Microsoft presented the results for its second quarter of the 2010 fiscal year yesterday, which ended on December 29 2009. As it turns out, thanks to sales of Windows 7, Microsoft experienced a record quarter, which is especially welcome after the previous two lacklustre ones. It sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses during this record quarter.
Since I have no clue about these figures, I’ll just copy them verbatim so I won’t make any mistakes.
Microsoft Corp. today announced record revenue of $19.02 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2009, a 14% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $8.51 billion, $6.66 billion and $0.74 per share, which represented increases of 43%, 60% and 57%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.
Windows 7 played a major, major role in the revenue jump. “Exceptional demand for Windows 7 led to the positive top-line growth for the company,” says Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft, “Our continuing commitment to managing costs allowed us to drive earnings performance ahead of the revenue growth.”
Windows 7 has seen tremendous sales, with more than 60 million Windows 7 licenses leaving Redmond during the second quarter, making it the fastest selling operating system in history according to Microsoft. “This is a record quarter for Windows units,” says Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft, “We are thrilled by the consumer reception to Windows 7 and by business enthusiasm to adopt Windows 7.”
Good for Microsoft.
I have windows 7 on my laptop and it really gets back to the task of helping common tasks happen more easily.
It has great memory management, tcp/ip offloading, a nice shell, better network access (similiar to Ubuntu).
Good job!
Morglum
Interesting. What “common tasks” are you talking about? My common tasks are possibly different from yours, but yours might be similar to some of my friends that are debating a jump to win 7.
Microsoft only really shines when it has to work for it which is why we have had lackluster releases from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
Microsoft have the skills to produce some excellent technology and windows 7 really is one of their better products. I know without the competition Microsoft would easily slip back into releasing poor lackluster products, so lets hope the competition heats up and keeps up.
The mentality in which you are referring to is not exclusive to Microsoft. It is human nature to “slack off” when one is not under pressure. That is why monopolies are generally a bad thing in free market economies.
Also, I wouldn’t call XP a “lackluster release.” It had problems, yes, but maintaining 90%+ market share for as long as it did is far from “lackluster,” in my opinion.
You talk about Windows as if their are equal competitors in the desktop market on the same footing.
Windows competes against itself, since hardly anyone can get a foot into the desktop market with OEMs. Windows 7 is the first OS since 2001 that Windows users can properly upgrade to. This is good for Windows users, but no doubt people will treat it as, the second coming of Jesus.
Edited 2010-01-29 17:15 UTC
OEMs aren’t the problem. This meme needs to die. The problem is simply that Linux, on a technical level, simply can’t compete with Windows and OS X. I don’t care how good it is in the server room, or how many developer tools it has, for everything else, it lags Windows and OS X by miles.
Can’t compete ona technical level!? Oh please really!?
Please flood us with examples of where linux lags so we can shoot them down!
X11, for one, which is even going to lose its room at FOSDEM next year because nobody cares about it, despite it being a critical component of the desktop. Still can’t get OpenGL 2.0 on an 8 year old graphics card, for example. Performance is still choppy and way behind Windows on the same hardware.
But aside from that, the DEs are lacking in coherence and it is very easy to run into bugs, crashes, incomplete functionality and just plain lack of polish. I gave up on ever using KDE 4 because it continued to fail to produce.
Priorities are also in the wrong place. KDE devs keep pushing for KHTML when it is so far behind the times, it’s not even funny. Instead, they could be working on WebKit, but that’s just not “free” enough for them, or whatever the problem is.
And, while the rest of the world gets work done and can watch whatever media they want and run whatever software they want, Linux users and devs will at least have their “freedom”, whatever value that actually has (certainly isn’t technical).
While the rest of the world gets work done,
I would run ubuntu over vista any day for performance! And have u tried running windows 7 on 512mb ram. Please!
Havn’t used kde for years cause it headed in the wrong direction. But you can hardly judge linux on kde alone! Gnome is a perfectly good alternative.
Cannot see the problem with media on linux at all. Did u forget to install the gui after installing ubuntu server edition? I use ubuntu for my entire household entertainment and works just as good as any other alternative in my mind.
I’ll tell that to my roommate who struggled for quite some time with MythBuntu. He eventually gave up and switched to Windows 7. Everything works and playback is not choppy. Same hardware. Also, he didn’t have to spend hours configuring and tinkering to get things to work right, things like audio and screen resolution. Stuff that you think would work on a frickin’ media center-oriented version of Ubuntu.
Your roommate is a chimpanzee?
In my experience Windows 7 does not “just work” all of the time. A few of the guys I play LockOn: Modern Air Combat with tried to put on Win7 and had so many sound issues etc they reverted to dual booting XP. Each O/S can have problems on an application-by-application basis. In this case, Mac OS X is generally the best for many media types. Your friend is settling for a “good enough” solution, which is fine, but it dont think Win 7 is the best at everything, k?
Sure, it breaks sometimes. I’d be remiss if I were to say that any OS gets it right all the time. Far from it. But in general, things Just Work (TM) on Windows or OS X far more often than they do on Windows.
And wrt the Mythbuntu setup, it wasn’t for lack of trying. We were reading mplayer man pages, installing special drivers, following HOWTO after HOWTO. I was helping him with it, having experience with, e.g., running X.org entirely from Git master and having used Gentoo for years where manual configuration skills are a hard requirement. Never got it to work right and each upgrade of Mythbuntu just made things work.
I must say my biggest frustration with windows is drivers. The amount of times i have had to reinstall windows for people who have lost their disks! Drivers are a pain in the ass on windows! THINGS DO NOT JUST WORK!!!
I installed a slipstreamed Windows XP SP 3 that had been heavily stripped down by a friend and aside from a few IBM drivers that I had to download beforehand, I was able to install Windows XP just fine on a T43. All of the drivers were available on Lenovo’s website and all I had to do was click on the .EXE. Pretty easy.
Most machines come with a restore partition from which you can make restore disks. It’s worked for me. Try that next time.
