuitive for any non-home user (that's even pushing it), and worst it had people that would ask silly questions like "why is windows 'stupid'?"'
Rotating your life around IE is suicide, my friend.
Does it matter ? I don't have a corporate world, so when my XP machine died, I went shopping. I found only the pre SP1 Vista machines on the shelf. This site and others were screaming about it. Wanting more stability than I had (with three users none of whom were savvy) I went to OSX.
Three years later, I retire another XP machine. Living with OSX, I go straight back to the apple store and buy a mini. OSX has crashed, I think, once, in three years...and World of Warcraft patches were involved.
One the iPhone goes CDMA, my life will be complete.
I still have one XP machine, the travel netbook I use and am writing this on now. If Apple had a @$500 netbook.........
Vista will actively use your system RAM to make everything load faster and uses less CPU time than XP since the entire UI is offloaded to your GPU.
The reason microsoft and windows have been so successful has been because their software has been so friendly to use.
The presence of numerous more friendly alternatives over the years, all of which failed for one reason or another kind of throws that argument out wouldn't you think?
The reason Microsoft and Windows have been so successful has got more to do with Microsoft doing everything in their power to gain marketshare, including but not limited to bullying OEMs with agreements which state "every PC you ship ships with Windows and may not multi-boot", seeding "partners" with outright lies over their direction (IBM, OS/2) and purposely crippling third-party products on their OS (Lotus, GEM).
Reported share for Linux.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
Just a note,
TFA is not about number of vista licenses sold
it's about percentage of Vista machines online
Let us not forget Windows Bob.
It even became a joke at MS. Check out Bill Gates Last Day Video @~5:40 Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie crack on BillG saying that they have to give credit where credit is due; Microsoft Bob was all Bill's idea.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
*Microsoft Bob
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I wouldn't blame Vista for the 1-year "laptop slowdown" you're experiencing.
I work at a college help desk, and I see a metric fuckton of student laptops. Some want help getting on the network, others have viruses, others want to know why the copy of Office 2007 the Best Buy wingnut sold them won't install on their Mac... but I see a lot of laptops.
Especially on laptops, a lot of the slowness is entirely due to the OEM. I was working on a Dell Inspiron; its owner wanted me to restore it using the recovery partition to make it run faster. The base image came with a purposefully borked Windows Installer - none if the preinstalled bloatware had entries in Add/Remove programs, even software like Picassa that I know comes with a proper uninstaller. Vista SP1 and SP2 wouldn't install without errors, and the machine was too slow to be usable.
Until I installed a clean copy of the OS using my own Vista DVD. Everything patched properly, and relative to how it was runs lightning fast.
This also doesn't include all the horrible tortures people manage to inflict upon their laptops after a year. There's physical abuse - I dropped it a few times, roommate dropped a subwoofer on it (!), the battery exploded and the chassis caught fire (!!!)... There's viruses - I sprung for the full version of XP Antivirus and my computer is still slow! There's garbage software like Flash, Java, Acrobat Reader, and Quicktime that either have "quicklaunch" services running in the background or "auto updater" services doing the same thing.
Windows machines are like brand new cars. They drive wonderfully until you give those idiot Adobe children the keys.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I have to agree with this.
Vista SP1 solved just about all the problems I've had with Vista and it certainly doesn't deserve the kind of rap that it seems to be getting right now.
I've toyed around the with Windows 7 for a few hours and my first impression was that it was basically like Vista. If you're using XP because you think Vista is slow, that won't change with Windows 7. If you liked the UI in XP, Windows 7 UI is a superset of Windows Vista and they both feel very similar. I don't understand the people that are praising Windows 7 that detested Vista so much.
Maybe you should give Kubuntu a try? I run a dual-boot with Vista and Kubuntu. I use Vista to test the cross-platform support of the software which I develop and I use Kubuntu for everything else.
MS downgrade rights only apply one version down. So you won't see people buying 7 to install XP.
Please tell me that you did not pay for XP antivirus and that you where merely relating an end user complaint.
Because if you where the one installing XP Antivirus then you should not be allowed near a help desk. ...re reading your comment makes me suspect the former, that it was not you but some hapless end user...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
After a lot of the driver issues got resolved (*cough* Nvidia and Creative *cough*) the OS became no better but no worse than XP.
