
Why hasn't Vista sold well? - blasdel
http://www.marco.org/217159338
======
blhack
Because it only offers a marginal improvement of XP. It is the same thing as
DVD vs Blu Ray. To a videophile, the difference is obvious. To a normal
person, the difference is noticeable, but irrelevant.

Vista is blu ray and I suspect that windows 7 will be as well. I honestly
think we've reached a point in desktop OS development where the average user
simply does not care anymore. Things are moving onto the web now. People care
about facebook doing a redesign, they do not really care what their desktop
looks like beyond "does it work?".

~~~
larrykubin
A while back my wife bought a cheap Lenovo. They pre-installed a lot of crappy
software and Vista. It ran painfully slow.

I formatted it and installed Ubuntu 9 and she's been computing happily ever
since. Here's what she cares about:

1) Does it run relatively fast? Is it stable? Is there a noticeable delay
because I am waiting for some unnecessary GUI special effects?

2) Does it run Firefox? Can I read reddit, watch videos on YouTube/Hulu, and
check my email?

~~~
jacoblyles
Does flash run well on 32-bit Ubuntu nowadays? I have a hard time with it on
my 64-bit PC. Ubuntu and Hulu didn't play nice last I checked.

~~~
elcron
It works fine on firefox with 32bit ubuntu.

------
InclinedPlane
Vista didn't sell well because most of the good changes were under the hood
and most of the bad changes were visible and affected usability negatively.

Vista made some good advances. For example, the number one cause of hard
crashes (blue screens) in Windows 2k/XP has been video driver crashes. In
Vista and Win7 if the video driver crashes the OS can recover, instead of lost
work and frustration as your computer reboots you get a little pop-up in the
system tray. Yet few users appreciate this because MS is bad at marketing this
sort of thing.

Out of the box, Vista's default configuration made for a hostile user
experience for both novice and sophisticated users. Vista was still a decent
OS upgrade over XP, but it took a lot of work (in learning and reconfiguring
Vista) to get to the point where it was worthwhile.

Moreover, there quickly sprouted up a negative user impression of Vista, even
among those who had never used it. Given that there was little in Vista that
was "must have", this hurt sales greatly. In reality Vista was as much, if not
more, of an upgrade over XP as XP was over 2000 (another flawed, but overall
worthwhile OS upgrade). Yet excessive negative public opinion squelched the
regular upgrade path.

Overall, Vista's lack of success was a boon to MS because it forced them to
buckle down and really succeed with Windows 7. It's better to fail
spectacularly and get a wake up call than to fail a little more with each
release until your product is irrelevant and unprofitable. Win7 is a truly
worthwhile OS upgrade, MS should thank whatever deity that they got a kick in
the pants when they did.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _the number one cause of hard crashes (blue screens) in Windows 2k/XP has
> been video driver crashes_

Where did you get this from ? A reference would be nice.

~~~
Devilboy
[http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-
responsibl...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-
for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/)

NVidia caused 30% of Vista crashes in the early Vista days.

~~~
jacquesm
That graph is by incident, to make it meaningful you'd have to normalize by
distribution. In an absolute sense Nvidia caused a lot more driver problems
than others but if you don't weigh that with the relationships between the
number of installations then it's hard to say that the problem was an Nvidia
problem or that there are serious issues with the Vista driver architecture
because all manufacturers had these issues.

I'm not current on the relative distributions of say Nvidia vs ATI, but all
the machine here have either Nvidia or Intel graphics in them, not a single
ATI one.

------
mattmaroon
"However, with an estimated 330 million internet users as of January 2009, it
has been announced that Vista usage had surpassed Microsoft’s pre-launch two-
year-out expectations of achieving 200 million users.".

The question isn't why hasn't Vista sold well, it's why do people think it
hasn't sold well?

~~~
raganwald
How many of those numbers are new PC sales and how many are actual upgrades?

~~~
josefresco
Does that even matter? People always point to how many new OS purchases were
via new machine buys but hasn't that always been the case? And even if it
weren't does it matter how the OS gets on the machine? What's the distribution
among Mac users, is the upgrade rate higher?

