Microsoft sold 180 millions Windows Vista licenses

[rasmasyean]

Preinstalled consumer machines are not sales from a demand perspective, only from a shipping perspective. Granted, MS pretty much can count them as "sales" if they want, but it's not as if 180M licenses were actually sought out by anyone.

More telling is the institutional take rate. In the 18 months since release, I have encountered no corporate or edu's among my clients that have chosen Vista, other than one or two workstations for evaluation & testing. Most of them went through bulk purchase cycles in that time and have steadfastly chosen to purchase XP preinstalled, or have forgone a hardware upgrade altogether, choosing instead to wait until they can actually not lose productivity fighting a NRFPT OS.

For me, there's no compelling improvement in Vista, as essentially the entire list of major framework improvements were all tossed long before release. I have greater hope for Windows7, I really do.

Organizations (especially large ones) take a long time to change. My company took 3 years to adopt WinXP from Win 2K. Just the way it goes.

 

[clevin]

Preinstalled consumer machines are not sales from a demand perspective

I understand the argument, however, other than linux, all OSes are primarily distributed that way. And we don't have data to make that judgment.

And who can definitely say users purchased computer purely out of demand for a pc, not Vista as an OS? nobody knows.

 

[rasmasyean]

I understand the argument, however, other than linux, all OSes are primarily distributed that way. And we don't have data to make that judgment.

And who can definitely say users purchased computer purely out of demand for a pc, not Vista as an OS? nobody knows.

I think most people just buy a computer just for the computer itself. The big choices are Mac and Windows. And many people put Windows on the Mac even.

I think you will see Vista sales figures rocket soon because school is going to start. There are rarely any more XP computers for sale. Then it’s only a matter of time before the universities mentioned start making plans to convert to make it more standardized with everyone else’s laptops and run the real big 64-bit softwares. Hardware is so cheap (outside of Apples ), that people will be ordering 4/8GB computers and then they have to go 64-bit Vista to replace all their old machines.

 

[superman193]

So the other 500 billion were from Torrents?

 

[rasmasyean]

So the other 500 billion were from Torrents?

Probably a smaller percentage are from torrents. You still need skill to crack it and most “industrialized people” don’t know anything about torrents or even would go through the trouble just to risk it not working right.

The “developing people” can’t afford it on even a month’s salary so the government lets them mass produce disks by stamping. They printing press their own manuals with misspelled terms like Windows Vista Ulimate 2007, or even make up their own editions. I mean look at that link. That wasn’t done by individual people. I’m sure boxes get spat out from factories and shipped across the nation to anywhere from chain shops to street peddlers.

Only 244 copies of Genuine Windows Vista sold in China

 

[Silver-Fox]

Nonsense. I will take myself as an example. In 2003, I bought a 2 GHz dual PowerMac G5. It was bundled with MacOS X 10.2.7. Since then, I have purchased MacOS X 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5. One Mac, four purchases of the OS. I think that there are a lot of Mac users like me. In fact, PPC-based Mac owners are angry that we will not be able to use MacOS X 10.6 on our current machines.

In the Windows community, OTOH, many users upgrade their OSes by replacing their computers. One PC, one OS for the majority of the user base. This is why I demand data to support your assertion. Absent supporting data, it should be dismissed as a wild a$$ guess.

I'm with you on this one

 

[atlanticza]

There is nothing wrong with Vista anymore, so there really is no reason not to run it on a new computer unless your software is only compatible with XP.
Leopard isn't that much better than vista in my opinion.

Hmmm, read this then from PCMag: Vista's 11 Pillars of Failure
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2286065,00.asp

 

[Killyp]

i doubt thats "better" comparison. Mac users do generally have higher incomes, or they tend to be ok with spending more $$$ on computers.

Source?

 

[clevin]

Source?

http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,11034564,00.htm

Im not sure about "smarter" part, but anyway, There is no <$800 mac laptops, and apple laptop sales pretty good, isn't that an indication that users are either richer or willing to spend more?

 

[mkrishnan]

Im not sure about "smarter" part, but anyway,

There was that analysis of forum post complexity... although that was before the iPhone. I think our ranking will probably have dropped somewhat.

 

[rasmasyean]

http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,11034564,00.htm

Im not sure about "smarter" part, but anyway, There is no <$800 mac laptops, and apple laptop sales pretty good, isn't that an indication that users are either richer or willing to spend more?

Yo, that article is like 6 years old…
That’s before the reign of the iPod monopoly that attracted more people into the Apple store for attractive reps in cute t-shirts to sell a whole load of more expensive useless accessories!

But anyway…Yea Macs were always more expensive and at that time at least, served a lot of the “Professional Artist” type so they have to have more college degrees. And maybe some people just with money to blow on it too.

Today, you would have to mix in a lot of “other people”. Computers on average are a lot cheaper nowadays, and $1000 isn’t out of reach for most “working class” people. And some would buy Macs out of suggestions that its the best option if they never had a computer before...UI, viruses, genius bar, etc.

Regarding “smarter”, technology workers and gamers overwhelmingly prefer PC’s so if you’re talking about smarter with technology…it’s definitely not in the Mac market.