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Be aware that with Vista there was a lot more than just the resource usage (memory size and CPU speed) that prevented it working with a variety of hardware. Vista is only supported on specific platforms and there are a number of machines that simply can not be upgraded. But then not many companies are actually interested in "upgrading" the OS. They are smart enough to know that there is seldom any advantage to such and upgrade and that the costs have to include usage of IT resources not to mention the wasted productivity of such an upgrade during the user learning curve. That is why so many companies did not buy XP machines until they absolutely had to.

I feel pretty confident that there will be very few machines that were bought running XP that ever get upgraded to Windows 7.

Rick

Reply to
rickman
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I suspect that W7 will be the last, or next to last, MS attempt at a real OS. Nobody is buying Vista, and Linux is available for all knowledgeable users, not to mention a few others. In addition Microsoft is finally bending under the strain, as evidenced by their recently announced layoff of 5000. They are rumoured to have

94000 employees, of which a large proportion must be software writers. I can't imagine a system less likely to produce anything good.

They are also rumoured to have 21e9 dollars to work with. My guesstimate is that they should be able to piddle away about 3 to

4e9 per year, giving them an expected lifetime of 7 years.
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CBFalconer

What kind of dope are you smoking??? Can I get some?

To say that "nobody" is buying Vista is absurd. Virtually every PC sold has Vista on it. Some percentage of them may also have an XP license, but that brings in even more cash for MS.

Then on top of that, you seem to be blaming the current economic crisis on Vista. You are aware that virtually ***every*** company in the US and much of the world is suffering from reduced sales and is facing layoffs and other serious cutbacks, right?

I don't really care who likes Vista and who doesn't, but you are so distorting the facts.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

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People aren't buying Vista. They are buying computers, which happen to have Vista mounted on them for nonsensical reasons. I may be exagerrating slightly, but I suspect that we are seeing the beginning of the end for MS. Just look at their 5000 layoff of

94000 - that firm never needed all those employees in the first place.
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CBFalconer

Yes, I'm sure you are right.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Do you suppose that might be because there aren't many other easily available choices?

I doubt that I will ever buy any MS product again, but that's just me.

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In message , rickman writes

For the home market. Though where I am most independent computer shops OEM PC's and STILL put XP on them If you look at the figures (reports all over the place in the trade press) the sales of Vista have been very poor. That does not take in to account that the majority of business users promptly reverted to XP. This is why MS extended the life of XP by a couple of years to overlap with the release of Windows7

That is 90% of the business markets.

No. Well OK may be in the US but not the rest of the world We supply Sw tools and business is good in fact the last quarter form ourselves and many of the other SW development suppliers we know was very good.

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Reply to
Chris H

I read that to mean that "nobody" (or almost nobody) is actively

*choosing* Vista. Obviously there are plenty of new PC's sold with Vista pre-installed (that's a joke term - I find that installing Windows or Linux from scratch is normally faster than getting a "pre-installed" windows PC ready to use). But the number of people *upgrading* to Vista, or buying it off-the-shelf is absolutely tiny, especially compared to when XP or even W2K came out. Right from the start, individuals and especially organisations have been preferring to stick to XP. People are willing to pay substantially more money to use XP rather than Vista.

For the most part, people have Vista for three reasons - either they don't know any better (you can't make an informed choice without being informed), or they have no choice (it's the only Windows option for their new PC and they are not ready for Linux), or they are willing to put up with it rather than spend more money on an older, slower and more expensive PC with XP.

MS are not stupid (though with Vista, they overestimated their customers' stupidity). They are not pushing Windows 7 so hard just for fun - this is their last chance to get in customers' good books again. Obviously momentum will ensure that there are lots of Windows 7 users no matter how bad it is, but if Windows 7 flops like Vista, it will be the beginning of the end of MS as we know it.

I don't see how you managed to infer that from his post. MS are suffering under the current economic situation, just like everyone else. It's going to be particularly bad for them, because it comes on top of their failed flagship product and the expense needed to get a replacement ready.

