Is Windows Vista in Trouble?

Ken Erfourth writes "The Inquirer.net is running a story about what they consider two powerful indications that Vista is failing in the marketplace. One, Dell has reintroduced PCs running Windows XP on its website due to customer demand. Two, Microsoft is conducting a worldwide firesale on a bundle of Microsoft Office 2007/WindowsXP Starter Edition. According to Inquirer.net, at least, these are signs of serious problems selling Vista. Are we seeing the stumbling of the Microsoft Juggernaught with the slow adoption of Windows Vista?"

You got it wrong

My friends, this is but another clever marketing strategy for M$ to sell more copies of Windows XP!

Re:You got it wrong

Like the New Coca Cola thing was to sell more Classic Coca Cola?

Re:You got it wrong

Actually, New Coke was put on the market as a distraction so they could switch the Coke Classic recipe from sugar to corn syrup. Go to a mexican grocery and get some Coke (they're not allowed to use corn syrup in Mexico). It's different.

Re:You got it wrong

While you are certainly right about how coke from Mexico has sugar, I think you may be wrong about the corn syrup thing.

I've always read that it has more to do with the fact that (cane) sugar is substantially cheaper than corn syrup/beat sugar. As such, most places outside of the US use cane sugar. The reason the US uses corn syrup is because we have high tariffs on imported cane sugar - enough so that corn syrup/beat sugar is more economically viable in the states.

I am willing to be corrected, however.

Re:You got it wrong

High fructose corn syrup (and the ethanol boondoggle, for that matter) wouldn't exist without the corn subsidies encouraging farmers to grow corn syrup. The stiff restrictions on sugar imports have something to do with it too.

But Coca-Cola had already switched most of its bottlers to high fructose corn syrup before the formula changed. So...the conspiracy theory about sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup really doesn't make sense.

Re:You got it wrong

Canadian Coke is also corn syrup. The pop in central america isn't though, and its fucking fantastic!

Interesting tidbit: high-fructose corn syrup suppresses Leptin secretion, so you don't feel full even after consuming 1000 calories from it. Compare how full you feel after drinking 3 beers, vs. 3 cokes. This crap is probably responsible for a lot of the obesity on this continent.

Re:You got it wrong

well you know what they say about snopes [xkcd.com].

Re:You got it wrong

Bah, it's still not the real Coca-Cola until they put the cocaine back!

Re:You got it wrong

Don't let the fact that aspartame turns into formaldehyde in your veins hold you back.

Again, Snopes [snopes.com]

Re:You got it wrong

I thought New Coke was to get more people to buy Pepsi.

Re:You got it wrong

You aren't kidding, and when I read the title "Vista in Trouble?" I thought to myself HELL YEAH! I bought Windows XP x64 less than 2 months ago (OEM Edition) with the promise of a FREE VISTA UPGRADE!!! I got it off Newegg, which I've NEVER had problems with... Microsoft doesn't recognize my computer's serial number (no kidding shits, I built it!), and even though I got XP legitimately, MS STILL won't honor my FREE VISTA deal.

As far as I'm concerned, forget Vista, XP works fine and for what it DOESN'T do..I have virtualization.

Re:You got it wrong

Actually, I'm finding that XP works better than fine, it works great. It gives me a sense that there is some value to a mature operating system that's had bugs worked out and service packs and enough time for the rest of us to figure out how to make it do what we want.

Vista on the other hand, is nothing but trouble. No significant improvement in performance (at least not for my media production apps) and the nightmare of DRM. The juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

As I've said before, if Microsoft had released a bunch of incremental improvements to XP pro, and an updated UI, called it "XP 2007" or something, they'd have had a hit on their hands. But by fouling it up with a bunch of nonsense, then trying to put a gun to our heads with "DX10", they've made me mad enough to say "enough". There may be a day when I decide to use that license for Vista Home Premium that came with my latest computer, but it won't be until I can find instructions for disabling all the DRM and until all the various audio and video hardware and software have drivers or are patched to work with Vista. And not just work, but work better than they did under XP. Until then, I'll stay with XP Pro SP2.

Re:You got it wrong

Unless their contracts specifically required that an OEM be someone building a system *for resale*, it's their own fault. I may not be in the business of selling computers, but if I build my own I *am* an OEM.

Re:You got it wrong

I disagree. There is, at this time, no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. If your employees/IT staff are trained on XP, but not on Vista, you aren't going to be buying Vista machines. As a home user, what do you have to dislike about XP? 95, 98 and ME were all pretty crappy (relatively few people ran Windows 2000 on their home machine), so XP provided a significant improvement. People are generally resistant to change. Vista is change for the sake of change for most home users. Eventually, DX10 gaming will provide reason to upgrade. Linux isn't even on the radar for most home users, and that's largely thanks to XP not being horrible. If it had been a failure of an OS, Linux (and the Mac) would've gained significant traction as users became fed up with Microsoft's buggy software--but it wasn't a failure, and XP was actually pretty stable.

DirectX 10 is the only reason I bothered to get Vista. But it appears that games taking advantage of DX10 are at least a few months away, and games that *require* DX10 are likely not going to show up for a couple of years at least. So until DX10 becomes necessary for a mainstream game, I don't see much interest in a majority of home users for Vista.

Re:Now if only...

Dell would release PCs running XP without all the other crap it might be worth buying one. Maybe...

You do realize that all that nagware crap subsidizes the cost of the hardware, don't you? All that crap is exactly why Dells are worth buying. One wipe, which I'd be doing anyways, and it's all gone.

Re:Now if only...

The Crap isn't on the windows CD dell gives you... the only change between retail and dell ms cd is drivers and a dell logo for support link

So you would wipe it with the cd dell gives you...

