Posted on 10/24/2009 3:43:52 PM PDT by SmokingJoe
Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 7, is on course to break sales records following its launch today.
The online retailer Amazon said that it was the “biggest grossing pre-order product of all time”, having overtaken the likes of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Nintendo’s Wii.
Speaking at the launch of Windows 7 yesterday, Jeremy Fennell, Category Director at DSGi, which owns Dixons, Currys and PC World, said: “We have sold more copies of Windows 7 in three weeks on pre-order than Vista sold in its first year.”
At midnight, queues could be seen outside stores as computers users got ready to upgrade their PCs to the new system as soon as possible.
(Excerpt) Read more at technology.timesonline.co.uk ...
It’s part of MS’s new business model. Release your next OS (Vista) before it’s ready, get a lot of press about how bad it is, and then release an upgrade, saying it’s a “new” OS. Seems to have worked.
You fell for the MS marketing, it seems. They rolled all the "PLEASE let me get XP instead of Vista!!" sales into Vista. If you bought XP, they counted it as "Vista with XP option" to inflate Vista numbers.
Has been working for game companies for more than a decade.
HP desktop with vista, 3G memory, 240GHZ, went to 7 yesterday and I do not see any difference. Waste of money in my opinion. Yes it has bells and whistles, but I expected performance boost or something noticible, but I see no difference yet...
That Apple ad has been labeled the height of “douchbaggery” across the internet. I would be embarrassed to even post it.
It’s smaller, faster, more stable and has much better driver support. Also the annoying security “features” of Vista have been toned down.
There were 7 years between XP and Vista. And meanwhile there’s a new OSX about every 18 months.
Not quite.
If you just think back for a minute, you might recall that Vista was launched in 2 phases:
On Nov. 30, 2006, Microsoft released Vista to businesses through volume licensing, with very little fanfare and no marketing.
Then on Jan, 2007 the bigger Vista launch occurred, with Vista on sale to the public, with Ballmer in New York, and all the marketing hoopla.
According to NPD, Vista's December 2006 sales (which were to only businesses with bulk licensing) were 62.5 percent higher than March 2000 launch sales of Windows 2000 and only 3.7 percent lower than November 2001 launch sales of Windows XP.
When you combine the December 2006 and Feb 2007 Vista launch sales, they easily beat XP launch sales. As far as your snarky bomb throwing is concerned, very few consumers would go into stores and buy a copy of Vista or buy a new Vista PC, only to turn round and use XP again.
The only time I used a Mac was when I was in college, and they had Apple 2e’s (?).
I’ve used Windows since 3.1, and it is my opinion they get every other OS right. Win 95 certainly had it’s issues, while 98 was stable; with Win ME, I had to reformat every couple of months, yet XP is a great OS (I’m using it now). I did install Vista 64 on my son’s computer, and have had few problems, but it’s had it’s share of bad press over issues.
I expect that Windows 7 will be another winner. I downloaded the upgrade yesterday, and plan on installing it when I build my next box in November.
Yup.
But that doesn't stop the idiotic Applebots from throwing bombs on every single Windows 7 thread about with their “but..but Win 7 is a only service pack” garbage.
Applebots are very happy to keep paying Apple and Steve Jobs more money for OSX service packs every 18 months or so, but woe betide you if you are a Windows user and you dare go buy a Windows 7 upgrade. Why you must be out of your mind to do such a thing. :)
Funny..it stares you in the face, but you fail to see.
Businesses who stayed with XP were counted as “Vista purchases” for every seat they added, even if it was for XP, since businesses are allowed to “downgrade” freely. Yes, the market was bigger now, but they also included those who did not change from XP to Vista as “Vista purchases” since they technically were.
It's essentially SP3 for Vista. It always takes MS 3 service packs to get an OS in reasably usable shape.
Biiiiig joke.
Given that there is already an SP2 for Vista, and there will be an SP3 for Vista, just as there was an SP3 for XP, and that SP3 for Vista will come for free, just like SP1 and SP2, came for free.
“It always takes MS 3 service packs to get an OS in reasably usable shape.”
I have been using Windows 7 in various betas for a year now, and it's hands down the best OS I ever used, in any way you care to look at it. Period. It don't need no service packs to "get into shape". It was already in shape, even before the RC1, so much so that I took my sweet time, before even bothering to download the RC1 when it first came out, because the beta was already too damn good.
That's why Apple only charged $30. IIRC, it most likely has to do with accounting, not actually wanting to charge.
So far I haven't seen any WOW feature from Snow Leopard either, just a several nice ones I like. I have a feeling the wow is going to come later after more apps are modified to use Grand Central and OpenCL. I've read up on programming for Grand Central, and nothing for any platform I've developed for has made multithreading so brain-dead easy, literally throw in a few lines and you're multithreaded. Pervasive multithreading of apps will be the key to performance in the future, and that's now a LOT easier on a Mac than on a PC, so expect to see better, more responsive apps on Macs.
But the biggest difference between Snow Leopard and 7 is that Snow Leopard improved on an already great OS, while 7 is mostly fixing what was broke.
SP1 and SP2 have already fixed the issues that Vista had at launch, which for the most part had to do with Vista's inability to run legacy apps, plus the lack of drivers for accessories and peripherals. Right now, those problems are gone for Vista. Vista is currently a much better OS today, than it was when it was first launched.
Win 7 on the other hand, is an excellent, rock solid OS, even from before RC1 when it was in beta stages.
It very smooth, solid, and unobtrusive(as any good OS should be). It just lets you get on with your work, without you even noticing it's there. Plus it has some sweet usability features, which you just come to love, and wonder how you managed to do without in Vista.
At the end of the day, I don't tell you what OS you should use, and neither should any Apple fan tell me what OS to use. You are happy with your OSX. I am happy with my Windows 7. I don't see what the problem is.
Microsoft is pretty much charging $30 for Win 7. All you gotta do is get a .edu email address, which anyone can get.
Apart from that, even without the .edu email, you can buy the family back for $150 for 3 Win 7 licenses making it just $50 per copy.
Plus when Win 7 pro-orders started, Microsoft sold each copy of Win 7 for just $50.
Essentially, if you use a bit of good old American ingenuity, the highest you are going to pay right now is $50, or likely $30.
No surprise. Harry Potter didn’t offer hope of escaping from the agony of Vista...
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