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OOOCH!!!

That one is beating the STATE OF THE STICK over everyone's head!

Aug 19, 08 - 04:09 pm Comment from: Predrag

It's actually good that they keep on counting these downgrades as Vista sales. That way, neither MS board, nor the (mis)management echelon will feel the need to make any effort to radically change things.

It is just a sad, sad story...

Microsoft's Mission Statement:
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time... FULL STOP.
Okay, that's good enough to keep billions pouring in."

And that's why the "Mojave" ads will work, just enough.

Aug 19, 08 - 04:26 pm Comment from: MacBill

Long live Ballmer.

Aug 19, 08 - 04:26 pm Comment from: Jubei

In the meantime, MS just announced they have over 2000 people working on Windows 7. Thats 2000 people... Thats a bit excessive.... but hey whatever it takes to make the OS more convoluted as ever... go for it MS. Hire 1000 more I say.

Surely it should be "upgraded to Windows XP" and not downgraded.

Aug 19, 08 - 04:47 pm Comment from: I need a 12 inch MacBook Pro

What a disgrace.

Buy AAPL !

Aug 19, 08 - 04:55 pm Comment from: ken1w

If the other 65% knew they could downgrade from Vista to XP, that 35% would be even higher.

This is not really bad for Microsoft, since they get to count it as a Vista sale. It's bad for PC makers (other than Apple). They are basically offering a "new" PC with a 7-year-old OS to customers.

Aug 19, 08 - 05:00 pm Comment from: alansky

One can only imagine how truly witless Windows users must be in order to successfully ignore the message that is now rapidly spreading to every corner of the world: "Pssssst. Macs are better." Anyone who calls Apple a "niche" company nowadays has lost his friggin' mind. Some niche!!!

Looking forward to getting my first MacBook Pro. My 3.5 year-old Dell has been fine, but it's time to upgrade to a more enlightened computing experience.

Yesterday, Microsoft was stagnant... from Windows 95 to 98
Today it is going in reverse mode... from Windows Vista to XP

Microsoft -- cheaters and liars. And, even if they do build Windows 7, they sacrifice the one reason that many people still think they need Windows: the abundance of legacy software. With a new, unproven operating system, Microsoft can't even use *that* as a reason to buy their product. I also remember reading something recently where a Microsoft executive assured the enterprise market that Windows 7 would not be much different from today's Windows. Well, then why the fsck develop a new operating system if not to make changes?

Aug 19, 08 - 05:10 pm Comment from: Ouate de Phoque

Shouldn't that read updated or upgraded to XP?

Aug 19, 08 - 05:11 pm Comment from: jjjj

Take that, Mojave!

Jubel writes, "MS just announced they have over 2000 people working on Windows 7." That number is meaningless in itself. MS had some 200 people working on Zune, while Apple developed the original iPod with a fraction of that number. MS had hundreds working on Internet Explorer until that became "the standard". They had thousands upon thousands assigned to Vista not just in Redmond, but at development centers in Israel, China, and India. It didn't help. It takes more than warm bodies and a big budget to deliver a quality product.

To quote that great American philosopher Homer Simpson: D'OH!!!!!

Aug 19, 08 - 06:23 pm Comment from: Zune Tang®

@ Raymond in DC

More is always better except when it comes to price. One metric I use to prove this point is the fact that there are many more reasonably priced Windows machines than super expensive toy MACs that can't play games and are useless in the enterprise.

Your potential. Our passion.™

Does that mean they two license fees for an XP downgrade computer?

Mate, Your lies are wrong...

Macs own 8% of the market share. and only a fraction of the world use macs. i went to Greece and told someone do you like a mac and they don't know what it is. you cant judge something that's 91% of the market share. i never had a problem with vista.i heard alot of mac users are switching to vista because there testing it for once.
Currently i shows this to a windows 7 blog and they just laughed because a Brand called apple is trying to take over thousands of OEMS ... go talk about macs. not something that ownes 91% of the market share.

also, who wants to spend more than a grand on a mac and its ram....

Aug 19, 08 - 07:23 pm Comment from: iDon't

Windows ME rules!!!

Aug 19, 08 - 07:42 pm Comment from: cogitoergomac

@Julius: "I heard a lot of mac users are switching to vista......" No doubt you did, from someone cuddled up with a nice wartm blanket. So you didn't see any Macs in Greece? OMG, I'l have to dump all my Macs. Why did I see Macs everywhere in the UK, France, Costa Rica, Brazil and Mexico? Watched a movie or a TV show lately? Just compare the prominence of the two. You seem to take comfort from Windows' monopoly poisition. Why is that? Afraid to think for yourself? Go troll somewhere else.

