Submitted by Microsoft rarely gives out sales numbers, but Vista is another story. Due to bad press, the company apparently wants to remind everyone that Vista is still selling well. The software giant recently announced that it would be putting resources into launching a marketing campaign that will fight back against Apple’s ads and incorrect Vista assumptions and will instead tell the “real Vista story.”
So, there are all these licenses sold. Wonder how many of them will actually be used.
At last count…12.
Yeah – the better question (and answer) would be how many of these are actually installed as WinXP. I bet its a large chunk. Also claiming “licenses sold” doesn’t really tell the story of retail vs OEM. However, I guess you have to give that one to MS since that is the only way they can really sell OSs nowadays. Gone are the long lines at the stores to voluntarily buy Windows at the retail channel (a la Win95).
Four months ago I bought a new PC. It came with Vista Ultimate. I tried to like it, I really did, but it was giving me too many problems. It would crash.
YES fanbois, I said CRASH.
It would crash when I was playing games like Project Torque and BF2, using Temaspeak2 and Xfire.
So, after trying and trying and submitting error report after error report, I moved back to XP.
I can now happily game away, but, Microsoft gets 2 things from me, a Vista sale in cash terms and a Vista sale in marketing terms.
I am no longer using Vista, and spoke to Microsoft on the phone about getting a refund, they said no, bastards.
I am soon to be an ex Microsoft user and my friend plays all the same games as me on Ubuntu. When he comes over and installs mine, I will stick two fingers straight up to Microsoft.
let me guess… you had an nvidia graphics card
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit…
Now, im no Vista lover myself, but blame where blame is due
I think Microsoft ought to spend money MAKING Vista good!
Put the thing through some optimization. Make it smaller, faster and less buggy.
Increase compatibility with older apps. Even if it just means making a compatibility box that runs older apps in a seperate space like Apple’s PPC Box.
And give users the option to go back to the XP Interface FOR EVERYTHING. I can’t stand all the changes in Vista’s Explorer. I don’t know where anything is. My old habits don’t work right. It’s a “stop flow” for me.
It’s NOT an improvement if it makes me stop and have to figure out how to do something I’ve done fine for the past 8 years with Win2k/XP.
It would be like GM changing the layout of dashboard of a car every so often. Getting rid of the Steering wheel and pedals for something “better”. And changing the readouts on the dashboard to something “better”. So that all the training and skills I’ve accumulated over 25 years of driving have to be thrown out and relearned.
I didn’t want a whole new OS with Vista. I wanted XP made smaller, faster, and less buggy.
Which is why I stick with XP.
I own 4 licenses to Vista, and only using one.
So cut that 180 million by at least half, probably more.
The last 2 computers I bought that came with Vista, I wiped and reloaded with XP.
Get a clue Microsoft. Make software for us, not for you.
Quoting part of the Ars Technica post:
“Microsoft is, however, counting sales and not users; some customers have decided to downgrade from Vista back to XP (they can upgrade to Vista as they please) but these are still counted in the sales numbers.”
So they’ve sold 180 million Vista licenses, many of them I’m sure have been with new computer purchases in the 18 months that Vista has been preinstalled on these PCs. I don’t see anything that impressive about it. They’re just riding on the coattails of the PC manufacturers that they’ve required to preinstall Vista on their PCs. The majority of these sales aren’t active purchases of the operating system by consumers. And as factotum218 mentioned, the numbers don’t consider the fact that there are users who downgrade their systems to Windows XP anyway.
Sure, it’s good for Microsoft and its shareholders, but beyond the numbers there really isn’t anything of substance here. “Number of sales of Vista” to consumers doesn’t equal the “total mindshare of Vista” of consumers.
Reminds of what someone said on Arstechnica over the fact that the majority of Windows sales are through OEM channels where as MacOS X users tend to be more willing to upgrade their operating system through purchasing it through the retail channels.
I can understand that to a certain degree, knowing that the hardware will work out of the box (due to the small amount of devices needing to be supported) makes compatibility a lot easier, however, even with that being said, most families have at least 1 person who has some intermediate level of computer knowledge so that one could always call on that person to upgrade the operating system.
The better benchmark for success or failure would be the sales through the retail channels. That would be a better indicator of how much confidence individuals have in Windows Vista. Atleast with the retail channels they can truly trumpet that these people have chosen a Windows Vista.