Why Upgrade at all?

With XP, there was a compelling reason for a lot of people to upgrade. For the Win2K users, it got you the gaming APIs and other things formerly only good in the Win98 branch. For the Win98 branch users, it was a huge upgrade in stability and robustness.

With Vista, there is no compelling useful feature for users, and much of the content added is particularly ANTI-user. So why upgrade?

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

XP doesn't fully support the latest Vista technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policeware [wikipedia.org]

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

Odd.... I've been gaming on win2k since oh... 2001. Only recently have companies started locking us out, even though with a registry mod they work fine.

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

but, but, under specs it says Vista is

"Most secure Windows® ever"

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

"Most secure Windows® ever"

Isn't that kind of like being the prettiest checkout clerk at Wal-Mart?

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

It is wierd how they don't stop pushing the propaganda even once you've already begun the install. Every install of Windows is like sitting through a Powerpoint presentation telling you how great Windows is. Like they are still trying to convince you... as if it wasn't something you'd notice otherwise. Brainwashing?

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

It's not just XP being good enough, but also most people's existing hardware being good enough. Used to be that hardware manufacturers would make extra money when people wanted to upgrade to hungry software, and Microsoft makes extra money when people upgraded computers for some other reason, but now when both are good enough, nobody feels the need to upgrade until it's actually broken.

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

Actually XP didn't introduce gaming APIs - Windows 2000 can run all the games XP can, except for those which specifically check for Windows version. XP's innovations over Windows 2K were proper Hyperthreading support and Cleartype.

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

When Windows XP was released, I distinctly remember the same 'theres nothing compelling to upgrade to XP for' pieces doing the rounds on Slashdot and other tech op-ed sites - people were predicting Microsofts failure, that XP wouldnt sell at all because it demanded huge hardware requirements, that XP had a Fisher Price interface that would scare buyers away and it would only really sell through forced OEM installations.

Im quietly confident that in 5 years time, when Vistas replacement is released, it will all happen again.

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

I don't remember Microsoft gouing back and start licensing 98 again after they released XP and discontinued 98.

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

When Windows XP was released, I distinctly remember the same 'theres nothing compelling to upgrade to XP for' pieces doing the rounds on Slashdot and other tech op-ed sites - people were predicting Microsofts failure, that XP wouldnt sell at all because it demanded huge hardware requirements, that XP had a Fisher Price interface that would scare buyers away and it would only really sell through forced OEM installations.

Yes, you heard that. It's what people who had Windows 2000 said, and a heck of a lot of them stayed with Win2k. There really wasn't any compelling reason to move to XP.

But there were a LOT of people running Windows 98/ME. For them, Windows XP was a huge, meaningful upgrade. They all went with WinXP, either as an upgrade, or as part of a new hardware purchase.

With Windows Vista, there doesn't seem to be any substantial group for whom a compelling reason to upgrade exists.

None the less, maybe you're right; in five years we'll all be running Vista SE, Service Pack 3, Trademark, All rights reserved. It'll be the only platform to access Windows Live, so it's gotta sell!

Re:Why Upgrade at all?

"When Windows XP was released, I distinctly remember the same 'theres nothing compelling to upgrade to XP for"

There wasn't and there still isn't. Win2k forever.

It was trouble

when they slipped their release date by 3 years..

they're in even more trouble since they haven't said a word about their next version of windows..

Re:It was trouble

They weren't slipping their release date.
They were just waiting for hardware performance to catch up.

Re:It was trouble

Not only did they slip on the release date, but they dropped many features that would have made the OS actually new. What we have now is on OS that costs a lot of money for a bunch of features that are truly cosmetic in nature. There is absolutely nothing to get excited about with Vista.

I could see delaying release for 3 years becuase they wnated to perfect some brand new must-have feature, but the product that was delivered was simply anti-climatic to say the least.

Re:It was trouble

There is absolutely nothing to get excited about with Vista.

The 'wow' starts now! How can you not get excited about that??

Re:Wow

Wow, six years for this?!

Even more so...

That extra three years XP became more entrenched each day. Every time somebody installed a new printer or upgraded their wireless or beat their way through a software install, the compatibility bar for vista got higher. Every time someone new installed XP, the breakthrough point for widespread adoption of Vista got higher too. Each time XP gained share the leverage of having everyone on the same plan became more apparent as the pool of people you could exchange files with grew. Every time somebody bit their lip and bought a hugely expensive new program in the faint hope it would install and run correctly and be compatible with their extant setup and not be lame, the cost of upgrading to vista grew higher again. Even the negatives of some of these things forewarned people that change can be very bad and unnecessary change can be dumb when things go horribly wrong as they sometimes do over the simplest things.

XP isn't perfect and it doesn't have to be. XP works reliably enough for most people to do what they want to do most of the time. They've grown comfortable with their XP setups and invested heavily in padding their XP nests. To abandon that for a whole new Vista that doesn't have any of their expensive software or work with their expensive peripherals or just won't do what they've done each day for years or isn't quite interoperable with their friends' just isn't going to fly unless there is a compelling reason. A new desktop theme is not compelling enough for most people. For that level of sacrifice people want real change.

Get real

Are we seeing the stumbling of the Microsoft Juggernaught with the slow adoption of Windows Vista?

Are you perhaps reading just a little too much into these events in the interest of journalistic sensationalism? Is an article on Inquirer.net really worth referencing anywhere else on the internet?

I don't like Microsoft, and I gleefully read all about Vista's "innovations" and the Zune's "features" and laugh. But this article is just a little too opinionated to make worthwhile.

