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.”

[RayChuang88]

I still remember in early 2002 people were griping about how Windows XP was so slow compared to older Windows versions, especially on older machines with under 512 MB of RAM. I think Windows Vista will be much better once most everyone's hardware catches up with what Windows Vista can do.

(For those who don't remember, Windows XP becomes usable once you reach 512 MB of RAM, and its "sweet spot" is about 1 GB of RAM.)

[sig226]

for later - nice piece.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I was told XP is not set up to use more than 3 GB of RAM.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Well, graphics-heavy OS requires a lot of man-hours, and its components were probably outsourced to all over the world.

Besides, their OS is built on layers of older OS codes which were patched and repatched again. It all make OS grow fast in size.

[ReignOfError]

Vista is the greatest gift Microsoft has ever given Apple.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a steadfast Mac user. I am also proficient in Windows. Every time I have provide tech support for a Windows-using friend or family member who isn’t as tech-savvy as I am, i thank my lucky stars that I don’t have ti del with that crap every day.

Mac OS just works. I’m just saying.

[Caipirabob]

I found a great deal Black Friday for a Dell 531. It was designed for Vista and only came in the vista flavors (home, pro, whatever). I took the standard home vista. It sucked.

I just bought a Dell off their site with Vista as well. E521 - Anthlon 3800+ dual core with 1 GB ram and 250GB sata drive and other goodies. $300 but with no OS option other than Vista. I'm going to get an OEM version and reinstall XP. I plan to get all the drivers off the net for XP before I do anything with the new PC, though. Hopefully no issues, but for the price, I'll deal with the temporary inconvenience.

[msgt]

OK, I’ll be the lone voice in the wilderness on this one.

I’m running Vista, with no problems, and I like it a lot.

I’m a systems analyst, and my home setup is a Windows 2008 RC 1 server, a Vista Ultimate desktop both hard wired to my wireless router, and a Laptop, also running Vista Ultimate connected wirelessly. The 2008 box is an Active Directory domain controller and the other two boxen are domain members. I also have both an XBox 360 and a Wii connected wirelessly.

I haven’t had any issues with the networking part - it’s just worked, and worked well. My daughter sometimes brings her laptop over (running XP) and connects to my network easily.

I do recall hearing much the same stuff being said about XP for the first year it was out. But, in my opinion, The initial relase of Vista was a much better OS than the initial release of XP. It seems that MS can’t catch a break - everyone’s complained for years about their security issues, but when they start to fix it, everone complains that it doesn’t work exactly the way it used to.

Sure, it’s different from XP, and that takes a little getting used to. You can’t tell after a few hours or days if it’s an improvement - you need to give it a little time to get past the learning curve. I’ve been using Vista since the first beta, and while there are things about it I’m not thrilled with, it’s a perfectly fine OS and will only get better with time, just as XP did and OS X is.

[ReignOfError]

(I know, I know.... Buy a Mac, vote for Ron Paul, wear hemp-fibre clothing....)

One of three. Ron Paul is a raving loon, and hemp clothing is scratchy. I prefer cotton.

Hemp for paper and fuel, that's a whole 'nother question.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Macs are so fun and easy to use. Why buy anything else?

That's easy to answer. There are a ton of specialized software packages that simply do not run on Apple machines. It's impossible to justify the cost of developing specialized software to operate on Apple computers when Apple's market share is less than ten per cent.

Apple is certainly idiot-proof but a lot of people expect more than that and look at their computers as an important tool to get a complex job done.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

I have developed a working hypothesis on software development. When the lines of code exceed 100,000 and the number of arbitrary constants approaches 50,000, no man (or woman, or group of programmers) have any idea about what the program is doing.

[msgt]

First off, not everyone needs everything.
Design a basic OS.
Then give people the option to add the extra features they want or need.

They did. It's called Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Pro, Ultimate. Buy whichever one you want. You can also turn off Aero, turn off UAC, turn off the sidebar, and you've pretty much gone back to XP.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Certainly this is a good opportunity for Apple.

[DaGman]

Worst tech product of the century.

[tarheelswamprat]

DOS was plenty good, especially with a few GUI programs.

Do you remember Deskview? Or Geoworks? I also have a copy of the last version of Borland's Quattro Pro 4.0 for DOS. Its GUI looks just like Windows, but it runs in 640K (yes, that's K!) of RAM... /grin

[TomGuy]

I have downloaded some of those run-from-CD/DVD versions of Linux and did the VMware virtual window for a few others.

The problem with Linux is that there are too many versions (around a dozen), which is confusing.

I also tried out the VMware virtual window. It worked, sort of, but several of the VM-specific programs said they needed upgrading, but would not connect to the Internet link to upgrade. The VMware virtual window was about like run-from-CD — pretty to look at, but it wouldn’t ‘read’ data on the hard drive outside of the virtual window, and anything saved inside the virtual windows was erased when the window as closed.

I have a standard Kworld pctv card that none of the versions of Linux have recognized. They sort of see it, but they won’t/can’t run the drivers to make it actually work.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Yeah, I tend to agree.

[TomGuy]

Do you remember Deskview?

Didn't to Geoworks, that I remember, but I did like GEM (GEM Draw, GEM Desktop, Ventury DTP under GEM), which was a menuing system, pre-Windows. I did use Quattro Pro some.

WordPerfect 6.0 (IIRC) could run both GUI and standard DOS. The GUI was slow --- but the max memory was 640k without one of the extended/expanded memory management programs.

The PC world has come a long way from those days. But some of the DOS programs still work.

[thirst4truth]

But the bundling of too many functions into the OS takes up a considerable portion of the computer memory and causes unexpected hitches

Finally MS is not going to get away with stealing other companys software and embeding them in to their operating system, to put that competitor out of business. A little too greedy there Bill. Pay back is sweet!!!!

[Tribune7]

Leopard is $129 for a single and $199 for a family pack but it won't run on the PC.

Linux, of course, is free and will.

[Peter W. Kessler]

Well, I guess I have extra ram, then.