Shipping Seven: hope Sinofsky doesn’t read

Windows SevenOne could ponder and speculate about Windows 7 all day and night, or they could read about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Not to imply parts of the Windows group is made up of domestic animals, but one Windows 7 developer is telling it like it is. The blog is called Shipping Seven and is described as “random thoughts from somebody working on the next Windows OS”.

In the spirit of so many insightful anonymous bloggers like Mini-Microsoft, MSFTextrememakeover and Fake Steve Jobs (before he was ousted), this was bound to happen and I’m glad it did already – in fact since November 2007 when the blog was started, because it shows a human side to Microsoft and what it’s like to be developing Windows without the sparkles and rainbows you might find on more ‘filtered’ company blogs.

This is nothing short of an interesting read. Here’s a few excerpts.

How simple things help: For Vista, we didn’t have a central spec repository – all PM, dev and test documents were scattered around on a huge number of servers around campus.

For Windows 7, we have a central spec repository on one new Sharepoint server. A spec repository where you can edit files offline. You can even sync the whole thing for offline reading, which means you can spend an evening perusing the entire Windows 7 feature set*.

(Note to self: Set up Bitlocker on laptop.)

The upside of all this is that my job is now much, much easier, and I can do it much faster. (Figuring out, for example, if the networking changes in Windows 7 will screw up my feature is now only a couple of clicks away. Awesome.)

*I’m not going to blog about unannounced features yet…but rest assured, Windows 7 will be filled with awesomeness. And there’s no bullshit new feature like Windows Flip 3D in there at all.

And it also helps to be funny.

“Please note that we have added a consequence for failure.”: I started playing Portal last night – And all the reviews were right: the disembodied voice is ridiculously funny.

Which got me to thinking: Windows is our own version of GLaDOS, the disembodied, disinterested, impersonal computer that provides a running commentary on everything you do.

We still screw up ui text, though – my two pet peeves:
‘May’ in messages: Most error messages still have the word ‘may’ in there somewhere, which is a pretty bad CYA move on the part of the team. It makes it sound as though Windows is only marginally aware of the consequences of your action. If you turn off the Windows Firewall, Windows may be exposed to shitloads of attacks from the internet. This may be a bad thing. You may want to turn it back on.

‘or’ in error messages: I hate, hate this one: Usually, it is along the lines of: XYZ has crashed. This may be because of problems with your firewall, or problems with the application, or an incorrect alignment of celestial bodies.

There’s plenty more where that came from. Let’s just hope Sinofsky is illiterate.

Update: To all those lawyers snooping my blog, yes you know who you are, I’m watching you!

149 insightful thoughts

  1. @I work there: Unfortunately for the rest of us we don’t eat lunch on Microsoft campus 😛

  2. “And there’s no bullshit new feature like Windows Flip 3D in there at all.” — That made my day. 😉 Added the feed to Google Reader. Thx!

  3. My friend who is an MVP paid $50 for Vista Ultimate (FPP) at the Company he said $80, free shipping and handling. So I am already suspicious about his links to MS.

  4. Hey Johnathon, that poll isn’t that good of a piece of evidence defending your point. If you have a poll at 50/50 which is is about, plus or minue 2, then you can imagine the majority of the people like it; this is because of all the random mac fanboys, and xp fanboys that just click it sucks for fun.

  5. Chad, my point is if Vista were so great, you wouldn’t still be hearing of folks reverting back to XP or continuing to ask about downgrade rights. It seems that every time I go to a computer store, I hear a customer asking how they can go back to XP or complaining of their continuing problems with Vista. Now you might argue that XP had a similar situation when it first came out however at that time there was a real incentive to upgrade to XP over 98, stability and reliability, and many people did so. And no, Windows 2000 doesn’t count because that wasn’t aimed at consumers. That same claim in my opinion doesn’t work for Vista nor is the claim of better security a major incentive either. How many other companies do you know that had to create a a new policy for downgrade rights for customers to move from the latest version of the software to the older version?

    I’ve used Vista, for months at a time even and I used it for long periods of time during the original beta as well. Whenever I go back to XP, it always seems like a breath of fresh air compared to the various issues I’ve had with Vista, both software and hardware wise.

  6. erm Jonathan, only techies are the ones with problems, because they think their old hardware is good enough. You never hear of normal people complaining (IE people who DON’T read tech blogs)so that poll is increadibly slanted. And I don;t seem to recal actually heariing of people downgrading, just that you CAN.

  7. Then you must not be reading the news. People are going back to XP all the time even those with new computers. Also, I am talking about normal people when I mention folks coming to computer stores. I know of 3 different cases personally where I was at the store and a) mother/daughter came in asking about it b) a guy who had just bought a new HP system came to the store and had nothing but complaints and wanted to buy an XP copy since he had Home Premium and couldn’t downgrade and c) another guy who also just bought a Acer system also wanted to move back. Now these were just instances where I was there and overheard the conversation but there have no doubt been many more similar cases. Further, I have asked one of the guys who works at my university bookstore’s computer department a couple months back and he also mentioned something similar that most of the folks who buy new systems there either do not want Vista on it from the start or come back most of the time complaining about it and would either go for the downgrade option or purchase the cheaper student priced XP copy.

  8. You still seem to not get it. It is not 100 million active users no matter what you may believe. There is yet more info available http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=357 not to mention that again, Vista’s growth compared to XP when it came out is actually lower and has slowed compared to what XP did according to Electronista. In fact, it seems less and less people bought Vista towards the end of 2007 whereas one would expect to see a surging of Vista sales because of the holidays. No, not everything is rosy for MS and Vista at all. While I do not agree with the title of Gizmodo’s post, even Bill seems not very pleased with Vista: http://gizmodo.com/342920/holy-crap-did-bill-gates-just-say-windows-sucks .

  9. After he compared the Zune 2 to Mickey Mouse and told everyone to go buy an iPod (among other comments), I don’t know how I feel about his blog….

  10. Microsoft knew long before Vista was even released that XP was going to be hard to beat in terms of usauge. Thats because Vista wasn’t a leap like Win9x to XP which was a change to the NT codebase path and the end of the much hated buggy 9x codebase.

    Even so, I remember the exact same dicussion back then, lots of people claiming Win9x was much better and that XP was slow, buggy, couldnt run games properly, no drivers..etc..etc

    I wouldnt care too much about all this, Vista is a clear improvement and it works just fine if ou computer is up for it, if you want to downgrade to a system that in it’s base is more than 6 years old then by all means do so.

    Vista works perfectly for me on all my computers and it’s a clear improvement from XP, that said, it surely wasn’t the leap everyone expected but that’s another debate.

    As for that blog I doubt it’s authenticity but still fun to read.