Side issue though, it reminds me of an article over the number of hoops a person had to go through to get a computer with Windows XP preloaded. If people are choosing Windows XP over Windows Vista – maybe Microsoft should face reality instead of smoke screening it behind a vainer of marketing and hype. The only solution as far as I see is to get some heads rolling at Microsoft – and appoint management who know where they want to take the company rather than simply reacting to the circumstances around them.
Well, I just built a new PC as an entertainment unit and yes, I went with Windows Vista. 100 bucks was a bit much (I think 50 bucks is fair with the price of pcs dropping… and i think a lot more people would actually buy it).
It’s my first Vista computer and so far so good. Maybe its because I’ve lowered my expectations and I’ve come to expect to be annoyed by the infamous cancel/allows and what not. Nonetheless, it’s fast, stable as a rock, and I haven’t ran into any problems. I love the windows media center though. Perfect for an entertainment system.
My experience matches yours. Vista has been rock solid and performs at least as well as XP did on my system. I have to admit that I got caught up in the Vista is horrible bandwagon. It’s not bad. True, it is not a stellar advancement over XP considering all the hype and delays, but it’s not that bad.
Five of them are mine — but none are used. We have had bad luck with laptops in our home in the past twelve months, so we had to replace most of them, and there’s another replacement coming up.
All our new laptops came with Vista; the last one also with an official upgrade to XP. But the only laptop that did run Vista occasionally, instead of OpenSUSE, was mine, and a recent upgrade killed it — somehow microsoft managed to kill winload.exe during an upgrade.
Still… 179.999.995 copies of Vista left 🙂
…and a 180 million really disappointed, pissed off people. Enough said.
I am not happy with my install, I am not disappointed either, if the worse comes to the worse, I can always remove it and install XP.
Some people get wound up to easily, it is only an operating system after all !
they’re just disappointed they didn’t know how to pirate it like everyone else.
Hi all,
I going to explain my little experience of this three last weeks with my new Laptop Vostro 1510 Vista Home Premium preinstalled.
After two night of disasters, nightmares, old applications that didn’t want to work, new applicacions (Visual Studio 2008) that even didn’t want to create the project, and influenced beacuase the readings here and other sites, was time to format and install XP. All again like the silk except I can’t use 4Gb RAM I have.
But, anyway, I was bored of seeing the same on the screen I’ve been seen for three or four years, and let me tell you, Vista has more sex appeal. I then parted the drive and installed again Vista by my self. Dual boot, dual crashing. Every few minutes, data corruption on Vista partition and chkdsk needed. “Not good. There must be something wrong”. Back again to only XP with an image and then parted again the drive but not allowed the application to tell the filesystem type of new partition.
Installation again, let the Vista format his partition and then, now, everything works fine. Perhaps is a bit slower than XP, perhaps not old applicacions will run, but hey we have just it suffered with XP. Didn’t you remember ?
So, be carefull. May be the installation that others have done on your new computer isn’t the best. I’ve found that Vista installation is a bit tricky. We may recognize it: Vista have had a very bad press.
I do wait for the old days when computers were selled without OS, better said, not preinstalled.
Strange … A partition was not created/formatted by Vista and it starts crashing?
Sounds to me like they changed the NTFS Filesystem or it’s usage a little, obviusly without bothering to tell anybody about it.
Question: does it also crash when interacting with a WinXP – created partition? Im mean not installed on one, but only reading/writing to/from one.
Hi Gustl,
Partition that got problems was created from XP using Acronis, and telling that it was NTFS. I simply removed this new partition and everything works fine.
I read something about “some blocks at the begining” at MS support website that can move chunks indexation. Sorry, no more technical knowdledge from my part.
—
Regarding again bad press on Vista. Where is the DRM ? I’ve used e-mule and .torrents and nothing has limited me listening/watching the donwloaded content.
I gonna stop making publicity on Vista. Microsoft doesn’t give me enought money, but I have really learnt is theat someone has used “free information channels” to spread non-true-information, and the worst is that some free-soft users has used teorical free-channels to spread their words, even less than 50% has tried the new operating system.
It’s a really pitty. My trust in free speech on internet has fall down several steps since the beginning of this year. My conclusion: on operating systems, don’t follow masses, try yourself. That would be another solution for future realases of OSes, returning to the concept of shareware. Let the people try !