Not everyone is buying OEMs. Try that on a clone.
Uhh, most people are. If you want to run a weird setup, then I’m sure you’re smart enough to deal with the consequences. And for Windows, at least, they are pretty minor. I’d hardly call having to have a driver disk, or download drivers after install a big deal, compared to the crap you regularly have to put up with on Linux to get things like, you know, wireless to even work at all, even if you have the drivers.
but then again the aeguement of hardware vendors. Linux developers have to put up with a lot of flack simply because hardware vendors refuse to produce drivers of linux or release code for them to be produced by community developers.
In fact, the vendors and integrators aren’t always free to release their own specs – if they have deals with other people.
And this is considered a fault on the side of linux???
Because not everyone wants to play by the ridiculous rules that FOSS people have created. Just look at how the kernel is regarding a stable driver ABI.
Was that a legal install? I hate people who go “Windows is so great” and then you find they didn’t even pay for *all* their copies. I always pay for mine – which means real economics become a factor in my decision, unlike the artificial economics when copyright infringement is involved. Microsoft know if they enforced Windows licensing *properly* then Open Source solutions start to look a whole lot better (that is, when compared properly on a technological *and* proper economic basis).
If your licenses were paid for was it your University’s money or your own hard won cash? Makes a big difference when it comes from your pocket and you are legal.
Edited 2010-01-29 23:40 UTC
I have never installed Windows illegally.
I didn’t mean to mod this up. I was just trying to click on the “Read more of this thread…”, but my mouse passed over the moderation icons causing it to pop up at the same time as my clicking.
I would like to see you getting as many graphics cards and sound cards working on windows without a driver disk as you can get working on ubuntu without a driver disk!
You can download drivers these days on Windows. AMD drivers can be downloaded from the website. And guess what? I just run the EXE, click next a few times and it works! Amazing! And even if I don’t have the drivers, I can count on VESA working and not being entirely unusably slow as is the case on Linux.
But really, rare is the hardware that doesn’t work out of the box on Windows, certainly not for most consumers. On Linux, they still don’t even support at all many common graphics cards and probably won’t for some time. Driver disk won’t even help you there. You just have to wait…or buy different hardware, usually some that’s at least 4-6 years old.
How long have you been in this game? Updated Windows drivers are *very* difficult to get working with all your (upgraded) software. Everyone I help maintain their Windows boxes for (since they can’t do it themselves, unlike Ubuntu’s Update Manager after I’ve done an initial installation) has older (4-8 years) PCs that you can’t get drivers for. They don’t want new hardware. Therefore, Windows *sux* for them, since patching/upgrading the OS to prevent the flood of Windows malware breaks stuff and you can’t often get new drivers to fix it.
Windows drivers are *excellent* for the first two years you get a machine. After that, it is a lottery. Upgrading every two years is not only wasteful, it is often not economically viable for many. => The Windows model is not superior, just different when you consider long-life hardware.
When i put windows 7 on my pc i had to replace the sound card, wireless card and tv card cause none were supported or going to be supported on windows 7. And all were bought within the last 3 years!
You are at the mercy of hardware vendors who want to make money by forcing people to buy new hardware.
You have to do what to get your drivers? Surely your drivers are brought to you promptly via Update Manager and you only then have the decision to make to choose between the manufacturer’s driver or the OS’s (Open Source) one. A single click and password entry and *everything* on your system can be updated.
And then reconfigured with whatever the newest PITA X.org configuration system is (thank God HAL is going away). That, of course, assumes that it works correctly in the first place. Also, you generally don’t get the latest and greatest on Ubuntu, you get whatever minor fixes they push out for that release. If you want a real upgrade for distro-provided software, you have to go to 3rd party repos, or you have to do a full upgrade to the next release, both of which can be dangerous to say the least. Not that Windows is better about the latter, but at the very least, you only have to do an upgrade once every 3-7 years, if then, and can just buy a new machine as part of your upgrade.
Yes, and even more important than Ubuntu are applications like VLC that are excellent for playing media (except for codecs that are specifically designed to squeeze out competitor players).
Lacking in coherence you say? Canonical are using the new KDE notification spec, both desktops use dbus and use various freedesktop specs. Qt provides native GTK theming which unifies the desktops’ look.
What can you run on an 8 year old graphics card anyway?(Geforce4 series)
Yes I do work in Linux/KDE4 all the time. It’s my main OS and desktop for graphic design, video editing, music, messaging, browsing and other common tasks. I get lots of work done thank you very much.
I don’t worry about the “Linux is not ready for the desktop” people. I just get work done in Linux and leave them to think we can’t to proper work.
Cool, they are now using a notification system that is utter crap compared to what is available on Windows and OS X (Growl). And it only took, what, 6 months to a year? Good going there. DBus is a joke, really, compared to COM+, for example. Wake me up when I can easily invoke services from pretty much any app in a sane fashion. DBus integration for many apps is lacking or weak.
I should be able to run a desktop operating system with 2d graphics that don’t make me feel like I’m running Windows 3.1. I guess that’s a bit much to ask.
Cool. Most users would disagree.
That’s debatable. Having used KDE4, Windows XP, and Windows 7, I find it hard to believe that Windows notification bubbles are better than KDE4s simple notification applet. Don’t know anything about Growl.
The biggest issue with Windows is that there isn’t a centralised notification system. Every app uses it’s own, and every systray applet uses it’s own, and you can get bubbles hidden behind popups hidden behind slide-outs hidden behind modal dialogs.
At least with KDE, it’s one tray icon, with a simple list that slides out.
DBus, as with most GNOME technologies, isn’t all that’s it’s cracked up to be. DCOP was much nicer, and easier to use to control KDE applications. It was also much more prevalent (was there a KDE app that didn’t use/expose it?). Unfortunately, it seems the KDE people are much more willing to bend over backwards to help GNOME even if it means switching to inferior technologies (DCOP vs DBus, GTK+ support in QT, GStreamer support in Solid/Phonon).