  11. Johnathon, you are abandoning your original post, the majority of people that get Vista are happy with it. But of course, the people that weren’t ready for a leap in their OS because of their comfort with XP, and who wouldn’t be comforted by it, wanted to downgrade. Everyone i know is happy with Vista, and that’s real people, not online chat rooms and forums or polls. I guess you just have stupid friends.

  12. All the points I’ve been making has been about the majority of people NOT being happy with it. That original poll may not have been the best way to show it however. I also included what I personally have seen at computer stores and the response I got from one of the guys who works at our university bookstore’s computer department in one of my previous posts. If I wanted to make this about online chat rooms, forums and polls I would have included a lot more (useless) links but my point of including the 100 million Vista users statistics is that it was a number provided by MS, not some poll and the analyzed stats behind that number. You must live in some fairytale world if everyone you know is happy with Vista. I have yet to meet one person that is actually truly happy running Vista and it seems I’m not the only one: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23569

  13. Pretty bold statement that the majority is not happy with Vista.Well, everyone gets off on their own beliefs I guess.

    Vista hasn’t even been out for a year yet, as I remember it took quite some time for XP to be accepted and like I said, we had the exact same dicussion then.

  14. Don’t mistake my rant about me being a Linux or Mac fanboy. I’ve been a Windows user from the start (10+ years) and I have always upgraded to the latest version when it came out (except for ME). I really did try to use and like Vista (for months at a time even) during the beta and after it was RTM but got so frustrated in the end that I always eventually moved back to XP. I’d love to do nothing more than support MS’s latest software but if this is the best they can do after 5 years (yes I know there was a restart 2 years prior to its release) then it’s quite frankly very disappointing.

  15. PL, XP was accepted because of its much superior stability and reliability compared to Microsoft’s previous consumer OSes. MS provided a very real incentive to move to XP from the start (even if some people didn’t like it at the start) and didn’t have to resort to downgrade rights policies for people to move back from XP to ME/98.

  16. Well, there seem to be a downgrade option from XP Pro to Windows 2000 so not sure this a new thing that came with Vista.

    If customers require it because of business reasons they pretty much have to have the option.

    http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/8/6/2860872a-35dc-4a10-8617-3927aacd189a/downgradeOEMversion-020707.pdf

    Like I said previously I think Vista is a clear improvement and most of the things complained about can actually be easily turned off, such as the UAC, if you don’t want it.

    Vista has numerous new technologies at the core, it’s not just XP with annoying UAC and Flip3D, they improved just about everything including wasting less cpu cycles, wau better memory handling, way..way better graphics handling, much improved security and on the list goes…

    Not sure exactly what you mean it takes so long to get used to, I haven’t hit anything that took more than a minute to familiarize with, if you don’t like the GUI then put stardock on it, if you don’t like the search for staring programs then install any of the program menu replacements out there, heck you can make it look and work almost exactly like Max OS i you want to.

    The core Vista system is way better than XP in all areas and that is my honest opinion from using it now since it was a beta.

  17. You misunderstand. I’m not talking about the corporate sector in any way. Windows 2000 never was aimed for consumers and the corp. sector has its own special stuff such as even current Vista Ent. users can downgrade to Win 2000 or lower. My whole point was about the consumer sector as I previously mentioned: “And no, Windows 2000 doesn’t count because that wasn’t aimed at consumers.”

    Also, I never said it takes long to get used to Vista either. I said “I really did try to use and like Vista (for months at a time even) during the beta and after it was RTM but got so frustrated in the end that I always eventually moved back to XP.” and “Whenever I go back to XP, it always seems like a breath of fresh air compared to the various issues I’ve had with Vista, both software and hardware wise.”

    As for all the improvements to the core of the OS, again that is not something that is considered a major incentive for most regular folks. Why? They wouldn’t even have a clue or know about it in the first place. They just want the system to work and work well. XP has been doing that for years now. MS’s marketing for Vista was flawed as most people agree by now. When you have a new OS come out by MS that has major issues/slowdowns in file transfers/networking (yes I know that MS has patched most of these issues) and tons of other issues (Audio playback slowing down network performance b/c of MMCS? You kidding me?) it doesn’t put a lot of confidence into the minds of the users of the OS. If the problems did not exist in XP, there is no excuse that those basic problems should exist in Vista. MS did the complete opposite: they took perfectly working bits in XP/2003 and delivered poor performance/issues when Vista RTM’d. Wasting less CPU cycles? Trustinstaller comes to mind right off the bat. The thing has a mind of its own.

  18. I usually stay away from bash contests involving Vista but this one since its on this site I have to say something..

    The “regular” people hate change because of their “just want things to work” mentality. The learning curve might be alittle higher with Vista meaning that the “regular” people will complain about it because things have changed and they can’t get something to work. Probably more than likely because they dont know how so they complain.

    But, I think there are several levels to this mentality. One being if something is annoying to some people then that can be a form of it not just working. Another level can be the 3rd party app and drivers not working which in this mentality is very easily blamed on Windows. Driver makers “really” dropped the ball on their end when it came to delivering them on time. They had “plenty” of time to get things developed and tested before the consumer launch and they just didn’t. That simply cannot be put on MS’s shoulders and it was for the first six months Vista was out. That is just clear reason “regular” people said it just doesn’t work.

    As for the argument that saying that these very same arguments that were around for XP when it came out aren’t the same. I believe you can say that about Vista as well because theres always going to be SOMETHING that you can say “well that was different because so and so”. It doesn’t matter. Vista is a clear improvement and until you can provide millions of actual individual accounts of people complaining then just saying “oh three people and probably more came into a store complaining.” There just isn’t any basis to claim that most “regular” people do not like Vista. Geeks,”people who read tech blogs, etc. are in a great position to pray off the “regular” peoples complaints to say that no one likes Vista.

    I’ve been using Vista since around build 5270 on various computers ranging from 768mhz with 368mb ram to 2.5ghz with 2gb ram. I have yet to find anything in Vista that would even make think of thinking about switching back to XP. While I have nothing against XP and even still have XP on a laptop and thats only from lack of a Vista license. I just like Vista better and there are plenty of people like me. I can’t be alone. Vista will be accepted in time just like XP was and I can say it will be accepted because of its much superior stability and reliability when SP1 is included. Having used SP1 for months now. The longer Vista has been out the better its becoming.

    Johnathan dispute anything Ive said till your blue in the face but both sides have their own stats to show and in time your side will lose.

  19. Matt S., eventually yes Vista will be accepted but since 7 is due in 2010, I doubt you’ll see a higher market penetration than XP. Look at it this way. The issues I was specifically talking about have nothing to do with 3rd party drivers or apps. They are core/basic Windows issues that MS patched 8 months after Vista came out or still hasn’t taken care of. These issues never existed in XP yet it takes MS that long to figure out what’s going on and try to fix the problems in Vista? Unacceptable. Nor is it acceptable that these kinds of stories (http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10007037o-2000498448b,00.htm) still exist. That was posted today by the way by ZDNet UK’s #1 blogger.