Vista is by far the best OS Microsoft has come out with. I use 64bit Ultimate and usually stick to a non-root account for my daily tasks. Hasn’t given me any problems so far. I also use MacOSX, Windows Server 2008, and Linux on other machines and I prefer the newest Microsoft OS’s due to their stability, excellent program selection and ease of use.
Thanks for that laugh man, you made my day !
This is the best shill post I have read in a long time. You could have made it better though, let me help.
Vista is so good it makes you toast in the morning.
Microsoft’s latest operating systems are so secure and stable, they have been running for a million years without a reboot.
Vista is so fast, I did not even see it move !
Microsoft’s latest operating systems beat all others in a fight, even if the others have knives.
Vista will wipe your ass when you are done !
If you are going to shill, please try a little harder to mask it
You know, it’s a shame people feel the need to mod you down because you’ve taken the time to share your experience with it. I don’t agree with you, but I certainly won’t mod you down either.
Yeah, my experience with Vista has been pretty similar after not using a MS OS for over 9 years on my own desktop. Not as stellar as the introduction of dinosaur 3.0, they just caught up the visuals, usability and security to a more sane level with the rest of the industry than previous years.
A few tips.
Avira or AVG do a better job than Symantec and Mcafee.
Vista Firewall control.
Make sure UAC is on.
If you haven’t used Windows for 9 years, that would mean that your previous Windows experience would have been 95 or 98, or the corresponding NTs. While I’m not a fan of Windows, I’m not posting to bag it, and I’ll try and keep this post devoid of fanboy-bitterness. XP was a massive improvement over previous versions, and a step in the right direction in terms of stability and ease of use. Vista is another step in the right direction, in terms of security, though some old concepts deeply embedded in the OS cripple it; such as the tight integration of IE making any IE security holes a problem for the whole system. The new user permissions are probably borrowed from various *nix, or they could just be a flash of sanity, but it’s just some fancy trimmings on the same old problems. Not real permissions management. If I remember rightly (but it’s a vague memory, so apologies if I’m wrong), Vista’s UAC has a built in “Jedi mind-trick”. A bypass command that programs can issue to it telling it not to ask the user, and just allow. That there just renders Vista susceptible to the same problems as XP, after a small modification to an old virus. Again, I may be wrong, but I think I remember reading about it months ago.
Standard disclaimer: I am not a professional technology reviewer or analyst (read “person with an opinion and a WordPress blog”). Comments are to be taken with a liberal helping of salt, if you’re stupid enough to take them internally…
Yes, the last Windows I used primarily on my own desktop was win 95. I’ve used Linux, NetBSD, and Solaris since that time. I mentioned 3.0 since it was a more revolutionary introduction amid a much smaller playing field.
Regarding the “bypass command”, here is what the ireboot team did in Unix terms. They did nothing more than make a setuid root shell script, runnable as any user, that modifies a standing cron entry which fiddles the boot entry (if cron had an @shutdown similar to @reboot). You still have to install their program {pkg,port,deb,rpm} as root.
IE, there is no bypass since you have to allow, through UAC, their program to install to set these things up. The term, “give enough rope” applies in all OS worlds.
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/ireboot-and-working-around-uac-limita…
Osnews linkage: http://osnews.com/story/19686/Coding_Around_UAC_s_Logon_Limitations…
Notice how they mention the installer of their program.
“The resulting application has an installer – which requires admin privileges, of course – which installs and launches the background service.”
So, they are actually creating a more secure program by coding within, not around UAC vs an older Windows system with no UAC and full rights to certain accounts.
Edited 2008-07-22 09:59 UTC
Well, I come from a 10 year Linux/BSD/Solaris background and those are what I use on my desktop.
I use WinXp at work, but its pretty much outlook and securecrt to login to aix/solaris servers. That is my Xp experience.
I decided to give microsoft a shot after all these years of really not using it much and I haven’t had any problems with vista that stand out and make me shout. Runs fine, looks nice. You can stop the UAC stuff so the argument people use all the time reminds me of people complaining about no mp3 in Fedora, even though you can get it.
Anyway, longtime linux user that has no problem with vista.
I think we have just entered into Generation Whiners, everyone pisses and moans about everything.
I am a long time Linux/IRIX/HPUX user, and had to use the funny IRIX desktop (not too good, but manageable), the CDE (also not too good, but manageable), I really like KDE, Gnome a little less, but it is a good desktop.
Whereas the Microsoft desktop is the plague! Why? Simple – no multiple virtual desktops.
