Vista pirated half as much as XP, Microsoft rejoices
By Donald Melanson 
posted December 4th 2007 3:21PM
posted December 4th 2007 3:21PM
While it admits it's not possible to pin down an exact number, Microsoft has let out word today that it estimates the counterfeit rate of Vista to be about half that of XP, a figure that it seems to be more than pleased with. Of course, one could interpret those numbers in slightly less positive ways, but Microsoft claims the sharp dip in piracy is due to Vista's amped up authentication system, which it says is a "proven and effective way to combat piracy." To come up with the numbers, Microsoft apparently relied statistics based on Windows Genuine Advantage validation failures, as well as other unspecified internal data. As TG Daily notes, all this follows Microsoft's announcement of revised anti-piracy measures in Vista SP1 and, specifically, some big changes to the aforementioned WGA feature.
The reason is there is less pirated copies of Vista is because Vista SUCKS and no one wants it. I have Ultimate installed on a work laptop because I'm the tech guy and do these kind of stick needles in your eyes kinds of things because I need to keep up with the latest tech and software. But OMG.. IT IS TERRIBLE. The laptop is a Dell XPS M1210 with 2gigs of memory and a Nvidia 7400 card. All it does is constantly lock up and make the computer way hot. Runs out of memory, the programs stop working or have parts of them stop working and say error error error(Internet Explorer). I haven't rolled back to XP on the laptop yet because I wanted to see what SP1 would do to Vista but from what I'm reading not much. Vista is bad for laptops. I don't care if you have a basic one or suped up one. XP forever! :)
I'm an IT tech for a hospital, so naturally people ask me to fix their computers. More and more these I'm getting requests to fix Vista machines. I ask them why they bought Vista and it's usually that they were curious. More often than not though it was because they didn't know where to find an XP machine anymore.
Also you would think M$ would take notice when Vista started competing with winME for the worst OS of all time.
I kick myself everytime I think about my wasted birthday present request that I made last Spring for Vista Ultimate... I had it installed for a grand total of three days before removing the filth! For that $400, I could have asked for a PS3... DOH!!
Ubuntu, Leopard, and XP are all I'll need for a while... :)
Yeah, it is half the piracy because its half the people who are using Vista in the first place !!
This is spectacularly bullshit-tastic as far as MS news goes. Everything is flawed- from how they get the data to what it means for them in the market. I have one friend and two family members who put either xp or 2000 on a vista pc (one of the xp disks courtessy of bitorrent) to make their life work again. I've had pirated vista ultimate for a year now, and while it occasionally annoys the hell out of me, it runs snappy and I've found things I like about it (after disabling uac and stripping down some other things). But I would never pay the 400 that a regular ultimate disk costs, not when leopard is 129, 200 for a family pack. Bottom line is, microsoft could in a few decades be notorious as the company that makes zunes and xboxes.
I own Vista Ultimate and uninstalled it for room for Ubuntu Ultimate and Mint. Never been happier, vista is in the corner gathering dust but may reinstall for WoW ONLY, been jonesing lately
Cart
People don't even want Vista for free... that's why! It's a prett horrific OS. I went back to XP on my computer.
Microsoft's great solution to the piracy problem - make a product so damn crappy that no one wants it. :oD
Hey...it works!
Honestly, Vista isn't that terrible. People just like to bitch. I've been running XP dual booted with Vista Ultimate. Aside from the fact that it's really pokey, it's not too bad. My 30-day version of Vista + a little playing and it passed the genuine validation, which really says something.
What I find interesting is that a lot of people just say "Vista sucks!" without providing any reason for why it sucks or what's wrong with it or what doesn't work on it?
I have been using Vista for more than half a year and everything works perfectly, it doesn't crash, it runs very fast, I can run all the latest games at good frame rates using the latest Nvidia drivers.
Here's a new headline for you: only about 5% of people use Mac OS X, so Mac OS X Sucks! (this is not really my opinion, this is just the logic of 90% of the commenters here)
Haha..Microsoft is dumb...The reason for that the crack that most people use passes the WGA check perfectly so they do not catch pirates....
Just curious. How many people who post here actually use legal version of XP or Vista?
School/college, Business serial code doesn't really count... Why? Cuz a lot of legal version people are using mass serial code that own by business and college. Which in a way, many people I highly doubt even have their right talking about how they cheated the system.
What they didn't say is that since the release of Vista, the number of people pirating XP has doubled so they can get Vista off thier new pre-built
Hello, my name is Angel and I'm proud to say I never bought any MS product. I only use counterfeit copies and they work so good!
y'know what , my pirated Vista ultimate is just seen as "ORIGINAL". microsucks even sends me update & gave me those dreamscenes too.
they are even unable to determine who is pirate !
I, like most intelligent computer users, have abandoned M$ as a source for computer operating systems, in favor of something that:
1 - Wont try to rip me off with sub-par software; to-wit:
2 - CANT rip me off, because I dont have to pay for it, although I can choose to (which I do), to support the efforts of its creators
3 - Doesnt force me to upgrade because someone doesnt feel it is economically feasible to support it in a few years time
4 - Doesnt exponentially *require* faster and faster hardware to run the next release
5 - Doesnt require that I re-activate it just because I turned the monitor on
6 - Doesnt even *HAVE* a key to activate, even if I felt compelled to do so (oh how I miss THAT... NOT!)
7 - Doesnt have the security problems that are found in the alternative to my choice, because they get caught by the public and responded to *MUCH* faster than a private enterprise can (recent sudo exploit?)
8 - Doesnt catastrophically freak out if I do something I shouldnt have done; Worst case, I can just make a new user and fix almost anything that I have caused
9 - Doesnt have creators who are in and out of court on a consistent basis for violating anti-trust rulings
10 - If for whatever reason, I decide does not have everything available that I need, I am free to download another and try *its* offerings, all without threat of prosecution from a greedy industry. Even on more than one computer, should I wish!
If anyone needs me to go on, I can. I felt 10 was sufficient to start . . .
That is so funny! No one even wants that crap Vista- It's simply Win XP with new graphics and no device drivers. that's why they stopped naming it Windows xxxx where xxxx is the year, because it takes 5 or more years for people to adopt the next version!
Maybe it should simply read, "Vista used half as much as XP." Given install patterns of past Microsoft OS products, piracy rates may be a good indicator of over-all usage.
-Adam
Ah I've seen this story before. It's in the dictionary under "spin"
It's a bit odd, but I haven't seen a computer running Vista (except in stores) more than once, and my friends who usually update (read: crack) new stuff as fast as they are released have no plans to update.