Endless Paradigm

Yeap - too many complaints about Microsoft's latest OS:

Quote:WHEN will enterprise users finally decide Windows Vista is ready for prime-time desktop deployment?

With most data suggesting adoption of Vista is trailing way behind its predecessor, Windows XP, the question is as much a matter of interest to Microsoft as it is to its corporate customers, but a clear answer still seems some way off.

There was no surprise in last week's report from analyst NPD suggesting retail (boxed copy) sales of Vista during its first six months of availability were down 40 per cent in dollar terms and 60 per cent in volume terms from the comparable period for XP.

That decline underlines two challenges Microsoft has faced in the retail upgrade market, both of which are shaping the rate of corporate adoption.

Firstly, Vista's onerous hardware requirements have excluded a much larger share of users from using the operating system until they buy new hardware.

The second challenge is convincing those users whose hardware can run the newer system that it delivers enough value to justify its purchase, given that so many Vista features are either hidden (improved security), not fully mature (networking and multimedia) or superficial (the new interface and graphics capabilities).

Microsoft has also spent far fewer resources advertising the features and advantages of Vista than it did after XP came out. Of course, given the economics of Microsoft's operating system business, that lack of promotion is understandable and the cool response to Vista from users is largely irrelevant, at least for now.

About 80 per cent of Microsoft's Windows licence revenue comes from pre-installed copies of the software shipped with brand new computers. There are a lot more new computers being shipped this year than there were in 2001, a reality that presumably underpins Microsoft's bullish statements on Vista volumes so far, since most of them ship with it.

The idea that Microsoft will retain its operating system dominance by osmosis, as old hardware is replaced by new, is therefore fairly compelling, particularly in the consumer market.

The corporate sector is a little more complex, not least because the rate at which old hardware is replaced is itself a function of the perception among corporate buyers of the attractions (or lack thereof) of a move to Vista on desktops and laptops.

Among the large US corporate customers touted by Microsoft as having made a large-scale switch from XP to Vista are Citibank, Continental Airlines and Infosys.

Insistence from the big hardware vendors that Microsoft allow them to continue selling PCs with XP rather than Vista is, however, clear evidence that plenty of persuasion is still required in the enterprise market.

Many corporate users are holding off on Vista until release of the first service pack, which will bundle fixes for all the flaws and corner cases uncovered by widespread usage. This is not expected until at least early next year.

Nothing will stop Windows Vista from becoming the world's dominant operating system in due course, and as yet there are few signs that Microsoft is suffering financially from the pace of its adoption, but there is good reason to question whether it will ever achieve the ubiquity that XP enjoyed.

- Source: [AustraliaIT]

MS is starting to get hit hard it seems...
Not to mention the increasing presence of open source software these days.

So, will SP1 be Microsoft's savior?

SP1 is a stop gap, they have already bumped the 'original' SP1 timeline to become effecivly SP2, this version of SP1 is just an update roll-up and a services tweak to help stop conflicts.

Vista is the new ME, the quicker the real Longhorn shows up the better as that was the best OS I have ever used, and it was a pre-beta build!

^ Hmm, so they've decided to drop features that were promised in the original release of Vista, like WinFS and a vector based rendering engine?

I really think (and hope)that Vista SP1 will make it much better and be really stable.

Yup, won't see winFS probably at all in Vista now, it's just to be a thing to drop into a SP and there definitely won't be a change to the render engine this product cycle.

diego_429 Wrote:I really think (and hope)that Vista SP1 will make it much better and be really stable.

Same here, my vista is always giving me problems

im just to lazy to reinstall xp

I doubt I will ever want to install vista as a main OS, let alone only OS. Unless SP2 and other unofficial tweaks make it much better and more reliable, I think i might just skip Vista and stick to Mac OS X and XP. ATM, Id rather learn to use Linux then learn to live with Vista.

Ive used every single version of windows from 3.11 to XP64 at some point, so Ill probably give Vista a try at some point, but only when a) sp2 is there, b) its fully hacked and c) theres a wide variety of reliable pre-tweaked installs that are about as stable as the current xp ones.

sp2?? they are only working on SP1! and bive hacked my vista (well not hacked more like ripped) with vLite it makes it much smaller and lighter on your system.

Besides the only reason I have seen from (less-educated) people to use Vista is 'it's pretty', well I have a gentoo linux boot on this rig, which takes full advantage of my graphics set-up running a full 3d xgl desktop using beryl
Source: YouTube


That's a video of the standard Beryl interface running on Ubuntu Fiesty, once you have it tweaked a bit more it is so much better.

well vista dosent seem like a good os n i think ms should scrap vista altogether n recreate it in some new form