Reply to
David Brown

David, we appear to be agreeing again.. This could ruin our reputations :-)

Quite so. They have also extended the supply of XP by a couple of years. It looks like XP will be Officially available till the full launch of Windows 7

I think so. At least the end of their dominance. There are other choices. OSX. UNIX and eve Linux if you must. Me might even see a resurgence of OS2!!!

I didn't. With all the problems with Vista companies are holding off upgrading thousands of PC's just to run it when XP is all they need. This may finally break the cycle of new OS and new PC to go with it.

I agree. Also the current economic crisis is a consumer credit crisis. Many industries are not have that much of a problem. It is not affecting some companies at all. A lot of it depends on who much you depend on credit. The USA was up to it's neck in credit and has major problems. Other countries, when they have stopped holding their breath, will carry one. (So I am told by our money people in London)

In the industrial SW industry in the UK and Europe I am told that the last quarter of 2008 was very good. Certainly our turn over for 2008 was up on 2007 and so far so good this year (though David has jet to spend any money with us :-) The problems appear to be in the retail and housing markets. This does of course have a knock on effect.

MS has had a major hit with very poor sales (in the corporate world) their new OS not selling and they are having to bring out Windows 7 faster than planned to try and save things. Though I am not sure brining out the next OS faster is a good plan. :-)

Also I hear that Office 2007 is not as reliable or nice to use as 2003. So MS could be in for a bad time credit crunch or not.

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Reply to
Chris H

Agreed :-)

Macs have always had their place in the professional workplace, and a small but loyal base of home users. They are definitely increasing, especially for home users, but I don't see them being used as general PC's in the workplace. "Real" unix, in all its flavours, is now almost unknown outside of servers and the occasional high-end CAD system - it has lost out to Windows and/or Linux in its other traditional strongholds (such as universities, CAD, and embedded development).

The real competitors to Vista are XP and Linux. XP would be the preferred choice for the majority, but MS seem to be trying hard to push people towards Linux. Technically, there is not much reason to choose XP over Linux for most professional users (90% of users could switch from XP + IE + MS Office + Outlook to Linux + Firefox + OpenOffice + Thunderbird/Evolution without really noticing a difference). Remaining technical obstacles such as compatibility with legacy Windows apps are getting lower (with more cross-platform applications, and better Wine and virtualisation solutions). The main reason for sticking to Windows is familiarity amongst users and IT departments.

A resurgence of OS2 would be nice - I used Warp between WfW 3.11 and NT4.0. It would only be possible if IBM were to open the source code, and I believe they are unable to do that (too much third-party code).

Be careful of listening too much to the money people! After all, the whole economic system of the western world is grounded on nothing more substantial than a belief in what the money people say.

Fast-forwarding Windows 7 is a gamble - if it is good (reliable, usable on existing hardware, unobtrusive, familiar to use, and with enough

*real* new features to give an impression of progress), then it will restore confidence that MS are able to develop Windows for consumers benefit.

The big trouble with Office is that very few people use, need or want any feature that was not already in Office 98. Since then, there have been steadily fewer users upgrading, which used to be a major source of their income. The only reason why anyone would upgrade to Office 2007 is for support for open document format - in which case, why not simply switch to OpenOffice?

I suspect MS is going to have an IBM-like makeover in the not too distant future.

Reply to
David Brown

That is not relevant. CBF was suggesting that MS was hurting economically because people were not buying Vista and that this was because they didn't *like* Vista. My point is that MS developed a business model some time ago that they dominated the market through inertia, by being the defacto standard. That has not changed in any significant way. Linux has not made any inroads visible to the average person. MS office package is still the "norm" in spite of the presence of a very compatible ***FREE*** alternative.

Yes, there *is* little choice of OS in the market. That is the point. MS still dominates and is going to dominate for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying I like that or that it is good. I am just saying that currently it is inevitable.