Aug 19, 08 - 07:45 pm Comment from: cogitoergomac

@Julius: "also, who wants to spend more than a grand on a mac and its ram...." Well, more than 66% of the purchasers of computers over the cost of $1000 pick Macs. You know, I am glad you revealed your bias. You want a cheapo computer, god bless you, go pick whatever piece of junk you want. If you want a real one, you'll get either a Mac or a PC that costs more than a $1000, because that's what it takes the real thing. And feature for feature, Macs typically still cost less in that range If you're smart, you'll get the Mac, but wait, you've already demonstrated where you fall in that continuum.

Aug 19, 08 - 07:54 pm Comment from: Hm...

@ Julius,

Sorry, that position is already filled by ZuneTang®. You'll have to apply again next year. Meanwhile, we'll keep your application in files. (The circular ones.)

@ Julius
Ahhhh, the old 'Market Share' argument. You do realize that it is essentially flawed, right? You understand when Ma and Pa wandered into Wal-Mart to buy a computer, they were never asked what operating system they wanted. The bottom line is this: Most PC users have never tried a Mac, or only briefly. Most Mac users have used Windows and chose to spend more money on a Mac. To use a beaten-to-death analogy, Honda Civics must be much better cars than Dodge Vipers since so many more people own them. They are both just cars, right?

Aug 19, 08 - 08:30 pm Comment from: elgruga

Actually the Honda Civic is a MUCH better car than a Dodge Viper....

....but windows is still a pile o' crap.

"It's actually good that they keep on counting these downgrades as Vista sales. "

Well, there is the little matter of the duty of managers of a publicly-traded company to make truthful reports to their shareholders...

-jcr

Nearly 35% of new PCs have Vista replaced with ancient Windows XP

I'm extremely surprised it's only 35%.

If that percentage is informed enough to avoid Vista, why didn't they go rest of the way and switch to Mac?

Or buy Mac in the first place, and use that XP install for Boot Camp?

They all run on fossil fuels (production ones, anyway).

They all need repairs at some point.

You lose your ass the instant "new" becomes "used".

If they evolved as fast as our computers we be driving to Mars today.

If MS dominated cars (ACK!) we'd be driving Model T's with Prius bodies. Complete with a hole in the front bumper for crank-starting....

"The wreck is going down - get out before you drown"

The best computing decision I ever made was to buy a Mac Mini a couple of years ago, after growing disgusted with the PC I had since 1998. The Mini got me into the Mac world at a reasonable price, and now I can read articles about Microsoft without feeling I need to take a shower to clean the slime off.

Aug 19, 08 - 10:42 pm Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Holy cow!
That would be like "upgrading" from Mac OS X 10.5 to Mac OS 9!

By the time MS gets around to releasing and stabilizing (hah!) Windows 7, XP will be about 12 years old. And you can bet loads of people will still be running it!

That would be like running System 7.6 today!

That's stunning!

Aug 19, 08 - 10:45 pm Comment from: Mr. Reeee

That's as stunning as people actually BELIEVING that drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge (and elsewhere) will lower gas prices and solve the energy crisis!

What does ten years + never equal?
Delusion.

" ...i went to Greece and told someone do you like a mac and they don't know what it is." ...

A classic case of Dumb and Dumber!

Maybe, Julius was horsing about with his geeky Greek friend, who sadly, turned out to be a Trojan.

Nevertheless. windoze users will HAVE TO "upgrade" to vistaburk these next few years (if they still haven't switched to Mac), because M$ will just do everything to embarras$ XP users even more than vistaburks users allready are by now, with vistaburk-only compatible products...

Aug 20, 08 - 05:53 am Comment from: Ray

S.O.P. at my job...inspect all new Dell PC's. If they do not come with XP, disk image and rectify the situation.

Just my $0.02

@julius.. ..".i went to Greece and told someone do you like a mac and they don't know what it is."

is that a question or a statement?? "Mate"..you cant even construct a proper sentence or a question..How can anyone take your comments serious?

Stick with Windows and go get ed-uMACated, retard..

Aug 20, 08 - 09:00 am Comment from: ElderNorm

I was at a Best Buy yesterday. There was a guy that was totally clueless, but he needed a new computer for his company. Of course he was in the "cheap" pc section cause that was what he had before.

The Best buy lady was clueless too, but that is usual. So up walks this guy who plays with computers at home and he is talking Vista and it runs ok, "just be sure that you get 2 gig of ram min. These computers here have 6 gig (SIX GIG!!!!!) of ram so they should run Vista ok."

I was thinking, this buyer is going to get what he deserves. Use NO brain, get sh*tty results. Be happy with it cause you choose to be clueless.

Its the way of the world (mostly) and I have really backed off pushing Macs,...... cause these people (mostly) don't care. :-(

I did, however, (last month) talk a lady into looking seriously at two macs for her kids for school and she is even considering switching. Hey. we do what we can, when we can.

