Submitted by Lots of Windows-related news today. Firstly, responding to customer demand, Dell has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them. Secondly, Microsoft software will sell for just USD 3 in some parts of the world in an attempt to double the number of global PC users (probably not at all unrelated to this interesting figure). Lastly, Vista may only be three months old in the retail marketplace, but Microsoft is already seeking participants in the beta testing program for the next version of Windows Media Center, codenamed Fiji. Update: Microsoft denied the sales figures in China to News.com.
…of how far away the “Wow!” campaign is from the real perception of the OS.
Yup, I guess there’s a lot of Ow out there…
Yes, 244 copies in China is pretty ‘wow’. Then when you start up the new OS, you look at the RAM usage and go ‘wow’, after looking at your receipt, and going ‘wow’. Vista sure makes you go ‘wow’, just maybe not the kind of wow Microsoft intended.
Why don’t you just point them to Leopard? Oh wait..
Oh wait what? Go on, finish that sentence.
Its delayed and the fact that 99% of those living in the third world won’t have the cash (or the justified reason) to hand over for the higher markup that Apple Mac’s have.
Leopard is delayed, what, three months? And Vista was delayed how long? Tiger is already as good as Vista so the delay hardly actually matters. Apple do not wish to enter the third world market, if they did, they would make an OS that wouldn’t suck, and didn’t cripple you to running no more than three programs at a time.
Actually, Windows Vista was delayed for 1 year when you take into account the new road map which was released Microsoft after the release of Windows XP which scrapped the idea of an upgrade in 2003/2004 and instead pushed the next release out to 2005/2006.
Lets also remember that the road map didn’t take into account the security issues that plagued Microsoft resulting in the development of SP2, security audit and the likes.
Oh. and btw, I didn’t bash the delay of Leopard; infact I am one of those who think it is being released too early and needs more testing and addressing long standing issues such as fixing the finder.
Who said I agreed with Microsofts approach for the third world? Me, I think the whole idea is bloody stupid. If it were *me* I would be selling a full blown version of Windows via OEM channels in these countries for $10 per unit. Get them using Windows now and once leach money in through other avenues.
It makes little sense for Apple to enter now in the market, however, once there is a sizable middle class, then it’ll be worth Apples while to do something in those regards.
I am switcher and do root for OS X when I get the chance (friends, family, etc.). I am anticipating that Leopard will be a great release of OS X, but if *were* to turn out to be as resource hungry as Vista evidently is, I’d switch again (to something else). It’s a great OS, but it’s just an OS.
…of how far away the “Wow!” campaign is from the real perception of the OS.
Did you bother to read the article? Dell is still selling Vista by default and says that demand for Vista dwarfs that of XP.
Do you bother to use your brain?
I never said XP outsells Vista or all people don’t want Vista.
It’s just most – but not even nearly all – of them don’t want to buy a dated version and therefore go with Vista. No one really gets stunned by it like in MS’s campaign.
Edited 2007-04-20 22:12
Do you bother to use your brain?
All the time.
It’s just most – but not even nearly all – of them don’t want to buy a dated version and therefore go with Vista.
Funny. How do you presume to speak for most?
No one really gets stunned by it like in MS’s campaign.
And how did you manage the leap of logic that “no one” really gets stunned? You’re quite the projectionist.
why was this modded down?
Do you bother to use your brain?
All the time.
It’s just most – but not even nearly all – of them don’t want to buy a dated version and therefore go with Vista.
Funny. How do you presume to speak for most?
No one really gets stunned by it like in MS’s campaign.
And how did you manage the leap of logic that “no one” really gets stunned? You’re quite the projectionist.
I modded you up to compensate it
Because the discussion you two are having off-topic and of personal nature. (Read: Full of personal insuts)
If it makes you feel any better, your friend got a -1 too.
– Gilboa
Its also funny that the poster whom you replied to completely ignored the fact that Dell’s marketshare has been dropping whilst the likes of HP and Acer have been poching customers off them.
As far as I see, looking at HP’s latest financials, everything is looking rosey; HP have a good PC/Laptop stratergy going (making the PC personal again – as corny as it may sound) and offering good discounts on their products. Acer is gaining in the asian markets as well as in America where they’re starting to make a presence.