What weirdo hardware are you using? If I can run KDE4 with desktop effects enabled on an eeePC 701, you should be able to run a 2D desktop on any video card. My home desktop even uses onboard Intel graphics with 8 MB of video RAM without tearing, artifacts, slowdowns.
Not all Linux distros are ready for the non-business-oriented desktop. However, a lot of Linux distros are most definitely ready for the business-oriented desktop. And some Linux distros are ready for the hobbyist consumer desktop.
It’s debatable whether Linux distros are suitable for home desktops. For business desktops, though, they’ve been ready for years now. And it’s mainly due to all the nifty network features in X11.
There’s a huge market around desktop management tools for Windows primarily because Windows itself is not suited to large, networked, business deployments.
Should one really need a completely separate server just to run the desktop management tools, over and above the shared network server? Should one really need 17 different GUIs to manage everything? Should one have a completely separate server just to manage all the software licenses?
These are all things that Unix solved years ago, and that Linux inherited over time.
KDE is committed to supporting KHTML through the 4.x release cycle, so dropping it is not an option. Besides, while I’ll admit that KHTML may not be cutting edge, it is still very usable, a fact made more impressive considering that it is developed by a handful of people. It’s worth remembering that the whole reason KHTML was chosen by Apple (versus Gecko) was the code base. It’s no surprise that WebKit passed it by once Apple, and then others, poured resources into it.
It’s still worth remembering where WebKit came from, though.
Having said that, you may want to give this a read, because clearly not all the KDE developers are pushing KTHML because it’s “free”(?), or whatever.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/01/key-quest-webkit.html
Actually I use Windows 7 64-bit and Vista at work. Have used Irix, Solaris (now, that is technically superior!), OSF1 etc. Have used Windows since 3.0. Use Mac OS X on my shiny new Macbook Pro 17″. Use Ubuntu for a lot of my consulting work. I have to say that each of these are perfectly usable (and the recent Ubuntu 9.10 is slick and a joy to use). In fact, there are plenty of things that Ubuntu has that I miss when I use OS X. I disagree with your statement.
Also, who really cares about marketshare? Certainly marketing weenies. I think Solaris is an excellent fit for many heavy applications and certainly is vastly superior to Windows Server in uptimes and certain design aspects (you have to reboot your Windows Server more than once per decade? what a joke).
who is retarded enough to say, “Oh, Solaris has a tiny market share, it must be crap, don’t use it”. Marketshare is for d!ck-swinging comparisons intended for people who aren’t technical enough to make intelligent technological comparisons. The “Bob and Joe down in the mail department are using Windows 7, so I should use it too” mentality.
I didn’t hold marketshare up as an example of why Windows is better on the desktop, just as an indicator that it is better on the desktop and then I gave some reasons why. I wouldn’t use Windows for a server. And I myself run Ubuntu in VirtualBox, so I can get Unix-y stuff when I need it without the hassle of constant brokenness when I want to do things like browse the web, play games, create real documents and do Windows/.NET development for my day job.
Constant brokenness when you browse the web? or make real documents (like PDF yeah? Word is a total joke for professional typesetting). Games, well you have a point there, but not everyone cares about those – although I do, but if could get the same games on the Mac I would (DirectX was an excellent lock-in strategy for Microsoft as is working exactly as they planned, and you can’t even see it) – but consoles are a better fit than PCs for many in that space.
Windows 7 is nice, I’m glad you like it, but it is not better on the desktop for all users, and it certainly aint better outside of the desktop space. That is why Windows has essentially failed in the embedded space and Apple and Google are able to lead though in space.
You don’t use Word for professional typesetting. That’s what LaTeX or other tools are for. But for general office productivity, Word/Excel/Access (cursed be its name) still beat the pants off OpenOffice.org, which is the only package that is even close to competing with MS Office.
Brokenness on the web: crappy flash support, slow Java and, of course, you have to deal with the slow performance of X when browsing the web, so switching tabs, scrolling, etc. are slower than in Windows where graphics are properly accelerated (or at least more properly than in X) and the toolkits aren’t slow as f–k.
Wow, you really have an axe to grind.
How you can consider Word/Excel to be the epitome of office productivity is beyond me. Perhaps you’ve never tried WordPerfect/Quattro Pro?
Yes… windows on a server is a pain in my ass.
Where is the sane scripting environment? Where are the built in tools for archiving? It is driving me nuts…
we have a vendor that chose to use Websphere and Java but deployed on win2k3… wtf!!!
Edited 2010-01-30 01:22 UTC
Mmmm, Solaris 10 + Live Upgrade + ZFS + SMF… administrative heaven.
Agreed.
Windows is by definition a monopoly. Saying it is a success would beg the question compared to what?
I mean, if you have no competitors in a market segment, claiming a profit success is really, well hardly surprising.
You never need genius to be outstanding in a monopoly market. IN the USA, you just need to make enough money to keep the government on the Dole (pay off the right people) and keep a casual eye on the market. (The next step after a monopoly is fascism…which has come to America now in so many ways.)
Just on a off topic, we are seeing the final pieces being assembled by the open source community to make Linux a viable desktop.
The final missing piece for Linux is open graphics hardware, to break onto the desktop. Those pieces will be assembled in the next 2 years.
If ATI continues its path toward opening up the hardware so that source code can be worked on it for 3D functions, it will succeed.
The open source community also has a backup, which is the open graphics project. They are working on open sourcing the hardware. For 2D and 3D acceleration coming later.
From that point on, games will come to Linux, and since games is what the largest application segment for Windows is, Linux should be able to attract the same market.
Windows 7 looks like a decent OS (used the beta for about 2 hours.), but the only reason why I use Windows is to waste time. (i.e. fixing some elses problems, or playing games.)
I certainly can’t imagine it being used in any serious way to be useful, without investing huge amounts of money into it.
-Hack
I refer to Windows XP being lacklustre not due to it’s market share, but more to it’s predecessor, Windows 2000. Windows XP didn’t offer much over Windows 2000 apart from a light dusting over the UI.