I only wish I had an economical choice. My main customer does not use MS Office and sends me Open Office files not even compatible with MS Office. But I still have to have MS Office if I want to do business with some customers. I paid $550 for my latest PC which is a laptop. When I looked for Linux alternatives, I found units that were nearly twice that amount and offered a lot less. I may buy a new Linux desktop or convert an old one to Linux. But that won't be my main machine, but rather a learning device.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

***Why*** people are buying Vista is not the point. CBF was claiming that MS was suffering because they couldn't sell their product and that Vista was a failure because it was being rejected by their customers. Both points are false regardless of whether their products sell because of technical excellence (ha!) or predatory marketing.

Again, irrelevant. The point is that they *have* Vista. The marketing and business plans of MS work.

I guarantee that if you go back a few years and read what people write about XP, you will find that virtually the same things have been said about the introduction of XP. Now many are holding XP up as the gold standard for a usable OS.

The quote is above. He clearly blames the results of the economic crisis (MS layoffs) on the "failure" of Vista. Here it is again.

This entire discussion is a bit silly. The doom of MS has been predicted for a long time. Linux is no more in a position to displace Windows as the dominate OS than is DRDOS. This may change at some future date, but there is no marketing force behind Linux and 99% of PC users don't even know it exists. Heck, AMD has trouble selling chips even whey they have a technical lead and a recognized name. How can a brandless OS hope to compete against a multibillion dollar company? Even Apple has had difficulty making inroads against MS and they spend many millions every year on marketing.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

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There is nothing wrong with any of these OS. But there is just no evidence that there will be any change in the OS choice of companies or consumers.

No one said you did. To attribute any business decisions on Vista is unsupported. I worked for a company that had tons of Win2k machines. They never upgraded a single one. Why would they? That would be like swapping out all your V6 engines because a car company came out with a new V8.

What is happening is that companies are holding off ***buying*** new PCs which is how most get a new OS. This has to do with the economic situation and not Vista. Don't read your biases into the facts.

You seem to be a bit oblivious to the facts. I recently heard an interview of a British economist who said that the British response to the problem was understated and would take effect very slowly. He indicated that Brittan was in the same boat as the rest of the world. I think your assumption that it is a "consumer" credit crisis is naive. Just as some industries are not affected (in sales) many consumers are not affected. For example, I am in the best economic situation in my life. I have tons of credit and lots of income. But commercial credit is severely curtailed. The only businesses that are not affected are ones that do not need credit.

But this is very off topic and I won't discuss it further.

You present no facts to support your claims. How do you know that MS is bringing out Windows 7 to "save" things? This is just more "made up" facts.

Again, that has been the manta for many generations of MS products. So clearly MS is headed toward their products being virtually unusable any day now. ;^)

Like Mark Twain, the reports of MS death are greatly exaggerated.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Again, you are basing your claim on a near total lack of information. Where are these reports of poor Vista sales? How do you attribute any lack of sales to the OS rather than the economy?

Every generation of MS OS has been slow in the business community where they prefer stability over improvement. That is true for Linux and other OS as well. For example I use FPGA software. Xilinx supports Linux, but only one version (how many are out there?) and only one revision which is typically rather stale. However, they have fully supported Vista since 2007. Entering "xilinx vista support" into Google got this as the first hit.

"Xilinx Delivers ISE WebPACK 9.2i - Offering Expanded Support for ... Free, downloadable design solution now offers Microsoft Windows Vista Support. July 10, 2007, SAN JOSE, Calif."

AFAIK, all the other FPGA vendors fully support Vista. Why? Because their customers demand it.