Preaching to the choir

Did the submitter know this is /.? Plenty of us here think the answer is yes, and have been thinking that for a loooong time. I'm more interested in anone here who thinks Vista will do well, and why. So step right up and change my mind, let me know why you think Vista will eventually dominate. And I need a better argument than "800-pound gorilla".

Re:Preaching to the choir

because it's better than XP.

I have 2 machines, a vista one and an XP one (plus an XP laptop). The Vista PC is newer, so i can't do an apples and apples comparison, but still, my impression is that Vista feels nicer, slicker, more responsive and faster than XP.
Like most versions of windows, it's hard to really put my finger on a single 'killer app' that makes Vista better, but as a user, the overalle xperience just feels more polished.
I *had* to get a vista machine, to do compatility tests for my games, but I certainly don't regret doing so. I'd be suprised if many end users who get an O/S with a new PC, who aren't uber geeks will go out of their way to ask for the earlier operating system, especially as any new machine will run vista fine.

I know lots of people have a beef with various aspects of Vista, but they don't bother me. I don't watch downloaded movies on my PC, I use it for gaming and surfing and developing, so the DRM that may be in it doesn't bother me personally.
Apart from anything, Vista is more likely to be safer, as XP will now be ignroed in terms of patching exploits.

Vista will win in the long term. it might be longer than the short-termists who write magazine articles are used to, but in 3-4 years from now, it will seem funny to have written off vista.
Microsoft aren't as strong as they used to be, Google has seen to that, and I doubt they would attempt to do an even more bloated expensive O/S after vista, but I also doubt there will be any long term problems in its takeup.

Re:Preaching to the choir

the DRM that may be in it doesn't bother me personally.

Don't worry, it will eventually - vista hasn't been out long enough for the restrictions to become obvious and troublesome.

As for vista "winning" in the long term, I do believe that vista will become the dominant home-user OS because of forced integration (no more OEM sales of XP and EOL date for XP) than for any other reason.

Here's the problem

The problem for MS this time around is that everyone was happy with XP. Ok, maybe not everybody was completely happy, but it's pretty stable, and does just about everything most people need it to do. People don't want to go back to having to run something that's buggy, or slows their system down. It's not like with windows 98, where we were still getting frequent BSODs. XP is a pretty good OS, and if people don't want to change, I don't blame them.

Re:Here's the problem

It's not restraint of trade. They simply don't offer the product for sale anymore. Why should a company not be allowed to discontinue a product? If a more satisfying product is offered by another company consumers will simply migrate.

Uhh...

"Why should a company not be allowed to discontinue a product?"

Uhhh...Because they are a monopoly that was convicted of using their monopoly position in an illegal manner. Given that people still want to buy XP, and that they can sell it at a considerable profit, one must then ask why they would not be willing to sell it to an eager public. The answer entail vendor lock in. This is a problem for a monopoly that has been convicted of anti-competitive behavior.

Re:Here's the problem

Agreed. And when we read articles here about MS stopping the OEM distribution of XP by the end of the year to force OEM Vista adoption, how does that *not* qualify as restraint of trade?

Well, there is no way in hell it qualifies as anything illegal on the part of microsoft. No one should ever be compelled to continue to sell a product they no longer wish to.

It does maybe finally raise the cause/issue of abandonware to the forefront.

Copyright is designed to protect authors from competition so that they have the exclusive right to profit from their creation. The idea is that it benefits society to give authors the ability to exclusively profit from their creations for a "reasonable" period of time, as an incentive to create interesting new works.

I'm all for preserving the rights of authors to profit from their work, should they choose to exercise that right. But if an author decides they are no longer interested in selling that work, I don't see any reason to prevent the work falling into the public domain. After all, if the author has 'abandoned' the work, why should the public be denied access to it?

The average author can't and doesn't abuse this. If they release a book, it sells well, and they decide to release another book, great. Presumably people will find the new book interesting and buy it. And In general, except where there are annoying legal/contract conflicts, as long as there is adequate demand for a copy protected book the market will ensure it gets reprinted and sold. Rarely do authors write a book, and then refuse to reprint it regardless of demand, so historically its not really a problem.

But Microsoft and software developers in general abuse that 'feature' of copyright. They release a program, and then down the road after it has been successful they release another one, while simultaneously dropping the first one. Now, normally, this works out ok, as people generally want the new version anyway... but sometimes they don't. They still want the old version. And the software companies refuse to sell it to create artificial demand for the new version.

What rationale is there for allowing this. If microsoft doesn't want to sell/support XP, that's fine. But then copyright should pass into the public domain. If Microsoft doesn't want to exercise their right to profit from the software, that's fine, but that's no reason to keep it out of the public's hands.

We as society GIVE Microsoft the exclusive right to profit from Windows XP to incent them to write Windows XP.

We didn't give them that right just to be denied access to XP when they felt it would be even more profitable to herd us into buying Vista when what we want is XP.

We GAVE them the right to profit from Windows. If they're response is to stop selling it despite high demand. Our response SHOULD BE to put Windows (and other abandoned titles) into the public domain. Of course, Microsoft, and any company for that matter faced with the prospect of having their IP seized and put into the public domain when they could still wring a profit out of it would of course respond by continuing to sell it until they could no longer wring any profit from it. And that is as it should be.

No, It's Not

There's this thing called a monopoly that prevents this trouble from occurring.

Windows users will buy new machines, and get Vista "real soon now." The number of users that switch will be nominal. No harm done to Microsoft.

As much as the media may want it to be, there is no competition in a market with a Monopoly.

Re:No, It's Not

As much as the media may want it to be, there is no competition in a market with a Monopoly.

Oh come on, I think there is. I can think of several off the top of my head; Snakes & Ladders, Hungry Hungry Hippoes, Cluedo, etc.

