An overpriced, resource hungry, not-much-different-than-XP-except- for-being-a-DRM-crippled-OS is not what consumers (and more importantly, businesses) are clamoring for. Our story from yesterday about Dell was only one shot in the war of the people vs M$.
Microsoft admits Vista failure
WITH TWO OVERLAPPING events, Microsoft admitted what we have been saying all along, Vista, aka Windows Me Two (Me II), is a joke that no one wants.
It did two unprecedented things this week that frankly stunned us.
Dell announced that it would be offering XP again on home PCs. […] This means that Me II sales are at least as bad as we think, the software and driver situation is just as miserable, and Dell had no choice but to buck the trend.
[…]
The other equally monumental Me II failure? Gates in China launching a $3 version of bundled Me II. Why is this not altruism? Well, it goes back to piracy and how it helped enforce the MS monopoly. If you can easily pirate Windows, Linux has no price advantage, they both cost zero.
Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can’t compete on level ground, so is left with backpedalling and discounts of almost 100 times.
What we are seeing is an unprecedented shift of power. It is also an unprecedented admission of failure. And the funniest part about the moves made? They are the wrong things to do. Microsoft is in deep trouble.
I got my first opportunity to use Vista while helping my sister in law with her new laptop and it’s hard to be impressed. Her core duo, 1 gig of ram laptop seems to run slower than my four year old athlon 1800 xp with 512 meg of ram running xp.
I’m sure with a lot of tweaking I could speed it up, but why should I have to? I won’t be supporting MS when it comes time to upgrade, unless they can give me a better reason than to help the movie industry keep it’s profits up by crippling my computer.
Office/business USE–
An OS.
Word processing
Spread sheets
Email
Internet
Printing
And I see None of these require ram, or Much HD space.
All around system–
SAME as above.
Add MP3 dubbing/burning
Scanning/fax/print
AND really not much different..
Gaming system–
BOTH of above,
AND add Heavy Video.
the main problems come when MS wants to do everything, insted of letting the programs DO IT. there are so many background tasks…I cant see where MOST of them are redundant, or OVER security.
1000 monkeys all creating code, and only 1 human SLAPS it together and MAKES it work… Optimization LATER.
What a WASTE.
Greed and complacency kills. M$ is guilty of both I for one will not shed a tear for their demise.
Its too good to be true, the article is from the inquirer and they mess up quite often. If it does end up like ME M$ will end up making (or buying) a real 3d desktop which will will make them back to the same point as XP. Also there is too many computer illiterates who wont find out what is happening until its too late. People are too much self servicing and too lazy to search or read of what they buy until it hits them.
For me pre SP2 XP was worse than ME because of the many unreliable services that was on by default and no inbound firewall to prevent you from infection before you get the patches. What a mess.
For years I wished that directx would end up open source because of an eventual death of M$. 🙁
You should post this instead, its a good one:
Samsung Exec Takes DRAM Plea Deal
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4731559.html
Yup its happening again and again and…..
Sadly, even though Vista IS Windows ME II, I don’t think it will kill them. What DOES seem to be happening is a definite shift from Windows to OS X. I work at a computer repair store and 1 year ago, we may have gotten 1 Mac a month. Now, we get 4-6 calls a day on Macs (Not repairs, but if we carry them or upgrade them), and have 2-3 in the store for upgrades or hardware problems. Most are getting them second hand, on ebay or from individuals. So, I’d say we’ve gone from 1-5% Mac a year ago to 10-20% now. Pretty heavy growth rate. Oh, and Mr. Jobs, that growth rate is in Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast. You may want to think about putting a store SOMEWHERE on the Gulf Coast soon.
The relative maturity of the current software market means that new, killer, Vista-only applications may be slow in coming. I only wish that Microsoft didn’t have such a huge and growing software patent portfolio to use in slowing the encroachment of linux in the operating system space. Linux could be more robust and user-friendly by now if its developers didn’t have to navigate through such a tricky minefield of software patents.
What??
Waddaya lookin’ at me for??
I didn’t say a thing… 🙂
Well, even in the business end of things, I don’t know of a single company I deal with moving to Vista. Preloads are wiped clean and reinstalled XP.
Hype, hype, hype . . . This is where Microsoft has failed with Vista.
Where’s the excitement?
So make the new OS two years late, let leak awful DRM tid-bits, let people bad-mouth on how they copied Mac OS X, price it way too high, and you have a PR mess.
Microsoft should have cleaned up their image with the public first.
In the pure business environments, and professional conferences, Microsoft is respected. They outclassed SUN, Novell, SCO. Only Oracle gave them a good run in the high-end, and Sybase in the low end, business spectrum.
At http://www.DevTeach.com, we will have over 400 students/professionals for three days. I’ll report back on Vista + professional developers. Especially our 30 teacher team. In the CageMatch forum.
Lauren, I thought you were supposed to be the main act here! I wouldn’t have bought my ticket if it hadn’t promised a “MacRant by the Ghoti” (plus laser light show).
