Vista Sales

[Mehen]

http://news.com.com/Gates+40+million+Vista+copies+sold/2100-1016_3-6183890.html

Microsoft has sold nearly 40 million copies of Windows Vista so far, Bill Gates told a crowd of hardware developers Tuesday.

That's more than the total install base of Windows' largest competitors, Gates quipped as he began his keynote at the Windows Hardware and Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here.

It's disappointing that so many people have been suckered into buying it already. But if you must find something good about it - hopefully with those kind of numbers theyll be pushed harder to get Vista up to snuff. ('They' meaning both M$ and the rest of the world).

[Jessterw]

I'd be interested in knowing how many of those copies were sold outright or were pre-installs. Just on the basis that initially a great number of vendors immediately stopped offering XP on new systems. I know of a few people who purchased new PCs loaded with Vista that went back and reinstalled XP. I wonder how that compares to new Vista-based system purchasers across the board.

[DGhost]

http://news.com.com/Gates+40+million...3-6183890.html




It's disappointing that so many people have been suckered into buying it already. But if you must find something good about it - hopefully with those kind of numbers theyll be pushed harder to get Vista up to snuff. ('They' meaning both M$ and the rest of the world).

why? it's a pretty good OS. It's not perfect but it's a hell of a lot better off than XP was when it was released. Hell, it's good enough that it replaces XP + about half a dozen utilities that I needed as a basic install of windows.

I mean, seriously. What problems do you have with it that make it a horrible, horrible operating system? and that makes the people who bought it suckers?

[Mehen]

I should have italicized "already" as well. Or "so many" (meaning not all were suckered). Or you can read the sentence. And I never said it was "horrible, horrible." Joe schmo shouldn't have to deal with it yet, they are suckers because they probably got it on a system with 1gb of ram, a video card that isn't capable (not to mention with immature drivers), etc etc. There will be a time for Vista, and at that time it will be great, but that time is still a little ways away (<1yr methinks).

[DGhost]

No. You said that lots of people were suckered into it buying it. What can be read directly from your statements there are, 1) they were lied to or decived when they went to purchase it, 2) that it is not worth purchasing, 3) you believe they are fools for it, and 4) that this offends disappoints you.

So. Back your claims up. Or don't bother to throw your own personal opinion into it next time.

your memory argument is BS. I run it on several systems with only 1GB of ram and it runs fine on all of them. or your video card not being capable, seeing as just about every major add in card released in the last 4 years is supported by it - the one exception being the Parhelia. And integrated graphics - although that is a seperate argument and most people in that crowd are not the types to go and upgrade their OS just for fun.

immature drivers... yes, some of the drivers are immature but it's mostly in a way that 1) they run a little slow, and 2) they don't exploit all the features of Vista. Not that it detracts from the experience. And even the most immature drivers I've worked with (Intel's integrated graphics drivers) still work quite well.

again, I don't see why you have any reason to be offended disappointed that people are buying it.

[Mehen]

suck·er
–noun
2. Informal. a person easily cheated, deceived, or imposed upon.
Pretty much what you said #1-4, and in "so many" (deliberately vague and general because I did not have any numbers) cases; true.

Joe Schmo goes into Best Buy, wants the latest, greatest machine for his family and kids. He ends up getting getting M$'s brand new Vista - DirectX10, all that jazz - with "brand new" ATI Powered video, which ends up being an X300 onboard, or a Geforce 6150. Now your 1GB of RAM is cut down to 896mb or less. Then they buy whatever game it is they want, and get somewhere from 5-30% less performance as compared to XP. It all adds up. Those are the people that were SUCKERED into buying it. That is what I am disappointed about. Most of those people would be better served sticking with XP just a little bit longer.
I see this all the time, people will drop 1-2k on a computer and then wonder why my 2-3 year old machine still runs better.

Again, I didn't say I was specifically disappointed that people were buying it. Those who know what they are getting into have their reasons and are probably benefitted by buying it. I know I do not have flawless English, but I don't think what I said was that misleading. Many people were suckered (deceived, easily cheated, imposed upon, etc) into buying it, and THAT is disappointing.

And again I'll quote myself: "There will be a time for Vista, and at that time it will be great, but that time is still a little ways away."

[Gurm]

Problems? Let's see... where to begin?

NETWORKING:

This is a biggie. There are some routers that Vista just WILL NOT play ball with. Some WAP's that it WILL NOT connect to. Why? Nobody knows. Sonicwalls are especially hard hit, which is terrible considering they are a trusted name in security! Vista's IE7 can't even access SonicWall control panels any more! ARGH!