Re:No, It's Not - Did you read TFA??

When OEM's are providing customers an option to stay with XP, there no longer is an automatic 'Vista migration' anymore. The trick just went away. If Dell decides that they can't sell PC's with Vista but they can with XP, then Dell will continue to sell XP and customers will continue to get XP systems.

What's amazing is that the beta community has been loudly warning Microsoft for the imminent failure for more than a year. That's unprecedented as well. All Microsoft beta's are near-adorations of the company. Vista is the first where I saw open revolt against some of the stuff being pulled. And guess what, they did not listen.

The Market is Saturated - little room for growth

By now, the PC market is saturated and MS already has 90+ percent of it. Nearly everybody who needs or wants a PC already has one. This means that there will be little growth and the market is really based on replacement of older models with newer ones. MS already has a huge market share, so they can't grow by taking share away from the competition.

This does not mean MS or Vista are washed-up. It just means it is a mature market. MS and Vista are actually sitting pretty. They will continue to see 90+ percent of new computers running their stuff for the foreseeable future. But they simply won't have double-digit growth year over year, just a steady torrent of replacements.

Re:It's great, but...

Well because it has better secur...errr, I mean, the driver support is muc...well, ok, you may have me there.

Re:It's great, but...

What I want to know is why it requires super duper computing abilities even with the "Turbo Hyper-Fighting Championship Edition graphics mode". It's not doing anything that's not being done on OSX or Linux (Compiz, Beryl). So why does Vista require so much power when Linux and OSX can do it on half the hardware?

Why wouldn't it be?

Is Vista in trouble? Why wouldn't it be? Even if Microsoft gave the thing away for free, it totally ignores the fact that there's an enormous cost [auckland.ac.nz] to upgrading. Microsoft doesn't need a fire sale, it needs to be paying people to install this thing.

Let's run down the usual suspects of people who upgrade and see how they feel:

• Business users hate it. The hardware required to run it cost a lot of money when multiplied by tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees. Add to that the training costs, the support costs, the deployment costs, and so on ad nauseum, and the business decision easily becomes a no-brainer. And for what? Beefed up "security" that causes your user base to go nuts answering "Allow or deny" dialog boxes?
• Gamers hate it. It just plain doesn't run with the hardware that's out right now. I really think that Vista is trying to be the proverbial egg that comes before widespread manufacturer support (the proverbial chicken), but it's just not happening. Every gamer I know is avoiding Vista like the plague. As long as gamers aren't begging for Vista support in their high-end components, manufacturers are still going to continue to be reluctant.
• Speaking of manufacturers, it's obvious that they hate it, too. When I tried Vista for a week a while back (not the beta, the so-called real version after launch), two things didn't work. My Creative SoundBlaster Live! card and my nVidia video card. To be fair, the latter technically worked, but some of its higher-end functionality didn't. We're not talking about little no-name manufacturers here or bizarre equipment, we're talking about common cards from major manufacturers. Have you even seen the hoops that hardware manufacturers have to jump through to comply with Vista's outrageous requirements?
• The emerging home entertainment market hates it. Let's not mince words: One of Vista's primary design goals is Digital Rights "Management," keeping these people from doing what they want to do. Why would buy software that takes functionality away!!?

I could go on, but you get the point. Is Vista in trouble? You bet. Add to all of the above the competition that it faces from various Linux distributions that are easier than ever to install and use, products like Mac OS, clever new projects such as ReactOS [reactos.org], and even its own predecessor! and it becomes clear that Microsoft should be praying that people pirate it, because that's the only way it's going to make any kind of splash when all is said and done.

Don't get me wrong, it won't die completely, any more than Windows ME is dead. But in the annals of operating systems, my money is that it will be merely a blip on the screen. If Microsoft is smart, it should be working on adding features to its operating system, making it faster and more powerful and easier to use. It should be fighting with us against DRM, not against us by crippling their software with it.

Personally, I think that Microsoft is not very smart, but who knows, I guess we'll see. At any rate, after giving it a week to try to convince me that it's not as bad as everyone says it is, I was very disappointed in it and won't be running it anytime in the forseeable future.

Functionality taken away

Which functionality is taken away? IIRC, the only DRM in Vista is there to enable playback of DRM-enabled media. (I.e. HD-DVD/BluRay) It's not as if it infects all your AVI files with some vicious DRM scheme.

No, but average consumers don't know that. The "Cost of Vista [auckland.ac.nz]" article points out some fantastic ways in which functionality is effectively being taken away from consumers. Here's an excerpt close to the front of the article:

Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content. In other words if you've sunk a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content. Instead of hearing premium high-definition audio, you get treated to premium high-definition silence.

In other words, a consumer who has high-end audio setup thinking that they're going to be able to listen to the latest and greatest in A/V home theater technology will be sadly disappointed. The discs aren't broken, the hardware isn't broken, and no AVI files have been infected, but the end result is the same: Functionality that the user has paid for and reasonably expects to work doesn't. It's been taken away.

Re:Why wouldn't it be?

I find it hard to believe that many gamers actually want Vista instead of XP. Here are a few reasons why:

• Hardly any game companies support running their games under Vista.
• Gamers I know like to squeeze as much performance out of their machines as they can, and Vista's bells and whistles, the things that separate it from XP, are intensive resource hogs. If those fancy Aero graphics are consuming your GPU's cycles, guess what... Your game isn't.
• Hardware support, as you pointed out, is sketchy at best. Spending $1,000 on video cards that don't work is, well, not fun.

Are they crying loudly for Vista drivers? Sure, because some of them have made the mistake of getting Vista, most likely by buying a new PC that didn't give them the opportunity for getting XP, and most of them would rather spend the $200 retail for a new copy of XP on some system component. But, like I said, most gamers I know aren't crying to manufacturers; they're simply avoiding Vista like the plague.