Windows XP only grabbed 90% market share as it was the only windows offering available.
you are seeing xp from the workstation-side where it didn’t improve much since 2k
the picture is completele different on the consumer-side where it replaced dos and all it’s bastard-children up to ME
Exactly. Win2000 was okay for desktops as long as you didn’t play games or use exotic hardware. When XP came along as a consumer Desktop OS, it was okay for desktops as long as you didn’t play games or use exotic hardware. But, manufacturers didn’t have a choice with it being the only Windows OS so they made their stuff work with XP.
Its not that XP wasn’t great when migrating from win98, but win2000 was also great when migrating from win98.
I don’t disagree with your statement but that “90%+” market share is on the desktop only. In the other markets (server, netbook, mobile, embedded) the penetration is not nearly as much. It is worth qualifying your statements to make them more accurate – otherwise you look like a fanboi that thinks all of computing is the desktop only.
Edited 2010-01-29 21:10 UTC
Well that should be pretty obvious since he was talking about XP which is a desktop OS.
True, but anyone who runs windows xp as a server OS is crazy. Its a desktop OS, its pretty safe to assume when talking about a desktop os what anything we say about it is referring to its intended use as a desktop OS.
Nope, people still try it. Qualifying your statement makes it explicit what you are talking about (yes, you do have to be accurate on a forum such as this).
No they don’t. Its not the intended purpose of the product. No one who understands the difference between a server and a desktop was confused by that sentence.
Do you really want all of us to be *that* specific? If so we’ll have to start saying all of the following:
Microsoft Windows => windows can be generic computing term
Apple Computer company => as opposed to the Beatles Apple Recording company
Fedora Linux => as oppoosed to a hat
Intel Corperation => as opposed to a term for intelligence
Adobe Flash => as opposed to a form of flash memory.
Apple Computer company’s iPhone => as opposed to the Cisco iPhone I have on my desk
I’m sure there are many more I’m forgetting. Technobable does get confusing at some point with the acronyms and marketing terms getting recycled and used in different contexts, but this really isn’t one of those examples.
In order for us to communicate, we have to assume some level of information, otherwise each post would exceed the max number of characters just laying down the prerequisite assumptions, backgrounds and history behind all of the forthcoming terms. That’s absurd. You must simply assume that a product is going to be used as intended by the manufacturer unless there is a significant reason to assume otherwise.
I’m starting to wonder if you just misread his post at first and thought that XP was generic for Microsoft Windows, which then would have made sense to respond with a clarification citing the overlooked server market.
No, I just was pointing out that “90%+ market share” can be easily misconstrued since it does not cover The Entire Computer Market, but the wording “90%+ desktop market share” cannot. See how easy it can be, just a single word in the right place. Makes the difference between an excellent writer/poster and an average one. I have no doubt you understood the point as well as I did, but what I’m trying to say is that an ambiguity could be removed for other readers through the use of a single extra word.
Any by the way, perhaps you don’t know how users in this “desktop” space actually work. Plenty of folk try and run server apps on Windows XP – I have seen it. Only well-heeled businesses and the technorati take the time to install the server version of Windows. I expect the same to happen with Win7, that plenty of common folk will try to run their little corner of the web on it. Then we’re talking about the use of Windoss in the “server market” as well as the “desktop market” since “server” and “desktop” are actually roles, not specific pieces of hardware or software (despite the increasing trend of artificially segmenting markets to increase margins).
Edited 2010-01-29 23:15 UTC
No he doesn’t when he is talking about an OS that is designed for the desktop. It has a tcp/ip connection limit after all.
Everyone here knew what he was talking about, including you.
Everything has a TCP/IP connection limit. It just depends where it is and whether it is used to artifically segment the markwet. Which market? well, that’s my point.
And no, not “everyone” reading these pages has done IT as long as you or I. Again, you don’t understand the users (of this forum).
Depends what your needs are. Would you really install Windows Server 2003 if all you need is a simple file server and to share a single printer (and you didn’t know anything about configuring/using Samba/CUPS)? Or would you just install XP, share a folder, install the printer drivers, and share the printer?
If you need a simple box to run a single file share to house an Access database that will be used by multiple people, would you go to the effort of installing/configuring/managing a server version of Windows? Or just install XP, install Office, and share a folder? (Yes, we do this, for that one stupid Access database … personally, I think Access should be nuked!)
Just because it’s a “server” doesn’t mean it needs a server-optimised OS.
You can only share with 10 users at a time, and that’s in xp pro. With home you are limited to 5. It’s a desktop OS that comes with limited network sharing capabilities. It isn’t a server OS.
And … if you need to share with 10 people, why would you spend $$$$$$$ on Windows server, when Windows desktop does the job?
That’s my point.
Earlier posters disagree that this is even possible. Of course people do exactly as you are suggesting.
That still doesn’t make it a server OS.
It’s a desktop OS with basic sharing capabilities.
Very true for wage slaves (as most employees are). Not true for those who can choose to do what they love and love what they choose. Open source development comes to mind.
//. Open source development comes to mind.//
Right, because you can earn all kinds of wages coding for free.
There was really no desktop releases between XP and Vista, other than servicepacks, and SP2 for XP was a godsend. On the server, however, Win2k3 and Win2k3R2 were outstanding, IMO
Agreed. I have several W2K3 and W2K3R2 servers that are still going strong.
Agreed.
I used Win2K3 until a few weeks ago where I finally surrendered to the modern ages, and upgraded to Win2K8.
Win2K Pro is the only non-server version of NT I’ve ever used. But of all the versions I’ve used Win2K3 stands out as the best ever.
I’m proud to say I did not contribute one dime to MS’s $19.2bn profit from Win7. For the variety of work I do, Linux has been a great improvement in the past four years.
Troll fails at trolling.
cat my2cents.kwaak > osnews.com
Most people seem to agree on the “fact” that Windows 7 is a better release than Vista.
