vista not selling so well

[asianman6924]

Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP because Vista has simply not shown any life in the market. We have to begin to ask ourselves if we are really looking at Windows Me/2007, destined to be a disdained flop. By all estimates the number of Vista installations hovers around the number of Macs in use.

How did this happen? And what’s going to happen next? Does Microsoft have a Plan B? A number of possibilities come to mind, and these things must be considered by the company itself.

So what went wrong with Vista in the first place?

full story

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2209837,00.asp

[Jman123]

Now that I can have my Xp looking like Vista, I don't really see the point in getting it anymore unless they stop making programs xp compatible.

[shought]

Vista was released like in a beta state... I don't c why they released it this early, my friend has it and there's just lots of bugs in it. Sometimes explorer.exe just starts using 50% cpu(one whole core(dual core)) and won't stop till you shut it down and restart it.

[dock98]

my laptop came with vista home premium and there is virtually no way(without a floppy drive)to install xp over it.it uses twice as much resources as xp.(i have wxp64 on my desktop)i have had to delete a major portion of the bullshit it came with(uses twice as much disk space).i am very dissatisfied with it.if you are contemplating buying a new computer(desktop or laptop) for gods sake don't get it with vista.it woukld be worth a couple more dollars to have xp and wait for op7 due in 2009,as a lot of companies are doing.afterthought.some of the programs cannot be deleted even in administrative mode.definately worth a dick award to Microsoft.

[cooldude7273]

If selling 100 million copies in 12 months is a flop, then this is the biggest of all MS screw ups.

[Cougar]

I was given a complete new in the box retail version of Vista Ultimate. I'm currently on Windows 2000, a very strong and solid box that i built in 2001, still works beautifully today without a single problem. I'm at odds on whether I should build a new computer and use the Vista or not and waste it.

I really do want to build a new computer anyway. I'm sure i could do amazingly better with 2008 hardware than 2001 hardware, even sticking with windows 2000. Initially I was going to stick with win2000 and build this year, but then i heard that WinXP would actually make better use of the hardware. Now I have a real legal copy of Vista (and ultimate at that), so im struggling with the choice. I hear Vista makes even better use of 2008 hardware, but maybe its too early to tell. And maybe the bugs it brings and the limitations and the annoyances are just not worth the mess.

Keeping in mind my situation above, any thoughts?

[mjall]

i think it's sad to hear that, i have been using Vista, and it has been more stable than XP when it came out and the big example is the lack of updates available for Vista, in the end, ignorance is prejiduce, one should try and see and most importantly check whether Vista or XP or any other software would suit his or her requirements, statistics don't mean anything, in the end it's what you want!

The tabloids had made a bad name for vista, people should not beleive what they read, it's what they believe in ;)

[ROMANTICGUY50]

I have seen and tried both. Texh have still told me not to consider buying Vista at this time. They recommended still staying with XP until Microsoft gets it together with Vista. And with SP3 comming out for XP in the future that is what I am planning to do.

[bearoninternet]

I was given a complete new in the box retail version of Vista Ultimate. I'm currently on Windows 2000, a very strong and solid box that i built in 2001, still works beautifully today without a single problem. I'm at odds on whether I should build a new computer and use the Vista or not and waste it.

I really do want to build a new computer anyway. I'm sure i could do amazingly better with 2008 hardware than 2001 hardware, even sticking with windows 2000. Initially I was going to stick with win2000 and build this year, but then i heard that WinXP would actually make better use of the hardware. Now I have a real legal copy of Vista (and ultimate at that), so im struggling with the choice. I hear Vista makes even better use of 2008 hardware, but maybe its too early to tell. And maybe the bugs it brings and the limitations and the annoyances are just not worth the mess.

Keeping in mind my situation above, any thoughts?

Depends on your needs.

If you're into gaming, i'd probably say vista. If you like eyecandy i'd say most definitely vista.

If you like a stable os; xp pro.

What's more; vista needs a lot more (memory) resources, and xp will support your hardware as well (especially pre-2008 hardware).

But i am sure a lot of vista-fans out there will disagree...

I recently bought a new laptop, pre-installed with and 'designed' for vista, so after a month i switched it to xp pro :rolleyes:

Its fast and stable now... Serious.

[themiragemaker]

Hmmm.... all the above sounds way too familiar. I remember the days when people were posting notes about sticking to 2000 cos Win XP is crap, heavy on the system, unstable, etc, etc so I believe the story went like this.....

Once upon a time, Bill Gates called a meeting with his top execs and in a nerdy nasal voice said....