For me, it seems that Dell reminds me of Sun Microsystems 4 years go; lashing around trying to grab a hold of something to bring them into growth. No real stratergy for short or long term profitability. Unlike Dell, Sun refocused on what made them unique, what issues that customers were facing which switched them off Sun offers, and addressed them – now they’re growing again.
We’ve seen it already – offer Linux on the desktop? that was tried before, and it failed, just like the Itanium workstations failed, but hey, second times a charm? Listening to the whining chorus of end users about Windows Vista – yeap, listening more like the squeaky wheel rather than the real problems that plague Dell and what is causing the real issues behind the marketshare decline.
When you have the competitors rocking along, maybe the issue isn’t Windows but the company itself. When I ring up, I get someone who knows no English. Secondly, I want to go into a store where by I can compare the offerings, and if something goes wrong, I can take it back to the store rather than having to deal with sending it back to some place in the middle of no where.
Fix your sales model, fix your service quality, fix your product quality, and spend a *little* time on actually making your machine a unique Dell experience rather than just pumping off clones – make the out of box experience with the bundled software, a pleasent experience rather than a torturous journey to hell and back.
I’m sitting here with a HP dv6209TX, and its great; its actually a pleasent experience using Windows Vista, everything works as it should, all the hardware works as it should; the software works as it should. It stable, reliable and no problems – why can’t Dell achieve the same thing?
Edited 2007-04-21 04:11
Dell can and does achieve the same thing. In my experiences with both numerous HP machines and Dell machines, quality and reliability has been about the same, with a gradual increase in both areas in the past few years, particularly in terms of the quality of Dell’s laptop offerings. How can you FUD about Dell and their service if you don’t even own one? And btw, have you called HP’s service yet? They have foreigners too, whoop-de-doo.
The many surveys put HP and Apple top the list, routinely swapping with each other for customer satisfaction, product quality, service quality and a list of other metrics.
Dell proved itself with the whole Sony saga; HP tested the Sony batteries, they weren’t up to standard, so they sourced their batteries from another supplier. Dell, did they test the batteries? of course not! that would require money spent on QA! something that Dell would *never* do in a million years.
Thats what seperates the boys from the men; or in this case, HP/Sun/IBM from Dell. Dell pump out poorly tested cheap rubbish with very limited support.
How do you whether I own Dell products? you’re rude enough to accuse me of lying? I actually own two Dell desktop systems and I can tell you that the time spent testing the software they bundled was very limited indeed. Running Solaris, its an acceptable machine, but for running Windows, its a nightmare (Windows XP SP2).
And again you make assumptions; I have talked to their service centre actually. I have nothing against the idea of having a call centre overseas; what I do have problems with is when they don’t understand English to a reasonable standard.
Infact, I’ve actually had greater problems with phoning American companies who have their call centres located in the US, and the people on the phone unable to understand a New Zealand accent!
How do you whether I own Dell products? you’re rude enough to accuse me of lying? I actually own two Dell desktop systems
My apologies, I did indeed wrongly make an assumption.
Dell proved itself with the whole Sony saga; HP tested the Sony batteries, they weren’t up to standard, so they sourced their batteries from another supplier. Dell, did they test the batteries? of course not! that would require money spent on QA! something that Dell would *never* do in a million years.
Oh come on, now. Apple, Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, Fujitsu, and Sony itself all had to recall their Sony batteries, as well; Dell just happened to be the first and most visible PC maker with the battery problem.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php/16066/Fujitsu-To-Recall-287000-Sony…
According to your logic, though, all of the above PC makers have horrible quality testing facilities; HP, on the other hand, was a knight in shining armor that was able to able to outdo all of them. Sorry, but that is just plain BS. If HP wasn’t affected by the battery issue, it is because they had some other reason to choose another battery supplier, but not because their quality testing is oh-so-superior.
I owned an HP ZE5000 laptop from 2002-2006, and throughout that time, while it wasn’t really unreliable, it also wasn’t exactly what I would call the most solid laptop ever. It was shipped to me with the built-in speakers not even connected(!), so I had to ship it back immediately to get that fixed. Within half a year, the left touchpad button no longer worked. The hard drive crapped out on me exactly one month after my 3-year extended warranty ran out, so I ended up having to replace it myself. Finally, last September the laptop itself decided to die on my for no apparent reason; an out-of-warranty repair would have set me back $400, which really wasn’t worth it since I could just get a used laptop off of eBay for that price (which I did). So much for quality assurance!