Say, though, since you bring it up, and now that I've told you why the gamers I know are avoiding Vista, exactly why do you think that "most of them want to get vista"? What is it about Vista that's better than Windows XP?

OEM Licensing

Microsoft is in control. All they have to do is to discontinue XP OEM licensing, or substantially raise the price. You'll get Vista with your new PC and you'll like it. If you don't like it, See Figure One [things.org].

There's a VISTA PC on my desk

Nobody touches it, nobody cares. It just sits there, a Dual Processor Dual Core Hyperthreaded monster and nobody thinks its worth the time to even login.

Even I don-t touch it because the fan is noisy, all that eye candy and gloss and the noisy fan outweighs it.

I'm typing this on Feisty Fluffer, no Funky Feaster, no Finkle Fungerstein, oh whatever the latest Ubuntu is called. It's far from perfect, the keyboard layout doesn't know the Spanish keyboard I have (where are those damn brackets_ and why is the question mark an underscore__). The typefaces are not as good as Windows, the status bar is too high and the icons too amateur, but so far 2 people have asked me for a copy of the disk.

So yes Vista is in trouble, big big trouble. It-s a big yawn, it's late and the stories we hear of privileges being determined by filename etc. mean I just don-t want to waste time with it.

Re:There's a VISTA PC on my desk

I'm posting this from a Vista laptop.

Now, If I had my choice, it would be a MacOS or a Ubuntu laptop. But I specifically requested a Vista laptop so I could evaluate our software on it (it seems fine).

The thing is, other than some fairly trivial eye candy, there is nothing here that is a must have for users. The thing that was great about the Win2K upgrade from NT was that the horrible instability of NT4 was fixed. Vista at first blush is a lot like the Win 2K to XP upgrade -- basically eye candy as far as most users are concerned. But unlike XP, Vista comes with a pretty hefty sacrifice in RAM and CPU. So it feels like a bit of a downgrade.

Much of what we'd really like to know about Vista lies in the future. The great fault of NT4 was stability. The great fault of 2K and XP were security. If Vista, in the long term, proves more secure than XP, then it will be a worthwhile sacrifice of RAM and all will be forgiven. For now, savvy users are not counting on it in the short term. Vista was a horribly late project pushed out the door. It introduces many new technologies, none of which are particularly important to users, which add massive complexity to the product. Both these argue for a bumpy start.

Overall, I'm pleased with this Vista machine because it has enough RAM and power to run to OS adequately.

What do you mean

What do you mean, slow starter.

They've already sold 244 copies in China!

It'll be easy to tell on Thursday

Microsoft reports earnings on Thursday and I'm sure they'll provide some details on sales of Vista and Office 2007. From what I've read, sales of Vista seem to be good. Dell's decision to offer XP is a PR thing...they had a few customers who complained.

Re:It'll be easy to tell on Thursday

Dell's decision to offer XP is a PR thing...they had a few customers who complained.

And for each person who complained, how many did not, but just took their business elsewhere? Personally, I did both.

Dell is smart enough to know the relationship between complaints and lost sales. Hint: it's not a one-to-one relationship.

Even on sale, it's still overpriced

I saw what seemed like plenty of copies of Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade at my local closing CompUSA marked 30% off, which still made it about $181 + tax. Still too much considering the OEM copies can be had for less, and the real apparent benefits don't outweigh the bugs and incompatibility with my various hardware or software.

Seemed kind of fitting that the "failing OS" was one of the few remaining items on the shelf within a failing computer store.

Outrageous Pricing Maybe?

I thought about installing on a spare drive just to see what all the non-fuss was about but then I saw that it was going to cost $200+ and said "no thanks".

The problem is XP is an UPGRADE over Vista

If you are a gamer, XP is an upgrade from Vista. Helped one build a new system recently. Of course they they bought a copy of (32bit OEM) Vista. 3D performace (with a 512MB NVidia card running current drivers) was pitiful and the machine only saw 2GB of the 4GB installed. They are in an area with no broadband so PeoplePC being unable to get them connected via dialup was the final insult.

So they bought a copy of XP and reinstalled. 3D looked like what a top of the line card should be able to do and dialup worked. Performance in general was vastly improved. Still had the 2GB memory limit though, probably not much to there except go to a 64bit system and suffer the issues involved with that... not worth it.

Yes most of their problem was probably driver related. Doesn't matter, Vista is now facing the same problem we Linux users deal with every day. Users don't want to hear excuses, if the OS doesn't work with their hardware NOW they don't want to hear "maybe it will work someday". Especially since right now it doesn't appear a Vista user has any good options. NVidia doesn't perform well, ATI doesn't even have a DX10 hard out and Intel only has low end onboard stuff.

Three years late and they still couldn't manage to bully the key hardware players to have proper support available for launch. Doesn't sound like an 800lb gorilla to me. This fiacso is going to be long remembered.

XP will be gone at the end of the Year

Most vendors I talk to have said that they are being allowed to sell XP until the end of the year. Systems sold in 2008 will have to have Vista.
Part of the problem is that there was not enough support for Vista ( a lot of people ran into problems with drivers ).
Basically MS got some of the pressure off of them to put a new OS out. Early adopters get to be the guinea pigs while the rest of us wait for the major problems to be fixed.

Actually... no

Dunno where you pull that "info" out of, but I remember it quite differently.

When 95 came out, people were literally storming the stores. There were geeks camping outside like it's some sneak-rare-midnight-preview of Star Wars 7. There were people buying it that even didn't have a computer 'cause it was supposedly SO cool you had to have it.