    My basis that regular people don’t like Vista was a) my personal findings after asking our university bookstore’s computer department where he said that most of the folks who buy new systems there either do not want Vista on it from the start or come back most of the time complaining about it and would either go for the downgrade option or purchase the cheaper student priced XP copy which is unrelated to the other 3 people I was talking about at other stores and b) based on analyzed statistics of the “100 million Vista users”, less, yes much less people seem to have bought Vista towards the end of the year even though you’d expect to see the opposite effect because of the holidays.

  20. I dont think you can judge Vista fro having issues that XP didnt have because XP was a completely different codebase. You change the code, new things might crop up. As for people coming and saying they dont want Vista to begin with.. Is just them listening the the media instead of finding out for themselves. It may be unacceptable to some. But most just dont care. To go back to the “regular” people just want it to work idea. And I’m sure there are plenty of “regular” people that like Vista just as much as I do but just dont say anything.

    Your not getting my point.. No matter how many people buy computers from that university or go to that store. It can’t depict what the current opinion is because they are such a small piece of the market. Plus the only vocal ones. There just isnt enough geeks to be vocal enough to give a contrasting positive opinion to counteract the impact of everyone taking one persons negative opinion and echoing it all over the internet. And yes that happens no matter how many different negative opinions there are. Alot of them on the internet are just being repeated over and over again without actual personal experience.

  21. I still think the majority of Vista-haters on the Internet, are just Mac and Linux fanboys spreading false rumors and such about Vista. Possibly even bots as well.

    And it’s just an OS. Silly people.

  22. I realize that a single store does not depict the whole market. That was just part of “my” personal findings. However, again, as I already pointed out, if you take a look at the BIG picture, those 100 million Vista users/licenses whatever you want to consider it to be, that number is a very real number provided by MS as not some other 3rd party. Analyze that number a bit and you get the following (thanks to Electronista for the calculations http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/01/08/xp.on.more.pcs.than.vista/):

    -Vista was just on 39 percent of the new PC market despite going on sale early in the year.
    -The statistic points to almost 60 percent of all PCs shipping with the older XP variant — or a more than 50 percent larger number than its newer counterpart, according to Electronista calculations.
    -The growth rate has actually slowed versus XP, which sold 89 million copies in its first year on store shelves despite an overall PC market half as large as in 2007.
    -The statistic also represents further evidence of a continued slowdown for the new Microsoft OS … This leaves 12 million copies sold in the last three months of the year, or just 4 million per month despite the potential for increased holiday sales, Electronista finds.

    I think those 4 points (especially the last 2) based on comparisions/calculations of older MS Vista numbers and the new 100 million number pretty well depicts what the “current opinion” of most regular people (since those are the vast majority of the buyers) is.

  23. I don’t think it matters what the growth is comparatively, XP was the exception. They usually have a new OS every 2-3 years. So you can’t compare anything to XP. XP had double the amount of time to penetrate the market as any of its predecessors.

    I say let people hate Vista, let people downgrade. Because eventually MS will stop support for XP as they do all their products eventually.

  24. Matt, those numbers were for first year sales of XP compared to first year sales of Vista, not anything else. With a PC market half as large as today, XP shipped on 89 million systems in the first year yet Vista only did 100 million despite the doubling of the market size. Basically, Vista shipped on nearly half the percentage of total PCs compared to XP in its first year of sales. Remember that this 5 years after XP came out where you would think people would jump at the opportunity to move to a new OS after being stuck with XP for that long a period. XP on the other hand came out a couple years or so after ME and 2K and had a far bigger impact despite it coming out so soon after the others.

    As for support, that’s hardly an issue. MS still issue hotfixes for Windows 2000 (which is currently in extended support with a final date of 2010) and XP will have extended support until 2014 for hotfixes. XP will continue to have mainstream support until mid ’09 also which is also only a year before 7 comes out if MS stick to that schedule.

  25. The only thing that will give Vista the opportunity to take over the Windows market sales completely is MS’s insistence that XP cannot be sold on new machines after June ’08, else based on current calculations of Vista sales compared to XP it wasn’t looking that great.

  26. MS have a far bigger problem in my opinion than just Vista sales of desktops and laptops. Once XP’s June ’08 date passes, they won’t have an OS that can run on those cheaper and smaller systems that are starting to get far more popular such as the EEE PC and the many other similar devices seen at CES. Vista requires far too much horsepower and far too much space to run on those nor is it cheap (at least for the decent versions of Vista it isn’t). Yes there are ways to get Vista on those systems but there really is no point to running it them due to lack of resources and not really being able to take advantage of many of Vista’s benefits.

  27. I knew you would go get the support dates.. :p In most normal situations OS support dates will always overlap each other.

    But again, you cannot compare anything to XP since it was a unique situation. Of course numbers are going to be bigger. And XP had more because 9x sucked and was a big revolutionary upgrade and people wanted to move.

    Most getting a EEE PC and OLPC will be perfectly happy to have the Vista Starter Edition SKU and does not require many more resources tan XP does. And are you actually bringing up the over discussed topic of Vista requiring more resources? Every OS has a increase of resources over the previous OS. And as I said in my original comment. I ran a early beta on a 768mhz, 368mb computer and it wasn’t that slow. The only slowness it had was due to the debug code and development that hadn’t taken place yet.

    People fail to realize that Vista Basic has the same contents as XP Home. How is XP Home decent and Vista Basic trash? And Vista bashers use AERO using alot more resources as just another thing to bash Vista with. When you need more resources to power the new UI. My current computer is 2ghz 1gb and have never turned AERO off. Its not slow.

  28. It is not just about Vista Basic having the same contents of XP Home. It isn’t just about the lack of performance but rather the lack of space as well. That in my opinion is a HUGE issue. In case you haven’t noticed, these devices use flash based storage with 4-8GB of storage at most. Next gen devices will probably have 16GB. For current gen devices, Vista (even Starter Edition) will use up the vast majority of that space leaving space for nothing else basically while XP still had a relatively small footprint. OEMs are not going to use vLite to slim down the OS obviously. What can they possibly do if XP is not an option after June? They’ll be left with only one option, linux, since it is far far more flexible.

  29. “I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.”

    -Mitch Hedberg

  30. Well, I wasn’t aware that the EEE PC only used a SSD. But its not like it can’t be done. There is Origami that runs Vista and comes with 40GB HD. So they can just switch to using the same HD iPods use or the 160GB hd being used in the iPod classic.. It can be done and its not THAT much more expensive.

    Anyway thats it for me..

  31. Don’t suppose you consider size/weight/reliability to be an issue? 8GB of soldered flash is quite small in size compared to having a iPod size HDD in there not to mention the growing popularity of flash and SSDs these days or that folks don’t want to have to worry about having a HDD in a relatively cheap device that they probably won’t be that careful with. There are many benefits of solid storage over HDDs and more and more small devices will use it to get an advantage in size/weight/reliability. No, I think we can easily conclude that MS will be missing out on a market that will continue to grow if they don’t offer anything to replace XP that is relatively small.