Yes, because some huge percentage of business PCs are older than Vista. Your assumptions are not supported by facts.

w

Ok, there is ONE company in Brittan that is not hurting... of course there are some companies that aren't hurting. For example, companies that handle real estate foreclosures seem to be doing rather well this quarter. Get real. The economic events are not limited to one country and are not restricted to a small market segment. The problem is widespread and will eventually include virtually every market in every country. If you don't see that coming, you are hiding your head in the sand. But this is not about your company. This is about MS and Vista, remember? The MS layoffs are due to the recession, not Vista.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

All over the computer trade press. Some on line just googol for them. Just look at all the large corporate that have not moved to Vista

Because the two are not linked. The Os was out for some time before anyone thought there was a problem with the economy.

No .If one does it they all do it.

Yes. And they are not upgrading

No. I have friends are some large IT companies and they have noticed no one is moving to Vista and this is backed up by the trade press.

And all our customers (several thousand)

I am in engineering not realsestate

I have to be real. I trade across the world do you?

Yes.

Not so.

Well we saw the crash coming 2 years ago so we were not in the sand,.

Yes it is. We want to survive and we deal with a lot of companies across Europe and some in the US

The layoffs are due to a couple of things. The slump in Vista and other MS products coupled with the economic climate. You are just doing a knee jerk reaction to the superficial events.

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Reply to
Chris H

What you are saying here is true enough - there is no doubt that there are plenty of Vista installations out there, and each one brought money in to MS.

I just didn't think that your post matched up well with CBFalconer's - I read his to be a comment on people not choosing Vista, while your reply is about people *having* Vista, whether or not they chose it.

It is worth noting, however, that MS traditionally makes a substantial income with major OS releases (and major Office pack releases) through off-the-shelf sales and upgrades. OEM sales with new PC's provide much less profit per computer, since the OEM prices are much lower. MS have several times been "invited" to explain to the tax authorities their "creative" accountancy techniques that spread this income over several years to provide the illusion of steady income and growth, when in fact it comes in bursts. With the release of Vista, this burst simply has not happened, and that must hurt MS economically.

There was plenty of scepticism about XP on its release, but it did not last long. I personally never saw good reason for moving from W2K, but the majority of users saw XP as the next step from Win98 - it was therefore clearly a great improvement. XP was a big success, as evidenced by the number of people that actively upgraded or replaced older systems. Vista, on the other hand, has never had that appeal. The best reviews it has had are on the lines of "it works for me, I don't see what people are complaining about" - people don't see any real benefit in it. There is virtually *nothing* that you can do with Vista that you cannot do at least as well with XP (and a good old fashioned analogue wall clock). Thus the failings of Vista stand out far more than the failings of XP ever did.

He may be blaming MS's current economic problems on Vista's failure, but he is *not* blaming "the current economic crisis" on Vista!

Reply to
David Brown

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I think that you and CBF are making a tempest in a teapot. My point is that there is little about the release of Vista that is different from the release of XP. XP went through all the same reluctant acceptance by the commercial community. That is their nature. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There are a lot of costs associated with adopting a new OS into a corporate environment. Heck, I remember when Win98 came out and the IT guys recommended that everyone stick with Win95! Win95 was the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen!!! Moving to Win98 is the single best upgrade I've ever seen other than the switch from the 95 lineage to the NT lineage.

No one has offered any real support for the idea that Vista is not being accepted any more or less than previous versions of Windows. On top of that, it is being claimed that Vista is the cause of Microsoft's economic problems. I think it's very clear that is what CBF was saying. I dispute that claim and I have heard nothing that supports it. People here are saying stuff with no support.

The idea that people are not "choosing" Vista is a bit silly. Of course they are choosing it. They may not be very aware of the alternatives, but can assure you that if there was a real market for Linux, the vendors would be pushing it and educating the consumer, even if it is just a store display. "Here is an alternative to the things you don't like about Vista". I have seen nothing like this in any of the stores. Heck, if you want to find a PC running Linux, you have to go ***looking*** for it. Dell sells Linux PCs, but you have to search the web site to find them. Walmart used to sell Linux PCs and even PCs with no OS, but I don't see them anymore. That is because the customers have *chosen* MS and are *choosing* Vista.

