RSSThe Vista Sales Numbers: Anatomy of a Wash
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published February 19, 2007, 4:01 PM
The abundant mix of both upward and downward slopes that have characterized Microsoft Windows Vista sales projections since last September, and the strangely dichotomous co-existence of expectations exceeded and fears realized, has led many experts to start asking serious questions about the role the operating system plays not only in the markets but in our lives: Has Windows evolved out of its shell as a consumer product, into the homogeneous commodity that Microsoft simultaneously hoped and feared it might become?
In other words, does Vista really matter?
Last Friday, BetaNews received word of preliminary numbers from an upcoming NPD report that seemed to sound some alarm bells -- at least we thought we heard them -- pointing to Vista retail sales that were 58.9% lower during its initial week than for sales of Windows XP during its initial week. But when we applied those numbers to previous volume sales figures from NPD, the numbers seemed impossibly bad, as though Vista sales were only one-fourth of what they were six years earlier.
In the back of our minds, we were saying, "This can't be," and NPD came back to us to say, "You're right; it can't." What we learned about the shifting economic landscape, and why "58.9% lower" wasn't lower than what we thought it was lower than, became one of the subjects of San Jose Mercury News reporter John Murrell's Good Morning Silicon Valley blog entry that day. There, Murrell cited a quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer making the rounds, which tempered his earlier rosy sales projections: "[Vista] is primarily a chance to sustain what [Windows] revenue we have," said Ballmer. "Not every release is a revenue growing opportunity."
A later attempt by Ballmer to explain why things look rosy on one side and abysmal on the other, ended up confusing analysts so much that they prompted an unusual short-term selloff in Microsoft stock this morning.
Correctly estimating BetaNews' situation last week as "up to its waist in apples and oranges," Murrell's observations point to an increasingly evident truth: The world to which Vista has awakened in 2007 is significantly different than the one which greeted XP in 2001.
More businesses are purchasing Windows through a volume licensing program, which reduces the number of small businesspeople picking up copies at their local retailer. And Internet downloading is becoming more prevalent among everyday consumers. A good part of the reason there are fewer Vista retail customers is because the market has moved to other sales options.
There are other reasons, as Chris Swenson -- NPD's director of software industry analysis and the lead author of last week's preliminary numbers -- told BetaNews.
"Vista unit shipments were down 59%, but Microsoft gets approximately 80% of their OS revenue from the OEMs - PC manufacturers," Swenson reported. "So it's really important to focus on them predominantly when you're trying to figure out how well an operating system release is going to do; and when you look at that 2007 launch week versus the same week in 2006, PC unit shipments were up 67% year-over-year." Those numbers were provided by Swenson's NPD colleague, Steve Baker.
"Long story short, that is such a great number that it counterbalances the negative growth that we're seeing in the shrink-wrapped box [segment]," Swenson added. "And if you think about it, if there is a 'Vista effect' - if there is a bump in PC shipments that will result from Vista - there has to be a corresponding negative Vista effect for the shrink-wrapped box [segment]."
So already NPD has a clear reason for lower Vista sales figures being reported by its current list of participating retailers: A great many of those customers are still getting their Vista elsewhere. The channels are just different now.
"The reason why I think that is," Swenson continued, "is because at least with this release, the hardware requirements are so stringent that this dual trend - an increase in PCs and a decrease in shrink-wrapped box - might be an indicator that more consumers are going to opt to get Vista through a new PC versus upgrading an older machine." He cited reviews from sources such as the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, who noted some Vista features performing slowly on a new Dell XPS laptop.
So are we seeing a situation where the retail channel NPD has been tracking for years, and whose evolution NPD admits caused generational shifts that make six-year spans of comparisons implausible, if not impossible, is less pertinent to the overall picture?
"I think that's true to a degree," Chris Swenson responded cautiously. "We've seen digital downloads have more of an impact on the game side than on the non-game side, especially for key applications. If it's for a small utility, an IM program, Skype, people don't mind downloading a little thing and then running it; they do that all the time. For an office suite, for an operating system, oftentimes you see consumers wanting to get that CD or DVD as a backup, in case their machine blows up."
E-commerce, Swenson said, is a much larger percentage of NPD's sample than it ever was, and Amazon is a major player in its current sales figures, where it was much less of one in 2001. Microsoft itself, he said, can fuzzify the picture of e-commerce sales in two directions: first, by generating Internet consumer interest in Vista and then link that consumer directly to Amazon and other retailers; and in the opposite regard, the company's Test Drive program for trial downloads has been, in NPD's view, extremely successful, driving revenue directly to Microsoft and away from the Amazons, NewEggs, and other e-commerce retailers it covers.