Citrix? Doesn't work, spontaneously. Some days it works, some days it doesn't trust Verisign. That's a big problem. Wait, let's back up. Yes, I said it correctly. SOME DAYS VISTA DOESN'T TRUST CERTIFICATES FROM VERISIGN! Seems random.

What else? Oh, how about the known TCP/IP stack suckitude? MSN Messenger can't stay connected. MSN MESSENGER, DAMMIT. THEIR OWN PRODUCT!

Can't use any VPN other than MS's VPN, either. Apparently anything that deals with the TCP stack. Urk! No wait, peer guardian works fine! So that means that MS is just ****ing with other VPN products.

MEMORY FOOTPRINT:

Vista machines are being shipped with 1GB of RAM standard. In my experience, anything under 2GB is pretty slow. 1GB is nearly unusable. Especially if, as previously pointed out in this thread, you're using onboard video.

DRIVERS:

My HP PhotoSmart 1215 isn't supported. At all. Ancient DeskJets are. This can be blamed on HP, I suppose... but why don't the XP drivers work? They SHOULD. But Vista is pretty selective about WHICH XP drivers it will and will not use. In a pretty random manner. In my case, my HP is hooked up to my XP box, and shared out. Connecting to it from Vista works, or SEEMS to work. Try to print to it... and the jobs just *POOF* DISAPPEAR! Not stuck, not queued, just GONE. Try to get to the properties page? It pops up and *POOF* goes away before I can click on it! ARGH! And you can't install the printer AT ALL under Vista, without lying to the system and telling it that it's a PhotoSmart 7200 (apparently the SAME PRINTER with a different label).

Let's not get started on the sad SAD state of video drivers. I mean, this thing has been in beta HOW LONG and nobody has a working driver? I mean, they're all CRAP. Not to mention that a LOT of cards that were fully Aero Glass compliant in RC1 and RC2... aren't in RTM. That's not arbitrary! NOOOOOOOO.

Audio:

Microsoft has decided that nobody wanted good audio. Therefore, DirectSound3D... is... GONE. Yes, removed. Kaput. Extinct. As a result, all sound drivers SUCK DONKEY BALLS NOW. Nice work, MS!

FLICKERY PERMISSION THING:

GOD DAMN IT I AM A SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR STOP ****ING ASKING ME IF I WANT TO DO SOMETHING OR NOT! AND STOP MAKING THE WHOLE SCREEN GO BLACK TO "GET MY ATTENTION"! I'm not a moron! I'm not 5 years old! I can goddamned well READ! And no, changing my screen saver is NOT an event worthy of your security might!

And you can't turn it off! If you turn it off, it puts the machine in "low security" mode, and to compensate all sort of shit stops working! WTF IS UP WITH THAT?

[Gurm]

Oh, and did I mention that entire chunks of the OS are dependent on Aero Glass working?

Or that the DVD playback built into the media center... is SO EGREGIOUSLY BAD THAT IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE INCLUDED!?!?

[GT98]

Or that the DVD playback built into the media center... is SO EGREGIOUSLY BAD THAT IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE INCLUDED!?!?

I never had any problems with it, then again you shouldn't be using a PC to watch a damn movie

[Jammrock]

The new TCP/IP stack needs to be junked. It is horrendous to say the least. I have to run 1 patch and 3 hacks just to get networking stable enough across a VPN connection (I work from home in a "virtual office"), plus run a networked and wireless connection at the same time so if one connection drops the other automatically kicks in, to work throughout the day without constant outages. And **STILL** I cannot do multiple things on the network at the same time.

If I run a torrent and try to work ... VPN drops every 3-5 minutes. Turn off torrent. Network still drops every 3-5 minutes. Reboot, and THEN it works great. As long as I don't download anything big, torrent, or do anything that is network intensive.

Now comes the wierd part. When I used Vista on a corporate network, while I worked at Sprint ... it worked fantastic! Absolutely rock solid! As long as you were connected to Cisco switches and routers. Run it on a home network seriously, and say your prayers and in hopes that the gods of computing are smiling on you.

Jammrock

[DGhost]

|Mehen| - and my 3 year old PC is still faster than most desktops being purchased today, under XP or Vista. That is less of a Vista issue and more of a OEM issue. As far as specific video memory usage... Integrated graphics do a majority of their memory allocation dynamically and are not going to allocate any more than they need to. As a heads up, you can fit a 1280x1024x32bit framebuffer, complete with a second buffer for double buffering, in under 16MBytes of ram. The impact on system ram is minimal outside of games or 3d applications, in which case a majority of the memory allocated goes towards textures and geometry. But of course, this behavior is not exclusive to Vista. XP does the same thing. Vista will page information out of system memory to make room for the game, just like on XP. It will have to deal with the video card taking memory, just like on XP. In the end, it all comes down to how well optimized the video drivers are, which I'll admit are not quite there when it comes to using higher end features.