~~~
raganwald
I think it matters because the OP's thesis is that XP is "good enough" and
that Vista's competition is XP, not OS X. If Microsoft allows its HW
sluts^H^H^H^H partners to offer a choice between XP and Vista with new
machines, Vista sales reflect people choosing Vista. But if Microsoft doesn't
allow their partners to sell new machines with XP, the sales numbers appear
high but those number don't reflect anything except a large number of people
that would have bought XP any ways.

In fact, the numbers are crazy-bad with new machines, because some vendors
insisted on the right to sell XP, and Microsoft gave them the right to
downgrade Vista machines to XP. So even if a large corporate customer buys
1,000 systems with XP on them, Microsoft records it as 1,000 Vista sales!

I'm interested in sales reflecting choice, but it is not clear to me how
Microsoft's accounting practices help us understand that at all.

------
EliAndrewC
I was pleasantly surprised that this article was not simply bashing Vista
(whether it could do so justifiably or not), but rather focused on the
observation that nowadays there's hardly ever a reason for average computer
users to upgrade their OS, discounting the one you get when buying a new
computer.

However, I'm unsure whether to agree with interpret his assertion, "The
upgrade market for average PC owners is dead." This may well be true for PCs,
but I've known a lot of Mac users over the years who have shelled out for OS
upgrades. Sometimes they've been fairly technical people, sometimes not. I
wonder how Apple's numbers would compare to Microsoft's in the home PC market
if you adjusted for technical know-how.

~~~
webwright
I think a lot of Apple upgraders treat it like dues to a club membership.
Apple has done an outstanding job of making their customers feel like they
belong to an exclusive club (Microsoft obviously has not!).

I'm not a huge apple fan (but I use Macs) and haven't felt the SLIGHTEST itch
to upgrade to Snow Leopard. There's just no OS pain for me that it solves.

~~~
brk
Apple OS upgrades have also been generally priced much more reasonably than
Microsoft's.

If Vista had been a $29 upgrade instead of a $299 upgrade, I think it might
have had a lot more uptake, and people would be less likely to complain if it
were not "perfect". For $29 people don't expect as much as they do for $299+.

~~~
rythie
If Microsoft had done 10.6, it would be a service pack and would be free. I'm
surprised so many people paid $29 for it.

Don't forget 10.6 drops PowerPC support meaning for many users a the price of
a 10.6 upgrade is not $29 but $599+ (the price of a mac mini) and Apple were
still selling PowerPC macs in 2006.

~~~
acg
Isn't Window 7 a "service pack" for Vista?

Companies will charge more if they can, and Microsoft can.

It is also worth noting why MS Service Packs have been free: it has been the
case in the past that the released OS is not ready. Hence the reason why
corporate IT departments used to wait for at least a service pack before
installation.

OS X pricing hopefully will help bring the cost of windows down. It's clear to
see we've been fleeced for years.

------
TravisLS
One of the biggest mistakes with Windows Vista was the product strategy. Most
consumers probably recognize that the latest version has improvements that
will make their experience faster, more secure, etc, but get bogged down when
trying to make the purchase.

Since most people don't use the features of their operating system anyway, why
would anyone need to compare "home basic" (reads: worse than what you have
now), "home premium" (for better homes?), "business" (what kind of business?
filmmaking or accounting?), and "ultimate" (320 bucks for windows?)

Can't I just pay you for the version that works like what I have now but
better?

------
jsz0
I have a theory that one of the things hurting the PC industry is the
availability of cheap, easy, external storage. There was a time only a few
years ago when the average mainstream PC user who is scared to open their
computer had basically no options for expanding storage. They would just go
buy a new PC every few years and get a bigger HD included. Today you spend
$99, plug-in a cable, and you're all set.