  32. It’s amusing how a lot of people get info of Vista on Digg, it’s like the Enquirer, which has a lot of bogus biased info…. eg. Johnathan.

  33. Biased/Bogus? Care to give an example? All the info that I’m using has come with links from very real tech news websites.

  34. Arguing these numbers is almost pointless since they can quite literally, be tweaked any which way but up. You should read articles about XP in the year after it was released – you read nothing but what it a disaster it is and how no one is upgrading. Or at least they were waiting until a service pack. You might as well do a find and replace for XP/Vista – they are pretty much the same articles. Not sure why Jonathan cares so much but he might try some perspective to the blathering stats:

    Just one example:

    http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18829228

    One difference is that MS was admitting the slow uptake:

    The adoption rate for the installed base of 250 million Windows users is “pretty small,” said Rogers Weed, vice president of Windows client product management at Microsoft. “We’re trying to kick-start some momentum.”

  35. I’m thinking the 89 million for XP’s first year and the 100 million for Vista’s first year that are being reported are then a bit too optimistic and are incorrect and probably don’t represent installed bases for both. Why? Because 89million/250million is far greater than the less than 10% mentioned in Danny’s link. Either that or there’s something wrong in one of these numbers, either the installed base or the actual number of copies sold/being used.

    All I was trying to show with the numbers is that Vista demand seems to be going down rather than up (based on MS’s own 100 million claim) which you would not expect especially during the holidays and to link that to what the current supposed opinion of new buyers is of Vista.

  36. Well this is my point about those numbers – I think they are incredibly easy to tweak depending on what story you want to tell. MS does it (“Vista selling twice as fast as XP!”) as so do vista bashers but I find that the 36% number a particular egregious pablum because it comes from PCworld’s website visitors! It doesn’t have anything to do with actual sales but instead is a mathematically untenable extrapolation of who goes to PCWorld = number of sales. It all but useless to everyone but PC world advertisers. If that is the bizarro world silliness they are publishing I’m surprised they have any visitors. On the other side, any blog mostly about vista will have maybe 50% of the users showing up with the new OS. Is that an accurate depiction of the overall market? Not at all.

    A better barameter IMHO is to look at how XP was being portrayed, and the actual numbers, at the time. Win98 outsold XP (to consumers) for ages as did W2K to businesses. Why even in 2005 poor old XP was strugglin’! Check it out – XP uptake slow!

    http://www.betanews.com/article/Windows_XP_Adoption_Rates_Slow/1118943913

    Also – a reasoned approach here:

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=349

  37. As you can probably assume Johnathan.. If we read this blog we probably read others as well and know what the stats are. Theres just no need to keep going on about them.

    As for the differences between the HDs that iPods use and SSD drives? They are about the same size and actually SSD have a larger capacity. Going from 32GB to 256GB so that satisfies your stipulations of size/weight/reliability, same weight, same size and pretty reliable. So, the UMPC, EEE PC, OLPC, projects can still use MS OS’s when they lose the ability to use XP.

  38. @Johnathan:
    I don’t agree. I live in an apartment with four other students (marketing, psychology, marketing, aerospace) who all use vista and really like it. They think its a solid OS (cue the wailing) and are not interested in XP.
    By the way, why the hell would anyone want a 4gb, 8gb or 16gb computer? What would you do with it? My roommates music is at least 20 times larger than that. Besides, If it reaches 16gb (as it will), then people will be able to run vista, right?
    Also, I was using windows 2000 just a few months ago because my computer with 400Mhz, 512MB RAM and 4gb HARD DISK wasn’t strong enough to run XP. I don’t remember going on message boards and screaming “XP sucks!”

  39. I should of looked up that stats myself. Consumers are actually “choosing” Vista over XP a whopping 7 to 1.

  40. Chustar: the 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB computers he is talking about are for the developing nations. Read up on EEE PC and the OLPC programs. They are for very cheap computers.

  41. @Matt S.:
    I know all about that. I still don’t think OLPC is a good idea, but that’s just me. I grew up in a “developing nation” so I can understand the whole thing. For OLPC, it would have been better if it were OCPS (One Computer Per School). Much cheaper and a lot more support. The leaders in those countries would never allow kids to handle laptops. It comes from the conventional wisdom that intelligence comes with age. In Nigeria, the teachers have the knowledge, the students learn from them. OLPC challenges that and it isn’t working out so well.
    But I have strayed too far. I see your point now though. I guess I had to remember what it was like when I was a kid.

  42. (still here Jonatha? I have been having fun reading this flame war, and watching you get so worked up to prove vista sucks)

  43. as a person that ran the Vista beta and RTM on an old Athlon XP 2400+ with 2GB RAM and a 256MB 6600, i’d like to see this list of problems people are having with Vista that makes them want to go back to XP.

    it can’t be a performance issue, and even though my old machine was meant for gaming and pshop it still ran the thing with Aero on two monitors and Dreamscene while i was still able to surf and do mass video conversions.

    this whole downgrade issue just seems to me like teething problems. i remember when my IT department heads made us downgrade the DELLs that came with XP back to 2000, even after we showed them TNG, SAP and Oracle ran fine on it.

  44. Matt S., the EEE PC is not for developing nations. The OLPC is. The EEE PC is a very real lightweight/small laptop that is inexpensive, a combination that wasn’t easily found in the past. That’s why its selling so amazingly well and why my prediction is the demand for such devices will only grow.

  45. You could even argue that the EEE was probably one of the most popular devices at CES this year with all kinds of people from bloggers to tech news reporters using one just because of its practicality. Even if the EEE gets a 16GB drive, why would one even want to put Vista on it? You’d use up half the space, not really be able to use some of Vista’s benefits and end up paying more compared to a license for XP. But I guess this doesn’t matter in the end because you won’t be able to buy XP with a new system after June.

  46. Erm, by 400,000 do you mean increadibly poor? Let’s crunch numbers since you seem to love to do that. First, do me a favor and read this: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=349

    Since you love to crunch numbers that really mean almost NOTHING, let’s do it.

    Microsoft has sold 100 million copies of vista to consumers and 40 to business/ VL partners; 140 million. If we trust the US census we could say there are 303,824,650 people in this country, so that is 46% of our population using Windows Vista. (See how irrelevant and flawed those calculations are?)

    The EEE PC has sold about 400,000 — that is .00132% of our population using it…

    That post was meant for two reasons, one to show you how ridiculous stats are… They can be skewed anyway you want to, but 100 million is 100 million. Second, to a degree, it shows Vista IS doing pretty well.

