Microsoft sells 40 million Windows 8 licenses
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 28th Nov 2012 15:17 UTC
Windows "As we pass the one month anniversary of the general availability of Windows 8, we are pleased to announce that to-date Microsoft has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses. Tami Reller shared this news with industry and financial analysts, investors and media today at the Credit Suisse 2012 Annual Technology Conference. Windows 8 is outpacing Windows 7 in terms of upgrades." Not bad, but there are the usual asterisks, as Ars notes.
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RE[3]: But....
by lucas_maximus on Wed 28th Nov 2012 21:11 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: But...."
lucas_maximus
Member since:
2009-08-18



The sales numbers they were providing were proof enough.

Sales are based on licenses sold. Vista Pro included a license for XP, so did Win7. During the first few months when MS was claiming record sales, it was also shown that most were reverted to XP systems. So, sale of Vista/Win7 did not necessarily mean someone using Win7.


Doesn't really matter, Gym memberships work on this very principle. Also even if you half the numbers it is still pretty impressive the number of sales.

Now add to it the fact that with WinVista and even more so with WinXP, most got a very limited version of Windows (sale #1), and would therefore need to upgrade the version (sale #2). While one can technically count these as separate sales of separate licenses (they are), it would in fact be double-dipping the sale for the same system. So unless you differentiate this in the numbers (which was not likely) then you have inflated numbers.


Again it is still a purchase, it is still money going into the kitty.

Also interestingly, nobody criticises Adobe for this pricing model ... Would it be soo hard to consider that they are rewarding existing customers by lowering the price for the update?

My question is - are they doing the same with Win8. There are certainly fewer versions, but as Win8 systems seem to be sitting on the shelves their sales of 40 million in the first month seem a little unbelievable - it's not like 7.5% of the US population went out and bought a new computer in 1 month - and if its world-wide, that's even less remarkable.


At worst count we are still talking millions of licenses sold.

WinXP was hardly flaky at any point in its life. Just like Win2k, and Win7 they were all pretty solid releases. The issue with XP is the interface - its very eX-Professional - very childish.


Actually Windows XP was very flakey. There was piss poor support from programs at the time (most used hacks from the Windows 9x line). Some drivers just didn't exist (OpenGL on S3 cards was just a no-no and S3 cards were fairly common or SIS cards in Laptops).

Most of the time you could use a Windows 2000 driver, but I have run into cases when you couldn't.

Let not forget about the MS blaster worm.

Also the default display driver in Windows XP RTM does not support anything past 1024x768 ... thankfully I found nlite.

WinVista's biggest issue was driver support and that was primarily due to MS changing driver interfaces at the last moment - between RC2 and RTM. The other big issue was UAC - something MS had been warning developers about for a long time.


I fail to see how UAC is any different to OSX and Ubuntus "sudoing" to admin.

UAC was a good thing IMHO. I know it isn't perfect, but at least made people pay attention to the installer.

Modern problems with XP were that it was painful to install updates, Windows Vista, 7 and 8 they just happen in the background and I can still use my PC.

Win8's biggest issue is the UI. I'm sure its just as stable as and better performing than Win7 - namely due to the Windws Dev process put in place since the start of Vista.


The Metro/Modern UI is a matter of debate, but it doesn't mean that Windows 8 is insecure OS or that it isn't functional in Desktop mode (tbh I really haven't missed the start menu).

However, Windows still remains a major security whole, and one that can only be plugged properly in a virtual environment. it's just the design of the system and its APIs. It's yet to be seen whether the WinRT API will help resolve the security issues of Win32 - I haven't looked at it very closely yet.


Actually Windows has been pretty damn secure since VISTA, most of the exploits require a user actually running code as Admin ... no system not even OpenBSD/Linux etc can protect against that.

There aren't many holes when it comes to the actual OS itself. It is rely on the user being dumb. The only virus that has been successful was Stuxnet, which took security experts years to decipher its inner workings.

Unlike MacOSX which still ships on Mac with the firewall turned off.

I really wish these myths from the past (which was true until Windows XP SP2) that you keep clinging onto are laid to rest.

And if you even quote the number of malware for Windows, it is because it is the most popular desktop OS, not because it is insecure ... Android has had similar problems (and Nokia smart phones early 2000s ... bluetooth viruses).

The same security precautions on Windows can be said about any OS.

This isn't 2001 anymore.

Edited 2012-11-28 21:20 UTC

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