As long as most PC’s are not available without Windows operating systems glued/sold with them, and more PC’s are being sold every year…..
…put out an operating that doesn’t suck (as bad) and people will be more willing to buy it. Shocking!
This is good though, because Win7 is decent. On the other hand, they got what they deserved with Vista.
Now, if only they would lower the price and quite forcing someone to pay $300 bucks for something every OS should support… more than 16 gigs of memory. I’d like to get a copy myself but I just don’t have a few hundred bucks to throw over toward Microsoft (as if they haven’t got enough of my f***ing money to begin with).
win 7 prof 64bit supports 192gb of ram and costs only 110^a`not here in austria
Windows 7 is $105 in the United States. That’s for either the 32- or 64-bit Home Premium OEM versions.
No, it’s not a lot of money. But it still ends up being the most expensive component on many computer builds. There’s no reason in the world why the most mass-produced piece of software on the entire planet should cost more than a processor or motherboard.
Hmm, what about the thousands of man years to write that code, and that once one has paid the $100 they will provide bug fixes and many new features for six to eight years at no additional cost?
“Mass-produc[tion]” in this instance is more or less asserting that the marginal cost is basically zero (which is true) but that for a rivalrous product such as a processor it is well above zero (also true).
However, these are fundamentally different products. In addition to R&D, each processor must be manufactured, and therefore there are real resources that it consumes which might have been put to some other use. Elements have to be mined (which could have made some other thing), factories have to be built (where the land and machinery could have been used for something else).
Another copy of software is just so many electrons flowing through wire that has already been laid. The entire cost is whatever it takes to get those electrons from point A to B, which isn’t very high.
Taking that logic to the extreme–and there is some reason to do that, as prices do tend toward marginal costs with time–almost all modern services would collapse.
IE, the marginal cost to a cell phone provider of an additional wireless subscriber is nearly zero (as opposed to a regular telephone or cable, which have roughly static line costs). Same goes for satellite, all software, any online services, etc. All of these things, wireless, software, etc. have tremendous upfront development or infrastructure costs to create the product or service, followed by a marginal cost of almost zero on every consumer. That throws a wrench in traditional pricing mechanisms.
If customers insist that the price actually reaches the marginal cost, the services would all dry up, because they would have fundamentally no income.
So, yes, you hit on a tricky subject for pricing, but no, the price shouldn’t fall just because it is so easy to mass-produce that it is essentially free to produce any number of copies.
if you had access to a .edu e-mail account, you could have gotten it for 30 bucks since sept. IT ended in january though.
my school uses google apps so I was able to get more than one license by using the uname+[insertSomething]@domain.edu
it worked out really well….
If you are a professional, get a freaking technet subscription… 10 copies of Windows (every version) for your unlimited “evaluation”… it is 250 a year when it is on sale and 350 when it isn’t.
I mean, when 97% of folks have zero choice in what OS they use when they buy a new computer, combined with that fact that modern computers are unreliable pieces of shit (which essentially forces most to upgrade at least every 2.5-3 years), I wouldn’t be surprised.
Sometimes I think licenses sold attatched to manufacturer PC’s should, like, maybe count as half a sale or something. Cause it’s not exactly like MS hired tons of sales workforce to push the thing, it was basically forcefully delivered on contract for the most part.
The OEM excuse doesn’t hold when Windows 7 had more marketshare than Linux before it was released to retail.
Linux has no problems with OEMs when it comes to the server. You’ve been able to build Dell and HP servers for years.
The real problem with Linux on the desktop is that it is unappealing to ISVs and IHVs. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
It really is a great release by MS and I have to say, well done Redmond. I’m still waiting for my brother in-law to send me a cheap copy as he works for MS and I’m still running the release candidate ;-).
Frankly, MS has a hard battle ahead in trying to get businesses to migrate. Remember, it’s not solely for the revenue, although that’s obviously a big part, but also to finally get people to migrate away from IE6 only apps. The only worry I have is that with the free XP virtualized environment, companies will continue to drag their feet.
I guess only time will tell.
I am very disappointed in those who bought Win7.
Edited 2010-01-29 17:54 UTC
Why disappointed? Do you really think people are going to drop a familiar face and apps they have been using for years in favor of an open source (or another closed source) operating system and environment? If there is no need to change, why do you think they would?
I’ve used (and actually still use) linux, OS X and Windows. (I’ve used lots of other OS’s as well – BeOS, OS/2, BSDs, VMS, Ultrix, some crazy IBM OS, Mac OS 6-9, etc. – and when I say use, I mean more than downloading a live image and trying it out for an hour or two).
They are all decent, all do what they are supposed to do. And when you become familiar (often for development purposes you need to work one platform for an extended period of time) with one OS and its apps and utilities it can be difficult to break from them.
Anyway… you must be disappointed by a lot of things all of the time if you are disappointed in strangers choices in operating systems.
I’m very disappointed in you…
I’m disappointed in myself for replying to a troll…
Awesome, I’m going to go and buy a copy right this minute just to spite you. And I’ll run it on the Psystar OpenComputer that I bought to spite the Maclots (which, to them, will be adding insult to injury).
Of course everyone saying something a little negative about MS gets a negative rating.
Unfortunately MS is a monopolist. Monopolism is a crime, and everyone supporting MS encourages criminal activities. Luckily I don’t give a damn about my kudo-score on any forum, I just speak my mind and embrace freedom of speech.
Well, you didn’t say anything about MS at all. Instead, you generously insulted anyone who paid for their copy of Windows 7. Don’t tell me you can’t grasp the difference.
So, offending people gets you modded down. Or punched in the face, in real life. It’s that easy. Embrace that.