I have to use XP at work, and I would like to have desktop 1 for email, calendar, and this stuff, and then for every project I work on one single virtual desktop numbering from 2 to 5.
I don’t know for how long the UNIXes and Linux have had this feature, but Windows seems to avoid it, what I personally do not understand. If some people don’t like more than one desktop, they just set them to “1”.
Haha… Windows have had this feature for as long as I can remember. It is part of the Microsoft PowerToys.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx
Let google be your friend and just type “multiple desktops windows”
Agreed – I have not had any of the issues that seem to be creeping up here and there by the users so far.
Our company utilizes Solaris, AIX/AS400, and 2003/2008 servers. We have in place for workstations Mac OS X (Marketing\Media), Linux Workstations (Novell), and Vista Business both 32/64 Editions since as you may guess we are working with Office 2003/2007 on the Vista boxes (yes we do use OpenOffice.org). So far we are quite impressed by the stability of the system and we have had no crashes, blue/blackscreen. The systems were rolled via the image deployment in Vista – we see that works as well.
Now the system may be far from perfect – No OS and I mean none are perfect upon any release.
I plan on running Vista at home in the near future but, I have Sabayon Linux on one system, and a MacBook Pro (I may boot camp this for Vista Ultimate 64). So far we are not highly impressed with Vista but, we are impressed none the less.
Have had three computers so far with vista installed, haven’t had any problems at all with it. One of the laptops (800$ hp pavilion dv9800) had a crappy onboard video card, and there was a slight sluggishness on some of the effects, so I flipped it to Aero basic, and haven’t really experienced any other issues with it. My wifes laptop only had a gig of ram, and right after the boot up it was pretty brutal, but that went away after we stuck another gig in it. On my desktop, Vista is far smoother and performant then xp ever was.
At work we all use Vista business. There are some odd problems we have to work through when it comes to infrastructure and UAC (try creating event log items as a non admin on Vista/2k8, not fun) but other then that the machines run well. We have switched to 2k8 on our servers, so all our backend dev VMs got a boost in memory requirements, which noticeably slowes stuff down, but it is just in time for a new round of dev rig upgrades anyways, so I don’t see that being an issue for much longer.
Vista is FAR from my favorite OS, but especially post SP1, I don’t really hear many complaints about it, (other then places like this which are predominantly filled with linux users), and I am surrounded by people who is it every day.
wth ?
2gb of ram to make it not brutal ?
I know ram is cheap, but that is taking the piss. There must have been something else slowing down the system, like the hard drive controller, or even just a slow drive, but I have found a machine that runs sweet on 768mb
Her machine is really not that great, so it was a combination of things that added up to the disk thrashing for a good 5 minutes after boot up. Since ram is so cheap, that was the direction I went to make it more bearable. It is basically an MS word container/XVid player/Netbook, so we didn’t want to spend the money for a new machine.
well, it depends what you do with it, if you’re doing more than just powering the thing up, then 1gb will really not survive.
For graphics and programming work, XP won’t really cope with only 768Mb ram, let alone Vista.
While Ubuntu Hardy will do all that well with only 512MB.
So? XP runs great on 64mb.
I’m not sure about 512Mb but I know that it fails on 256mb.
Whats That There said…
Yes, there was something else slowing down the system; I believe its called Vista!
–bornagainpenguin
I suspect the reaction against Vista has a lot to do with the publicity for it backfiring badly. No ones likes monopolies in the first place.
On top of that folks were asked to swallow a lot of footstomping, cheerleading and sheer triumphalism, without Microsoft realizing that their users had become distinctly tired over the years of that kind of carry-on. After that, the press had a field day, pointing out Vista’s hefty hardware requirements and the degree to which Microsoft had caved in to the Hollywood DRM crowd.
Finally it was wallet-gouging time. But on shelling out users found Vista employed “confusion marketing” with the many different versions designed to maximize revenues at the expense of making life that much less pleasant for the purchaser.
So not a good start. If Microsoft dropped all publicity and advertising for Vista for a year and agreed never to mention it in interviews, they’d probably find it does OK and even that user ratings of it improve.
Instead, imho, they are compounding their initial error by releasing gung-ho stats like the ones in this article. No one really believes them. They assume, probably correctly, that “licences” does not mean silver disks and actual running installations.