As someone who's run XP Pro, Vista SP1, and Win 7 beta and Win 7 RC on the same system, I can testify that your assertion that once driver issues were fixed Vista is just as good as XP is false. Is Vista SP1 HORRIBLE? No. But it's not great either. Gaming performance on the same exact hardware is much lower with Vista than it is with XP or Win 7. Boot times were longer with Vista than XP or Win 7, Vista also used more system resources just to run the OS than XP or Win 7.
So no, it wasn't just a driver issue. It's a "Vista wasn't well written all around" issue.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Microsoft has said it may ditch Vista the moment Windows 7 comes out! They've since backtracked - but we need to make sure they know our feelings.
Windows 7 is CASTRATED APPEASEMENT to soy latte-sipping girly-men who wish they owned a Mac. We want a REAL operating system. An operating system that PERSONIFIES America's INDUSTRIAL MIGHT. That makes you feel AWE at the MAJESTY of the progress of its operation. VISTA is a monument to everything that makes us the country we are!
Like Chrysler, like Hummer, like Edsel - "Vista" is a name that will be remembered as the greatest operating system in Microsoft's history.
Just Say "No" To Seven -
SAVE VISTA!
Original blog post - Facebook group - we want ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE to join. So far we have just over a hundred. SIGN UP TODAY!
"I fully support this initiative. My computer business employs 200 people; the best possible thing for it is to make sure Vista continues and goes forward." - M. Shuttleworth, London
"I can't tell you how much Vista has done for my business. So many people depend on it." - S. Jobs, Cupertino
"Vista is the one thing that will keep people seeking out and using systems that are at the forefront of technology. It's been the best thing for all of us." - L. Torvalds, Portland.
"I'm ... I'm touched. *sob* I didn't think anyone cared. You guys. Developers! *sob*" - S. Ballmer, Seattle.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Millions of people on every forum on the Internet are bashing a product they've never really spent any time with that's actually great.
That's plausible. Why didn't I think of that?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
These Microsoft death watches have become almost as cliche as the annual YOTLD penguasms. Yes, Vista sucked just like ME, but so what? In both cases users were able to stay with/fall back to the previous OS version and wait for MS to get it right. I'm betting Win7 will see a large and rapid uptake just like XP did.
Waiting around for the competition to fail is not a winning strategy. Linux had a chance with the Vista debacle and blew it - as evidenced by Linux's share of the OS pie still hovering at around 1%.
Until the Linux community realizes that it is the state of the apps holding back adoption of the OS and decides to do something about it, Linux will never gain a significant share of the pie.
Even with the Vista debacle, Microsoft's total share of the OS pie (win98, winME, winNT, win2000, winXP, and Vista) is still 92.71%. Hell, Linux barely beat out Windows 2000 for market share!
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
Yeah, those are all end-user complaints. I guess my post was missing quotation marks... >.>
I figure I could start my own website with those, or power TheDailyWTF for the better part of a year with submissions.
DATABASE WOW WOW
They can force DRM down the customer's throat
This is what DRM means to anyone but a geek:
The PC with a Blu-Ray drive ships with a licensed Blu-Ray player.
DVD play out of the retail box.
No searching for the gray market codec.
The single cable HDMI solution for audio and video. HDMI 1.4 adds support for Ethernet, 4K x 2K video, and 3D.
Subscription and rental services of every sort - if he wants them.
"Trusted Computing" solutions for his employer or small business.
I fully expected the Vista haters were baseless whiners using some decades-old legacy app. So I started using Vista *after* service pack 1 on a new Core2duo system. The experience has unfortunately been dismal.
UAC has a slew of problems, even if its goals are good. But most of all, the OS has seen no improvements for the end-user. All of the same bugs and annoying quirks from XP are still there, with new and bizarre bugs having been added for Vista. It truly is a downgrade from XP.
I'm still using it at home, but it's painful. They need to put some serious effort into the user interface bugs, usability, and desktop performance.
In other words, Windows Vista market share is falling before it ever hit 20%, and Linux has more market share than the latest version of Windows. ;-)
Linux broke into the single digit in the Net Applications stats in March. But has not been able to hold the ground.
Typo of Greater Nashville Apartment Association?
There is absolutely no reason that I can think of for corporate IT to switch to Win7. Why waste time learning Win7? We have XP now and it works, sure it is not perfect, but what OS is. Supporting WinXP, Vista, Win7 is a waste of time and money. No, companies will stick to WinXP, until 4Gb RAM won't be enough, then we will switch to whatever OS is the best for 64 bit.