  47. Actually MS have not said 100 million + 40 million. They have said 100 million total period.

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=357

    “The spokesperson confirmed for me that those 100 million copies represent licenses, not confirmed users. And the total includes copies sold through all channels, including those preinstalled on OEM computers, copies sold as retail upgrades or full packaged product (FPP), and volume licenses sold to corporate customers.”

    I said the EEE PC market was a growing market, I didn’t say it had a large market share at the moment. My point is MS will not have a product (main reason being space-wise) for those devices once XP is gone in June.

    No, Vista is not doing pretty well no matter how you spin the numbers. It was sold on half the percentage of systems that XP was sold on in its first year of sales (if XP’s sales report were dismal based on Danny’s linked article, Vista can only be even worse), AND, most importantly, Vista demand is slowing, not gaining based on MS’s own 100 million number.

    It’s quite simple really. MS said in October they had sold 88 million copies. Since October till December they have averaged roughly 4 million/month which is much much lower than what they were selling Vista when it had just come out and during the summer and is the opposite effect of what you’d expect during the holidays.

  48. Again, none of this really matters because XP will be gone this year giving Vista the complete Windows market.

  49. Did you even read this post? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=349

    It shows that through a totally independent choice, consumers chose Vista over XP 7 to 1.. So bringing up what Ive already said before. It doesnt matter how many less Vista sold according to XP numbers. People want vista more than XP right now.

  50. No that does not begin to address the point I was making. Try again.. All that comment says is that people use what they automatically get with a new PC.. My comment was if you read it…. Of the returns that DELL allows people to buy as refurbished.. They allow either/or, XP or Vista and 7 people CHOOSE Vista to every 1 person that chooses XP.

  51. Returns/Refurbished? Where on earth did you mention that? You said quite clearly:

    “It shows that through a totally independent choice, consumers chose Vista over XP 7 to 1.. So bringing up what Ive already said before. It doesnt matter how many less Vista sold according to XP numbers. People want vista more than XP right now.”

    whereas I’m trying to show as simply as possible that Vista demand is going down. Let’s try that again shall we?

    The simple math is that MS apparently only sold 12 million in the last 3 months of 2007 which really is the easiest way to show the demand or low demand for the OS. That is the simple fact based 2 on numbers provided by MS (the numbers are from MS, that is the key point I’m trying to make):

    100 million (End of 07) – 88 million (Mid October) = 12 million

    So MS averaged nearly 10 million/month before mid October (there was probably a spike when Vista just came out and also probably during back to school season) and a measly 4-4.5million/month after that period. That is the simple picture in my opinion.

  52. You have to understand that even if Vista demand is going down, it will still be on the majority of systems being sold out there so its market share will obviously continue to grow. However, I suspect that its growing far far slower than MS anticipated or hoped for and seems to be slowing down at this point in time (perhaps people are waiting for SP1 before buying but I doubt most regular buyers would have a clue about that).

  53. I don’t know about you but I don’t think 4 – 4.5 million/month can be called “measly”. As you say, demand has been going down. Isn’t that what is supposed to happen? People who want vista buy vista but I don’t think they’ll be going back for seconds.

  54. No, demand is supposed to go up especially in that period of time. We are talking about the Christmas season here (including Black Friday sales) etc. People will jump at the chance to buy a new PC because of those crazy deals. This is after all the first time Vista has been available during the Christmas season where you would think it would be at the highest peak demand.

    After all, over 255 million new systems (according to Gartner) will have been sold in 07 and Vista reached just 39% of those systems despite it being available all year long (not even that high a percentage because the 100 million number is not just for new PC licenses but for upgrade licenses, Volume Licenses etc.)

  55. Johnathan saying this: Returns/Refurbished? Where on earth did you mention that? You said quite clearly.

    Clearly shows that you didnt read it.. If you had read it then you would know that is what I was talking about.

    You keep repeating the samethings over and over again only in a different way. Who cares anymore.. I like vista im not the only one that likes vista more people are going to like vista once the vista bashers stop.. Now lets drop it right there..

  56. Oh well. I’m not the economy major. Perhaps, one day in the not too distant future when we are all toiling away in loyal subservience to the master Overlords at Microsoft, some one will look back at vista and go, “That was our chance! We blew our only chance to stop The Horror of Redmond!”

    Oh, I forgot to ask, the 100 million copies, is that US or worldwide?

  57. No Matt S. You quite clearly said “My comment was if you read it” meaning it was a part of your comment which it definitely was not a part of. You did post a link to that article but then only mentioned “consumers chose Vista over XP 7 to 1” and nothing else about Returns/Refurbished.

    I am repeating the same thing again and again because in the end that’s what the calculations show quite clearly without any bias and those who really want to support Vista do not want to accept the simple fact that demand went down during a period of time where demand should skyrocket. Anyone can do it and get the same result using MS’s provided numbers.

  58. Sigh…. Go back up there..

    I did post a link Johnathan. Cullen, me and Danny posted the same link..

    This was my post:
    Did you even read this post? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=349

    It shows that through a totally independent choice, consumers chose Vista over XP 7 to 1.. So bringing up what Ive already said before. It doesnt matter how many less Vista sold according to XP numbers. People want vista more than XP right now.

    … Post is RIGHT there..

  59. Did you read what I just said? I said “You did post a link to that article but then only mentioned “consumers chose Vista over XP 7 to 1″ and nothing else about Returns/Refurbished.”

    I’m not going to go through the article looking through its details when you’ve clearly summarized the portions you want me to see which definitely did not include any mention of Returns/Refurbished in your comment.

    I did the same thing. I posted links to article but summarized the points I wanted you to see and sourced it back.

  60. @Johnathan: Jeez. Cool down. So he isn’t quoting the way you’d like. I don’t see you following the MLA citation format.

  61. “It doesnt matter how many less Vista sold according to XP numbers. People want vista more than XP right now.”

    I’m not even comparing to XP anymore if you didn’t notice. I’m comparing Vista to… itself. Demand went down for it compared to the previous period of sales, simple as that, during a period of high demand for PCs.

    And by the way, more XP PCs were sold than Vista PCs this year so in regards to people wanting Vista more than XP, that’s certainly debatable. As for the demand right now, again, if Vista’s demand slows as it quite clearly did during the Christmas period, there really is only one other choice in its place and guess what? That’s XP.

  62. Chustar I simply meant that Returns/Refurbished wasn’t a part/the point of his reply. All I gathered he wanted to show with his reply was that “consumers chose Vista over XP 7 to 1” and that “People want vista more than XP right now.”

  63. jsflk;jsdjsd..lol I didnt know I had to mention Returns/Refurbished in my post since I posted the link that says it. Since you read the link.

    Im done.. again..

  64. Its almost midnight here so I’ll be dropping off pretty soon. Thanks for keeping it civil (barely).

  65. Well your reply to my comment seemed to say exactly that, that you did mention it:

    “My comment was if you read it…. Of the returns that DELL allows people to buy as refurbished.. They allow either/or, XP or Vista and 7 people CHOOSE Vista to every 1 person that chooses XP.”

