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Vista is not helping PC sales
Author: Tim SmalleyPublished: 24th May 2007
Microsoft would like you to believe that Windows Vista has caused a massive surge in PC sales, but the reality is quite different.
At this month’s WinHEC keynote, Bill Gates announced that his company had sold 40 million copies of the new operating system and that the launch had caused an unexpected surge in PC sales.
However, the In-Stat report points out the fact that sales of PCs were down in the run up to the Windows Vista launch because consumers were waiting for systems preloaded with the new OS instead of Windows XP.
In-Stat said that it doesn’t question Microsoft’s sales figures, but it doesn’t believe that the launch will cause a long-term growth in PC sales. The firm says that the mini-surge we’ve seen in the wake of the Windows Vista launch is merely from the sales that were ‘lost’ in the run up to the OS’s launch.
To further highlight this, the research firm hasn’t changed its long term sales expectations and still expects 300 million PCs to be sold worldwide in 2009. I guess only time will tell if this holds true.
Have you upgraded to Vista yet, or are you waiting for headline DX10 games and/or the first Service Pack? Let us know in the forums.
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The sad thing is that while it runs it drops from over 140FPS to 40 fps and lower in large fights :(
Especially when people say it's bad for using up your systems RAM. I've actually heard three stores say to people this.
The majority of people will be not be buying a PC just for vista, but be buying a new PC because it's about time they replaced their old one, and see the release of Vista a perfect opportunity to do so.
I also don't believe that there was a slowdown of sales, pretty much every manufacturer offered a free upgrade to vista in the months before it was released.
As for me, I'm very tempted to buy Vista so I can grab a copy of H2 vista and the PC version of shadowrun, I was going to wait for the first service pack for the rumored WinFS, but I don't think I can wait that long.
Which comes to the question, which version should I get? Thinking of getting ultimate OEM, but I'm really thinking it's a complete waste of money and I should go for the home premium that comes in at half the price. What about which version of that to get? I heard not very many programs support the 64 bit version of Vista, that improved now?
I'm not really gaming much anymore, I like Vista because I can run apps faster.
But I'm going to have a week off in June and will reset my box to become a pure Unix box.
I will jump to Vista when Crysis gets here. Until then, no thanks.
I will get directx 10! Whenever someone ports it over to xp :(
Worst case I will buy the next os that Microsoft comes out with, which similar to xp will be coming right after a famed windows hell edition.
I still stand by my opinion that Microsoft should drop making computer OSs and stick to media software/media players, and consoles.
Then what the world run on? If you removed Windows right now there is no alternative on the market that is as flexible and able to work with just about any computer hardware, and the average joe bloggs can use.
Linux still is not a desktop OS despite Dells offering Ubuntu the problem is you have to faff to install anything, its not a questing of click and finish and its done. If you cock up your display settings the odds are unless you know what your doing you have shafted your setup.
Of course your also forgetting the world runs on MS Exchange there deffo aint anything like that to replace it.
I run Vista Ultimate and i think its great, turn off the indexing service, turn off UAC and its a fab OS. I find XP a step backwards now for me.
Kimbie
they want people to be dependent of their OS cause it makes them more money.
Mac is just as compatible, but they're only using software that works with their hardware right now. They even use Intel processors, so it shouldn't be long before they can support all hardware setups. At least one would hope.
I'm not saying take windows off the market right now...it'd be like getting rid of all the cigarette companies at once.
Linux is a whole other story...
That's completely wrong, Macs have FAR FAR less hardware support than Windows, and more importantly businesses worn't run it (for a number of reasons, one could be that their rather esoteric hardware wouldn't work) and Apple would get poorer, they're a hardware business. Hardly anyone makes money from software (Microsoft does because it sells a lot of it).
People only buy Macs for OS X, once that's out in the open no-one would buy them. One of the most important things about OS X is it's integration and the 'It just works' stuff, which would disappear.
Hopefully things will get better by SP1. And this is for the 32-bit version, I've heard dreadful things about the 64-bit edition!
Im using the 64bit versions without any problems EXEPT i can't manage to get a driver for my chipset or whatever needs to be done so i can safely eject my eSata external... (on my sig system)
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8948/controlchainwinhecdh3.jpg
"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called premium content, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry."
Read Peter Guttman long whitepaper at his site its very intresting
And then they would have to accept it, and even then DRM still isn't stopping people rip films, because you can just decode it and remove the encryption for now, which is a lot easier then trying to hack it out of the hardware
It has often been said before, but why the hell do people want all that free RAM? You payed for it, you might as well use it... But I have an idea for those stubborn guys who think they need free RAM, get 3 sticks of 1GB, plug 2 in and leave 1 on your table, then you have 1GB free all the time, and then you surely are cool.
Linux does it for years, actually using up the ram with buffers and caching to improve system performance. But if you rather wait every time when you open something to get all the bits from the HD into the RAM, be my guest. And the argument that you want the RAM filled with stuff you want to be in it is lame... I think the OS knows better what has to be in the RAM, what benefits from being in, and what has the proirity to move into the RAM, don't you? Because if you know it better then the kernel, you should be writing (or rewriting) kernel memory allocations...
Saved me from writing it
If someone offered me copy of Vista Ultimate X64, I'd take It, but wouldn't install it.
Companies don't use macs because Office:mac is terrible and there's a much larger choice of PCs to choose a specific setup for your needs, thereby not wasting money.
Besides, I don't think most cooportations need their computers to "look pretty" or "make cool videos" at the expense of functionality and the extra money they cost.
I think my old school summarises this quite well... despite most of the IT dept. being mac fanboys they still gradually transitioned over to PCs. The mac servers were terrible and Dells were allround easier and more reliable, both as the servers and client computers. I know this doesn't matter so much - but when I walked into the IT room after the switch over, I was shocked at how quite it was in there. The one 120mm fan on the Dells was so much quiter than the little whiney fans and the loud clicky hard drives in the macs. And finally - there were 2 IT rooms right opposite each other. When they changed one to PCs, everyone went in there, the IT room with macs in it was almost allways empty.
EDIT:
well said glider.
also, in vista, does it take into account the ram used by its temporary stuff - IE superfetch ?
And yes, sadly Linux has been way ahead of windows for years now
Hell I'm sitting here with 2gb ram, 47% used - so that's 53% sitting there doing nothing useful at all, what a great use of ram ...
1. my old PC (Athlon 3000+, 9800 Radeon pro) was starting to feel slow for games.
2. DX10 and crysis and Bioshock and all the others
So i bought all the bits and made up a box, plugged em in
Intel core 2 duo E6600
2Gb Patriot DDR2 667Mhz RAM
Antec Nine Hundred Gaming case
Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 Motherboard
Zalman Big copper CPU fan thing
Nvidia 8800GTS graphics card
600W modular PSU
Sata 250Gb Samsung HD
DVD RW+- with Lightscribe
and Vista Home Premium
Approx cost £690 inc vat and del
Id say Vista is well worth the trouble of a few incompatible drivers and older software. But make sure what you need to work... will work.
People will just keep buying PCs as they would normally!
Businesses will do what they always have. "If it isn't broke don't fix it". I read somewhere that about 50% of computers in companies were still on 2k even though XP had been out ages (this was a while back), the only reason XP was making its way into companies was they were buying new systems in line with their usual policy of removing obsolete tech.
Consumers will work mostly along the same lines, some will go for upgrades because its there, for the vast majority, priorities are elsewhere, XP plays videos, runs IM clients and writes documents, why change that.
That said, it's interesting to see that most of us haven't changed our minds much on vista.
My bad