Look, maybe you’ve had bad experiences with Dell, so have I. But I really, really just can’t agree with the premise of your argument, that HP’s quality is somehow better, because in my experience it’s just not true. They both use low-cost parts that you would probably never dream of using if you were building a PC yourself. End of story.
Edited 2007-04-22 08:20
Can’t say I’m even remotely surprised at the Dell announcement. The number of people I know who’ve gotten PCs with Vista installed and then asked me to come over and put some variant of XP on them is huge. Lack of drivers and the fact that the system’s a resource hog isn’t helping its image with the average consumer.
The number of people I know who’ve gotten PCs with Vista installed and then asked me to come over and put some variant of XP on them is huge.
Huge? I call BS.
20-something (and that’s just my circle of friends). Mostly due to driver problems. I’m not saying that Vista can’t work well for some (I beta tested it and found it lacking, although it worked fine), but it supports relatively little hardware, and that’s giving people fits. Sure, you can’t blame that on Microsoft (and I’m not trying to), but it makes for a pretty poor OS choice at the moment. The other blow to Vista’s reputation among non-techie home users comes from the fact that many of the computers it’s now pre-installed on can’t run it well, and it comes off as slow compared to XP.
20-something (and that’s just my circle of friends). Mostly due to driver problems.
Wow (pun not indented)!
Are you saying you have twenty-some friends who are all misguided enough to go buy Windows Vista instantly, only to figure out later that their hardware doesn’t work properly and then asking you for help? Sounds to me like you should have warned your friends, especially if you’ve been a beta tester (and have that many friends!)…
Yeah, well I’ve been away in New Zealand for a while, got back in early February, and yeah…a lot of my friends had picked up Vista around the time it came out (yay for marketing, apparently). If they’d asked me beforehand, I’d have told ’em to keep XP or buy a Mac. The sad thing is that these are fairly intelligent people, but when confronted with computers their brains seem to shut down.
Edited 2007-04-21 15:25
“The number of people I know who’ve gotten PCs with Vista installed… Lack of drivers”
What PC maker is shipping a machine with Vista on it without the proper drivers? Not one that plans on staying in business much longer…
That doesn’t even remotely make any sense…I call BS as well.
The drivers for their pre-existing hardware, genius. Digital cameras, scanners and printers were the main culprits.
Excuse me, but how is that possible. Digital cameras either use PTP or USB Storage for accessing digital photo’s. If your camera doesn’t support those two major transferring protocols, maybe you got ripped off rather than it being an issue with Windows Vista or some other boogie man.
Printers? I’ve had a look – Canon have drivers out, Epson, and HP – the big names for consumers all have their printers out; want to use some freaky no name brand that doesn’t provide quality drivers, then be my guest, but don’t blame Microsoft for your poor purchasing decisions.
Scanners – who the heck uses those these days with the rise of multi-fuctional printers/scanners/copiers? If your drivers aren’t being provided, maybe the axe to grind is with the vendor of the hardware rather than it being with the operating system vendor – how is it Microsofts fault that the companies you bought the hardware off are too lazy to provide the necessary drivers to make the transition easy?
Well, I’ll buck my usual posting trend to say that there’s no great reason for a scanner to be incompatible with Windows Vista since the driver model should be equivalent… you don’t really need to be in the kernel to drive something as low-speed as the average scanner.
I just looked it up though… seems like this is a security issue. They want to push the scanners out of LocalSystem and into LocalService to reduce its privilege levels. I don’t know how much pain they expected, or were willing to tolerate, but maybe they could have provided some compatibility hacks to make it work.
Ah yes, the scream of ‘use a hack’ and when the hack causes problems, you then have the same people complain that Microsoft didn’t fix the problem properly.
Sorry, I’d sooner have broken compatibility and higher security.
Excuse me, but how is that possible. Digital cameras either use PTP or USB Storage for accessing digital photo’s.