I used Vista64 Home edition. It’s OK. It’s proved stable and reliable so far. But it’s nothing special and nothing one could grow to lurv or respect. It feels like a collection of rather clunky parts that never makes a coherent whole. If Microsoft want that, the answer is simple: design and build a better OS.
whatever they want because it can’t be verified, it’s packaged with every new computer and more important, it’s still crap in a box. Let vista where it belong : in your trashcan.
And from those 180 million, I would suspect the vast majority to be happy users.
I for one am one.
The Aero theme is refreshingly good. better than most out there, but it is so simple – simple glass effect.
Graphically, Vista is highly polished, much more so that XP.
The UAC are annoying for all of two days – the time sit takes to get the PC set up right.
I gotta say, I did turn off indexing. not easy to do, but the constant disk spinning up was annoying.
Vista also sounds good too. First OS that had system sounds and beeps that were not Jarring. (Fedora 9 seems to have also improved much in this sense from its previous incarnation – I would assume (but am not 100% sure as it has not been documented anywhere) that it is probably a Gnome thing which all distro’s benefited from.)
You speak of how happy you are with your Vista installation and then proceed to talk about all the aesthetic features that are pleasing. Hon, you can have every single visual whiz-bang effect present in Vista in XP. I can show you an XP box I put together for a disgruntled Vista using friend of mine that is nearly indistinguishable from the “real deal”…save for it’s twice as fast, compatible with everything, and never annoys the user with UAC prompts.
Happy Vista user here too, owner of two licenses (one for myself, one for a laptop I gave to my parents). I haven’t any problems with the operating system, other than the more philosophical ones that I’ve detailed in editorials here on OSNews.
For day-to-day use, I’m really quite satisfied.
Edited 2008-07-21 17:36 UTC
Microsoft’s press releases are as accurate as the Soviet Union’s Pravda newspaper was about the USA.
Apple’s press releases are as accurate as the American media is about the world.
So which one of these agencies now employ Saddam Husseins information minister?
I always loved his quote, “There are no American soldiers in Bagdad”, just as a US convoy drove past him and 2 choppers flew overhead.
Who gives a rat’s ass. MS sold the licenses. That’s billions of dollars in their pocket. Whining about it isn’t going to change a thing.
I strongly concur, and I think you’re missing the point. I am decrying the people who take their press releases without a grain of salt.
The “real Vista sorry” oops story.
You can’t buy a notebook from Dell without getting Vista preinstalled on it. Personally, I think that some of them are a bit under-equipped (eg. 1GB of RAM), but Vista is indeed shipping on all their machines. And, seriously, anybody who thinks that the *average user* is downgrading to XP is whacked. People use whatever OS comes on their machine. They don’t reinstall another OS. Maybe the corporate types who want to pave a 1000 notebooks — or the geeks on OSNews. But that’s not who we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the average person. As much as it’s going to pain some of you to admit it, Vista will be the dominant desktop OS within 3-4 years. It’s just a matter of time.
Au contraire:
http://linux.dell.com/desktops.shtml
http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_7.04
Those Dell models don’t have Vista pre-installed.
Because they don’t have Vista pre-installed, they will run far faster than the near-identical Dell machines with Vista. If you want to run the odd old Windows binary program, use Wine 1.0+ on one of these machines for better backwards compatibility and snappier performance than Vista.
In other news, 100% of all Apple computers come preloaded with MacOS X, thus proving its popularity with end users!
Windows Vista has the market share because it is pre-installed; to state that the end user has choice is ridiculous. I’ve seen customers go into retail shops only be told, “sorry, all the laptops come with Windows Vista only”. These people haven’t sucked down the kool aid of ‘vista sucks’ – they have applications they need to use but aren’t compatible with Windows Vista.
This isn’t a bash of Windows Vista, but at the same time, when you provide no way of having 100% compatibility through the use of virtualisation, peoples confidence drops. Windows Vista should have removed all the bad/unsafe calls (available off their website; originally created when Windows XP SP2 was released), locked the system down, and removed the work arounds for poorly written applications (their virtualisation of the registry for applications who think that it is running in administrator privileges).
Ship a Windows XP image which is loaded onto the machine during installation, and allow end users to use that as a compatibility crutch until applications are updated. For me, the problem I have with Windows Vista isn’t hardware or software compatibility – it is the compromises made resulting in what appears to be a half baked compromise of an operating system with little focus or willingness to break with the past and forge a new path for the future.