    I skimmed the article but again, Returns/Refurbished weren’t a part of the points you made. That’s all I’m saying, that if you wanted to make a point about Returns/Refurbished, make that point else don’t just say “My comment was if you read it…” and point to the article link as being your “comment”.

  66. Johnathan……lol

    Numbers dont mean anything really until all 1 Billion PC users worldwide( all the take the poll and show the actual definitive number of what Windows version they all use. Besides it has already been said numbers can be presented in a way to make either side look like the winner.

    http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0907.htm —- See this is me showing you a link to backup what I just said.

    Plus, actually PC companies actually had a pretty good Christmas.. http://www.betanews.com/article/Early_Q4_PC_sales_numbers_point_to_Dells_comeback/1200611329

  67. I’m not talking about who sold more PCs or what OS was sold on them when I pointed to that link Matt S. Vista is sold on the majority of new PCs, there’s no denying that, and sales of Vista should in theory be higher than XP etc. What I should have specifically linked to:

    http://www.changewave.com/assets/wavewire/012108_pcs3.gif

    to make my point.

    Paints a pretty grim picture doesn’t it? Customer satisfaction for people that bought NEW PCS in the last 90 days (around the Christmas high-season) is horrible for Vista and yet the opinion of most people is that to get the best experience out of Vista, you should get it with a new PC. Seems that isn’t helping is it?

    And yet, Leopard (No I am not a Mac fanboy or a Mac supporter), having been out for less than 3 months, is enjoying an enormous amount of customer satisfaction. Vista’s been out for a year (I can’t imagine what the satisfaction numbers for Vista would’ve been last year 3 months after it had come out) and cannot manage to even beat the much older XP? Very very poor. And again, my point is these are NEW PCS in the last 90 days where Vista will/should be at its highest customer satisfaction.

  68. Chad made the following point way back in the discussion which I’d like to also comment on again:

    “Johnathon, you are abandoning your original post, the majority of people that get Vista are happy with it. But of course, the people that weren’t ready for a leap in their OS because of their comfort with XP, and who wouldn’t be comforted by it, wanted to downgrade. Everyone i know is happy with Vista, and that’s real people, not online chat rooms and forums or polls. I guess you just have stupid friends.”

    I think this new info proves exactly the point I made with my original link of the poll. The chart isn’t about people downgrading or anything else about moving back to XP. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. It is about: Are people satisfied with their OS with a new PC purchase in the last 90 days? It shows quite clearly that only around 1 in 4 people (much less for Home Basic) are very satisfied with Vista.

  69. What do you hope to accomplish with going on about numbers? I’m never going to agree with you..lol 1, because I dont want to. But, 2, because there always has to be a defender. Its just the fact that no matter how unpopular Vista MIGHT be according to YOUR interpretation of the numbers. Its not going anywhere. SO who cares if vista is unpopular with the people they found to say they hated vista. That was MY point of saying in my previous comment that any poll doesnt matter unless all 1 Billion PC users are polled because you can’t guarantee who they polled.

  70. It is NOT my interpretation. I am no interprating anything when I show you the graph. It is plainly obvious what it says. This is from real people who just bought NEW PCs. They are supposed to be HAPPY with Vista. It should be obvious to you that its very real as even XP numbers aren’t that great. It’s 5 years old, people are probably sick and tired of it but Vista is an even worse option for them. I’m not even trying to defend XP when I posted the graph. I am showing that the large majority of people are not happy at all with Vista even on new systems.

    Also, in case you haven’t noticed, ChangeWave is not some small company making random reports. They do this all the time and people take them very seriously, just as they do with Gartner/IDC. This is very very real no matter how you want to see it. That’s how stats work. It is impossible to take the opinions of everybody, so statisticians use samples. Unless you are here to tell me the whole field of statistics is full of it.

  71. Here is their own analysis:

    “Eighty-one percent of Apple buyers said they are very satisfied with Leopard — an exceptionally high rating for a new operating system. This compares to 53% and 51% for Windows XP, and 27% and 15% respectively for the Microsoft Vista systems.

    Simple as that.

  72. Again, What do you hope to accomplish with going on about numbers? Samples are are inconclusive. You could find a group that all likes Vista but apparently they just found a group that all hated vista. So im goint to say this again. Numbers do not matter Vista isn’t going anywhere.

    Sigh, you can’t compare users of OS X to users of Windows because there are exponentially more PC users. Its not at all surprising there is a higher approval rating of a new release.

  73. Because there are fewer OS X users and most changed to get away from the PC and are more likely to be a MAC fanboy and like anything they release..

  74. I am trying to show what is apparently impossible for someone like you to grasp: that Vista is a failure in the minds of most of the consumers who have used it so far. The majority of new PC buyers will have to use it as that is what they will get on their new PCs, that is plainly obvious and Vista’s market share will grow because of that, but that doesn’t allow us to say that just because all or most new PCs have it means that MS should be given a by in regards to the quality of the OS or to the supposed “value” of the new OS. No, this continued criticism by many major parties should only further help MS to rethink its strategies and come out with a much better OS. They’ve already started thinking about it the right way with 7.

  75. Gartner/IDC/ChangeWave/CDW have been doing this for years Matt. Do you really think there’s no credibility to any of these reports, that they just make it up or do a poor sampling?

  76. I choose not to grasp it Johnathan. I’m not saying those people don’t have credibility. I dont care if you or the portion of the people their polled don’t like vista. Its just a fact that since there are going to be more UI changes in Windows 7. People will just have to get used to hating the new OS at the time. I don’t see MS going broke over it.

    I’ll say this again. Since they didnt poll everyone that used those 100 million copies of Vista. They can’t say Vista failed. Because I like Vista and Im not the only one. Until everyone says they dont like Vista. Then Vista didn’t fail.

  77. UI changes? Are you really that naive to believe that this is just about a UI change? No wonder you’re having trouble comprehending the issues people are having with Vista in your perfect little world when all you really think the people are having a problem with is the UI.

    “Since they didnt poll everyone that used those 100 million copies of Vista. They can’t say Vista failed. Because I like Vista and Im not the only one. Until everyone says they dont like Vista. Then Vista didn’t fail.”

    Great logic that is. So why did Windows ME fail exactly because it definitely wasn’t because they polled “everybody” using the OS and got their opinion about it. It was just a poor OS riddled with issues. After ME came XP for consumers, providing stability and reliability in a single codebase for the combined group of businesses and consumers. That was something that hadn’t happened before. They’ll do that same thing with Vista, learn where they went wrong, and they went wrong in quite a few places by the way, and deliver what I hope will be a great Windows 7. Plus if that report on TG Daily is true regarding Windows 7, it may even be out soon after mainstream support for XP ends (although XP will still have extended support for quite a while longer).