Later,
en

Aug 20, 08 - 09:02 am Comment from: ElderNorm

ps,

Oh yea. The best buy lady indicated that they could not load XP but did remember something about other places doing it, maybe in the past, sort of, ..... kinda.

And this guy is getting computer "information" from this store?????

weird,...... just weird.
en

Aug 20, 08 - 11:40 am Comment from: derekcurrie

What I find utterly hilarious is:

1) The constant, non-stop, in your face marketing spin that is coming out of Microsoft regarding Vista all the way up to Ballmer himself, calling it "the second most popular OS in history" while constantly, non-stop, in your face marketing spin diverting every single point made by technologists that what MS are counting in great measure are machines that are sold to customers with no other OS option but Vista. The fact that a huge number of these machines are then 'DOWNGRADED' to XP is deliberately left off the MS radar. They don't want to know about it.

MS have meanwhile tried to cut off XP as an option to computer buyers. But considering how dirt easy it is now to hack XP such that MS never knows how many copies of the same serial number someone is running, you cab expect this 'downgrade' behavior to continue behind the scenes, even at the Enterprise level.

MS have cruelly painted customers into a corner with regard to upgrading Pre-2007 PCs to Vista. Unless the machine was particularly well tricked-out for speed, 'upgrading' to Vista will noticeably slow down the machine. IOW Microsoft's online 'Vista Ready' testing of older machines was an almost complete failure. It actually hid the fact the Vista required far better than average PC hardware.

2) If you foolishly take MS at their word about how incredibly proud they are of Vista and how everyone loves it, kissy kissy, you'll flip when you hear this:

MS are so unhappy with retail sales of Vista that they are about to begin a $300 MILLION campaign to promote it, again. Failed the first time. SP1 didn't do the trick. So when at first, and second, you don't succeed, market market market again!

Meanwhile, on Mac OS X, to my personal shock and awe, every new version is FASTER than its predecessor. And thank the techno-lords, Apple are going to strip out rubbish code and optimize the OS further to make it even faster and leaner. The result will be Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.

So what are MS and apologist techno journalists doing now in the midst of this Vista fiasco? They're blethering about upcoming Windows 7 (demonstrating their inability to count Windows versions) and a side project MS have been tinkering with for many years called 'Midori'. This week in eWeek magazine there is even a gushing love sonnet to Midori, about how wonderful it will be as a replacement to antiquated old Windows and about how MS are trying to allow this new OS to be backwards compatible with current Windows apps. Yeah right. Don't hold your breath.

The fact is that the vast majority of Windows users aren't even caught up with 64-bit computing. I can hardly wait for that migration. It's going to be one nasty mess in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, Mac users have been 64-bit since the release of G5 PowerMacs from, ahem, 2002.

Then let's toss some gas on the fire of Vista: The Black Hat conference two weeks ago presented a paper describing how to PWN any Vista machine via the Internet using methods any script kiddy can use. The cherry on top is that according to the folks who wrote up this report, there is no way Microsoft can repair the vulnerability.

Well, as expected, there is more to the story than the sensationalist claims. There are equally sensationalist claims that the hacks presented at Black Hat aren't even usable. But the fact is that Vista isn't what MS claimed it was going to be: Safe. We already know about the 'Blue Pill' strategy for invisibly root-kitting Vista. Now we know that its memory protection is faulty. Clearly XP is less secure. But the fact that new massive exploits in Vista are found year after year doesn't impress anyone.

http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/119085,black-hat-vista-ineffective-against-browser-attacks.aspx

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/08/12/black-hats-alexander-sotirov-vista-security-is-not-broken

OK OFTs, have at it! Gather up the gang and anonymously trample my write up to your sadistic heart's content.
;-D

Aug 20, 08 - 11:45 am Comment from: derekcurrie

Jubai sez:

"In the meantime, MS just announced they have over 2000 people working on Windows 7. Thats 2000 people...".

I say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

Aug 20, 08 - 12:44 pm Comment from: Grifterus

Look! Zune Tang is back!

Hey, Zune Tang

I need a girlfriend so I don't care.

I want a share off apple as i use to smash PCs

"Today it is going in reverse mode... from Windows Vista to XP"

You're right, of the say 210 million Vista copies sold, perhaps 70 million of them are downgrading to XP and only 140 Million have kept Vista.

This is terrible! Imagine using an OS platform which sells less than 140 million new units! The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling! What if Vista, after a decade of trying, only had a pathetic installed base of a few tens of millions of units. That'd be a real failure. If only Apple can increase it's sales about ten to twenty times they'll be outdoing Vista, one small part of Microsoft's business.

But wait! The Mac's already Won. With 10 million units or so a year going to Apple, it's all over for Windows.