Home users are sheep and they will use whatever OS they get with the new PC.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
The question is, is this the final service Pack of Vista or do I need to wait for Win7 SP2?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
They each have their place, but on low end hardware you would never choose vista over XP, so the only way to switch to Vista is buying new hardware also.
I think most people who like Vista over XP either don't run IO intensive applications over a network or never had XP and Vista on the same hardware. I wouldn't mind Vista on a desktop where it's not too pricey to get the additional specifications required by Vista. And their is little doubt at the high end hardware front Vista can be better.
I don't see why I want my dept to pay extra in power consumption, specifications, and OS price so that IT and Sony will have more control over our computers. (warning car analogy) then again I am one of the few that still drives a manual transmission because I don't want a little convenience at the cost of additional maintenance, lower economy, reduced reliability, and higher upfront price.
nt
I try not to be a Windows Hater but it's an uphill fight. I didn't get Vista because of all the hype and hysteria surrounding it, and because I too, was burned by WinMe. Crashed and burned Three times on install, then BSOD'd about 15 minutes into the first boot. Went straight to the coaster pile with all those AOL CDs after that.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Maybe the FUD won't hit the fan this time around?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I have, and was one of the beata testers for Vista (RC1 was actually good) that got the free Vista copy for reporting bugs and I gave it away. last I heard it was being passed around like a bad fruitcake. here is why I HATED Vista RTM:-
Networking- Networking slowed to a fucking crawl while listening to music, so much so that before file transfers I would have to remember to shut down WMP 11 or you might as well pack a lunch. Networking- Network would occasionally just lose its little mind and would be unable to see network shares. Everybody else, from the ancient Win2K 1.1GHz Celery I'm typing this on to my XP office box worked just fine. The ONLY way I found to "fix" the problem was a full reboot. WTF? I thought stupid network problems died out with Win9X. I actually had a better experience networking with the 733MHz Win9x box I keep for running DOS games than I did the 3.6Ghz P4 I had Vista running on.
File System- I never did get the damned file system to keep from thrashing the hell out of everything, even with 2Gb of RAM and every tweak I could find on the net Vista just kept grinding away a hell of a lot more than it needed to, so much so that it ended up killing a 200Gb HDD that I had it installed on. And what was up with the RAM suckage? Yes I know all about prefetch, but that is supposed to give RAM BACK when I actually need it, yes? Launching any of MY programs, even those that I used daily, was grind city. And with 2Gb of RAM, plus a 7600GT to offload the desktop to, that was just nuts. And don't forget about the little fricking irritation I called "senior moments" where Vista would just hang for 5-15 seconds for no damned reason whatsoever, just long enough to really piss me off. That was a several times a week occurrence.
I could go on, but you get the picture. As a PC repairman who has run and worked on and built machines with every MSFT OS for Win3.x up I can say without a hint of overstating that Vista RTM was an even worse experience for me than WinME, and that is saying something. It was slow, buggy, irritating as hell, and generally a giant PITA. My network is now a combination of Win2K, XP32 and my main rig XP X64, and the difference between those and Vista is like night and day. ZERO problems with the network, network shares are instantly available to any machine on the network, no need to reboot anything, actually able to listen to tunes or watch vids while files transfer, etc.
I bought Win7 HP just in the hopes that unlike Vista it doesn't blow chunks, and the fact that I'm gonna be forced to learn to service it as MSFT killed XP even though folks still want it. But just because YOU got "lucky" with Vista doesn't mean the rest of us wasn't in Vista hell. After all, I have a customer who got one of the few WinME machines that has only WDM drivers. For him WinME is a nice little OS that never screws up and he just doesn't understand why folks hated it so. But MY WinME machine, which is now running Win2K and has been stable now for going on 9 years, had the mix of Vxd and WDM drivers and you could literally set your watch by how long after it reached desktop that it would BSOD. Just because you got lucky with Vista doesn't change that is only that, luck. Luck that most of us wasn't blessed with when it came to that turkey.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If Windows 7 is halfway decent all it will have cost us is nine years of Software Assurance payments.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Dual core is low end, 2GB of RAM is about 20 bucks and a video card capable of handling Aero is no more than 30 bucks. Basically any low end PC you can buy right now is probably more than capable of running Vista without any performance issue.
Of course none of this matters to you because you have never even used Vista. If you had, you would know that overall Vista significantly outperforms XP. General use is much faster in Vista and intensive processing is equal to XP's performance.
Let us not forget Windows Bob.
The elephant can remember - but the geek can't forget.
