Windows Vista, One Bad Year Later

Chosun Ilbo ^ | 01/11/08

[TigerLikesRooster]

Windows Vista, One Bad Year Later

A year since the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft is cringing at the poor sales of the new operating system. It was initially touted as a landmark new development to reinvigorate the IT industry, prompting expectations of wide-ranging “Vista effects.” Instead, Apple’s new operating system, which now also works on PCs, is stealing the thunder. Microsoft has hurriedly responded by developing a new version of the old XP.

◆ Windows Vista flops

According to market researcher Net Applications, Apple is enjoying the largest-ever share in the global operating system market with Leopard, the newest version. Since its release in December last year, Apple OS including Leopard have gained a market share of 7.31 percent, a record high. During the same period, Windows OS products including Vista saw a drop in their market share ? although their aggregate market share still stands at 91.79 percent. But Leopard is enjoying critical and consumer acclaim, which Vista has signally failed to win.

Major media outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have showered compliments on the Apple OS, which they say is easy and fast. Consumer opinions about Vista have not yielded to Microsoft’s efforts. Tech product reviewer CNET’s UK division picked Vista as one of top 10 “terrible technology products” for 2007.

◆ Microsoft in Agony

Vista cost US$6 billion and a workforce of 8,000 to develop before making its debut in January 2007. It shows a handful of good improvements, especially better security features. But the bundling of too many functions into the OS takes up a considerable portion of the computer memory and causes unexpected hitches like a slowdown in processing speed. The IT giant faced a stream of consumer requests to change the operating system of their computers back from Vista to XP. In Korea, Microsoft failed to win a single corporate customer.

Kim Hyun-jung, an analyst with Tongyang Investment and Securities, said the Vista effect did not happen, and memory chip makers are “suffering from their miscalculation.” Memory producers aggressively increased investment in developing facilities in expectations of Vista effects, but they have yet to see a profit from the investment.

A Microsoft spokesman said XP was only in genuine demand one year after its release. His company, he said, has follow-up plans to boost sales of Vista like the release of a service pack in the first half of the year. But he declined to reveal exact sales figures of Vista in Korea. Despite Microsoft’s efforts, many IT insiders worry because there is insufficient supply of programs that run on Vista. One IT industry guru said the operating system market situation shows that “even the mythical Microsoft monopoly could break down if it fails to meet the demand of consumers.”

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[buffyt]

I know that my son who is a computer wizard genius, taught me what I know, built my computer from spare parts....
hates Vista. Insisted that I NOT have it on my new laptop.

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

What people want is performance, not pretty pictures. That is what hurt it. If MS can’t optimize the performance to bring it in-line with XP, without having to have twice the memory and processor, then it is the second coming of OS/2.

[giotto]

My computer wizard son said that Vista requires at least a gig of RAM, so any computer with less than 2 GB will not run well.

[Gorzaloon]

know that my son who is a computer wizard genius, taught me what I know, built my computer from spare parts.... hates Vista. Insisted that I NOT have it on my new laptop.

Every single person I know and every neighbor who bought or was given a new laptop has either taken it back to the store for a refund, or demanded an XP conversion. There are only a few things to call a Vista Customer, particularly on a laptop:

A Mac Customer.

A Linux Convert.

Angry.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

My company recently upgraded our XP laptops to Vista laptops. It was a BIG mistake, to say the least. I'm forced to run Vista every day, and it sucks at so many different levels that I don't know where to begin my criticism of this turkey.

Needless to say, our IT manager is on the phone EVERY day to Microsoft trying to find solutions to annoying "issues" that repeatedly pop up and have the potential to cripple our operations if left unchecked.

Microsoft ought to be ashamed of itself for putting such a shoddy OS out on the market and trying to force folks to upgrade to it via their draconian licensing agreements and control of the business software market.

[Gorzaloon]

If MS can’t optimize the performance to bring it in-line with XP, without having to have twice the memory and processor, then it is the second coming of OS/2.

Haha, more like the Second Leaving.

I remember OS/2. It was better than Vista, and it was a train wreck. The OS/2 Team worked their hearts out trying to get mine to work, and I felt sorry for them.