Not to mention all the conventional retailers NPD covers, such as Circuit City and Best Buy, who operate their own Web storefronts, and who report their offline and online sales to NPD.
Next: Is Vista the last "new version of Windows?"
I got Vista, put it on a test system, and kinda regret doing so. Problems with restoring after sleep, problems with networking blocking some apps and not others, (yes even with firewall disabled,) and general compatibility with MANY of our apps.
Yes we could MAKE those apps compatible with our tools, but better yet it looks like we will wait at least another 6-12 months before considering this...
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Man, unbelievable, the same stupid empty discussion every time MS launches its OS for decades now.
Will you ever shut up, take your money and spare people this vanity crap ? ? ! !
Yesterday we stood at the brink of an abyss - today we are one step farther . . .
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Very Dramatic.
You should be in pictures.
Well, mugshots, at least. :p
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Most people like myself won't bother upgrading to vista. Why should you. I just bought a pc last year with xp pro. Why would i waste money upgrading, since most pc's older than a year can't handle vista anyway. Microsoft should be happy. They still control around 90 percent of the market. So even if people wait till they buy a new pc that has vista, they haven't really lost a cust. Plus is says how good xp turned out.
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Huh? What?? Blah blah blah blah BORING!!
I never considered myself to be a dumba55 until now. Can someone break this down and explain it to me in language I'll actually understand please.
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Haven't ya learned yet?!
MS = Windows Windows = rules
MS expects mucho money
MS = poor company
Buy Windows!
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Wow.. We got tweleve years olds posting...
tipsyboy: don't you have to be in school or something?
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Reading this news story makes me feel like I am 12 years old! Like I said, I never considered myself to be a dumba55 until now. [shrugs]
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Doesnt surprise me at all. The system it self is cool... But my computer tried to run it, and died a horrible death in the process. Oh well... Leave it to MS to try harder. Don't the have enough cash? Why a new OS? Was XP not good enough? Even with the hundreds of megs of security updates...
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The same things were said when we were all running Windows 98 and XP came out. Many years later XP is the normal, many years from now Vista will be the norm....
And the world keeps turning.
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Depending on how success is measured, Vista will be a success in that all new PCs will be shipped with Vista, thus over a period of time, the platform will replace XP and Microsoft Evangelists will start to beam as developers take advantage of what Vista offers.
I like Vista. It's running great on my 3 year old DELL Latitude C640, 1.8GHZ Pentium M with 1GB of RAM and a Mobility Radeon M7 card. I had a tough time getting the Mobility to install with its drivers and 'FORCED' it. As a result, everything runs perfectly, but when shutting down, I do experience a blue screen due to the old DELL ATI drivers.
I enjoy Vista's visual refresh and it's embrace of technologies that are now common place but were not well integrated into Windows XP out of the box. I like not having to install a huge number of updates to be current.
Is Vista amazing me? Nah, but I'm thrilled that it's running smoothly and the transition was easy. There are lots of bells and whistles that I enjoy. It's a good OS to ship with modern Core Duo / AMD X-2 systems and a good OS to show off new video cards and provide an enhanced 'coolness' experience. And in a few years, when Avalon is more widely used in applications, we will look back on XP and it will seem dated.
I do, however, think MS are silly for selling Vista Ultimate for $399... I understand the marketing and think its fair for there to be 2 Windows XP versions (not counting Server 2003), but it's silly that so many versions of Vista are available. It's NOT a good strategy for recouping development cost. Vista is Microsoft's responsibility for holding a monopoly in the OS market.
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gotta love those 604's though, they are workhorses. used one for my work computer for the last few years, and let me tell you that thing has survived more than most and kept on kicking. Did you also have a problem with vista and properly gauging the battery life on yours? it showed 4 hours on mine, but shut off closer to 2 and a half, then i had to run through the dell battery run test and upgrade the bios to get it to work right.
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Keep in mind that when you buy the retail version of Vista Ultimate you are paying for two copies of the OS (a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version). This is why the retail version of Vista Ultimate is $399.99 and the OEM version of Vista Ultimate is $199.99.
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There are some huge crybabies in here. If you don't like Vista, don't use it. Nobody is making you.
Does it have Mac OS features? Sure, Is there something wrong with combining good ideas? Does Apple have some patent on these?