Well, My Canon, industry standards, DSLR came with a whole CD of software that allows remote-capture, time lapse photography, RAW editing and much more. It also provides a Mass storage interface for file access, but you are badly ignorant if you think that the only possible interface for a camera is for basic file transfer.
Scanners – who the heck uses those these days with the rise of multi-fuctional printers/scanners/copiers?
Anyone who cares anything about quality. The quality of a multi-functional scanner is usually much worse than that of a dedicated scanner (see: Economics 101).
If your drivers aren’t being provided, maybe the axe to grind is with the vendor of the hardware rather than it being with the operating system vendor – how is it Microsoft’s fault that the companies you bought the hardware off are too lazy to provide the necessary drivers to make the transition easy?
So let me get this straight. Epson(for example) develop a high quality scanner to work with windows XP, they spend many $1000s perfecting the drivers, ironing out all the bugs, getting to grips with the crappy Windows APIs (check out Linux/Glib, it’s great by comparison). Then Microsoft turns round and releases a new OS and suddenly Epson have to spend many more $1000s ensuring that their unchanged product now works with some new OS. It’s even worse for Graphics card manufacturers with the new WDM.
Given that it’s Microsoft’s fault that all these interfaces are changing, your claim that third parties are ‘too lazy’ to back up Microsoft’s business development seems a bit strange.
Plus the fact that half the new “Vista ready” systems sold aren’t actually powerful enough to run Vista without having half of the features (particularly Aero) turned off.
“vista Ready” isn’t a designation used by MS for PCs. New computers meeting MS’ logo requirements are branded as either Vista Capable or Vista Premium Ready. If you’re buying a new computer that can’t run half of Vista’s features, the computer is either old and below the minimum specs for Vista, or it has a very unbalanced configuration, and it certainly isn’t certified under either of the above logo programs.
There’s no excuse for purchasing a new system that can’t fully run Vista when such systems have been available for over 3 years.
I never said I was. I put it in quotation marks to emphasise the irony in my statement.
I think you should take a look at Dell / PC World / etc. Half the systems (particularly their laptops) aren’t powerful enough to run aero. Now if a system can’t run one of the key features behind MS’s ‘wow’ campain, then I have to wonder just how little a system needs to run to be considered ‘fully’
So now we’ll get to see $3 copies of XP imported into the US?
Maybe we’ll see a 1000% markup or something for the whole shebang.
Product dumping probably isnt’ a good thing.
Edited 2007-04-20 20:34
Product dumping probably isnt’ a good thing.
They’re not dumping. They’re competing against free pirated copies in those same countries. Obviously, if the product is marginally more expensive than free, people may consider giving the real thing a shot.
Of course it is product dumping.
XP is dead and Microsoft will not sell it after Jan2008, so why push a very cut down version onto the Chinese.
If it was not product dumping, the cut down version would be Vista Started Edition.
If money’s that tight why don’t they use free / open source OSs? Plus the latest copy of a *nix distro is much more likely to run smoothly on cheap or old hardware than Vista (or even XP to a lesser degree)
Quote:
“Product dumping probably isnt’ a good thing.”
I wonder what the WTO will make of this. Will the Europeans for example complain about this on behalf of Mandriva etc.
How will European and US citizens feel about subsidizing Chinese consumers?
Is there any action Novel and Redhat can take in US courts? As this is obviously just a way that MS is trying to use it’s monopoly position to extend its monopoly into a new market
Given Microsoft’s success in the US courts, I doubt anyone would bother to sue them over there. As far as Europe goes, I doubt anyone over here can justify the expense (bad press?) of trying to get the EC to attack MS again. MS are too big to be stopped by something as simple as an international world power.
I’m sure individuals and organizations who pay market price or even institutions who negotiate license specials appreciate the fact of McSoft selling 3 USD copies of XP.
The 244 legitimate copies of McSoft’s latest and greatest is hugely funny. Did anyone notice the misprint `Ulimate`? Great quality control.
I doubt they’ll find many people (even those using government-supplied computers) who would rather pay $3 for a hobbled version of Windows (XP Starter Edition) than continue to pirate XP Pro for free.
That is funny…
Probably widely inaccurate, but funny none the less.
I work in a building with around 1000 people.
