Microsoft is keen to stir up enthusiasm for Windows Vista, but when it comes to the 64-bit edition of the recently released operating system, the software giant is sending decidedly mixed messages. Vista is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, with the latter targeted at owners of recent computers with 64-bit processors. However, customers who purchase the retail version of Vista Home Basic, Home Premium or Business don’t have the option of buying the 64-bit version directly. It also seems Microsoft will toughen its anti-piracy policies.
“We [will] really ferret through how far we can dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer satisfaction,”
Translation: “We will make things a living hell for admins and ligitimate users in the name of piracy as far as we can possibly go without pushing them onto other platforms.”
Which reminds me of this:
“Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
I had to re-activate(sic) a machine recently, and for the first time got the question.
“Do you have this XP installed on more than one machine?”
…and I had 3 days to re-activate!?
I was a little surprised at this, as I had made no changes to my machine.
Microsoft is already toughening their anti-user policies *now* its a ongoing process with XP.
Vista is not selling in the same quantities as XP even though there is now twice as many computers in the world.
From a firm with 70,000 employees; 5 years of development; half a billion launch budget. Vista is a flop.
…and we will be all using it in couple of years.
A flop? Hardly.
Personal computer sales for the week following Vista’s debut to succeed Microsoft’s Windows XP in January were 67 percent higher than those in the same week in 2006, and nearly triple those of the preceeding week, according to Current Analysis Inc.
I hardly call that a flop.
Tell me why you even care at all, much less why you care so much as to pull stuff out of your rear?
“A flop? Hardly.
Personal computer sales for the week following Vista’s debut to succeed Microsoft’s Windows XP in January were 67 percent higher than those in the same week in 2006, and nearly triple those of the preceeding week, according to Current Analysis Inc.
I hardly call that a flop.
Tell me why you even care at all, much less why you care so much as to pull stuff out of your rear?”
This is bad spin. Ballmer did better spin “Its the pirates!” allows Microsoft to justify its serious DRM, WGA methods, and gives another reason to increase these measures in place. He’s saying the install rate is greater, but people are stealing as opposed to buying.
Your point is nonsense, did people wait to get Vista on their new machine, as opposed to XP…absolutely. Would you wait a week to the Vista with your PC…absolutely, becuase it costs so much and *everyone* knows that if you use Microsoft this *is* the future.
How many people are buying boxed sets of Vista, less than they did for XP; yet they *should* be 100% higher.
The reality is *How do you measure the success of Microsoft when its a monopoly*. There is only one; those who *choose* to upgrade.
Edited 2007-02-20 14:14
You call my point nonsense, yet yours is so overwhelmingly beyond thought and reason I don’t see how you can call what I said anything.
The only people who “choose” to upgrade are those who’ve got the extra money to blow and also know what they are doing.
And again I say, why do you even care?
Personal computer sales for the week following Vista’s debut to succeed Microsoft’s Windows XP in January were 67 percent higher than those in the same week in 2006, and nearly triple those of the preceeding week, according to Current Analysis Inc.
How do you know this increase has anything to do with Vista. For all we know that could be a result of better economy. It could be a result of postponed purchases. After all, if you were going to buy a new computer at the end of the last year, you would probably want to wait to avoid getting one that gets instantly obsolete even faster than usual. It could be the result of old machines still in stock dumped at lower price.
Even Steve Ballmer claims that Vista sells less than expected see:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129105/article.html
“How do you know this increase has anything to do with Vista.”
I’m sure you’ve heard of ockham’s razor.
Also, postponed purchases had nothing to do with anything…all the vendors have been offering “Vista Certified” machines + free Vista upgrade coupons for months now.
Old machine dumping could almost be plausible, but I’d like to see historical data that backs that up.
I ordered Ultimate OEM 64bit from a retailer in Germany and am happy to say I got what I ordered.
I recently built a 64bit system and have been running Linux on it without issue. As I’m an avid gamer, I was running XP 32bit. I decided it was time to actually pay for a Windows release for a change and go Win64 at the same time, hence Vista.
The anti-piracy systems in XP are easily sercumvented for the experienced user so I never considered them an issue. It’s just I felt that if I’m gonna use a product, I might as well pay for it instead of acting like some romantic idealist/criminal. I have no idea how hard it would be to do the same with Vista but I suspect it would be just as easy.