Edited 2010-01-30 21:44 UTC
clearly the reason why it’s selling well is because people want windows 7.
linux on the other hand is not something people want. unless it’s on my android phone
i love my android phone.
but hey, i gave linux a try for my desktop os. i used ubuntu for 2 years. eventually i went back to windows. why? simple. Windows is better. you can do things like actually install software, without recompiling half of your system. if your video driver crashes in linux, your screwed (the proprietary video drivers for linux are horrible, but i don’t care who’s fault it is, i don’t want a system that crashes). if it crashes in vista or 7. then it just reloads the driver, and tells you it crashed, and to go get an updated driver.
linux is just not a good system for desktop pc’s. it’s hard to update. linux is however good for phones. once you get it slimmed down and have just the drivers you need. it’s tiny. fast. and stable. and android phones are awesome.
Freedom of speech? to insult every bodies choices, based on their needs? You have the right to say it sure, and we have the right to mod you down and insult you right back.
I paid for my copy of Windows 7, and I also run Debian. The right tool for the job. Linux can’t do everything.
It’s been good. Good enough to ween me away from OS X for the time being. Of course when that aluminum cube comes out (wishful thinking) I’ll switch.
Of course when Haiku hits beta status… both Windows and OS X will likely fall to the wayside for me. (As long as Java, and some required networking features are available to me).
But seriously, as a developer it has been a decent system to work on. They’ve made foundational changes and now the hope is developers will move away from using the legacy development libraries/interfaces and MS will be able to be more flexible in future OS development directions.
Isn’t this year the year of Desktop Linux, or did I miss the memo again?
1) XP was good enough, especially considering the *necessary* Vista flop. However, it’s a little long in the tooth and hardware support was likely becoming more of an issue for them.
2) Discontent people running Vista wanting to get off ASAP.
I think Vista was an absolutely necessary step for MS. Vista was “so bad” not because the OS was bad, but because the entire software ecosystem around it was so bad. MS made a very concentrated effort to secure its operating system. It did that pretty well all things considered, but software that ran on Windows made some very stupid assumptions that it would have full administrative access to the machine and this meant a lot of software, including Microsoft’s own Office Suite didn’t work well on it.
Fast forward a number of years and now that ecosystem of programs are developed and work with the additional security layers in place. The better user experience is *because* of the pain the Vista caused.
Even as a strong UNIX, GNU/Linux and BSD user, I’m impressed with what Microsoft has accomplished with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. I still use GNU/Linux and BSD nearly exclusively but I must say.. Bravo Microsoft, Bravo, but I still won’t use your products.
“but software that ran on Windows made some very stupid assumptions that it would have full administrative access to the machine and this meant a lot of software, including Microsoft’s own Office Suite didn’t work well on it.”
Oh please … you’re going into the strange loop. It was MS that designed its OS in a way that no privellege separation was a fact. Don’t blame software devs for that. Lol!
What does privsep have to do with anything? You do know that in XP you were allowed to create limited access users right? If you did that and tried to run MS Office you would find that it didn’t work as expected. There was even a MS knowledge base article about it, advising you against running Office as a limited account user.
I don’t blame the developers so to speak, as MS enabled them to continue to write software under the old insecure model for way to long. I *do* blame software developers for making that assumption of administrative rights in the first place. They should have stood back and asked if there was ever a chance that some tin foil hat user like myself would ever consider running as a limited user (something I’ve done for all my customers over the years).
privilege separation = user account privileges [i.e administrator, limited user account, etc].
I also used to run on limited access user account and there were – in fact – problems with many applications, but again – it was MS fault in the first place!
here’s the scheme:
1. MS designs its OS with user accounts, but no real privilege separation [i.e “do whatever you want, get the files from other accounts without giving a password] – Win95/98/NT/2k maybe?
2. MS again designs its OS with user accounts [crippled implementation – it makes YOU an admin by default] – WinXP ‘Vanilla’
3. MS once again designs its OS with user accounts [now it’s slightly better – “as it always should”] – WinXP Home / SP3 maybe?
4. MS changes the scheme: the previous one + UAC = more problems, more hell and inclarity. Devs are just *confused* … – Vista / Win7
Of course I’m not talking about more advanced server versions, ’cause this is another thing. It’s jus good.
But they couldn’t even design their own software to work well on their own desktop OS, which is freaking hilarious!
Regards, Teknoenie
Good old windows bashing! You gotta love it!!
Bull, lazy developers are the ones who are at fault for not make sure there applications worked under regular user accounts on NT.
In that first point, you’ve revealed yourself as completely clueless. NT has had proper user-level security since its first release.
That statement is even more clueless than the last one, if that’s possible. XP uses the exact same implementation of user accounts/security as all previous releases of NT. It wasn’t crippled in any way, it only defaulted to an admin account (thanks all the software from lazy/incompetent devs who only tested their applications in Win9x or in admin accounts on NT).
Instead of making wild guesses, you could, oh, I don’t know… try educating yourself? Even just ten minutes skimming the wikipedia “Windows NT” article would make you better informed than you are right now.
There’s difference between NT core technology and its actual implementation. Even more – XP HE IS crippled by the lack of security features met in Pro.
Too bad you can’t put out your arguments as a grown up man and instead you’re making arguments ad personam.
There hasn’t been a mass exodus of Vista users to Windows 7. Most Vista users are satisfied with their OS.
The major security layers were added in Vista while 7 has minor security improvements. I have computers running both Vista and 7 and I wonder if most Vista bashers have even used it. The major difference in quality was from Vista SP0 and Vista SP2, not Vista SP2 and Windows 7. Too bad most tech press writers enjoy bashing Microsoft more than reading boring old benchmarks.
Edited 2010-01-29 21:46 UTC
Most people are not at all content with vista. The only people i have met who are content are end users who know no better.
Oh and what don’t they like about it? All the issues were fixed by SP2. If people actually hated it then we would have seen more users upgrade to 7 from Vista.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-na-monthly-200901-201001
I didn’t like vista when it was first released but I was intellectually honest enough to admit that they fixed it with service packs. I have computers with both 7 and Vista and the differences are minimal. Interestingly Windows 7 actually boots slower than Vista.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139145/Windows_7_boots_slow…
http://gizmodo.com/5173392/windows-7-vs-vista-which-runs-crysis-fas…
Windows 7 has some nice features but it has been overrated it terms of what it offers over Vista.