You have got to realize that game developers very rarely target the low end PC as their platform of choice. Look at the games being sold and look at their requirements. Very few are targeting a lower end game experience. It doesn't matter if they are on XP or Vista - it's going to suck when running integrated graphics on a low end system. even boosting the ram isn't going to counteract that. This has been a problem since Intel started selling their integrated graphics solution as a mainstream option. A little bit extra money spent goes a long way when it comes to gaming...

Gurm - thank you for getting to the point and listing specific gripes.

Your driver gripes are pretty much typical for HP - you should see the people who have been fighting and fighting to get x64 support for their printers during the last two years. It's been... miserable.

I gotta disagree on the memory and audio points. My primary computer only has 1GB of ram. it really isn't as miserable as you think, even on systems with integrated graphics. They, in general, run better than XP did on 512MB of ram. Gaming and workstation usage... thats a different story. Truthfully though, 1GB of ram really wasn't enough for either of those scenarios even before Vista was released. I had several computers running 2GB of ram prior to Vista's launch for that reason. to each his own though.

Audio is a different can of worms. Microsoft decided to change the audio stack for a number of reasons, and part of that was disabling the ability for vendors to do kernel mode audio processing. The audio stack, now in user mode, writes straight into the output buffer exposed by the driver instead of allowing other filters to hop in on it. This prevents a company like, say, Creative from monkeying around with the audio stream between the mixer and the ports. several things about this... 1) it improves stability of the driver. who wasn't tired of Creative's drivers bluescreening their computer? 2) it helps application developers ensure that when they send something at x volume it reaches the speakers at volume x. Note: there is nothing preventing vendors from implementing their own audio stack. They actually added quite a few features that allow a vendor to completely bypass the Windows Audio Stack/Mixer if they feel like it. This is what Creative did with their OpenAL driver and ALchemy software. The key with this is 1) Creative is implementing it seperate of the Windows Audio Stack, and 2) it interacts in a different way that requires less hacking and has less interference from Windows. Generally speaking this is win-win.

I will admit though, it does suck that Microsoft didn't even bother trying to do anything with DirectSound. It could be worse though.

Networking stack... I have not had issues. I have no doubt that there are some, especially considering the rather touchy nature of TCP/IP. I just have not seen any.

UAC - yeah. it's obnoxious. Generally speaking, once a computer is set up it's not a major bother. It is annoying until then though. I understand why Microsoft not only implemented it, but also made it extremely difficult to disable. It's just one of those things that we will have to wait and see how it works out. There are quite a few things they could have done to make it better... but... it's really not all that bad.

oh, and the reasoning for blocking the screen out when it pops up.. it's to make it harder for an application to fake it. Kinda like the hologram on your drivers liscence. It doesn't prevent it from happening, just makes it harder to do it.

never played with DVD playback. I have a nice TV and DVD player for that. I also don't mess with Media Center either. I have heard some negative things about it. It's not too suprising since they have already started up a beta for an update on it.

Jammrock - Like I said, I have not had problems with Vista on a network. WLAN, LAN, GRPS vis Bluetooth, no issues. Doesn't mean they don't exist. I just have not seen them. Networking is kinda touchy like that.

[Mehen]

|Mehen| - and my 3 year old PC is still faster than most desktops being purchased today, under XP or Vista.

But desktops today would run/work much better under XP than Vista.

[Umfriend]

My wife wanted a laptop. I never liked the darn things, know nothing about them and was not looking forward to do research from scratch to select one for her.

She, fed up with my hesitation, went to a store and just bought one. Just bought one. A HP DV6318ea (T2100 or so, 1.73Ghz, 1gb ram, GeForce 7400 256mb ram) running Vista. What a buy. Great! Really. Vista installation was great and it runs very well on a 1GB machine. To date, there have been only three products by M$ I was impressed with (one of which they discontinued), but Vista is likely to be number four.

With a 5400rpm HD, it does not, NOT, appear slow to me and I really doubt doing XP on this machine would improve the experience. I think not.

[Nowhere]

So...what are other 3?

[Technoid]

microsoft BOB

Internet Explorer 1

Windows ME