Drivers wise: if your not to bright with computers, you shouldn't attempt an upgrade. It takes a bit of work to get this right, so consult someone who knows something.
x86 vs x64 - More stable, less drivers, consult an expert if you can't handle it.
So, quit crying about Vista. Microsoft (or Micro$oft for the retard that uses that above) put a lot of work into it.
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i think the driver problems are mostly temporary, most amnufacturers will have their ducks in a row in a few months and we wont have to worry about all these driver problems.
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"If you don't like Vista, don't use it. Nobody is making you."
Phew! Thanks, I feel much better now.
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There are some huge crybabies in here. If you don't like Vista, don't use it. Nobody is making you.
Dell is forcing you it seems.
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How so? You mean by selling only Vista on new machines? The answer to that, don't by Dell. There are still vendors out there selling new computers with XP.
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Why would anyone want XP if they are buying a new computer? Over 99% of all hardware that works in 32-bit WinXP will work in 32-bit Vista, even if there are not Vista specific drivers available.
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I have no clue, I assume hvacr wants XP from his comment.
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Well Vista is inevitable, but truth is, and I ran the betas and have been running Enterprise RTM since November 30-06, and the word is out. Vista is a bug laden, resource hogging mess. None of the OEM peripheral vendors have stepped up with decent drivers and the OEM system makers are selling the same old systems with Vista installed that are going to have a half-life of about 30 seconds (notebooks 10 seconds) when the mother board, graphics, audio, chipset, and other device makers finally figure out what the devil microsoft was doing (given all the beta time we still don't know why that's not even close yet).
Folks are sitting back just hoping... what would serve the whole industry right is a major slump in ALL sales, hardware and software alike, until the makers get it a lot closer to "right".
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Really? The only thing not working on my pc is TV card, and I knew that won't work way before I installed Vista. Other that that I easily found compatible drivers for EVERYTHING is my machine. And guess what, it is not a Dell, it is a custom built machine. Moreover, this machine is a year old and everything flies. I have no problem running even the most resource hungry applications with Vista aero and all the other cool new Vista stuff turned on. It is easy to form an opinion based on a few cases like You Tube videos, but it will not be the correct one.
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MS did a very fine job in XP as a overall stable system, and so does many agree (Aside from phreak accidents occuring from malware) and makes it more prevailiant to hold fast with it. Vista to XP is not a necessity upgrade like XP is from Win9x
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Realistically, XP was just a GUI wrap for NT, which was not too user friendly. Maybe you forgot how everyone was screaming they will stick to 98 and never upgrade to XP because they could not believe their games will run on NT based platform? Vista is a continuation of that trend but also offers numerous improvements in other sectors -- it tries to be as user friendly as possible while still trying to protect the users.
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except its an upgrade from 32 bit to 64, which could cause alot of problems for many programs *if vista doesnt handle the programs in 32 bit legacy mode* like its supposed to. have faith though, given time someone will find a way to get most anything to run on vista that was made before it. although DOS programs will most likely have a VERY hard time of it.
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That's why Microsoft released Virtual PC 2007 for free. This way you can run every DOS or 16-bit Windows application that was ever released at full speed in most cases.
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Microsoft has failed to understand 2 things:
1. Energy growth has becoma a problem.
2. The purpose of an operating system is to provide services to allow applications to be written more easily. Microsoft has instead shipped a power hog that is so bloated that it
crushes most of the machines currently in service. By the time that Vista would have been hitting it's stride in the exponentially increasing energy world, it will be undesirable due to power consumption.
Goodbye Microsoft.
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I'm sure they'll miss you.
I have a year old machine running Vista, and everything runs absolutely smoothly, am I an exception?
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Expeption= hell no
AMD 3500 single core processor 1gig ram Nvidia 7300 and Vista runs much faster than a clean install of XP and have not yet run into any problems.
Not the newest or anywhere near the best hardware but even with the specs knocked down a notch or two Vista home premium should run decently.
XP was a good OS and i plan on keeping it on my backup computer incase i run into any programs that don't work with Vista but so far that has not been the case even one of my old games from the early-mid 1990s runs smoothly.
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I'm sure sales will pick up as the year goes on, but let's face it, from a hardware and software perspecive, upgrading right now will cause way more problems than it will be worth - that is if your current system can even comfortably run it at all (most can't). Interested parties know this and are warning off ma and pa to stay clear for awhile too. It's gonna take some time me thinks.