    ME made the list (and most likely many more lists) for the Top 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125772-page,2/article.html) and was criticized the moment it came out. Vista made those same lists in 2007 for Worst Products of 2007 and has been criticized heavily. How does that exactly provide confidence in Vista to anyone? Vista’s satisfaction rating is extremely poor (based on what stats say, interpret that however you like) even after a year after its been out. ME’s satisfaction ratings … well words can’t describe ME to be honest. Vista is nowhere near as bad as ME as it still offers the stability/reliability of the NT codebase but it is littered with issues that have plagued it from the start until now and it just isn’t good enough or acceptable for a product that took MS 5 years to deliver.

    So go ahead, like Vista, but the message you’ll be passing on to MS is: “Well gee, Vista was pretty good for me (and who cares what the majority of people thought about it) so you can the same effort into your next OS (and take another 5 years to deliver it if you want and not even offer any great incentives to the highest payers (*cough* UE *cough*)) and I’ll still like it regardless. At least you pleased me even if the majority of folks are having issues with it or think it had poor value.”

  78. @Johnathan:
    I’m not kidding. What I mean is that there is a whole demographic of people who don’t use the internet, (especially outside the US) and as a demographic with a particular mindset, they might be generally approving of vista but unable to express it. But then again, I’m an engineering major, not psychology so this might be nothing more than a steaming pile horse ejecta. (I’m trying to keep the foul language out) 🙂

  79. @Johnathan:
    I have reviewed you’re posts on this particular topic i.e. “Vista is a tremendous failure” and I’ve decided that I agree. Not that it’s bad, but that it will probably not be as widely-adopted or approved-of as I would like. But what the heck, I didn’t pay for it and I am very satisfied (like the 1 in 4). Besides, I’m surprised you made the argument that it will be widely adopted because people will get it on their new computers. I thought the generally accepted belief is that people will either:
    a) Uninstall vista and go back to XP (like leaving that high maintainance boyfriend to go back to one who abuses you because you know how much he hits when he starts drinking but you never know how much the new one will cost you when you go out on a date)
    b) Uninstall vista and install some Linux distro (like leaving your high maintainance boyfriend for that girl who’s always flirting with you no matter how much you tell her you don’t play that field.)
    (Wow, that’s a nice analogy! I should use it more often!)

  80. Do you actually think Im a noob Johnathan? But at least I didn’t get personal.

    But anyway, IF you thought through it more thoroughly the UI changes are the only thing that we can guarantee people will complain about. Naive?

    While I didnt really have any problem with ME. I will complete agree with you that ME deserves to be on that list.

  81. The sad reality is the large majority of people (ie. most of the regular consumers), even those not so satisfied with the OS, won’t have a clue about downgrading or your option (b), (I personally would never do option b unless I was truly desperate), and will just live with the fact that this is what they’re stuck with until it’s time to buy a new system again or may even sell it for a Mac lol (there’s been enough Mac ads on the TV and ‘net regarding Vista that that might just help decide for them). But the impression that Vista will leave on those people will not bode well for future Windows editions. No amount of polls/studies in my opinion will stop the growing market share of Vista (especially since XP will be gone by the end of the year), that’s just plain reality, unless MS were to actually do something about it because OEMs will largely have no choice but to sell/promote Vista if there’s no other product to sell in its place.

  82. “But anyway, IF you thought through it more thoroughly the UI changes are the only thing that we can guarantee people will complain about. Naive?”

    Oh, so all the other issues that Vista had, poor gaming performance b/c of drivers (not entirely MS’s fault but they did release patches as well for gaming and it has gotten better now), awful basic file i/o/networking issues (which was patched 8 months later), sleep issues (that still plague some users), a poor value for money, I could go on for quite a while, but nevertheless all this was just largely ignored as the reasons people are not satisfied with Vista because the users couldn’t get used to the new UI? Please, don’t kid yourself.

  83. The UI changes in WINDOWS SEVEN Johnathan.. Is the only thing we can guarantee people will complain about…… Kidding myself?

    I think people just think mac ads are entertainment. What is the purpose of all this arguing with people that like vista. Should’t you be out trying to convince the REGULAR people that vista suck? Throw all your numbers at them.

  84. Of course not Matt. The UI change in Vista was not the only thing people complained about nor will it be in Win 7 but if what we’re seeing is true, MS seemed to have learned their lesson with Vista and will tread more carefully with 7 and deliver a much much improved product that will actually satisfy users.

    MS seems to have used the mentality of “change just for the sake of change” in Vista to negative effects. They literally took working parts and delivered poor performance/flaws in many areas and claim that it is actually better. To what end? They say “Oh just wait for the patches, that’ll solve all your problems” but why? Why break something that works? Sure, I get that you want to replace the desktop with a GPU accelerated one, and there will be issues with that BUT that is a change for the better. Many others are not and were just “change just for the sake of change”. Some changes, well, it definitely doesn’t make a better experience for me when all I get are issues with them and they offer no clear benefits.

  85. Of course there will always be someone like you always picking on anything MS makes. Now yell at me for saying that.

    Johnathan, what “Specfically” is wrong with your copy of Vista? Dont say anything that anyone else has said is wrong with theirs dont say anything that was said in any news. What is happening on your computer that you dont like?

  86. Perhaps you missed the part where I absolutely loved XP from the start. I even had a pretty poor system and I couldn’t stop praising it even on that system. I had absolutely no issues and I even did an upgrade install from 98->XP will all those apps installed.

    In regards to Vista, I get everything from sleep issues on my laptop (I’ve tried everything but the thing has a mind of its own and will decide by itself if it wants to sleep or not), to extremely slow file browsing/viewing in v. large folders with lots of files (especially those over the network, even with all the latest patches or the latest SP1 RC Refresh its still horrible/slow compared to XP’s near instantaneous performance with the same folders), programming development issues believe it or not, the same programs I write in Eclipse in XP that run just fine there have issues and actually do not work properly in Vista (even when run under Eclipse in Vista) in that I can do less with the programs in Vista before they die, to gaming issues (it is absolutely inconsistent compared to XP, I don’t care what you have to say/show about it, it is inconsistent and many people I know who use Vista also agree on this), and lest we forget, TrustedInstaller, as I said before it has a mind of its own jumping to 100% even in the middle of gaming making them unplayable for no reason at all, audio drivers that have died on me for no apparent reason requiring a restart, slower (meaning higher CPU utilization) HD video playback compared to XP where its silky smooth with lower CPU usage. But really, it’s all that bloat. It’s no wonder MS tried to strip things down in MinWin and I hope they apply those philosophies to the actual 7 project. There’s much more but that’s what I could recall off the top of my head.

  87. Yea I’ve seen that Chustar. I’m just saying 7 will be much much more componentized (in a good way) than Vista ever was allowing for far more flexibility. I don’t think anyone will disagree that Vista is quite bloated in some areas.