Sheesh — some concerts are so disappointing 😉
I hate to admit this, but the Inquirer is “spot on” with this story. Me II is not that great of an operating system when you compare it to the XP SP2. The only thing I see that that Vista has is the eye candy with Aero Glass. And even Aero is terrible when compared with Beryl.
The whole campaign stunk from the beginning. It was pretty obvious that MS intended to shovel Vista upon the world with extreme prejudice. Then people who actually needed a working machine got a hold of it and many (not all) said “I’m happy with XP for now, thanks”.
I keep saying… computers need a major paradigm shift. There simply are no more new computer customers (except maybe teens)
We need a completely different computer … not just an incremental improvement of the same. Not Vista and not Linux or Apple, either.
Microsoft is actually in a pretty good position to create that paradigm shift since they have the money and the engineering staff. But I’m guessing they don’t have the corporate culture and are too invested in the status-quo.
If I had to bet, I’d put my money on Google as creating the next big change but it may come from some completely unexpected company or group.
Every beta release of an MS OS (first iteration, commercial release) has had folks saying pretty much the same thing, with ME being the only one that didn’t settle down by SP2 or 3. Killing the leviathan with small knives is never easy. Wishing it would die from internal flaws is actually more practical. But realistically, even as an MS basher, predicting the “death” of MS is wishful thinking.
Twenty five year Mac user at home, but not on the job where I do the IT. I’m locked to MS OSs at work. Due to vertical scheduling, billing, & accounting packages, we wont be going to Linux/OSX anytime soon. Can’t find the tools to do the specific job and/or pick up seemlessly from what we have.
But I would kill for an update of Win2K for the business environment. Stripped, basic, no consumer bells and whistles, good enough security (with some enterprise server level add ons). That could keep me in the fold for another 10 years. Consequently, I hope there is some truth to the ME II concept, and a “near death experience” and that it would force MS to become competetive based on product not marketing muscle. That would be lovely.
hmm, one might argue that paradigm shifts are rarely engineered, they are labeled after the fact
My wife has a new Mac laptop. I’m a Windows XP guy mostly (that uses Unix and VMS with Motif style GUIs sometimes at work). I’m not in love with XP, but OSX isn’t all that great either. She’s computer phobic (still thinks something she does in using the computer can break it), even though she’s had an account with EMail and Web access for some time.
Good things about her Mac: seems to be quite stable, and has a GUI that she thinks is cool (flashy animations, etc.). Finder works a lot like Explorer and similar navigation systems in Unix and Linux. Wireless connects just happen, unless the connection is encrypted (in which case you have to enter the protection key on the laptop).
Bad/Weird things:
The trackpad has only one button, and the click/select event is fired only by clicking that button, not by tapping the touchpad as in Windows laptops. She doesn’t have a mouse yet, though PC mice will work with Macs. Only two USB ports on the laptop. Her laptop comes with a remote control, though I have no idea why.
Macs still detach the application menu from the application, unlike any other windowing system (Unix Motif, Windows, and the Linux GUIs all work the same way–the application menu, if any, is on the main application window).
For some reason, data shared between her laptop and the .Mac EMail service has to be manually synchronized at this point, though there’s supposed to be a way to make that automatic.
Tastes Vary category:
Wife likes the OSX Dock, and I like the Start Menu. I have no idea what the Dock looks like if someone has a lot of applications installed.
I like startup icons and file or URL links on my desktop, and she thinks that an icon on the desktop means the icon is running some application. She considers desktop icons to be a lot of clutter.
Back to the topic at hand:
From looking at demos, Vista seems to combine some of the worst of both XP and Mac OSX. It’s not backwards compatible, and has a flashy GUI that slows down the computer a lot but offers nothing to the user in return other than the flash. The DRM crap is _the_ major reason not to upgrade to Vista (or have it on a new PC) of course.
More hypocrisy from this blog. With regards to movies and songs, you guys say the industry needs to embrace copying and lower prices. Now when MS does that in China and lowers prices to $3, you call it a sign of failure.
I have a nearly brand-new HP/Compaq desktop. This one didn’t come with it, but a lot of the same boxes were sold with Vista upgrade coupons.
I tried the “upgrade advisor” just for the heck of it – I’m going to have to put a copy of Vista on something here for client issues anyway – and there were two “you can’t do it” issues….
I don’t really care – I’ll end up with a super-cheapie if I really need Vista – but imagine some clueless newbie who tries to install that coupon-based upgrade….
I’m going to stick with XP/SP2 as long as possible. Only four machines, but….
(Don’t even get me started on the DRM thing.)
Regards,
Stu.
Guys, guys…
Relax. It will take some time but Vista will prevail.
It will only take the time to someone krack it permanently (ie. divert that activation gimmick). And also to clean that DRM jungle it comes with.
Only then will it flourish on the pirate networks, and that is what it takes it to be successful.
If Microsoft was half clever it would have already arranged to have a leak of crucial information on how to do it.