It reminds me of the attempt to try and ‘evolve’ the MacOS 9 architecture and add features rather than avoiding the inevitable reality that it is a rickety piece of junk. The same ‘reality check’ will occur by Microsoft with Windows Vista, the question isn’t if but when it will happen. Too bad there are out of touch management at Microsoft who don’t seem to be willing to put down a long term plan and move Microsoft towards it – need I say, they need an authoritarian approach, a software Czar who says, “this is the future – move towards it”.
[qWindows Vista has the market share because it is pre-installed; to state that the end user has choice is ridiculous. [/q]
There’s always a choice. Mac OSX runs on the same Intel hardware.
is that you get a Windows XP x64 licence for a fraction of the price !
I was camping this weekend and I had my laptop with me. We had some speakers set up where we could play stuff with an iPod. I brought my iPod and transfer cable. Someone wanted to listen to a CD, so I needed to rip the music and put it on my iPod. Since I had no internet and I had yet to install K3B I didn’t know of a way of ripping a CD under Linux, so I booted into Vista (which is a very, very rare occasion). It was real simple to rip the music. Opened up Windows Media Player selected all the tracks and hit rip. I however, couldn’t navigate my way to the folder that it was ripped to… I got permission denied. Yet, for some reason I could navigate my way there using a console. Weird. I had another filesystem problem before with vista hiding files that didn’t appear in the console, or in explorer but they were there.
Anyway, I only had Vista installed because that is what came with the computer. In Linux if I need to use a Windows program and wine doesn’t work (like wanting to watch netflix online which uses activex and internet explorer), I use VirtualBox and XP. But now after all of these bad experiences I’m about to install XP instead of Vista.
I’ve been using Vista for about 3 months now (I wanted a Tablet PC, and waited for Vista SP1 to get one), and have had no problems at all. I would never downgrade to XP, and it’s painful to use XP after using Vista.
To those of you claiming that the sales have no relation to how many copies are actually in use, what about the thrice-cited recent web usage stats from http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=11 ? You guys had no problems citing these stats when talking of Mac’s share increaing 30% from 12 months ago, Linux finally nearing 1% usage share, and/or Windows dipping to 90% share, so you also have to accept that these same stats show that Vista’s usage is more than twice that of all Mac usage and 20 times that of all Linux usage, after being on the market for just ~18 months.
Yes, I know some of you are desperate to believe that nobody is using Vista, that everyone downgrades to XP or whatever, but that’s called “denial”.
Edited 2008-07-21 20:46 UTC
Anyone can use that link to push any argument, but fact is no one knows how and where they collected the data (no one but paying customers, apparently).
For what it’s worth we could as well use the W3C stats.
Well, we know that most people will recieve Vista when they get a new computer. What is important from a long-term perspective is
1. what the people who know about computers think about upgrading to vista. and
2. what Joe public’s experience is with Vista AFTER it has been installed.
Her point is that people tend to take what they like and ignore what they don’t like from a given set of data. If, based on this data, you believe that Mac market share has grown 30% and Linux has grown to 1% in the past year, then you have to admit that Vista has likewise increased its share, as well. Ergo, you can’t have it both ways.
Well not now anyway, had some issues when I first got my laptop (Thinkpad T60) but after a bios update and some driver updates from Lenovo I have to say I’m pretty damn satisfied with Vista Ultimate.
Its stable, fast and seems to work just dandy on my machine.
Vista FTW!! Seriously though I use XP home that came with my pos 6 year old computer. Am i missing anything?
They’d sell MILLIONS of copies of DOS if it’d ship with every new computer.
Sales, in this case, don’t say a thing about the quality of the OS.
I have been using Vista X86 and X64 for Media center and Gaming respectively. Since SP1 there have been some improvements. But then again I needed a really beefy machine to get the speed without tweaking it.
That said I am still installing Ubuntu on people who need to browse the net and email. They don’t need the bloat. My mom has been nothing but happy with her machine running Ubuntu. The only question I get is “will <X device> work?” My answer is plug it in and find out. Usually followed by a thanks it works!! My mom is 5000 miles away, so this is a major issues to assist even with remote software.
Vista missed the boat because they were too busy beefing the system. Bloated software does not make it better. Features extreme at the expense of performance, does not make a better OS.
Simple easy to use software is all people want and need. Get with the program MS or GTHO.