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Not only nVidia 8800 owners, but also all of us that have motherboards with nforce3. Look like nvidia do not plan to upgrade, so what we do stay with XP
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Another reason for low sales: People like me understand now that you don't have to buy the Ultimate edition box from Best Buy--order the OEM version for almost half the price!
So--PC shipments being as high as they are compared to XP, Vista being on every new PC I see out on the market right now (yes I'm sure you can find XP systems still, but you have to spend time looking specifically for those now), and more people like me who realise Vista Ultimate OEM is just $199 USD from newegg, while Ultimate Edition "UPGRADE" is $379 USD--who wants to pay $179 for more user friendly instructions and Microsoft tech support? Not many--apparently only about 58% of those who would have done it in 2001 :D
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It will simply 'invade' the channel by way of new PC sales.
I am rather surprised that with the associated resource requirements that anyone anticipated a rush to run out and buy it except by a small group of hard core early adopters.
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That's exactly what I was thinking as well. It's only a matter of time before it takes off because it's being pre-installed on all of the new PCs.
I personally am one of the people who need to upgrade my hardware before I get Vista. I could get it today and it would run, but not at full steam with all of my other applications. I need more RAM and a new videocard first.
As soon as those upgrades are done then I'm certainly putting Vista on this machine.
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OEM--I rushed out and bought Vista as a standalone OEM. There's the trend, peeps.
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funny thing, i got it to run pretty well on my old p4 1.6 with 384 mb ram. and it ran ok. about the same performance as xp on the same machine. then again im running business not ultimate on it. seeing as not everyone NEEDS to run ultimate on every machine.
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Nah, the haters all believe everyone need Ultimate.
When they b**** about price? Ultimate.
When they b**** about resources or performance? Ultimate.
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What secret trick did you use to get Vista to run on a computer with 384MB total RAM? If you do a normal installation of Vista it will pop up a box stating that you can't run Vista with less than 512MB of RAM.
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I suppose you could install it with 512 and then pull out a 128MB stick.
Of course, one must then ask why the hell anyone would want to do that, much less use 128MB sticks in anything other than printers nowadays, but...
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Just bought parts for a new system and Vista Ultimate (OEM). Couldn't resist.
Ah well...
Should run decently on a X2 64bit 4400 with 2GB of RAM and 2 250GB SATAII Seagate drives.
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Now not in a million year, i'm going to read a two pages long article so i'm sorry if my comments to the article are wrong...
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Vista should have a better sale you should think due to the fact that it has been six years since the past release.. But actually I don't think its becaurse people wanna have this new OS, its more that you then have an excuse to go and by a new PC.. I doubt that Vista is going to be a success.. I
It has fare to many bugs at release to be attractive to pay for as a private person, and as a compayny, you surely wanna wait ..
And here I think most companies sees that there just isn't much to gain by upgrading to Vista.. Think most will have in the back of their head, that Vienna, the next windows will be a fare greater upgrade, and save time, money and effort to it's release..
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Too many bugs huh? Name one?
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There's at least five here:
http://www.betanews.com/...es_Available/1170364637
Not to mention a massive bug that's still being worked on: DRM. :P
There's also the significant problems with drivers - nVidia 8800 owners are spewing at the moment. Sure you can say this is an nVidia problem, not an MS problem, but the fact remains this isn't an issue on XP, only Vista. Upgrading now is foolish, IMHO.
Unfortunately XP OEMs are drying up in the channels already. Although we don't want to sell Vista OEM for at least 6 months, we're soon not going to have a choice, because we can no longer buy XP! :P
EDIT: spelling.
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I agree "upgrading now is foolish". I did so and regret it for I can't play many of my games and when I play video I get the blue screen of death. Still waiting on some good drivers from Nvidia and the current drivers are still buggy.
I should have waited. I believe Windows Vista will be this decades "Windows ME".
Already Microsoft has announced a new OS to come out sometime in 2009 which will include many things they wanted to put into Vista, but were rushed to get this OS out so they left it out of the OS.
The Apple commercial showing Vista's security is not only hilarious, but hits the bullseye.
Never owned a Mac and the only reason I never went Apple was due to proliferation of software programs for Windows, particularly games.
But if Windows keeps getting more "anal" with security to keep out pirates; hence making it more consumer unfriendly, then I'll go with Apple and just buy a games console as soon as Sony and Microsoft get the flaws out of their consoles taken care of...
Just my humble opinion...
If your using Windows XP and need to use graphic intensive software, i.e. games for example, then wait. Vista is not "ready" yet.
