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.”

[MichiganMan]

"Free" only in the sense that you have to buy all the parts and build it yourself. TAANSTASAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Parts, what, the machine itself? Ok, you got me, the machine isn't free. And as point of fact I did build mine, (and added, and rebuilt, and...) but since you need to pay for the machine no matter which of the three OS' you use, I considered that to be a non-factor in the analogy.

[Richard Kimball]

Why do you have to stick with MS? Is it a work requirement or your preference?

[bajabaja]

You turn your computer off?

It doesn't find me attractive at all.

[Conan the Librarian]

I have Vista and love it. It works great on my laptop (1.8 gig duel-core with 2 gig memory). In fact, in most cases, it's much faster than my 3 gig celeron running XP (1 gig memory) desktop and my 2.8 gig desktop running XP.

Instead of whining about how Vista dosn't run on old equipment, maybe folks should just upgrade to new equipment.

Before you ask, I bought my first PC in 1979 (a SWTPC 6800 with 20k of memory), so, I do know a little about computers. Also before you ask, the 3 gig celeron is the 4rd computer i have run out of the cabinet it is in. It is using an old harddisk out of a laptop, old floppy drives (including a 5.25 drive) and a 5 year old CD. I know something about using old parts too. I also know when it's time to move on.

[Conan the Librarian]

The laptop is a Lanovo 3000 n100. Paid $450 for it.

[COBOL2Java]

I spent two years finding and fixing problems... then, enjoyed champagne on New Years Day!

Ditto that!

[Master of Orion]

XP SP3 is due out later this year. In the summer, I think.

I'm still running XP SP1! No need for all that extra garbage, yet.

[COBOL2Java]

Ever notice that the PC guy looks a lot like Bob?

[COBOL2Java]

YouTube: Mac vs. PC: Windows Vista

[Richard Kimball]

Nonsense. OS/2 was a much better OS than the Windows of its time. It was faster on equivalent hardware, better at multi-tasking and far more stable than Windows ever was. What killed OS/2 was internal politics and battles over their business model between different corporate factions of IBM.

IBM went through what MS is, I think, going through now. I remember IBM marketing a laser printer, back when they were new and very expensive, and they wanted another one at a lower price level. They took one of their high-end printers and put a chip in it that slowed it down, then sold it for several hundred dollars less. IBM made a huge mistake in thinking like a monopoly, and believing their products only competed with other IBM products. They similarly lost the PC manufacturing battle by deliberately crippling their PCs so they wouldn't compete with IBM mini-computers and mainframes. It never occurred to them that people would go to other manufacturers because they had been the dominant corporation for so long.

Although OS/2 was a better OS than Windows at the time, you nailed it, that internal politics at IBM destroyed it. I think that was critical to MS becoming dominant. A lot of companies bought off on OS/2, and when IBM killed it, they developed the attitude that the MS operating system, whatever it's shortcomings, at least would be there, and that MS wouldn't pull the plug on it. That killed a lot of OS projects in the womb. Nobody wanted to take a chance on an OS that might go away in three years, creating huge data porting problems and requiring them to start their IT process from ground zero.

At my college, the IT people buy Microsoft products and don't want to hear or discuss anything else. Vista has been a huge problem for them. We currently have no plans to upgrade to Vista, but we have upgraded to the new Office, and I find it to be a pain in the rear end. There's been a huge reshuffling of standard features, so I sometimes spend ten or fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to do something that took two clicks in the old version, and because many of my documents go off-campus, even saving a simple document is a pain, because it defaults to the new document format, and gives me a warning box that I may lose compatibility features every time I save.

Our college also uses Blackboard, a third party service, for online classes, and Blackboard has had serious compatibility problems with Vista. The college position is "Don't go to Vista," but unfortunately for them, they can control the desktop environment at the school, but 8,000 students are NOT going to submit like the employees have to.

[IronJack]

Mission-critical work is on TCP/IP based servers, accessible by Macs, Windows, Linux, cell phone, or Blackberry.

Most mission-critical applications still run on mainframes. Almost every bank, insurance company, airline, hospital, and government entity that provides vital services uses a mainframe. Which is not to say that distributed systems aren't growing in importance, or that they won't eventually edge the big iron out. But at this point, legacy still rules.

In 1981. the IBM PC made desktop computers credible with business; the Apple }{ was popular in homes and schools, but had no corporate cred.

IBM and IBM COMPATIBLES made inroads into business. Xerox, TRS, and Texas Instruments were already there, but couldn't carry the clout IBM did. When Blue stepped into the game, the PC came of age. Unfortunately for IBM, its own models were overpriced and underpowered, so they eventually lost their market share to the Dells and Gateways and Compaqs. However, the operating system they used -- compatible with the Intel chipset -- became a de facto standard.

Microsoft leveraged its association with IBM, the big swingin' Richard of the day. And for two decades, that was enough to keep them on top

Yep. Then IBM decided it didn't need Microslop so it came up with OS2, a better OS by the way. But nobody bought it, even though it was part of IBM's Enterprise Service Architecture. DOS, which was really just a rip-off of Unix, continued to run most of the world's PCs in one form or another.

Microsoft prospered not because it had the best answer, but because it had the most popular. Now, when machines and people are closing in on common languages Microsoft cannot control, its influence is fading.

Exactly. Java has had a lot to do with that, as well as Microslop's arrogance about its marginal products. My next machine will run Linux; most of the machines at work run some form of Unix. Microsoft's days on top are numbered.

[ovrtaxt]

Or, Die Roll Modifier, if you're an old-school gamer. :-) Geez, I haven't heard that term since junior high! haha

[ovrtaxt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAJDbV9Vfs

[Gorzaloon]

Okay, you are so incredibly reaching. How often does Benoit fractal analysis factor into your daily life?

Not reaching at ALL, just describing a day at a humdrum engineering department. Surely others will respond. All those were used on the job, routinely, and Industry-wide. They are 3-d modelling packages, finite element analysis packages, and CAD programs. Benoit was used to analyze and define the complexity of textured surfaces for catalyst development,etc. They were used in a windows environment by our engineering department. If there were alternatives, it would be great because these are _expensive_ programs.

[ovrtaxt]

Thanks very much! I may work up the courage to put it on my Vista machine after I educate myself a bit more.

[Conan the Librarian]

Are we talking Old School Wargames?

I am a relative newcomer to Wargames, I only started in 1978.

DRM never go in my favor, no matter what I do. :(

[billorites]

"Why do you have to stick with MS? Is it a work requirement or your preference?"

A little of both I suppose. I don't want to have to go from all Windows apps at work to Apple version, or even virtual PC, at home.

Then there's the lazy part. I've learned my way around MS products in 25 years and usually can bend XP to my will.

[billorites]

"Our college also uses Blackboard, a third party service, for online classes, and Blackboard has had serious compatibility problems with Vista."

I teach as well and it sounds similar where I am in terms of sticking with XP and grumbling about the new Office products. We've been reassured that Vista will not be deployed anytime soon. A year ago we came back from vacation to find all the computers upgraded to Internet Explorer 7.0 and did the faculty howl.

As for Blackboard, gosh that's a clunky and slow tool as well. It's the beginning of the semester, one of my courses was cloned from last year, and all the quizzes disappeared...

[MichiganMan]

Debian is great, but somebody trying Linux for the first time might be more comfortable with Ubuntu, which is Debian based, and puts more emphasis on accessibility than Debian.

[txhurl]

I bought a Satellite with Vista HP this summer. I let microsoft patch it and reboot it at will (about three times a week intially, now once or less per week).

I guess the the re-bootable patches quit coming, I'll know Vista is 'fixed'.