I am not an OS fanboi by nature. I use what works best and is cheaper for me and my customers. If people want an uber shiny system, then an Apple is a good deal. If they want something that just works and gets them on the net, Linux (Ubuntu specifically) If someone wants to do Gaming or a Media Center (2 great things and the only ones worth it for Vista IMO) Then I go with Vista (if they are looking at HD/Bluray disc playback otherwise I use Mythbuntu)
Sales numbers are nice if you like numbers. They may work in the enterprise, but word of mouth shows that Vista is not a good performer and needs alot of work to get users on board. Trim the bloat.
Apple and Linux are going to eventually take up the marketshare if MS does not do well with Windows 7 (which apparently is just a Vista refresh?)
…why the need for ads?
I don’t think its OK that MS is trying to pass that idea that Vista is OK and that we have to shut up and not criticize this horrible job.
A lot of customers are asking me everyday to downgrade their vistas to XP; and unfortunately I cannot help them especially if they have laptops, because hardware OEM manufacturers are tortured by MS to not post WXP drivers; which I still can get from a paid drivers site but It’s a dangerous job for me, as the drivers are not guarantted to work without any problems or worse they are not updated frequently so if there is a bug in the driver you customer has to shut up or revert him back to vista. Its like asking him to choose between spending his holiday in Iraq or in Afghanistan.
I can say I have downgraded successfully up to 60% of systems I have received and sold up to 40% new laptops with XP (mainly Lenovo Thinkpads). So MS these numbers are not accurate.
Recently I got frequently BSOD on 3 different Vista machines, all they have the same error message; and only happening when accessing a mounted network share on Windows XP computer. by using windows server 2003 or any windows xp the error is not there and no crash whatsoever.
BSOD event is really really really horrible, especially if you Multitask: Quickbooks, 15 tabs on Firefox, surveillance software, word document, outlook, burning DVD on the background and finally backing up customers’ computers on the network. I fear mostly the corruption that could happen from semi full task execution like semi backed up data semi burned disks and other things too.
I have tried windows server 2008 and have seen how slow it is to windows server 2003. Of course WS08 is alot faster than vista but you cannot compare apples to oranges. Why MS didn’t mention the number of licenses sold for Windows server 2008?! and compare it to windows server 2003
At least server products are not forced down the throat of customers like the client version of windows.
If IT feels that the server product doesn’t worth or bad then he/she would never use it at all.
So, MS keep dreaming of the self imagined success of vista.
Overall, I think XP is still better overall especially if you game a lot (Vista won’t even run a couple of my older games…). It just needs:
– A less sucky file manager (dunno what Vista’s is like)
– Updated Software
– A better look (Then again, I’m using WindowBlinds and despite the fact it sometimes does not redraw correctly it’s just as cool as I’d want it to be).
3D Effects and Applets/Widgets/Gadgets/Plasmoids aren’t as useful yet as they could be… most of them are over-the-top, although a couple are pretty handy.
As in every new happens, Linux and OSX defenders of the crown appear.
I also did an installation of Ubuntu before returning to Vista. I must admit I use a Debian box as backup server on work, but, tried a demo(scene) on Ubuntu Linux, not worked, tried other, not worked, tried a new one (from this year) and worked only the first time, next, some video memory was corrupted, tried other: X-Window gone away, reboot, X-Window non-configured. Uff ! So secure system ..
I leave my thoughts to you.
How these numbers represents MS policy with “licensing programes”? “Microsoft Open Value” pack – 5 licenses with right to use “pack” with only one computer. It cuts 180 million figure significantly: 180 million “licenses sold” is only 36 million licensing packs
Of which, about 50 would be people who actually bought the license themselves.
OK here’s some rough calculations:
16.14% of internet users are Vista
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=11
1.4 billion internet users
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Assuming the usage rate is consistent around the world…
1.4 billion * 16.14% = 226 million Vista internet users
The actually user base would be significantly less (180 million) than the above number only if for some reason, Vista users surf the internet WAY MORE than all other OS’s to skew the percentage up to 16.14%. It’s probably more likely that that some Vista users don’t use the internet much because it’s for work mostly. Hence there is likely more than 226 million Vista users.
Hitslink logs statistics in the “rich” (and more regulated) nations. Here Vista adoption is probably held back a little by expense. So that could mean that Vista adoption in other “poorer” (Gov’t don’t give a crap) nations is much greater than 16.14% since you can like buy it at the local fruit shop for like $1, etc.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-pi…
Hey, if you include ALL of Asia? 500 million Vista users???
Edited 2008-07-26 10:55 UTC