"Assholes of the board....we shalt do as the fat executives of this table have done.....We shall become fat and heavy, bursting at the seams but shalt buy finer new suits. And we will release crappier new crap than the preceeding old crap, to make the old crap smell better than the new crap"

"All in favor?"

"HERE! HERE!"

"Very well, In crap we shall trust!!!!"

And thus was born Microsoft's sales technique...

:rolleyes:

[marke68]

:rolleyes: Interesting to see other peoples thoughts on vista,personally I've been using vista ultimate x86 and have found it to be a lot more stable than xp and any bugs have dissapeared since i installed sp1 rc1,and i'm only running it on a pentium4 2.93ghz and 1.5 gig of ram so all the talk about needing a dual core to run it is not true.

I for one will certainly not be going back to xp but i guess i've just been lucky with vista... :huh:

[bearoninternet]

B) Interesting to see other peoples thoughts on vista,personally I've been using vista ultimate x86 and have found it to be a lot more stable than xp

Could you explain how it can be a lot more stable than xp?

Xp home maybe, xp pro simply cannot get more stable since it never crashes (at least imo).

Plus vista uses a lot more resources and doesnt add any more functionality (except eyecandy).

[leland]

Besides eye-candy the only thing Vista brought to the table was it's security features that makes it harder to do almost everything you need to do to get work done. If you use your computer in a networked environment it gets even worse; I have seen how copying files over the network takes 3-5 times as long as it does with XP Pro. There is UAC, which apple likes to mock and in some ways they are correct, it does in general get a bit annoying though not as much as apple tries to point out. However if you setup XP correctly you can achieve almost the same thing by using limited accounts, or using software that will run your programs with limited credentials. So I have to agree what does Vista really give you, except for headaches? I myself am staying with XP while waiting in hopes of Windows 7 being much more usable than Vista. Maybe by then 64 bit will be further along and I can make a full switch at that time. If not virtual machines are likely to play a big role in the future with 64 bit computing.

Leland

:dance2:

PS From what I have seen Vista is definitely not more stable than XP, though I suspect the business and ultimate editions might be a bit better as they are tweaked to be more like XP Pro in some ways.

[Marik]

the title should be changed to Vista not selling at all...I mean come on...when my wow playing m8 saw 2 gb req for Vista...he flipped...saying well I rather not say :dance2:...

anyways the conclusion is that other than that cool theme...vista really is a piece of :o

[sidekick]

Me personally, I like Vista. I've been using Ultimate since it first came out and yes I noticed a few bugs (with new MS OS's there's always bugs) but they were quickly patched and I've never been happier with a MS OS. It seems like the only actual problem I've been having is with software developers taking their sweet time in optimizing their products for vista, but even that's becoming less of a factor. As for resources well yes it does use a bit more than XP but if you've got the resources it runs like a dream... I don't mind buying more ram... Who doesn't love having more ram? you need 2gb or at least 1.5gb of ram to run games without them chugging on XP anyways, and I must say I'm a big fan of DirectX 10, you can't get that on XP (at least not yet) .

I find Vista more stable as well, I have yet to receive an error message saying that something encountered a problem and needs to be shut down followed by a prompt to report this error to Microsoft. Anywhere I go and use XP it always seems to happen at least once in a session.

But, whatever floats your boat right? Stick with what works for you. Weather you're using XP or Vista, both OS's put together have less vulnerabilities than OSX Tiger and Leopard (something apple fails to mention in their cocky propaganda commercials)

Oh and something that I've really come to enjoy is running a dual boot with Linux. If there's anything that could be lacking in your MS OS, I would say it's very likely that you'll find it in Linux. Plus if you like free software Linux has an add/remove programs and a package manager where all you have to do is click on the app that you want, click apply and your app is downloaded and installed into your computer, and there are hundreds of apps to choose from in all categories.

I have an XP machine that I dual boot with Ubuntu 7.10 and my Vista box I dual boot with Ubuntu Ultimate 1.6, they're both ridiculously user friendly and there's a tonne of desktop customization and gui effects that go far beyond Vista, and with WINE (windows emulator) and Wine Doors there's a long list of windows apps that you can install and use (ie WOW, IE6, Flash 8,Dreamweaver 8 ). I could go on for days about how cool Linux is but I think I've already said too much, just be careful if you do want to dual boot Linux and MS that you don't wipe out your MS OS (I do it on two separate hard drives instead of partitioning, just to be safe and avoid any complications)

But if you're waiting for MS's next OS rather than Vista, be prepared for no backwards compatibility, I've read rumors that they'll be scrapping all backwards compatibility in order to save size and eliminate old security issues.