The bigger issue though is there's no new technologies out there driving
hardware sales. Arguably things like USB2, CD/DVD burners, decent sized LCD
displays, etc were big practical things that could drive a customer to go buy
a new computer. What do we have today? BluRay? 802.11N? Not good enough for
the mainstream. USB3 could be an important technology to drive hardware sales
but we're probably still a few years away from seeing its real impact.

------
protomyth
Was there ever an application released that took advantage of Vista and didn't
run on XP? On the Mac side, there are a fair number of programs that needed
10.5.

~~~
josefresco
Shhh no one is supposed to know about this little nugget of Apple genius.

There's a reason Apple does yearly OSX updates, think of how many versions Mac
users have had to buy in the last 7-8 years in the time it took MS to release
just two OS's.

MS's strong suit has always been it's compatibility which has the side effect
of killing one of the 'reasons' to upgrade.

~~~
ashleyw
If that's Microsofts strong suit, they really don't have much going for them.
Upgrading to Vista was horrific!

As a user and developer, I much prefer annual/biennial releases because in
both cases, I get an continually improving OS, but also upgrades are far
easier to deal with. And anyway, you'd have a hard time finding any OSX user
in 2007 who preferred using OSX 10.0, whereas in the Windows camp, _everyone_
was in that situation, using a 6 year old OS. Well, 8 year old now…

------
ardit33
"What if the reason why most PCs are still running XP has nothing to do with
whether Vista is “good” or “bad”, but rather is the result of indifference on
the part of whoever owns these untold millions of XP machines, be they at home
or in a corporate IT environment. I.e., that switching to Vista, regardless of
Vista’s merits, seemed like too much work and too much new stuff to learn;"

No, no and no. Vista is just horrible, usability wise. I bought a laptop for
my parents, and I curse I didn't wipe it out, and install xp instead. I get
twice more "how do i do this' request, than I got with XP.

Finally, last month my dad asked me if I could install the older OS he had on
the other computer, as he liked XP much better.

Horrible product.

I have used it personally at work, and at my home computer I sticked with XP.

~~~
singer
Change the theme to XP/Classic and you'll find there really isn't much to
learn.

~~~
maudineormsby
Gotta agree. I prefer Vista to XP. Maybe I'm in the minority, but since the
latest service pack, it seems rock solid.

Of course, I also know how to remove malware or avoid it in the first place,
and how to actually uninstall programs/clean the registry.

------
rythie
Because Vista requires at least 2GB of memory and/or a complete machine
upgrade. When it came out virtually no one (other than gamer geeks) had a
machine capable of running it. The press was so bad that few wanted to.

Even now I see machines with only 1GB of memory and Vista, and I have seen
friends of mine sold laptops from reputable companies like HP with only 1GB of
memory. Those machines do not work in any way shape or form how a new machine
in 2009 should work.

And then there is netbooks which can really only run XP partly because they
only come with 1GB of memory.

I think this combined with as the article said there is really nothing new in
Vista that people really care about. For most people typing facebook.com in
somewhere, is all they want from their home PC.

------
futuremint
Through the lens of the average user fearing OS updates, the whole "online
application" makes a lot more sense. These average users can be more
comfortable with online applications because there is no update that the end
user is responsible for (or that they know about).

Also, when they replace their computer in order to "get rid of" their malware,
all of their online applications are still there.

I'd never thought of web applications from this perspective before, but it
occurs to me that maybe we can thank Microsoft's horrible upgrade path in the
early '00s for the large market for online applications today.

------
tjm
Another factor is automatic updates which stream down fixes constantly to XP
machines- something that 98 and 95 never had. The jumps from 95 to 98 and 98
to XP usually meant a clean, virus-free OS. XP has remained solid because of
the ability to update it - something only realistic with larger broadband
adoption. I personally can't wait until your average store-bought computer is
some dumb terminal that boots off of a network. Less questions from friends,
acquaintences, etc when all of their sheah's in the cloud.

------
bprater
DirectX 10 was one of the few "hooks" or killer features Microsoft assigned
only to Vista. I'm wondering if they should have spent more time looking for
similar killer features before shipping.