I know that the majority use XP
8% uses Mac
20% use Linux and XP dual boot
4% solely Linux
3 use Vista.
3, not 3%, but 3. 2 of them because it came with the machine, and 1 because he thought it was a good upgrade.
Those figures are seriously not funny for Microsoft, as we work in a tech support company, and most people in our circle of friends and family would be asking our advice.
If you do get a machine with it on, then use an alternative.
I feel sorry for upgraders though, once that bitlocker kicks in, you are well stuck with Vista..
Edited 2007-04-20 23:50
How significant is that less than half a year after release? A competent IT staff doesn’t attempt an en-masse migration of a thousand users to an OS that was first released under than 6 months ago.
How long did major, large installations of 2k Pro remain in place after XP was released? I don’t recall there being an overnight transition from NT4 to Win2k either.
I was not talking about the company…. I was talking about the staff of the company, and our own preferences. The computers are the ones in our own homes, not work machines.
The survey was done a few days ago, we asked everyone on the way into work what they used.
Our companies works computers are using windows 2000 and solaris if that makes a difference to you.
Edited 2007-04-21 14:51
I was not talking about the company…. I was talking about the staff of the company, and our own preferences. The computers are the ones in our own homes, not work machines.
I would expect IT support folks to be much more wary of new OS upgrades than your average person, because they’re aware that problems that occur more frequently until the first service pack is released; consequently, I have little problem believing these statistics. But I doubt that the statistics will be the same in a couple years. I bet if we check back with you then, we will find that the majority of users are running Vista.
Hmmm, no.
THIS IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE AT MY WORK ONLY. I AM NOT ATTEMPTING TO SPEAK FOR EVERYONE
Everyone always used to say don’t touch Windows (insert version) until at least the first service pack. Now they just say don’t touch Vista.
I think what is putting them off are the restrictions in the system rather than the hefty machine needed to run it.
The people that have bought a new machine since are either formatting and installing XP alone, or dual booting with Ubuntu.
There was a lot of moaning the other day when ubuntu servers got bogged down with the demand of everyone trying to download the new version.
So much so, that there was a queue of people in work at the disk copier burning off copy after copy of one that was downloaded as soon as the 7.04 came out, but before most of the world woke up.
So, in a couple of years time, after sp1, then yes, of course, some more will have moved, but I think that will be because of these things;
1: XP no longer available to buy
2: The perception that the latest is the greatest
3: Being forced to upgrade, ie games only working on dx10
4: Lazyness
5: Apathy
Edited 2007-04-22 06:59
I think what is putting them off are the restrictions in the system rather than the hefty machine needed to run it.
What kind of restrictions are you talking about: DRM? UAC? Activation?
/satire on
NEWSFLASH: MS only sold 122 copies of XP in first month in China
Quote: “Microsoft wouldn’t totally clear things up by saying just how many copies it has sold in China, but it did say the first month’s sales of boxed Vista copies in China were double those XP had in its first month.”
/satire off
It does make you wonder though, since they do not actually publish their sales figures.
Regards
Darren
Wow! They even put Mickey Mouse on the pirated copies of Vista! It’s like saying a double F-U to U.S. copyright law. Hilarious!
just read : http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39087
and it will sum everything up for you!
just read : http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39087
and it will sum everything up for you!
Thanks, I just wasted a couple minutes reading that tripe from an obvious MS-hater. The thing that he fails to mention is that while Dell is offering XP on a small number of notebooks & desktops, Vista is the default offering and is being purchased by the overwhelming majority of buyers. So, consequently, I’m inclined to laugh when he says that “Microsoft is in deep trouble”. What a joke.
Thanks, I just wasted a couple minutes reading that tripe from an obvious OSS-hater. The thing that he fails to mention is that while Dell is allowed to offer XP on a small number of notebooks & desktops, Vista is the default offering being unwillingly pushed on the overwhelming majority of buyers. So, consequently, I’m inclined to laugh when he says that “Vista has the WOW factor”. What a joke.
ironi.
I just wasted a couple minutes reading that tripe from an obvious OSS-hater.
I’m not an OSS hater. I use both open and closed source products all the time. Both are useful for their purposes. What I don’t like is the ideology that closed source software and the organizations that produce it are evil.