I'm not aware that MS makes a lot of sales of users wanting to upgrade existing machines. Of course there will be an uptick. Something is more than nothing. I honestly can't remember one case of a friend or a job where they actually paid for an upgrade to a new version of an OS.

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I don't recall it that way. Of course XP was better than 98. But I don't recall anyone I know who paid for a switch. Replacing a system... of course they will replace a system with the current OS. They have done that with every release and will continue to do that, once it is stable such when as SP1 is out. True for XP and Vista. I never saw a reason to move to XP. Until now I was using Win2k and was quite happy with it. Now I am glad my new laptop has Vista because the networking is so much easier to set up than under Win2k. I still don't have my computers sharing files over a wireless network because the whole thing is too hard to set up with Win2k. I have to use a cable. But I can get into any open network with my Vista laptop with no problem.

So here is one customer that is happy with the upgrade. At this point there is only one thing I don't like about Vista and there may still be a solution to that. But so many of the web sites that score hits on google searches on the problem are either pay support sites or just forums where people ask questions and the answers come from users who less than I do. Once I find a good support site, I expect I'll find an answer to that problem.

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Ok, he is blaming MS state on Vista instead of the current economic crisis! Is that better? The point is that CBF is being totally unrealistic about MS and is totally distorting the facts.

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I stand by these statements. BTW, my claim to fame in these sorts of matters is related to my successful prediction, three times in a row, that you could more than double your investment in the stock market by investing in AMD. Most of my friends did not listen to me, but the one who did listen made more than 100% profit over a 6 month period. He could have done that on two other occasions if he had listened to me. My point is that I have a track record of understanding at least a little bit about the PC market.

BTW, without consulting me, my friend recently bought AMD stock. That was likely the worst possible time to buy AMD stock. They are a full generation behind in process technology, they are loosing money fast and massively in debt, Intel is broadening their markets with acquisitions, in response AMD has taken on ATI by acquiring even more debt and they have no real plan for changing any of the above. I seriously do not believe they will survive without an outside financier taking over a large part of the company. Given today's credit situation, that is not very likely. I give AMD two more years and if they have not been bought by then, they will be looking at bankruptcy.

You heard it here first!

MS on the other hand, will survive the economic recession and emerge as strong as ever... not unlike Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life", evil but the winner nonetheless. ;^)

Rick

Reply to
rickman

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Your entire argument has to do with information you have personally received that no one can verify and your personal interpretations of various events. I'm not sure what you are saying about "superficial" events, do you mean the worldwide depression we are entering? You have no support for your statements and just contradict everything I say. This is pointless.

I can assure you that sometime in the next year or so, virtually

*every* company in the world will see a slowdown in sales and will likely have to cut expenses. If that means layoffs, no one will be immune. If you are in a software company, I don't see how layoffs won't occur. If you really believe that we are not entering the biggest depression in 80 years, and by "we" I mean everyone in the world, you are just kidding yourself.

I would hope that I am wrong, but only a fool or a dunce could believe that it isn't true. Do you really believe the economy will be fine for your company?

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Two of my esteemed colleagues write:

I am testing Windows 7 now. Internally, it is Vista. The user interface is appreciably improved, especially in that you get to choose the level of security warnings you get.

It is still a multi-user OS and still an OS in which programs can't normally write in the folder where the .exe resides. It is not DOS. If you long for DOS, if even UNIX (1978) is too modern for you, then you're not going to like it.

Reply to
MC

On the other hand, I expect Windows 7 to displace Vista very quickly, since its infrastructure is the same and the user interface is better.

BTW, I had not heard that Windows 7 "uses less resources" than Vista. There are ways to cut both Vista and Windows 7 down, by disabling the advanced graphics in the GUI.

Also, people who liked Windows 2000 may want to use Windows Server 2003 or

2008 as a workstation OS. Less glitz, more performance.
Reply to
MC

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