98 was originally more a downer, even though it did add new features and fixed a lot of problems. And the "SE" of it surely showed that it was superior to its predecessor and soon became the clearly superior system to 95.

ME was a desaster. For many reasons. First of all, it was essentially Win98. Second, pretty much all the new gadgets that separated it from 98 were buggy, flawed or simply useless and nobody wanted them. Most had all 3 features. And finally, 2k was around the corner.

2k was a definite improvement, over both, WinNT4.0 and Win98. It was the merge of the simplicity and compatibility of 98 and the stability (you there, stop that snickering, will you?) of NT4. It certainly was a key cornerstone in the development of the Windows platform and was received as such. Geeks, gamers and businesses alike loved it.

XP already had to deal with a problem: What for? 2k was already the "perfect" system. It had everything you wanted to have. There was no really compelling reason to upgrade, and it would have been far from impossible for MS to add the features (like WiFi and other support) to the core of 2k if they would have wanted. Of course, they wanted to sell XP, so that was a no-go option.

And Vista now is suffering from the same problem. Why upgrade? We might see some reason in a few months or years, when some new fad or feature picks up that MS doesn't even dream of supporting in XP, so we'd have to switch to Vista to benefit from it, but so far, we're at the same point where we were with the introduction of XP: Why upgrade?

XP is "good enough". In some ways, it is even "better" than Vista. We will eventually see the reason why we'll have to get Vista instead when MS refuses to support some essential hardware, but the way you put it is simply and plainly wrong.

Microsoft sucess is its failure.

With Microsoft Goal a PC on every desk with Microsoft on it. Coming as close to reality as it is going to get. People are no longer excited by computers as they once were. Back in the 80s and early 90s PC were things for Geeks and Young People and Computers are the future but the presents is fine. So the younger generation started getting computers and such causing the growth in the PC market. Everything was new and exciting. Then the last big hooray was Windows 95 where all computers not just Macs were considered easy enough for everyone to use and with a timely popularity of the internet (in which MS jumped onto late) PCs became technology of NOW where everyone needs it, to function in our society fully. Now computers are way to common and the average person is not excited about the upgrade they have been threw the process and most people today have at least one upgrade under their belt, and that upgrade wasn't as exciting as they expected. So more and more people are not caring about a new flashier version of windows. Now the Geeks are hoarding and around Linux and Apple, so that is where the people who care are giving excitement too, back in 95 a lot of geeks were willing to wait until midnight to be the first for Windows 95 and now many of those people will hit refresh on their browser waiting for the next version of their favorite distribution or go to Apple Update Parties. As for Windows people don't care. Sure they use it but they are not excited on getting a new version just because it looks cooler. If they are going to put money into it it needs to be something much bigger. And the fact they learned that they could keep Windows 98 running for almost a decade afterwards and still run modern stuff. Makes them realize that XP will be around for a while to and no need to upgrade, heck they could probably skip a version if they felt like it.

Vista. XP. Who Cares?

Vista. XP. Who Cares? Does Microsoft really care? As long as you are buying their OS, they are doing fine. No, the threat to Microsoft is not people choosing XP over Vista. It's people choosing OSX. In my little part of the world (education/research institution) OSX has reached about 30-50% penetration in the laptop arena. At least judging by what people actually bring to meetings. That trend will spell real trouble for Microsoft if it continutes.

History repeats itself

Two words: MSDOS 4.0.

Those of you old enough to remember, and yet who can't even recall MSDOS 4.0, will immediately know what I mean.

For those of you who are too young, MSDOS 4.0 was a tremendous flop. MSDOS 3.3 was used pretty much continuously from its release in 1987 until it MSDOS 5.0 came out in 1991, and even then, I ran into machines running v.3.3 for years afterwards. Version 4.0 was buggy and bloated while adding virtually nothing in the way of useful features, and the market reacted with a resounding yawn.

Microsoft, it should be remembered, was the dominant OS vendor in 1987, but it was not a monopoly yet. There were still plausible alternatives (then as now, technically superior). Microsoft is the dominant OS vendor in 2007, but its monopoly is crumbling, and all it will take is one gigantic screwup for competitors to move in. Vista is a gigantic screwup, just like MSDOS 4.0.

This could be good news for Linux, great news for Apple, and freaking fantastic news for ODF, especially if MS takes as long to recover from Vista as they did from DOS 4.

If the geeks help the newbies, Vista will fail.

If you really want Vista to truly fail, then as a computer geek (and let's face it, if you read this on Slashdot then you *are* a geek), do your utmost to go and educate all the Joe Averages in the world.

No, don't try to convert them to Linux (unless they ask you to) but go help them when their computers fail. When you hear a friend or a relative suggest that they're going to buy a new PC because their old one is getting slow, go and help them out. Tell them it probably just needs a reinstall, maybe a bit more memory, a bigger hard disk... But *STOP* them buying new computers just for the sake of it.

And when you've helped them out, help them to install Firefox and Thunderbird, install OpenOffice for them and set it up.

People need to be educated properly about what it is to own a PC and what they need to do on a regular basis to keep it running relatively fast. We need to take control of our PCs - not buy every Microsoft upgrade, remove the Norton and McAfee Nagware crap that comes installed on every new PC.

That's the *PROPER* way to make Vista fail...

I said "Yes" before, but I'm changing my mind

The only reason why Microsoft is pushing Vista is so they can talk about their ROI for that particular (albeit very large) investment. However, with each computer that comes with Windows XP, Microsoft is still making money. Sure, the investors will be pissed if Vista isn't being taken up as quickly as they were told, but it's not like Microsoft is going in the red any time soon.