Windows success was always close connected to the piracy levels. Why? Well, if computer users lived all in 1st world countries and had money to shell out for a Dell or HP with pre-installed OS, that wouldn’t happen. Bus as it is, people around the globe are buying no-brand beige boxes, and mixing and maxing components to upgrade their machines for the least cost possible. Of course going to the store and shell out more than they’ve payed for the rig, on the OS is not going to happen.
And making it fast for games wouldn’t hurt either.
I still use W2K in my work computer and no plans to switch to XP or Vista.
I tweaked it to run faster, it does the job, I’m happy.
13, greg allen, I keep saying… computers need a major paradigm shift
I want the computer from the movie ‘Minority Report’.
Vista — an expensive joke. And I thought XP was tough to support.
#4, justsaying, forgot to thank you for the link about Samsung and memory price fixing. German Infineon was busted in 2004 for the same thing, for 160 megabucks. Jerks.
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3408491
Michael Dell is back in charge and he, first and foremost, is a businessman. He can see the bottom line of Vista sales and he can read the writing on the wall. Sales of Vista are way off of estimates. Why else would there be a sudden interest in Linux and even courting Mac OS X. After all, Dell sells hardware, not operating systems. He cannot let the new OS determine his bottom line.
You have to admire Dell for pushing back on MS. I just hope the rest of the industry follows suit. Freedom of choice makes capitalism work.
The cracks in the MS monopoly are growing bigger by the day. If MS has any sense, they should be feverishly trying to come up with a revised version of Vista with all the DRM components and bloatware removed or vastly reduced while adding back some of the cool things that were cut out. Their existence depends on it.
As for China, they are still communist, after all. I imagine that Linux has huge philosophical appeal there. It is a free OS for the people. I am sure that MS, to them, represents the worst of capitalistic monopolies. Microsoft selling Vista in China is simply recognition of that fact. It is hard to compete with free so they are forced to sell Vista at their printing costs.
“the war of the people vs M$”… wow, online “journalists” are a true fuck up.
Same ol BS was said about XP, and now noooone wants XP to go away.
The $3 dollar deal is an attempt at expanding the market to 3rd world countries. Want to know how it goes out there? Here´s an example from Mozambique: when i told my students to point their mouse at the left bottom and click Start they actually started tapping the left bottom screen with the mouse. People out there don´t understand computers or what they can do for them. It´s a huge opportunity for MS to expand their user base. I fully support this deal.
oh, and a quick google search reveals that (surprise!) Charlie Demerjian, the author of this article, is a Linux fanboy
Dvorak, how come you let this garbage in here?
Hey Floyd:
Re: Single button tracpad. Go to System Prefs and in the mouse pane, enable two-finger right-clicking. And tap-clicking if desired.
The dock size and icon size are re-sizable too Just drag the verticle separator at the right end and to re-size. Check out the Dock in system prefs for more options.
Mac email is automatic. In every Mac program, there is a Preferences command under the specific application menu (fist one after the Apple menu). Check your email prefs to see if auto checking is tunred on (I believe every 5 mins is the default).
Lots of good Mac sites out there. Check em out for more tips.
As dumb as Ballmer is, he can’t kill MS this fast. Windows is still by far the dominant platform, simply because there’s nowhere else to go. Lot’s of people (myself included) simply dislike Macs for the same reasons that the Mac zealots jump up and down about. As for Linux… The day I can run the Windows software that I can’t function without (Adobe CS, MS Office, and sadly enough IE for web dev testing) natively in Linux, as well as sync my Pocket PC, I’ll switch.
But unless MS decides that it’s going to buy into the Linux community and convince them to compromise their hippy philosophies, that’s not going to happen.
Sheva, you sound like the fan boy, the MS fan boy.
Just because the author is a fan of another OS, does not mean that his article is not right on the mark.
-Fratm
#13, Greg,
The x86 family of processors has been standard fair for almost 30 years now. Yes they have done quite a bit with the architecture, but something completely new using more modern techniques might give us a big improvement. There are enough power users out there that can’t afford or justify the cost of a mainframe that would jump at an opportunity to have something extremely powerful. Something that uses solid state (flash) memory only in the most efficient way.
Fratm,
I´m tired of the old anti-MS trend, people unjustly criticize the company. Most never tried Vista, never installed it and have no idea what their talking about. It´s a very good OS and it will get even better.
Just so you know I own 2 Macs, a Vista Pc and a another Pc dual booting XP/Ubuntu. I´ve tried Fedora, SuSe. I use Opera as my main browser. So no, you cannot accuse me of being a squared fanboy. I appreciate technology, unlike idiotic one sided fanboys who come up with the most uneducated points of view to bash a corporation.
As I always say: if you only drive Fords one can forgive you for thinking Ford invented the wheel.
Charlie Demerjian is a idiot who is biased and is doing nothing except fuelling a dumb OS war of words.
Vista isn’t part of the $3 bundle. It’s Windows XP Starter Edition, which seems to be a somewhat crippled version of XP.