MS Bob, Clippy, Slashdot's Borg icon and stained glass window - all of these familiar geek memes get in the way of clear-headed thinking.
Linux on the netbook made a faster exit from public consciousness than My Mother The Car.
Vista as a mid-line consumer product took about 20% of the market - despite significantly more demanding hardware requirements than XP.
The Win 7 RC has been tested across a broad range of systems and by an astonishing number of users - and there are no show-stoppers.
While Linux loses it's grip on the 1% share of the market it held in March.
Then there's the whole issue of RAM. The memory limit of 32-bit XP started to matter practically some time ago, and honestly switching to 64-bit XP wouldn't make much sense, it has serious driver and compatibility issues.
It has the same "serious" driver issues that Vista has, which is to say, none. And compatibility?! What compatibility problems are you talking about? I'm a software developer and artist and have a BUNCH of different stuff on my system. The only thing I don't do much these days on the main system is gaming, so I can't speak to that, but for everything else (graphics, hardware, resource usage and most importantly, SPEED) the 64-bit version of XP is by far and away the best release Microsoft ever had.
Former Windows 2000 lover here, BTW.
Im suprised to be saying this, but Im actually impressed with Win7. It seems to be more responsive at "General use" tasks IE flipping back and forth between programs and that sort of thing. Not to mention all the games Ive tried on it have actually run at a decent FPS boost. Granted, I havent tried anything older than a few years, but so far Ive had no problems with the system. Which is an almost reversal of my experience with Vista when it was released. My dads laptop crapped out and humorously co-incided with Vistas release. So of course every single machine for sale at the box stores was preloaded with Vista, no choice in the matter. After tinkering around with it, grousing at its drag-ass performance and tendancy to hardlock whenever he plugged in his iPod, I upgraded the damn thing to XP. Of course even that was a chore, considering the laptop manufacturer had hilariously removed XP drivers from their website because "We just expect everyone to be running Vista" as a customer service drone told me. But oddly enough, after setting up 7 on my desktop after toying with it on a spare machine, Im a bit shocked. The folks comparing the Vista/7 releases to ME/2000 are dead on. Granted, if you run XP and it works just fine, why bother? But in my experience 7 at least isnt a pile of Vista.
Just say NO to stinky cheese
The sidebar/widget changes are a massive step backwards too. I now have the option of having maximised Windows go underneath them if they're always on top meaning they get in the way of my working Window, or I have the option of them just being on the desktop underneath all my Windows where I have to go to desktop to see them so they may as well just be implemented as normal applications.
In contrast the sidebar kept the widgets visible where I needed them without obscuring my Windows as the Windows maximised around the sidebar rather than under it.
I wouldn't mind, if it weren't for the fact there is no option to go back on this feature and those you describe. There are some ugly hacks, but how long can they really be expected to work for?
Most the Windows 7 UI changes really do piss me off, especially as they're mandatory not optional.
Having shifted from XP to Ubuntu 3 years ago (and now on Kubuntu) I was as you describe, hating Vista before actually using it.
Then last year we visited my sister-in-law in the US, and I left my laptop behind as I didn't want to risk having it taken at the border. While there I had the choice between using a brand-new, reasonably powerful laptop running Vista, or an ancient, virus-laden desktop running Win98.
After quite a while trying to use the laptop, I eventually just used the desktop for the rest of our stay. It was faster than trying to deal with the Vista UI.
Actually... I spent six months using it while doing sustaining engineering for AMD's OpenGL group.
There's nothing there that's actually useful to most people.
To each their own, but Vista offers little and gives you straight-jackets that never existed before. The I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads highlighted some of those straight-jackets in a humorous manner- but they still exist on Vista.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Heh... And, if they couldn't get it right after SEVEN years of development time on Vista and took them another two to get the drivers and UI portions right...what else isn't "quite right" and you just don't know about it yet?
I wouldn't give Apple the time of day if this was what they did.
I wouldn't use LINUX if it went down that way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Microsoft will always rule the 'users' as long as 'Enterprises' (corporations and business oriented groups) are also ruled. If Microsoft has another interation of companies refusing to upgrade on Mass, it could seriously hurt MS's grip on the OEM's.
The problem, is that if Enterprises DO embrace Se7en and finally give in and upgrade BILLIONS of computer hardware, then MS has nothing to fear in respect to OEM and 'users' opting for Apple or some Linux Distro.