I cannot work up that sympathy for MS. Anyone who would do what Vista did to their customer base deserves whatever happens.

PS: DRM, anyone?

[SkyPilot]

I haven't had a Mac since the 80's, but these commercials are just great.

[ovrtaxt]

I HATE vista. I want to convert my newer vista PC to XP, but MS won’t honor the transfer of the license.

I may try Linux after all. How much does Leopard cost?

[Casaubon]

as a IT pro i would almost agree entirely with the article

yet vista’s biggest issue wasnt the OS, it was all the 3rd party software makers and drivers (lack of to be more precise) that are currently the biggest headache. Now you can say Micro~1 was greedy and made software companies jump through hoops to develop for vista. But in reality Vista is harder to code for. dotnet even compounds the problem.

vista will either become good after sp1 like win 98. For those who remember win98 stunk to high heaven and was buggy as heck til sp1. Or will be the next ME if the vista name becomes to tainted to carry.

currently XP pro cost more oem on all the sales sights....hmmmmmm

[Washi]

I haven't used or investigated Vista very thouroughly, but since the moment I heard of it, I sensed that it was the second coming of Windows ME (which I upgraded to, back in the day, for about an hour before I decided to roll back to 98.)

Based on everything I've read and heard from Vista victims that I work with, I was right to avoid it.

That being said, I think I will leave this thread now before the Mac snobs finish watching their BetaMax movies and log-on to hijack the conversation.

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

Another problem is Microsoft has become a much more bloated, bureaucratic company. Too many cooks in the design kitchen gives you a clear Vista of a bloated mess.

[Peter W. Kessler]

I just got my first super-zoomy computer. For ten years, I’ve been using hand-me-downs and <$400.00 machines.

This one is a monster. 4 gig ram, 500 gig hard drive, quad core processor, the works.

And it came with XP installed.

I insisted on that and, from what I’ve heard, I’m glad I did.

[ovrtaxt]

What’s DRM?

[ovrtaxt]

Wow, that’s a beast! How much?

[Fred911]

I run XP, I run Vista....I don’t see what the big problem is.

[bcsco]

A fellow Kiwanian and his wife came to me for advise when buying a new laptop last week. I advised them insisting it come with XP. They didn’t take my advice and bought one with Vista because Best Buy told them that’s all they sell and the system could not be converted to XP (Does anyone know if this is a fact?).

I spent 4 hours yesterday working with a system I’m unfamiliar with (Vista), trying to get the laptop and their old desktop (XP) linked through a wireless router, and a new printer installed. I have to go back Monday and finish up. While not all of the problems I encountered stem from Vista, I don’t find it as intuitive as XP.

Note: The install pamphlet for the router came with instructions that related to XP installation sequences (I’ve installed one under XP). The way the software ran in Vista, it looked and performed completely different than it showed in the pamphlet (or what I’d experienced before). Boy, was that confusing. Also, the printer (an HP All-In-One) was not installing. It was in the ink cartridge alignment stage and wouldn’t progress after that. Sheesh!

I’m NOT an IT tech. Nor am I a geek who can whiz through software and hardware issues. But I am more experienced than the average customer, and these folks and I agreed that they’d have been completely clueless if on their own. The IT world lives in a bubble, and has no idea what kind of a monster they’ve created for their non-corporate customers. And Microsoft is the pinnacle of this disassociation.

[Westbrook]

I want to hear more about installing Leopard on a PC.

Has anybody in this forum done this or know somebody who has?

To run your Windoze programs, you can run them in a vmware windows guest on a Leopard host. But for overall productivity, you can use Leopard native.

The underlying OS of Leopard is BSD unix.

And has anybody seen Linux Mint? It’s free, and provides a Vista-like “experience” without the Vista headaches.

[FreedomPoster]

Are you up on Microsoft licensing?

I believe it used to be the case that if you owned a license for a more recent OS / higher level OS, you were legal to run something earlier. In other words, if you held a Win98 license you could run Win95, if you had a Win2K license, you could run NT 4.0, that sort of thing.

Does that still apply today? Has anyone tried to get a WinXP install verified based on holding a Vista license?