------
jackfoxy
I tried really hard to make an old XP machine last until Win 7 came out, but
the hard drive decided otherwise. Having heard too many horror stories about
Vista the first thing I did with the cheapest replacement machine money could
buy was spend 4 hours going through 99 performance hacks for Vista and
deciding which to install. I would say it is now adequate, while still having
a few Vista annoyances.

I upgraded my work desktop to Win 7 last week. It's what Vista should have
been.

~~~
josefresco
Do share the url for your performance hacks. Still have some Vista machines
that could use a tweak.

Black Viper guides still relevant?

~~~
jackfoxy
This is what I used <http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2238>

------
KWD
Along with the other reasons, I think price plays an important part of the
upgrade decision as well. Several years ago I upgraded a PC from Windows 98 to
XP but only after I found the upgrade for under $50. Now, in addition to my 2
XP desktops, XP laptop, and my primary Vista desktop, only the latter will I
even consider upgrading. However, looking at a $120 upgrade to 7 I have to
decide is it really worth it - and right now my thinking is it's not.

------
param
This doesn't explain all the downgrades to XP people bought, but otherwise
summarizes the situation well

------
cookiecaper
Yeah, people just don't care. That's the thing now. They're scared of new
stuff and if the old stuff still works, even if it's slow/crappy/whatever,
they'll fight tooth and nail to keep everything exactly the same.

Maybe it's a problem or maybe it's not, I don't know.

~~~
roc
But people have never really cared. And they've always been scared of change.

XP had the same 'why upgrade?' problem as Vista when it showed up; despite
following on the heels of the ME train wreck. People were still largely
satisfied with 98SE and didn't see a compelling reason to upgrade.

But eventually they did buy newer, faster hardware and peripherals. Microsoft
wisely never patched improved USB and WiFi support into 98, so people learned
to tolerate XP.

The biggest difference now, is that there isn't a very compelling argument for
new hardware either. Particularly amidst the Current Economic Conditions.

------
rjvir
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_vs_PC>

------
GrandMasterBirt
Because vista's drivers were not solid during release.

Bsods killed it

High spec requirements killed it

People selling pcs with less than 2 gigs of ram killed it

And the gains the user got were overshadowed by shitty performance, bsods, and
the software they need not working. Not to mention the whole upgrade to a
priucier version to get the nice ui feature you want.

Also the netbooks can't handle vista so that entire market died.

Also harder to priate = noone using it at home = not evangelizing at work :P

~~~
misterbwong
Interestingly, Apple handles all these problems (save the last one) by having
full control of the hardware. This is one of the reasons why Apple OSX comes
off as much more stable. MS needs to design an OS that can work with
_everything_. It's inherently easier to design an operating system where there
is a small(er) set of variations. Whether this is the right way to go over the
long haul is yet to be determined.

~~~
dasil003
This is why I switched back to Mac when OS X came out (after the IE6 beta
trashed my HD, and I didn't have a floppy of CD-Rom driver, so I had to
reinstall Win95 from 18 floppy disks, ugh). Yes, I pay a premium for hardware,
and yes, Apple abandons my old hardware in 3-4 years, and selection of
hardware and software is not what it is in the Windows world.

However in exchange for that, I get real progress in the software, and when
something inevitable go wrong, chances are someone else has had the problem
because there's such a limited range of configuration options. As a
professional developer it's pretty easy to justify the Apple tax on that basis
alone.

~~~
cpr
Actually, Apple has a good track record of supporting old hardware for years.

They just ended that record with the Snow Leopard/Intel requirement, but that
seems like a reasonable thing to do.

And your old PPC hardware runs fine with 10.5.

~~~
dasil003
It's not terrible, but it's nowhere near as good as Microsoft. This is just my
impression after owning lots of Apple hardware since 1985... I got left out in
the cold a lot.

~~~
ikitat
Any tips on installing Vista on my Alpha?

------
schammy
Hmm. Because it's steaming pile of shit, perhaps?