BUT, if Enterprise refuse to upgrade (this includes upgrading their hardware too as well as the software, will force MS to keep XP shipping and patches coming. Else if they try to force Fortune 1000 corps with potential viruses and exploits in Windows XP (due to not supporting XP anymore) could tip them to en Mass say, "Screw MS" (because let's face it, the Global Economy is not getting better, despite what you see on Wall Street).
It is entirely in the Enterprise's hands whether or not MS will go threw another Iteration failure ( and upgrade failure ) and more market loss to Apple and Linux.
The user's will install whatever HP and Dell decide to use, which will obviously be Windows 7, because they too want to sell new modern hardware.
So, in a sense, Windows 7 will most likely be adopted anyways, because there are profits to be made both for OEMs and Microsoft.
Not to mention, Windows 7 learned from the Linux on Netbooks (oh sh*t scare) because Vista simply could not be installed on them. Windows 7 can and also gets rid of all the annoyances like the pop up security notices and such.
The favor is highly in Microsoft's. With enough advertising and marketing, anyone can be sold. Maybe even in a failed Global Economy.
I would agree with you. Vista's big problem was with its launch and poor initial support by third party vendors. None of this is really applicable, as by now all the hardware folks have retail stuff on the shelf that supports vista fine out of the box. I know my only problem was on my initial install having to spend more time downloading and installing 3rd party vendor vista updated drivers from online than I spent actually installing the OS.
I have no problems now. A reinstall would likely still suck some, but wouldn't be nearly as bad as it was.
Since most people at this point in time are so established in Windows, the number of Windows gamers vs the number of Linux gamers is obviously in Microsoft's favor.
Hey kid. Computers do a lot more than just run games. Just because Linux won't run your shitty game does not mean it is a shitty operating system.
And linux has been in development for EIGHTEEN years, and the drivers and UI portions still aren't quite right. Windows, any version, is a decade ahead in those respects.
There's nothing there that's actually useful to most people.
Readyboost and readycache is actually quite useful for most people. Prioritized IO is actually quite useful for most people, once they upgrade to decent software that takes advantage of it. The built-in windows search is useful for almost everyone, and once you get used to it, you don't want to go back. Windows calendar and contacts supporting vCard and vCal is also very useful. Media Center is a lot more accessible to the public which is great, and something I hated about XP. Atomic transactions on NTFS drives is also very useful to people who run applications that need guaranteed transaction support (Any application with an internal database, and what apps don't?). IIS 7 is head and shoulders above and beyond IIS 6 as well for any web developer, media artist, or even people who just want to make their own homepages.
While Windows Vista is regarded as mostly a failure in public opinion, it is to be sure not as bad as what many would lead you to believe. I used to be one of those people, and coming from extensive use of all three Windows (XP, Vista, and 7 being the least used), I can tell you that after using Vista for a while it changed my mind.
When XP initially came out, I do remember a few people (myself included) that were using 2000 (jumping ship from the old 98 derivatives) really loathed the instability of 98, yet did not care for WinXP and all of its "eyecandy". For a year or two I kept with Win2k, believing it wasn't any better (all the while not actually USING the operating system long enough to see for myself). After using XP on my own seriously for a decent enough time, I began to like the OS and soon considered it "my" OS. The same is true here for WinVista: most of the people knocking it probably haven't used it much, and when they did they had something close to a "predetermined" opinion on the OS: You use XP, you like XP, that's what you form your opinion on. Instead of taking a step back and looking at it for what it is from the ground up (sometimes impossible for anyone to do), we form opinions as connections to what we know. What does Vista do differently than Windows XP? Do I like that? How does that help me?
Windows Vista is a failure simply based on the fact that what it was expected to provide it didn't deliver (public perception), combined with some early going troubles such as compatability (Microsoft apparently thought it was better than those that had gone before it, such as Intel - just ask their engineers why their instruction sets are still insanely large). That being said, it did significantly improve several features, including additional hardware support (like 64-bit), and that seems lost on many.
To say that I'd specifically go out and buy a license of WinVista, no, no I won't. To choose between WinXP and WinVista, now I'd most likely choose Vista. Only using Vista because it was pre-loaded, but after getting to know the operating system I'll tell you I had the opportunity to downgrade to XP (and not taking into consideration the pain it is to re-load your apps and data) and didn't take it. XP is nice when freshly loaded, but who runs an empty box? After going back to XP recently, it tends to get fairly sluggish or buggy if you do any decent usage over time. Windows Vista does to, but not the same extent (and compatibility isn't an issue).
Jury's still out on Windows 7, but signs are positive right now.
nt;