    As I sorta mentioned when I talked about gaming, I think it all comes down to this for my opinion of Vista: Inconsistency. In XP I rarely if ever have any unknown slowdowns or inconsistencies in usage while they happen much more often in Vista for no apparent reason and have aggravated me plenty of times. SP1 does not make much of a difference in this nor has heavily vLite’ing Vista or turning off unnecessary services done much to help either.

  88. You don’t even want to get me started on Vista on my desktop Matt. I’ll keep it short: the thing crashes whenever it feels like it and yes it will always crash within an hour or two of usage. Event log etc. was not much use either, it just crashes (not a BSOD) requiring a full restart whereas I’ve had XP for as long as 3 months 24/7 uptime on the desktop.

  89. Yet again another reason why you can compare anything to XP…. Because Vista underlying codebase is so much different then XPs. And Im glad they did it. It will be a good thing in the long run. New codebase, new problems.

    And I was waiting for you to blame some of it on 3rd party software or drivers. Thats not MS’s fault.

    You know what… I cant wait for 7 to come out. You know what will make my day? You bashing 7 too. You’ll do it. I know you will because theres going to be something that you dont like. Then out come the numbers again.. ooo Windows 7 failed!!

  90. I have left my VISTA computer on for an entire week. Never hiberating never sleeping never turning it off. Without a crash. Explain that? Hmm, MS built into Vista crash on anyones computer who bashes us for no good reason..

  91. Did you not see anything about what I said about when I moved from 98->XP Matt? Even though I had a pretty poor system for XP when it came out, I’d loved it from the start and couldn’t stop praising it. If MS can do that with 7, I’ll gladly use it and promote it.

  92. Matt those were my personal experiences. As I said, the major problem with Vista in my opinion is really inconsistency. With XP, I really don’t see any surprises on any system I run it on whereas with Vista I never truly know what to expect.

  93. “…who bashes us for no…” us? US? This is bringing back ideas of the Southpark episode where Cartman joins with his Dawson’s Creek trapper keeper.
    “Assimilation is inevitable. Resistance is futile.”

  94. Thanks for not cutting us off Long.. 🙂

    Most sites if a discussion went this long it would of been cut off days ago.

  95. Sure Chustar. Vista has its issues, I’m sure Matt will agree that Vista is not perfect but it can only get better… I hope. Some people like it, some people don’t like it, some people have major or minor issues with it, some people cannot stop praising it, and some people just are not satisfied with it or don’t think of it as a good value upgrade and will just stick with the older version, but in the end for the next couple years or so its hear to stay as MS’s primary OS… unless something drastic happens in that period. I guess we’ll all have to live with that whether we like it or not.

  96. Yes Vista isnt perfect. But, IMHO, it is better than XP. And yes I saw stability and reliability, performance get better after it was released. And continues to get better. I actually think SP1 makes it even better. OK there is one thing about Vista that is annoying to me, just one. Shadow Copy doesnt work but when I install SP1 it fixes it. There you got one gripe out of me are ya happy? 🙂

  97. Over a year later, many tech pundits STILL try to spin Vista into as much doom-and-gloom as possible. Today that process got just a little harder. According to CDW’s latest poll of Vista adoption, 48% of the 772 companies polled are either currently using or evaluating Vista, a 19% increase from this time last year.
    http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/archive/2008/01/17/poll-finds-corporate-vista-adoptions-on-the-rise.aspx

    Find a way to put a negative spin on that one.. 🙂

  98. … Microsoft has extra incentive to keep tight-lipped until they are actually ready to present something. Microsoft doesn’t like bad press about features they cut, and I don’t blame them. In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for good old fashioned speculation. In fact, when I was a boy we didn’t even have the internet, all we had was speculation. How times have changed. Now in this modern day, when hard facts are unavailable, we can speculate en mass! Hopefully…

    CrossTalk: http://dataland.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/windows-7/

  99. That’s their analysis:

    “Because of lingering hardware and application compatibility issues between companies’ existing IT assets and Vista, CDW still advises customers to move to Vista on a case-by-case basis, said David Cottingham, director of product and partner management at CDW. In the case of small businesses, they may not have the application or hardware dependencies on Windows XP that larger businesses have.”

    It makes sense that larger businesses aren’t rushing into a Vista deployment compared to smaller businesses. Larger businesses have much more systems/apps to cover/check for compatibility as well as obviously having a lot more machines so it could be they don’t have much of a reason to invest in upgrades as of yet when XP is still fine for them. It’s not that different from when XP came out, many larger businesses didn’t move in the first two years after it came out. If you recall from a few months back, the same is true of many big government agencies saying they didn’t have plans to move to Vista till at least 2009. The problem is XP had 5 years to grab that market while Vista, if the larger corps don’t deploy until 2009 could be stuck in the middle if 7 is supposed to be out in 09 and those companies may just leapfrog Vista.

  100. I’m not saying it would be a wise idea for the large businesses to not even take a look at Vista and not work on getting their apps compatible since 7 will probably be closer/compatible to Vista in many ways than XP so they will probably do that but there’s a good a chance as any that they may say: “Our business doesn’t really have a need to deploy to Vista just yet. Since MS will continue to support XP for many more years, we’ll let MS iron out any issues of the v1.0 tech they introduced with Vista, and they introduced quite a lot of new core bits with Vista, and reevaluate when 7 is out and the technology and hardware to accompany it has had time to mature.”

  101. I’m personally predicting the move from Vista->7 to be closer to a 2000->XP move so by the time 7 is out, everyone will probably have had a chance to evaluate and fix their stuff for Vista and could relatively easily move to 7.

  102. Obviously Matt, I have said that Vista’s market share will continue to grow, that’s inevitable, the problem is how much? Even if Vista were to take half the Windows market share by 2009, then what? You’ll have half of em on XP, half on Vista, and then if MS were to introduce a new OS in 09, there’ll be a nice mess there with 3 different user bases for MS to support.

  103. By 3 different user bases, I mean that there will be 2 user bases that have a considerable amount of users already on them by 2009 and then a 3rd that will only grow leaving MS with quite a job to do.

  104. You seem to forget how it was before XP. There was always another OS come out every 2-3 years. So Im sure they will just have to get back into the swing of things having more than 2 OS’s in the mainstream at the same time..

  105. I don’t mind, but isn’t it hard to have a conversation here? You have to refresh this massive page, then refresh it to check often.

  106. No, I haven’t forgotten. Before XP, there was NT4->NT5 (2000) and for consumers there was 95->98/98SE->ME (though that didn’t really gain a lot of users) + there were nowhere near the number of users that they are today. This is the first time where they’ll have 2 different large sets of user bases (XP and Vista) + 1 new one and all those systems cater to both, that being the key, both businesses and consumers whereas in the 9x/NT era, they had a split product/user base and could support the two user bases separately from each other.

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