Microsoft don’t let you get out much do they? Vista is so clunky and hostile it is almost universally *despised*. That’s why Windows 7 is so praised in comparison.
I look at benchmarks instead of following the crowd.
The benchmarks have shown that differences in performance between Vista and 7 are in fact minimal. It many tests XP still comes out on top.
Try thinking for yourself sometime.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/22/windows-7-put-up-against-vista-a…
Benchmarks? Lol. Take the engineer blinkers off, few really care much how technologically superior Vista is to XP. No wonder you Microsoft developers build the wrong things. It is the “feel” of Vista that people hate – especially since MS and MPAA/RIAA strategic interests are put ahead of system users. Your customers aren’t stupid, they know when a system is designed to control them like sheeple. That one of the reasons why people choose iPod over Wince/winmobile devices – where the control is a lot less heavy handed (but yes, it is there). Vista has as much style and panache as Steve Balmer.
Take my engineer blinkers off when measuring an OS and use my feelings? Really? You called Vista ‘clunky’ but didn’t provide any specifics. How silly of me for trying to be objective when measuring software.
I’m not a Microsoft developer, nor do I maintain contact with them outside of occasional complaints and suggestions for the .net team.
Edited 2010-01-31 00:33 UTC
Are they counting every new PC sold with Windows as a sale here? Because if they are, then their fastest sale figures would be a bit off in that you’re hard pressed to find a new PC that doesn’t come with the latest Windows (discounting Netbooks and Nettops) at least from the big OEMs and stores. The question then is: Is win 7 the fastest selling os in history or were people just in a computer buying mood last quarter and got Win 7 by default?
Heh. Either way it’s “cha-CHING!” for Microsoft.
Nearly all Windows sales are for new machines. This has always been the case because there is hardly any upside to replacing the OS on existing hardware and incurs the considerable risks of driver and application incompatibilities.
Captain Obvious is working in the Microsoft Marketing department with this release.
Upgrading a virtual monopoly provides huge results. That’s not exactly a surprise. In its day, wouldn’t a Commodore 64 upgrade have been huge? How about a CP/M-80 upgrade or a combined CP/M-80/86/68000 upgrade?
It’s only been since WinNT and Win95 that the majority of people started thinking about computers for home and usually, those machines were so outdated by the time the next release came that they couldn’t easily upgrade.
Further, Microsoft can claim the number, but shouldn’t they subtract all the Vista upgrades since it took them all this time to correct their mistakes?
Hmmm I would have agreed in 2002 but now that Apple has 12% share in the US I’d call it a duopoly. It’s still an open market, IBM could spend a billion and clone OSX but like other tech giants they don’t care about the desktop.
That would be inaccurate. IBM care plenty about the desktop, but management there don’t understand it at all, especially when there isn’t any IBM hardware involved.
What exactly is inaccurate? I pointed out what they *could* do, not what they are likely to do.
Yes I know that IBM is managed by pussyfoot bean counters. That’s part of the problem.
It will take a long long time to have all the companies adopt it… Good Luck Microsoft
Just have a look at this:
http://venturebeat.com/2010/01/28/microsoft-earnings/?utm_source=fe…
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a world-wide recession. Many (if not most) companies tend to have spending freezes during lean times.
Windows 7 Fastest Selling OS cause vista sucked and XP is old. So 7 is only option for people unable to switch to another os than windows.
Oh, what a racket the OS business turned out to be…
Has been glaringly obvious that both Microsoft and Apple have been hampering OS progress by lock-in or by forcing developers to adapt.
I’m not really impressed with Win7. The Aero style is severly lacking in both subtle aesthetics and tactile refinement. A decade has passed and Windows still feels like parking a rhinoceros. Unfortunately, Microsoft is in the business of selling mediocrity.
Edited 2010-01-29 21:56 UTC
Not to mention aero tanks performance. A customer bought a core i7 laptop to demo our software on and mentioned that the software ran noticeably faster with all the effects tirned off. I generally don’t notice since I turn all the crap off when building a dev box.
Network performance on windows 7 is still really really bad, running multi threaded processing apps makes the machine totally unusable (dual socket core i7s with 24GB ram). The default security model is a pain in the ass. I honestly see zero difference between vista, 2k8 and windows 7.
That being said I do all my dev work on linux, then compile and test on windows. The high performance stuff customers run on linux, any network filesystem access makes the windows stuff run at 6% system cpu capacity while the same setup with linux will run the cpus 100% (with corresponding speedup)
how many % of installed copies and forced buys of OEM windows 7 is in use?
Oh, I dunno, about… zero percent (with a margin of error of plus or minus zero).
Does any OEM put a gun to your head and force you to buy a computer with Windows? Does Microsoft threaten you if you consider buying a PC without Windows? Is there some law that forbids you to run an OS other than Windows?
What’s that you say, the answer to all of those questions is “no”? Then I hate to break to to you, but no one is “forced” to use Windows.
But it’s certainly no surprise that Freetards and Mac fanboys would latch onto the “forced to use Windows” excuse. Gotta find some way to rationalize Linux and OS X’s utter failure competing against Windows on the desktop.
no gun but i can’t get a computer without windows here in we love microsoft land sweden
yes i’m not forced to use but i’m forced to buy the garbage from redmond if i want a new pc without building it my self.
i really hate wintards!
microsoft is a convicted criminal that use it’s power over pc makers to stop selling linux pcs.
Edited 2010-02-02 10:44 UTC
Please note that in the 4th quarter 2009 Apple sold 29.7 million copies of iPhone OS (Apple uses the same OS variant for both the iPod and the iPhone). If you count iPhone OS as a variant of OS X, then you could say that Apple sold 33.06 million copies of Mac OS X.
I’m thinking the OS used on the Nokia smart phones would be the best selling OS currently (I think they use the same OS for most of their phones).
Before Windows 7, Vista was Microsoft’s top selling OS with sales far exceeding those of Windows XP.