I do believe that MS is going to step over the line if they squeeze too hard. I know of many people, usually your Joe/Jane Sixpack kind, that are very unhappy with the unspoken assumption that they are criminals until they prove otherwise.
Another gripe is the carat and stick approach of being able to download other software “free” if you have passed the genuine MS software test. The people who have voiced (to put it litely) reservations of this find the idea of bribery extremely offensive.
The amount of times I have been asked by privacy concerned individuals if it is possible to crack these system is staggering. I always have one answer for them. Yes, they can be cracked but Linuxs/BSD are a better alternative.
[Edit: Typo]
Edited 2007-02-20 11:13
After all, who uses 64 bit today?
* Power users?
They will get their versions from MSDN/MSDN-AA, or use Ultimate, anyway.
* Companies?
They can download Vista anyway.
* Newbies with > 4 GB RAM?
These are the only ones left out for now. There’s still too few of them.
How much more litter would an additional DVD create? Thanks, Microsoft, for saving the environment
Well put, I never thought of it that way 🙂
I think you could probably squeeze both versions onto a DVD9 (DL 8.5 GB) but the rest of your post is so true.
People who want to take advantage of their 64bit processors!?
Take advantage of your CPU, you say? There’s almost no speed gain, and you run into compatibility issues. Not to mention that several games won’t work.
Right now the disadvantages seem to exceed the advantages unless you have more than 3/4 GB of RAM. Actually, as I see it, being able to utilize beyond 3/4 GB of physical RAM is the main benefit of using a 64 bit version of Windows.
(Edit: Typo)
Edited 2007-02-20 11:40
“Take advantage of your CPU, you say? There’s almost no speed gain, and you run into compatibility issues. Not to mention that several games won’t work.”
Those are reasons not to use Vista *at all*.
“Those are reasons not to use Vista *at all*.”
Not before SP1 / kernel 6.1, at least. VERY true.
Off-topic
=========
Why should SP1 solve *anything*. All a service pack is is a large group of fixes(sic), packages together.
Microsoft have said that SP1 will be out in 8 Months due to this lie.
The reality is Vista is ready for the user somewhere between now—->never, and Microsoft is not the only player Nvidia, AMD, Creative, Apple and a whole host of smaller companies are not ready for Vista, and a lot of products will simply never have good support under Vista or at all.
Thats ignoring the fact that improved(sic) DRM; Trusted computing; WGA etc etc will all be part and parcel of whats included in SP1.
“Why should SP1 solve *anything*. All a service pack is is a large group of fixes(sic), packages together.”
Not entirely true. A service pack could be *anything*. Look at XP SP2. Look at what it solved.
Look at XP SP2. Look at what it solved.
And look at what new problems it created.
The changed tcp/ip driver with a limit in the half-open connections, causing problems for Peer to Peer Software, and some other problems it caused.
Okay, they did an improvement in the WiFi support, but still, a newer service pack is not for sure a better result.
I’ve noticed tremendous speed gains with Vista 64 (though I havn’t tried 32bit perhaps the speed gains is vista itself over xp) but I’ve yet to find software that will actually work. Oh my hardware is just fine but the software is non-existant particularly multimedia ones which 64bit is supposed to be the biggest help for. Divx conversion? No vista yet for that. Games?- won’t even run (don’t really care about that anymore though as I use my xbox for gaming more now).
But Linux on the other hand not only has all those multimedia programs available in 64bit (and YES there’s a tremendous gain using them over 32 bit windows equivalents) but it also can run the complete 32 bit library so that I can run any 32bit software I need. Now why Vista didn’t include a complete 32bit library so programs truely can run in “compatibility” mode is beyond me.
But Linux on the other hand not only has all those multimedia programs available in 64bit (and YES there’s a tremendous gain using them over 32 bit windows equivalents) but it also can run the complete 32 bit library so that I can run any 32bit software I need. Now why Vista didn’t include a complete 32bit library so programs truely can run in “compatibility” mode is beyond me.