The only way Microsoft will be in serious trouble is if they start losing overall OEM sales to competition like Apple or the various Linux distributions. I suppose they would be in trouble if they don't expand any further either, but then again, that's why they're branching out of the desktop and servers and going into things like video games and digital cable boxes.

Overestimated the audience they tailored

MS is suffering for the market they created, consumers who are satified with mediocre, resistant to change and generally lazy.

MS for years has built a audience that was willing to accept good enough. With XP for many MS finally delivered "good enough", Its fairly stable, acceptably easy to use and has more features than the average user has any need for. Though there are some nice new features with Vista the important ones are not ones that are noticable to the novice. The only compelling selling point for Joe Average is the eye candy which was "good enough" in XP for most and is stripped out of the affordable versions of Vista anyway. The lack of bells and whistles on the low end versions of Vista coupled with mostly fud articles on backwards compatability plus the much publicized DRM issues scares off a large portion of their target audience. If home users arent upgrading you can bet that businesses are going to drag their heels as well. Sadly I dont see this as being something that will move people to Linux in the immediate future, it does buy Linux developers time to make more inroads towards usability, ease of install and buzz, all of which need improvement and can lead to increased market share.

No, it's not in trouble yet...

Even if Vista turns out to be a big turd, Windows is so entrenched with businesses, hardware manufacturers and game developers that there's just no possible way Vista doesn't achieve nearly the same market share as WinXP enjoys today by virtue of the fact that it will be the path of least resistance for 90+% of the population. They'll fix most of the compatibility problems by the time SP1 ships, manufacturers will have updated most of their drivers and most of the whining will die down to a dull roar.

I suspect that given today's other viable alternative desktop platforms (Apple, Linux within a few years, maybe even Google at some point), Microsoft will probably concede a few percent of its desktop market share over the next 5 years, but I wouldn't say they're in trouble... yet.

Sometimes things are just about finished

I think it is a sign of the times. Technology has developed at a neck breaking pace and now reached a level of maturity while of course a large user base now has grown up with Windows 95 and up. Like everyone else I feel that XP does a pretty good job. Doesn't crash, I know how to work it and doesn't leave me wishing for more.

I think Vista is a scary OS. I hear about DRM limitations but also so called "security" features that will break a lot of applications and generally make life for a software developer hell.

Just Like Microsoft Office, Windows is finished and pretty much complete. In fact I have an old PC for my son that runs nothing else but a Firefox browser and a flash plugin. He can do everything on that that he needs to do so we basically don't care for Vista, glass interfaces (bah you could cut yourself) and so on.

In the gaming arena the same trend is developing, suddenly people go out and buy a Nintendo WII instead of the much more advanced PS3 or XBox360. Why? Because the cheaper box does the job just fine. It is time Microsoft goes out and finds a new market to open up and they are miles behind Google.

Soon I be buying a new PC for one of my projects but I will not accept Vista on it.

Consistent with Microsoft philosophy

Windows 95 was damn near completely unusable before 95B; Winsock 2 and a raft of stability improvements made all the difference.

You need to remember that Gates' philosophy has always been, "Ship it now, fix it later." Microsoft throw something broken and unfinished out the door in order to initially plant a flag in the market, and then they worry about actual usability in service packs later. That's always been their MO.

Sure, Aero is completely redundant (like I said it would be) and won't be touched by anyone who cares about hardware efficiency. I'm guessing it will also continue to piss gamers off as well, since one thing Windows has never been good at is RAM flushing, and if Aero fills up your vram with textures, chances are it won't be entirely empty for when you then try and load a game, meaning performance problems.

Once they bring out a few service packs though, Vista will predictably become something which the average person will probably find acceptable. If Microsoft alienate gamers with it however, that will be another nail in the company's coffin.

Vista and XP activation is your first level of DRM

Microsoft actually weaned me off when they started requiring "activation." So even XP isn't attractive to me — it has the same basic problem as Vista does. I run XP from time to time to verify web pages and test software, but it's in a network-free sandbox when I do. I run win98 the same way - no network - and no activation inside a sandbox (Parallels.) I don't use either one as my main OS, and I certainly have no intention of ever purchasing Vista, just to buy into the same set of risks all over again.

What happens when an XP system needs re-installation and I can't get an activation for any reason? As far as I'm concerned, if I buy it, I expect to install it, perhaps put a registration code in that will work each and every time without ever having to contact the manufacturer, and that's it. I'll grant you that it seems unlikely today that Microsoft won't be there in a few years, but will they activate an XP installation? That's a policy decision, and there's just no telling what that policy will be. I'm not hitching my cart to their policy decisions.

Whatever Vista offers, it isn't enough. I have plenty of functionality between linux and OSX, and I can run both concurrently, as is convenient. If either one ever fails, I'll just grab my install CDs and I'll be up and running in a reasonable amount of time. The rule of thumb here is (a) software on CD or DVD, and (b) registration codes, if any, sealed in the jewel case in a readable fashion.

I remember trying to re-install a screen saver (some very pretty aquarium simulation) and finding out that it wouldn't install, claiming I was trying to install it on multiple machines (I wasn't.) I wrote the company several emails about it (they were still around) and they never replied, nor would the screen saver ever work again. I was annoyed, as you might expect. But if this had been the OS instead of just a $30 screen saver, I'd have been pissed at about the nuclear level. This is exactly the risk everyone faces with XP and Vista.

Re:Vista and XP activation is your first level of

You're missing the point. What if "Susan" says "no, you can't have a code?" You're shit outta luck, that's what!

