Microsoft takes in $60b, sells 180m Vista licenses since launch

Microsoft's been touting its "fastest annual revenue growth since 1999," which resulted in a princely $60.42 billion dollars in its last fiscal year, but the number that has us rapt? Vista licenses sold since launch about 18 months ago: 180m. Damn, not too shabby a clip -- especially considering that they moved 20m licenses moved in month one, 40m licenses moved after the first 100 days, and 140m licenses by last April. But at roughly 10m licenses per month, that means Vista's still a couple years out before it surpasses XP, and with a bit of luck, by then we'll have already moved on to Windows 7.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 1:37PM]

Probably for the same reason you're using misleading averages.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 20th 2008 5:51PM]

@dan,

what ? you make no sense. nonsense. fool.

[enbadesign Posted Jul 21st 2008 1:18PM]

Let me help you on that list

What can Vista do that is worse than XP:

-Use infuriating security prompts every time any process attempts to access anything. Trying to disable the security center causes random errors because you just can't disable the whole thing. Anyone that really uses the full power of a computer has no need for elevated secure settings.

-Superfetch, I disabled it because it loaded all of my CAD and Adobe programs into memory. An extra second or two in loading times is better than memory errors. When you are working on 2GB image files you need all the RAM you can get. Superfetch fails for anything a power user needs a computer for. The average user would never notice if Superfetch is enabled or disabled. How much faster can a browser load, really?

-Sideshow, uh why. You can already control your computer if you have to with third party software. Some that do not have the compatibility issues that sideshow has.

-Sidebar, worthless as an application unless you really like to have a bunch of garbage on your desktop. Plenty of 3rd party utilities already did the same thing in XP.

-Aero, it looks fine but uses a lot of resources and reacts very slowly. Windows take longer to open and you can download themes for XP to make XP look just like Vista. You can even enable transparency.

-The Vista Kernel is prioritized for media applications. Applications like Photoshop and CAD programs simply are more responsive and work better on XP.

-64-bit version doesn't install unsigned drivers. Well you can forget about old devices that you may need where enterprising programmers made 3rd party drivers that will allow your device to work.

Look, you can’t really prop Vista up on a pedestal and say it is better than XP. It simply isn’t and it is OK to say so. Vista is less responsive, has a worse overall interface from a usability standpoint, and causes more errors than XP. I have XP64 on my work computer and would prefer it 10,000,000:1 over Vista. I’ve been using Vista on my laptop for six months and can’t stand it. I’ve removed and disabled as much of the garbage as I can. I have no use for the media center applications because I use my computer for my job. Every single application I use works better on XP64. In 4 years I have only seen one BSOD and that was when I was playing Freespace in compatibility mode. Rhinoceros has crashed Vista quite a few times on my laptop. I need that program to run, it is more important than Aero or new multimedia functions. I would downgrade my laptop but I can’t find all the drivers I need for XP.

The thing that infuriates me the most is that when you change the Vista Start menu to classic mode it returns it to the Windows98 style instead of XP. The Vista Start menu is one of the worst parts about the entire OS. The explorer style menu is just idiotic.
Vista is not a good OS. If it was there wouldn’t be a need for Windows 7 so soon. It has happened before, remember Windows Me. Microsoft has sold 180m Vista licenses because, well it comes on PCs. 180m PCs is nothing with the billions of computers in the world.