All Microsoft has to do is release a new version and make sure all the OEMs install it on a computer to make it a top seller. As the computer market grows, the sell rate also goes up since all the OEMs buy licenses for the boxes they sale.
It is interesting that Microsoft’s overall balance sheet has not been that flash in recent years and they’ve resorted to ditching staff. They’ve been making fantastic profits but also sold off investments to prop up their share price. It is interesting their share price has not been moving much – which means sharper financial minds than ours decided to invest elsewhere.
Microsoft is not going away, just as IBM is huge and isn’t either. It’s just that there will not be another “Golden Age” for MS as there was in the 90’s when they were growing and were dominating the developer thought-space. Being a Windows-only user in this day and age (of Google’s web, and Apple’s devices) seems slightly quaint.
Edit: Apologies for the flood of posts. I never have to waste time virus scanning, defragging or re-installing from scratch to maintain stability or performance. So I’m a bit bored with my other reliable virus-free desktops. Perhaps I should go and use my Windows desktops a bit more to liven things up.
Edited 2010-01-29 23:49 UTC
i have an info for you:
every fs fragmentates over time
the question is only: do you handle defragmentation as a planned task like in ntfs or as a background task like in reiser
Firstly, the word is “fragments” not “fragmentates”. Yes, every filesystem fragments over time. For some it affects performance badly, for others, not enough that you have to worry about it (except if you are squeezing every last drop out of a high performance systems, or your desktop runs lousy without it).
Yes, as a non-Windows user I’m sure you have much more productive ways to use your time. Like fighting with NDIS wrapper because Linux is too insignificant for wireless hardware makers to support. Or sitting idle while waiting for a replacement Mac motherboard because you can’t just go buy a new one at Staples, unlike every other computer around.
In my country (near Antartica) you can get Macs everywhere (although we have no iStores). So you are rather wrong.
Yes, as a non-Windows user I’m sure you have much more productive ways to use your time. Like fighting with NDIS wrapper because Linux is too insignificant for wireless hardware makers to support. Or sitting idle while waiting for a replacement Mac motherboard because you can’t just go buy a new one at Staples, unlike every other computer around.
I really don’t want to get caught up in these silly arguments, but . . . NDISwrapper? When I bought my laptop a couple of years ago it had the wifi gubbins installed under XP (I deliberately chose not to buy Vista) and it took me a full month to get the thing working with my (also brand new) wifi router. This a RaLink wifi card with native (for XP) RaLink software.
In contrast, Mandriva 2007 came out about the same time, I installed it in the ext3 partition previously occupied by MDV 2006, and guess what? Worked first time, “out of the box”. Never had any trouble with it at all. Now it has MDV 2010 with KDE 4.3.x and KDE is also working fine (although some of you may recall how long and loudly I used to complain about it).
Perhaps some distros don’t work so well with wifi but Mandriva cannot be accused of not working on the problem. Clearly not all distros are created equal – but that knowledge does not appear to prevent unfair or illogical comparisons.
Lego is the largest rubber tire Manufacturer too… doesn’t mean they’re useful tires.
Being as Microsoft REFUSES TO SELL Windows XP any more, and they force OEMS to pay for thousands of copies up front, it’s not really a big deal as they think it is.
Apple Leopard and Snow Leopard are more interesting because of the market penetration they had… well over 60% of existing customers upgraded in just a few months…. that’s much more interesting.
Agreed, and similarly, few people would recognize that Nokia sells more portable media players and digital cameras than any other company in the world. Easy to accomplish when the functionality is tied into the dominant global phone brand. Doesn’t mean they excel at it.
In fairness, MS is pretty restricted in what they can do with their Tier-1 OEM pricing (result of the antitrust suit). Any upfront purchasing as part of a contractual commitment is generally deferred revenue, it’s not recognized for reporting purposes until the systems are actually shipped to end users. Regulatory bodies don’t like public companies reporting revenue on products and services that haven’t actually reached the ultimate customer.
Sure, but Snow Leopard was a $29 upgrade vs $149 for previous versions, I think that may have helped…
Seems that this has turned into a Linux vs Windows slanging match (which was inevitable) and there’s lots of lots of half truths flying about. So here’s my view:
1 Windows 7 is not crap – actually quite nice to use. However, it main advantage over Linux is applications, MS Office, Paintshop, Adobe Creative etc. Now I know that some Linux fans will say Open office replaces MS Office etc, etc – but this is not true – these applications are not easy to substitute.
2 Windows 7 is selling so fast because its fantastic – no its good, however, XP which it’s replacing is old, obsolete, insecure and arguably only maintained its dominant position because Vista was so awful and it is a platform for running win32 applications.
3 Windows 7 has fantastic driver support and Linux driver support is awful. No my experience is the reverse (yes it is Tom) all my hardware was recognized by Ubuntu and Opensuse and Sound card, wireless were not by Windows 7 for the sound card a creative the drivers were unobtainable. There seems to be a pervasive myth that Linux is bad for wireless drivers and you will always have to use an awful NDIS wrapper. This is not true and I haven’t used this since Breezy. There are areas such as scanners where Linux driver support is great but lets not blow this out of proportion. However, for OEM Machines driver support isn’t an issue for either as only PC would be built where the hard was supported by the OS.
4 Linux video is unusably crap and fantastic in Windows 7. If this is true why is visual effect turned off on Windows 7 when I watch a video but not in Linux? Why can I start a video drag it over to another screen (so the kids can watch a film) and carry on working on the primary desktop? Linux video seems a least OK to me and my hardware is nothing special Dual core, 2 gig ram cheap Nvidia card.
5 Windows is easy, Linux is difficult and not desktop ready. No Opensuse, Karmic are not that difficult and Windows is not that easy. For boxes setup by OEMs this is hardly an issue anyway. Linux is desktop ready just most folk haven’t noticed. Why? inertia partly but mainly because they want to run MS office or Nero or PowerDVD or Photoshop etc.