If you are a business man who usually waits a year or two before upgrading, then avoid VISTA altogether and go with the OS Microsoft plans to put out in 2009 which is not that far off.
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I just did a fresh install this past weekend of Vista. It went through flawlessly. I cant say there are any bugs, aleast on my system. I installed a few games CS, and Warcraft 3, no problems at all.
While I can't argue that its a bad OS. I can't say theres ANYTHING in it that will make me go buy it. It runs slightly faster that XP. I like the new look, but not enough to dish out $400.
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Microsoft is just following its cycle most Windows OS have been out between 2-3 years time with the exception of Vista.
Vista itself is quite stable whereas ME was botched from the start. The problem with Vista is many companies sat on their hands and are very late to adopting it and testing it out.
You can't fault Microsoft because Nvidia and other manufacturers don't have compatible drivers. Thats like faulting Apple because when they moved to Intel's platform Photoshop was no long able to be used.
You can turn off the UAC it doesn't have to be on and UAC was not nearly as bad as apple makes it out to be.
The DRM that everyone keeps talking about will be something that is a download, update whatever in all OSES (even Linux) will use it if they want to be able to use certain kinds of hardware. Microsoft is just doing what the market is doing. Vista does not automatically drm everything by itself, I would love to know who came up with this ridiculous rumor.
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The problem is that software manufacturers are becoming lazy and they hardley even look at an OS until it is released before they try to make their software compatible.
Vista itself is more solid than XP was--does anyone remember the overflow of issues XP saw in the first week of its release??? Anyone remember Blaster? Sasser? Trust me, the complaints on this forum are so insignificant next to the complaints with Windows Me and Windows XP. If nothing else, the complaining is telling me how much BETTER this OS is than any other MS has released thus far!
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"Software manufacturers becoming lazy" Drop whatever you are smoking... Microsoft took 5 years to release a Beta (Vista is NOT ready) but everyone else is becoming lazy? No way: Developers either don't want to sink with Micro$oft developing for a OS which will cause thousands of problems or, in the best case, nobody see the rush to upgrade.
Vista is so solid that you become annoyed ALL THE TIME with UAC. Are you sure you want to administrate your PC? Damn, It can't ask about EVERYTHING, is soo annoying. They still learned to block incoming traffic to protect the vulnerable services (still exploitables), but that's old news, XPsp2 already did that... Microsoft photocopied the MacOS skin, but never the OS "common sense". Ask whenever you need to, not all the time, about everything...
And later they try to deny the lack of sales citing "downloads" blah blah blah.. Why they don't release numbers then? Fake numbers at least...
Microsoft, I think Vista is sinking, and I feel good about it. Maybe this is Windows Mevista and in 2009 (or 2020) you can release something real.
Now, seriously: I want the OS to use my programs, whatever I want to, not to waste processor time with DRM, seeing crappy animations or sending reports to you. Don't continue bloating the OS!
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Software manufacturers aren't becoming lazy - why would anyone drop whatever they're doing and work on Vista compatibility when Vista kept getting further and further delayed, feature sets kept changing, and for some period following the launch hardly anyone will be using the new OS anyway - especially since the UAC bugs the crap out of everyone and it's had a ton of bad press around DRM and overall performance compared to XP?
I've installed Vista, and I hated it. I don't need to be prompted ten times a minute to confirm I want to do whatever I just told the OS to do. I've had problems accessing network shares due to authentication bugs, and even some of the eye candy, like the stock ticker desktop widget, is hard to use! (If it takes longer than 20 seconds to figure out how to remove a default stock then forget it). Hell, I had to use the "Runas" command with alternative credentials just to get RegEdit to allow me to edit my own registry. WTF.
As a long-time Windows user, I would say that Vista annoys me more than OS X. And that is saying something. My next computer may not be a PC. Congratulations, Microsoft.
I won't make any kind of "I'm never upgrading" statement, but I do think anyone who upgrades in the first couple of months is being foolish. You probably won't have all the software support you want, nor all of the driver support you need.
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Do you mean these bugs or this bug?
The reason Vista isn't "hot" is because Microsoft didn't listen to customers and didn't give them what they wanted: an affordable OS that made their systems run faster and with more stability. Instead, we got an incredibly bloated OS that takes a day to tweak out the annoyances, and with six versions, only the most expensive allows what we all wanted: virtualization (and Microsoft even limits that). Same goes for Office 2007.