This is already built-in. It’s called Windows on Windows64 (WoW64). Most 32-bit software should run without issue on 64-bit versions of Windows — the exception being 32-bit drivers or software that is dependant on 32-bit drivers. Most games, codecs, etc., are not dependant, and compatibility issues are likely either related to how the app was developed (naive checks in the installer or app code for instance), or, in the case of games/video codecs, GPU driver support could also play a role.
The default versions of some apps included with Vista x64 are 32-bit (e.g., Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer) for compatibility with existing plugins and applications. 64-bit versions of these applications are also included of course.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath for Vista SP1. I have a feeling that, in order to foster more Vista sales, MS is going rush to market some duct-tape and bubble gum hodge-podge of “fixes” and call it a “Service Pack” simply for the sake of getting one out. They know corporate IT departments are scoffing at the idea of upgrading/supporting this pig, and MS know’s the main deal breaker for adoption is the release of the inevitable service pack.
I wouldn’t expect anything to be fixed or improved from SP1. The real one will be SP2, or later.
“After all, who uses 64 bit today?”
Linuxers 🙂 There’s no problem with software availability as well as there’s no hardware/diver problems.
… /+1.
Been doing it since, err, mid-life FC2?
However, to be honest:
A. I don’t use flash. (so I don’t really care about the lack of a 64bit flash plugin)
B. I -do- run 32bit software. (E.g. VMWare server fronted, computer games).
– Gilboa
Edited 2007-02-20 15:33
Yes, Microsoft might earn a lot of money by making sure that nobody uses pirate copies of their software.
The problem is that many people in the countries mentioned can’t afford to use Microsoft, so they will have to use something else, if they can’t use pirate copies. Most likely F/OSS software.
This will encourage the creation of local markets, that if they produce free software, may turn out to be not all that local, and in the long run lowering the price of software world wide, and that will hurt Microsoft in the long run.
To make it worse, making it hard for pirates, usually means making it hard for legitimate customers as well, and it usually comes with an increased cost for support. In the 1980’s it was quite common with copy protected software, but that strategy was abandoned by most software companies as the cost of support and annoyance among their customers became too big. My guess is the Microsoft will have similar problems.
“The problem is that many people in the countries mentioned can’t afford to use Microsoft, so they will have to use something else, if they can’t use pirate copies. Most likely F/OSS software.”
I actually see this development here in Germany. People don’t want to buy any software, and cracking protections is too complicated (for them). Furthermore, they don’t want to call MICROS~1 for activation if they changed something on their PC and furthermore want to use the same OS on more than one PC (usually impossible with OEM software).
So they’re beginning to ask: “Is there something else?”
In your post, you’re refering to “people” (who can’t affort MICROS~1 software). In my opinion, it’s usually the case for home users, but they get their “Windows” bundled with their PC. For corporate customers, it’s no problem in most cases, they can afford. And they “need” it.
But there’s still enough pirated software out there that will still run for a while, such as “Windows 98 SE” or “Office 2000 Professional”. It’s still in use by so many people who didn’t mind using pirated copies. And they’ll continue.
“This will encourage the creation of local markets, that if they produce free software, may turn out to be not all that local, and in the long run lowering the price of software world wide, and that will hurt Microsoft in the long run.”
We’ll see.
“To make it worse, making it hard for pirates, usually means making it hard for legitimate customers as well, and it usually comes with an increased cost for support.”
This tendency is increasing, right. Actually, changes require re-activation. Maybe in the next few years there will the enforcement to continously re-activate software (e. g. once a month) or to stay connected via Internet in order to make the software work.
“In the 1980’s it was quite common with copy protected software, but that strategy was abandoned by most software companies as the cost of support and annoyance among their customers became too big.”
A good handbook / manual was the best copy protection. 🙂
Printed materials? Documentation? Who uses these ancient stuff today?! 🙂
I already know that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxDd9iDcZWY
the company took heat from both users and analysts.
It appears that Ballmer doesn’t agree, for he hinted that Vista’s antipiracy features might be tightened even more.
Not that I am an advocate for piracy, but this is just crazy. The stuff they are doing is already bugging their paying customer base.
I think MS has lost its focus, they are not customer driven anymore. They are revenue driven.
Microsoft have always been revenue driven. This is the same of all businesses. The problem is that Microsoft has $100B in the bank and still they wake up each morning and work out new ways to squeeze more cash out of people.