Vista is the default offering being unwillingly pushed…
That’s gotta hurt, huh? A so-called “inferior OS” being preferred over an OSS OS…
So, consequently, I’m inclined to laugh when he says that “Vista has the WOW factor”.
Where did I ever say that “Vista has the WOW factor”?
What a joke.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I’m laughing WITH you, not at you.
The majority of the printers were HPs, apparently several models of Laserjet (maybe half a year old) weren’t supported at least as of a month ago. Scanners were mostly Canon and other well-known name brands. (this was roughly a month ago and the situation’s hopefully changed)
Please actually read what you’re responding to. I made it pretty clear that I don’t blame Microsoft for the lack of drivers, I was just stating that not having proper drivers at release (along with the system being resource-heavy and often sold on PCs unable to run it to its full potential) was one of the main reasons Vista’s not being well received.
Last but not least, these were favors I was doing for my non-PC savvy friends. I personally am not complaining, seeing as I bought a Mac this January.
I just went to the Connect site to sign up for beta testing and the site crashed. Positive PR? Are they testing me before I beta test to see if I’ll report a problem?
It worked.
MS stopping selling XP could ignite an explosion of illegal copies flooding the markets all over the world as it seems people still want XP over Vista. It’s a silly decision by MS and one they might regret a lot.
We heard the same complaints when Windows XP was released and Microsoft backed away from Windows 95 and Windows 2000. It was the end of the world, dogs and cats living together, fire and brimstone, Microsoft was doomed, Linux would replace XP on the desktop, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda… None of it came to pass. In fact, XP has overwhelming market share over its predecessors. The same will be true with Vista.
Face facts: Dell isn’t pushing XP. Vista is its preferred & default offering. XP is only being offered on a small set of notebooks and desktops, while Vista is offered across the entire product line. Dell is doing that primarily because its corporate customers need time to figure out their deployment plans, and because some small number of end users want the flexibility of using XP. Does that translate to failure for Vista? Hardly. If you believe that, you really don’t understand the fact that Vista simply cannot fail. The sheer weight of deployment will ensure its success. That’s one of the results of monopoly power.
Drivers aren’t the biggest problem with Vista; actually, it’s poorly written ISV applications that don’t play well with the new security model (UAC). But, I see that as a positive step toward getting ISVs to not only take security seriously but reduce the proliferation of malware that hijack poorly written applications.
To be honest, Vista’s biggest problem is the fact that due to the system taking more control out of the hands of the user, the first person who finds a way to take advantage of Bitlocker using malware is going to wreak havoc on the Vista user base.
I neither like nor hate Microsoft, I just feel they make shoddy operating systems. They’re capable of making plenty of decent products (see Office or the Xbox), but when it comes to OSes, it seems that office politics tend to trump quality, if some of the Microsoft blogs are any indication.
To be honest, Vista’s biggest problem is the fact that due to the system taking more control out of the hands of the user
How so? Actually, I think it’s quite the opposite. UAC is intended to move away from root-level access to user-level access. Sure, there are security technologies such as those in WM and Bitlocker; but those are purely optional for most people. Agree that exploiting Bitlocker with malware would be a very nasty proposition, but I’m not sure how much worse it would be than p0wning a Linux encrypted file system.
I neither like nor hate Microsoft
Me, too.
I just feel they make shoddy operating systems.
Correction: Just about EVERYONE makes shoddy operating systems. Noteable exceptions to the rule (in my opinion, that is) are Wind River Systems (VxWorks), QNX (QNX RTOS), among a few others. I don’t include Linux or Windows or OS X in this list because the quality of each is roughly equivalent, based on my evaluation of bug trends. I’m sure that some people will disagree, but I don’t think that any particular development methodology or nich market share gives any particular OS an advantage when it comes to quality. What differs is the degree to which quality is tested.
They’re capable of making plenty of decent products (see Office or the Xbox),
Yes, agree. I use both.
.. but when it comes to OSes, it seems that office politics tend to trump quality, if some of the Microsoft blogs are any indication.
There certainly is a lot of political infighting and poor decision-making. But that’s true of just about all organizations, including OSS projects.
The software dictatorship must be worried!