Re:Vista and XP activation is your first level of

You call the 1-800 number on the popup window

Yes, that sounds good, doesn't it. It's difficult to think ahead years at a time. However, I've already been down the road. I've got win98 machines, no longer networked, that are doing various things. They work fine, no particular need to fuss with them. Microsoft stopped supporting them - meaning no security updates, no nothing - fairly recently. In 1998 that didn't seem like much of a threat. Today, it means they can't safely be on the Internet. There's no recourse other than upgrading them, but if they fail, reinstall requires no interaction with Microsoft.

Having gone from brand new win98 install to "no longer supported", I tend to think in terms of "what happens?" when the latest and greatest thing of today is discarded, as win98 was. It'll happen; you can count on it. As I said in the original post, since activation is required for a reinstall, and activation, even today, is based on Microsoft policy, you are tying yourself to the whim of whoever sets that policy a few years down the road.

Do you think in five years, when Vista's been out all that time, that they'll re-activate copies of XP? They might, but where is the certainty? And then when Vista is 10 years old and HooHaOS is the latest and greatest, will they reactivate Vista? You seem to think so, while I observe that the fact is I'd have to guess. In the end, I'm not willing to tie the continued functioning of my computers to a guess about Microsoft's future policies. To be frank, I don't trust them.

OSX will work for me as long as the computer does and I keep track of the install disks. Linux will work for me as long as the computer does and I have disks. Hell, I've still got a couple of machines running AmigaOS, and Commodore is long since nipples-north. XP and Vista will work as long as Microsoft lets it, and as long as they are around to let it. After that, one crash, and you're dead in the water -- you must migrate to something else, regardless of what compatibility problems and other inconveniences (like spending money) that may cause you. See the conceptual difference?

Activation is literally Digital Rights Management, where the concept is, you don't have ANY right to reinstall your software. That right belongs to Microsoft and is entirely subject to Microsoft policy, as well as their existence. My reaction to that is unprintable.

Keeping WIN98SE going, and going, and...

I have at least a dozen WIN98SE boxes all running (home & work, combined), and most are on the Internet regularly. We're using FireFox and Thunderbird. FF has the AdBlock and NoScript utilities installed. (Worth their weight in gold-pressed latinum!) Annual sweeps with AdAware & SpyBot S&D show nothing more than a few "tracking cookies" once in a while. (In the IE days, those sweeps removed *dozens* of adbots, etc, every *month*!)

98SE, behind a standard router, with FF, is "safe enough" to use online, constantly. For one thing, how many virus writers are still actively targetting 98SE? In the past year, I have seen several serious virus warnings, all of which concluded with these words: "Windows 9x is not affected by this attack." to which I just smile, smugly. ;)

98SE is a snap to reinstall if/when the thing blows up beyond repair. Unfortunately, the WindowsUpdate site is becoming very buggy! Many times, it thinks I'm using a Mac! What's with THAT? Reload, reload, reload, ah, there it goes! That's the typical pattern. I suspect that someone at MS has been tinkering with the site deliberately, to annoy the crap out of die-hards like myself who insist on keeping *fully functional* systems running as long as possible.

Vista? Yeah, that's the "New ME", alright. "Mistake Edition". They can keep it.

Re:Vista and XP activation is your first level of

Well, it is worthwhile to point out that Vista is the first Microsoft OS that people don't want. While w2k and XP were welcomed with apathy by new PC buyers, Vista actually is met with a rejection reaction. That becomes really interesting.

Re:Vista and XP activation is your first level of

I'm pretty sure microsoft will have to keep their XP activation servers open for a long time. If they turn them off in even a decade, they will be wide open for some very nasty, very easy lawsuits. The windows licenses don't have an expiration date, so MS would have to demonstrate the the customer had violated the terms before they could stop activations without breaching contracts left and right.

Microsoft's alternatives would include giving all remaining XP users a refund (not feasible, even for them) and setting up an automatic approval server or other mechanism that would allow XP to be activated without troubling them. Unfortunately, that would make piracy even more trivial, and XP will continue to be usable (if a bit insecure) for years to come.

Re:Vista and XP activation is your first level of

And kids, this is probably the best sign you would be so much happier with a freshly cracked Vista downloaded off the 'net... when available.
Ok, so it comes with a free botnet or other zombified software pre-installed, but at least it:
a) never requires an activation
b) is probably safer as the commercially available Vista
c) might even have *gasp* some levels (or ALL levels) of DRM disabled

Ok, ok, so I'm being saracastic... still... is it only me, or does Windows mainly survive BECAUSE of the pirates, and not vice-versa ?
I mean... hell... if everybody that had XP (or will have Vista in the future) would have to actually PAY for it... how many computers with Windows ** would be around on the net ? My guess is, significantly less.
Oh, and you can bet your ass that whoever has a pirated copy of Windows *WOULDN'T* have bought it anyway.

On second thought, maybe the FOSS community should support the fight against software piracy more actively :)

Re:ATTN: SWITCHEURS!

I was raised on Macs, when I was 2 I remember my dad had an Apple 512k [apple-history.com] when I was very, very little. Ah, the good old days of B&W.

Oooh, and then when they brought out the Apple IIx [apple-history.com]. The idea of having colors, that was exciting. I remember the first time my siblings and I booted that sucker up. We all went "WoW" at the pretty colors. It was amazing.

I'd keep going, but my brain would fry from nostalgia.

There were some Quadras in there, a Centris, a Performa, a straight up Powermac or two, and eventually some iMacs of various generations. I still have a mac, in fact there's never been a period of time since the 512k was handed down to me that I haven't been the proud owner of a Mac. There isn't a memory of mine that predates that 512k.

But wait...

What do Cmd-Shift 1 and 2 do?
What's Clarus?

Re:Vista is too much

Why? Why on earth? What do all these versions do and why do I need to do research into that before I can buy?

Yeah.

"Please God, don't make me use my brain! I'll do anything...anything but that!"