Microsoft should spin off a non-profit subsidary whose goal is to innovate in computing. I’m certain that such a thing would be able to create far superior products, much like the non-profit Mozilla Foundation making a superior browser to IE.
Microsoft have always been revenue driven. This is the same of all businesses.
I should have called it customer focused, if a company stays customer focused then the drive for revenue just happens naturally.
The problem is that Microsoft has $100B in the bank and still they wake up each morning and work out new ways to squeeze more cash out of people.
Agreed. Its a sign of the beginning of the end for these guys. When your primary focus becomes squeezing money out of every possible user then its only a matter of time before the freefall starts.
“The problem is that Microsoft has $100B in the bank…Its a sign of the beginning of the end for these guys.”
I never thought I’d see anyone work the words “100b in the bank” and “beginning of the end” into the same sentence. Even worse is that some people actually believe this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft.
Hardly.
“beginning of the end
Probably would be more appropriate to say something like ‘the begining of the end of Microsoft as we know it’. Even a relatively small loss of market share would have significant impact on MS. Continuing as they are will most certainly hurt the company, and shareholders will eventually demand better.
One way Microsoft can bump up Windows sales is to tighten the screws on pirates, Ballmer said. “Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we’ll make some piracy improvements this year.”
You know the market that you’re in is in trouble when you’re not growing your market through coming up with new ideas, but treating large sections of your existing customer base (that incidentally keeps your monopoly in place) as rip-off merchants.
Edited 2007-02-20 14:27
If you pirate Windows, are you a Windows customer?
If you pirate Windows because you simply don’t want to buy it, you are no Windows customer.
If you pirate Windows because you don’t want to spend $$$, and would go Linux if you couldn’t pirate Windows, then you are a Windows cutomer.
Ballmer: I don’t want them to steal our software, but if they have to get software for free, I want them to steal ours.
…it will be a little longer, as a matter of fact. 😀
We [will] really ferret through how far we can dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer satisfaction.
Translation: “Give us an inch; we’ll take a mile.”
I can see not making 64-bit highly available from both a practical standpoint and a cynical one (which, with Microsoft, is often the same thing): Compatibility still isn’t good, and it won’t be until more industry inertia goes into it (namely, most off-the-shelf PCs running in full 64-bit mode, rather than just the few and the adventurous). As for the cynical aspect, look at it this way… 64-bit is going to become standard before too long. In the mean time, Microsoft is selling you a 32-bit operating system for hundreds of dollars that they’ve already “promised” to replace in fewer than five years. Place your bets now on how much more you’ll need their next replacement than you need this one. How do you measure the success of a monopoly? By their effectiveness with jerking the customer around.
Edit: Fix a typo, plus: I started typing right before the line about the “minimal” fee to order the CD, and forgot I hadn’t finished reading before I submitted. If this offer still stands in a couple years when people really start to need their 64-bit edition, I’ll be impressed, but the article doesn’t even say if you’re allowed to get the 64-bit version if you’ve activated the 32-bit one. Anyone know the deal there?
Edited 2007-02-20 16:02
“I’ll be impressed, but the article doesn’t even say if you’re allowed to get the 64-bit version if you’ve activated the 32-bit one. Anyone know the deal there? ”
Yes, you can upgrade from 32bit to 64bit at no charge.
Q: What’s the difference between 64-bit Vista and 32-bit Vista?
A: 32
Sorry!
well actually, seeing as we’re talking about powers…
geometric difference = 4,294,967,296
arithmetic difference = 1,844,674,406,941,458,4320
:p
Edited 2007-02-20 19:58
if you’d have read the whole post n4cer you’d have seen examples of where SOFTWARE not hardware (which all works flawlessly as I have the proper drivers for) are refusing to work with vista 64.
I read the whole post. You gave examples of categories, not specific products. This conveys little about the possible issues affecting compatibility, which could range from UAC preventing some files from installing, to the architecture of the software itself, to drivers, which have caused some applications to crash depending on the version you have installed.
Give specific product names/versions and I may have a better idea of the exact issues affecting compatibility, and check your event log for any anomolies.
Its not hard to get. I can buy the 64-bit version at a few Online stores here in Sweden.