By this time next year, StarOffice/OpenOffice will be up and Office 2007 will be down; while Ubuntu and Freespire will continue its encroachment for Windows users, Vista will continue to hold water at best. I blame this on Microsoft. Vista is what happens when you turn a deaf ear to those of us with the money to make purchasing decisions.
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I did upgrade and I regret it. Aero is a joke — like UAC, you just want to turn the darn thing off. Oh, and no matter how big and fast your system, Vista will make it noticeably slower than XP.
So laugh loud and hard at me. I deserve it.
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photocopied the skin? how? they are using the exact skin xp did with a better graphics presentation. (ie little to no pixelation)
Vista - http://galeria.purepc.pl/d/1329-3/vista41.jpg
Tiger - http://www.professional-...iger/05tiger_screen.jpg
Did you even try it? Because it doesn't ask everytime for every little thing and you can turn it off if its that bothersome.
The OS is the way it is because the average consumer (the ones that have NO technical no how) are the ones who wanted these features.
Contrary to popular belief Microsoft does listen to its users. (the tech group is a small minority, kind of like apples total user base)
For the LAST TIME THERE IS NO BUILT IN DRM IN THE OS. IT DOES NOT DRM ALL OF YOUR FILES.
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Actually, I think you're doing a service to others considering the upgrade by giving a genuinely founded opinion.
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Right, it just degrades your media playback experience if all of your drivers aren't signed. Gee, I can't wait to upgrade now!
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whats wrong with drivers being signed?
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I am using a 4 yr old system and Vista runs faster on a clean install then xp does on a clean install...maybe my parts are made of gold and have superhuman powers, then again no.
There have been a lot of people who have seen Vista as faster whereas others say its slower. Sounds like a drivers issue...
Aero looks nice and really shows off the new graphics engine I guess I don't get the joke (sic)
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http://www.macobserver.c...cle/2007/02/13.10.shtml
You are corrected :)
Now I might as well add that I am a platform neutral person, im using Linux at the moment, I have BeOS and DOS in QEMU and XP on my other partition (as well as a trashed Vista RC2 install on yet another partition, thought I cant get the boot menu for it).
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Nothing is wrong with drivers being signed. Until you want to use a beta or unsigned driver, and then suddenly your HD DVDs play in lower resolution with degraded audio quality. Suppose, for example, you buy a brand new game, and in order to keep it stable or use all of the visual effects you need to install a video driver that hasn't yet gone through MS for signing. Later the same night, you want to watch an HD DVD - what are you going to do, keep switching drivers?
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I worked for an apple center for more than 2 years and every part of the OS is a bad quality photocopy. I do like XP, but not vista at all.
A polished UAC is a function of Mac OS (since Puma version I think), which ask you for admin password whenever you need to, but it doesn't bother you at point you need to DISABLE the function to keep working. Asking every time about everything also make the user to automatically respond yes every time asked, without look what the system is really asking for. UAC is pathetic.
Not only Vista includes DRM in the core but it may include dangerous "features": http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=206481
And tell me that the NSA did help Microsoft to improve security, yeah, sure.. Security for who?
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actually they did, but they just dont advertise it. its called windows fundamentals for legacy systems. or just windows fundamentals for short. its like a slightly stripped down version of 2000.
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i dont know what system you are running, but every system i have tested it on, even ultimate, has run better than xp did on it. and i have tried about 15-20 different machines so far. although to be fair, ultimate takes up more memory and cpu than home or business does. But that is to be expected. havent tried the other versions yet, just ultimate and business, so i cannot vouche for their performance, but i expect enterprise will run the same a business.
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Well said!
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That is certainly the case. I installed Vista on a Core2 Duo 6800 with 2gb of Corsair memory and a 7950GX and found it ran slower than XP. Additionally, there are plenty of benchmark tests out the (Tom's Hardware did a good one) that confirm what you say. As for those who say it is faster; maybe they are seeing what they want to see.
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wel last time i checked that was going to be hardware based on everything relating to hd-dvd and blu-ray because of the inherent drm locked into them.
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so uh, because ms decided to do something similar, and didnt do it first, its copied?
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Glad to see you are giving upgrade advice based on your limited experience with Vista.
I have 3 laptops and 4 desktops ranging in age from 6 months to 4 years old and all are running fine on Vista. The desktops all have top of the line Nvidia cards in them (the 5200, 7800 and 7950) and the drivers are working without issue.
I am a heavy gamer and all the games I played on XP work just fine in Vista.
don't be so quick to judge when you aren't alert enough to make your own computer work. It might be part of the 1d1Ot error anyway.
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