Windows Vista no longer matters

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Make no mistake: Microsoft has moved beyond Windows Vista, which will become all too apparent during this week's Professional Developer Conference. Windows 7 is the future, and in many ways it's the present, too. Contrary to ridiculous assertions recently made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows Vista is a flop. If businesses aren't buying Vista, after waiting six (now seven) years, it's no success. Yet, during the last day of the Gartner 2008 expo 10 days ago, Steve asserted that Vista "has been extremely successful."

A few days earlier, Steve boasted: "Vista is our best-selling product ever. So, if that takes too much getting over—we're not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been. We sold over 180 million copies in the first 18 months, quite successful." Really?

But who's buying this "best-selling" product ever? "We have 180 million users, mostly on the consumer market," Steve said in an Oct. 2 speech. Oh? According to Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald and David Smith, only about 10 percent of enterprises have adopted Windows Vista. That's not a high number, particularly in context of the approximately six years between Windows XP and Vista.

#1 +King Mustard on 27 Oct 2008 - 11:07

Sounds like Windows 7 will be make or break for some divisions of Microsoft's business.

(2 replies) #2 rdmiller on 27 Oct 2008 - 12:59

Are these the same companies that are still using Win98 and Win2000? I hope you weren't holding your breadth.

#2.1 Shiranui on 28 Oct 2008 - 00:29

rdmiller said,

I was with you right up until you said 'breadth'.

#2.2 ErikJDurwoodII on 29 Oct 2008 - 18:44

A typo? Or a carefully nuanced pun on statistic sample size?

(3 replies) #3 bits on 27 Oct 2008 - 13:23

This article reads like it was written by someone that didn't like Vista so started to invent sales stats. But then he really doesn't give any form of graph or comparable figures to give any cred to his story.

The article questions Microsoft for calling Vista a success but nowhere is an example given for how it is less successful than previous versions of Windows. I don't think there is even a start of a news story in the whole thing.

#3.1 Intelman on 27 Oct 2008 - 13:37

I agree, take this article down.

#3.2 Islander on 27 Oct 2008 - 13:49

/vote

People shouldn't write articles while being on drugs (there is no other explanation for such a text). Take it down, this has always been a serious new site.

#3.3 Deviate_X on 27 Oct 2008 - 15:05

Big businesses purchase volume licenses anyway, that means they automatically have bought vista, and if they choose not to install it on their 512mb p4's then that's good.

In the real world Vista is a commercial success, no doubt about it.

In blogsphere, its not suceessful.

(2 replies) #4 Pegus on 27 Oct 2008 - 13:26

Has Vista been on sale for 6 years??

#4.1 markjensen on 27 Oct 2008 - 13:46

I think that King Mustard, below, intended on replying to your post. He is essentially saying that businesses, organizations and individuals have been using Windows 2000 or XP for over 6 years now, waiting for an OS to upgrade to. Some have chosen to upgrade to Vista. Others are choosing to wait (either timing/budget reasons, hardware reasons, or they just don't like Vista because of an aversion to an OS that ends with a vowel or some such reason).

#4.2 +King Mustard on 27 Oct 2008 - 14:48

markjensen said,

Oops, my bad

#5 +King Mustard on 27 Oct 2008 - 13:40

XP was released on 25th October 2001.
Vista was released on 30th November 2006 (RTM), 8th November (Vol. Lic.) and 30th January 2007 (Retail).

#6 Shadrack on 27 Oct 2008 - 15:44

Most my comments on Windows Vista articles are FUD control. Despite some painful visual consistency flaws, I like the OS. And I can't help but role my eyes at people looking to buy a new computer and want to put Windows XP on it (except in a few special situations).

But this rings absolutely 100% true to me:

Contrary to ridiculous assertions recently made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows Vista is a flop. If businesses aren't buying Vista, after waiting six (now seven) years, it's no success. Yet, during the last day of the Gartner 2008 expo 10 days ago, Steve asserted that Vista "has been extremely successful."

Truth of the matter is that upgrading Windows across a business is very expensive in both licensing and labor. There aren't any crucial productivity enhancement features in Vista over what is available in/for XP that will make this high upgrade cost worthwhile. This wil probablyl be the case for Windows 7, too. By then, it will be hard to get a new computer with XP and businesses will upgrade for consistency reasons.

#7 GreyWolfSC on 27 Oct 2008 - 16:58

In other news, OS 9 and Tiger and the original Linux alpha builds no longer matter either. Operating systems become increasingly irrelevant as the producers release new ones.

#8 Blaxima on 27 Oct 2008 - 17:03

oh look it's daniel and more have his sensationalist insight into anything Microsoft. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

#9 SHoTTa35 on 27 Oct 2008 - 20:06

well they can roll out Win7 as soon as it's ready, no need to rush it but i'll be there ready and waiting. I'm always looking to the horizon for the next best thing.

#10 +xiphi on 27 Oct 2008 - 23:25

Joe Wilcox is major flip-flopper. He either likes Vista or he don't. It's quite obvious he just writes up this garbage to generate more hits.

#11 +xiphi on 27 Oct 2008 - 23:47

Everybody bitches about how long Vista takes to boot up or wake up from sleep. Last week, one of my longtime Windows buddies bought a MacBook. Yesterday we talked about startup times. He surprised me. He had already clocked startup times: 7 minutes on his Vista notebook and about a minute for the $1,299 MacBook.

7 minutes for Vista to startup? I'll repeat what Ed Bott said in this video. If your startup time is 7 minutes long, Vista isn't the issue. Vista also wakes up from sleep instantly on all machines I've seen.

#12 AnarKhy on 28 Oct 2008 - 01:09

Thank god they are moving on. As soon windows 7 come to stores vista will be remembered as the win98me, the thing that not worked as it should.

#13 Airlink on 28 Oct 2008 - 03:50

The sad part is, there's a large part of the population that now use Vista and us hardware techs will have to support the dam thing for decades to come.

#14 sweetsam on 28 Oct 2008 - 14:57

Can people stop using computers they buy from Dell or whatever vendors to judge performance of the OS ? There is a lot of garbage that gets installed on those machines. If you want to truly evaluate the performance of the OS wipe the hard drive clean and install vista and the apps you use and then check out the performance.

(1 reply) #15 Foub on 29 Oct 2008 - 09:18

How many of that so-called 180 million are still using Vista? I actually bought a separate copy and didn't get it included with a system like the majority would and I went back to XP after 6 months. To me if you aren't still using it after a short while then it is a failure.

#15.1 GreyWolfSC on 29 Oct 2008 - 23:37

All of them as far as you know... I haven't seen any data on a 180 million customer poll floating around.

(1 reply) #16 chaicka on 29 Oct 2008 - 15:41

Vista...move over and on...

The firm I work for has dropped Vista after much work on getting in-house apps, etc to work on Vista... It just didn't make it to production quality nor user acceptance. Not to mention, the cost involved to upgrade globally most systems to higher hardware specs (core would be memory) just to get it at usable performance for Vista. So, in short, what falls short for production quality after so much work been done and pilots been roll out means it falls short for me to use too.

Don't put all the focus on OEM loaded stuffs. Enterprise don't use no OEM loaded image, they use in-house custom images built from fresh installations.

#16.1 GreyWolfSC on 29 Oct 2008 - 23:34

That's pretty silly. They aren't going to work any better with future versions of Windows, and whatever version you're currently using will slowly continue to slip into obsolescence. And what are you using for computers? OLPCs? Memory is dirt cheap.

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