InfoWorld finds 35% of enterprise-class users downgrade to XP
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 18th 2008 7:11PM
posted Aug 18th 2008 7:11PM
Hold your horses, vaquero. Let's not blow this all out of proportion here. While it's no secret that a certain amount of Vista purchasers are utilizing that "downgrade to XP" option to its fullest extent, a small (and let us emphasize "small") collection of data suggests that some 35% of "mainly enterprise-class users" have opted for XP over Vista on their newly-purchased rig. By scouring data from the 3,000 or so members feeding information to the InfoWorld Windows Sentinel tool, the site found that just over 1 in 3 users had defected to Microsoft's previous OS. Granted, the tool cannot take into account Linux users or even the "Hackintosh crowd," though as Randall Kennedy puts it, 35% is "still a huge percentage, and way out of proportion for even the dramatically unpopular Windows Vista."
Yay, another Vista bash.
Apple ftw.
/sarcasm
See the problem here is that Randall is basically a fucktard.
The sample is based on 3,000 mainly corporate based consumers. What this purports to show then is that, on the basis of this incredibly biased and weighted sample, Vista is dead in the water because he's extrapolated said biased - as in towards corporate users - sample to the entire Vista using population.
Now, let's actually do a recap here.
1) We know that corporations have defined software and hardware refresh cycles. If we go back a a few years and compare the corporate adoption rates for XP we can see that their corporate adoption rate was about 15% after year one and didn't hit 50% until year four. If we compare this with Vista's corporate adoption rate we can see that it's about the same at it's current point in its lifecycle.
2) Hardware needs replaced and this doesn't always tie in with software refresh cycles. To cope with demand OEM manufacturers allow downgrade rights to previous versions of Windows.
Here's a PDF from 2004 illustrating HP doing this for XP to 2000 downgrades.
http://www.hp.com/workstations/white_papers/docs/windows2k_support_sept2004_v4.pdf
3) Randall's sample is mainly corporate based. Points 1) and 2) cover why it's remarkably stupid to extrapolate a mainly corporate user base to the general population the majority of whom certainly don't downgrade to XP. This doesn't stop Randall doing this in his blog though.
4) Even assuming Randall is correct - which he isn't for the reasons outlined above - this would mean that there are currently somewhere in the region of 120 million copies of Vista installed on PCs, all of which have been sold in the last 20 months. That's more than the entire number of Mac (any variety) or Linux users in existence put together.
5) Randall doesn't state what his success criteria are. Given that the sample is mainly corporate and it seems about two-thirds of users are keeping Vista it seems to me that Vista is actually doing rather well.
6) Therefore Randall is a fucktard.
Sorry for the wall of text but it needed said.
Hackintosh!!!!!!!! is it a New OS by Ben Heck?
look up OSX86
Best picture evar.
Actually, the picture of the alien and the out of control satellite was better.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/20/us-to-shoot-down-failed-satellite-at-10-30pm-et/
Number is too low, just based on the enterprise level companies I consult for, I would expect 60 to 70%. I don't know any small business that don't avoid vista like the plague.
There it just nothing compelling about vista that isn't washed out by it's upgrade requirements (for businesses).
The statistic wasn't referring to those who _avoid_ Visa, just the subset of those who avoid Vista who actually went to Vista and then went back again. The total who avoid Vista entirely is undoubtedly much larger.
To the guy right above me, I don't think that is correct. This refers to the corporations that purchases new PCs which only come with Vista since XP is no longer being sold, but offer a downgrade-to-XP option with the Vista license (Any Vista ultimate or Vista Business license has this downgrade available).
Basically, Microsoft took XP off the market so that if you want to get it, you have to buy the expensive high-end Vista Ultimate or Vista Business in order to "downgrade" to a legitimate license of XP that comes with it. So Microsoft makes more money, and at the same time they get to report those orders as "Vista sales" even though the customer never intended to ever use Vista. Quite a sly scam eh??
If not for legacy applications or having IT departments that just don't understand how to partition AD services businesses would be outright stupid to "avoid" vista.
In our testing Vista has been more stable, more secure, better supported, and better liked by the users.
Many department managers and IT staff have been begging for some of the control the new Vista GP templates provide. And I can't even begin to tell you just how useful having "switch user" options on domain member workstations can be, and vista has this out of the box.
People are afraid of change and look for any excuse to remain stuck on the mud.
35% of enterprise-class users are pussies who can't adapt.
agree'd
That's a pretty ignorant statement.
Our institution backgrades to XP. We are an educational institution and can't support a teaching environment with two versions of Window, much of our hardware can't run Vista adequately so as we replace older equipment we have to keep XP until all the hardware is Vista capable. We will then look at rolling it out but there will still be consideration in terms of legacy systems that may prevent that. For example, our JD Edwards finance system is yet to even be able to support IE 7 and we have to have IE 6 installed... Our student management system still requires Acrobat 5. We aren't in a position to either force the applications' publishers to update then or to be able to do without them, therefore we run app and OS versions that don't break core systems.
To say that institutions in our circumstances are pussies that can't adapt is total BS.
Or they don't see a reason to upgrade because there are no real benefits at this point in time in doing so. In the future, certainly, as XP Pro support drops away. However, right now, there are very few actual benefits in moving the Windows Vista. Since clearly you know significantly more about this than me and my supposedly "pussy" colleagues, inform us of how we need to upgrade right at this moment in time, while also assessing the costs of, in addition to software licenses, the need to upgrade processors and ram on the vast majority of the machines we have running right now.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Vista is a steaming pile of crap.
If it was just adapting to the new OS that would be one thing. I just spent 5 hours today trying to get a wireless solution working on a new Vista computer. No go. That may not be 100% Microsoft's fault, but when new adapters from Linksys and Netgear will not install, that is a huge problem. File copies that take minutes on XP take 2 hours on Vista (all else being equal). The system is 30% slower with Vista than the same system with XP.
None of the cool new stuff that was supposed to be in Vista is there, and the new "security features" need to be disable to have a decent experience. (asking the user Yes or No EVERY FUCKING TIME is about as good for security as securing you wireless network by hiding SSID) Vista doesn't do a single goddamn thing for me that XP (or 2000 for that matter) didn't do, other than ask me too many fucking questions. YES I'M FUCKING SURE OR I WOULDN'T HAVE CLICKED THE GODDAMN BUTTON.
I can no longer get machines pre-loaded with XP, so I'm switching to Mac. It can't possible be as big a pain in the ass as moving to Vista has been.
Very much agreed,
Honestly, the same "enterprise" users who we're all supposed to be looking up to as some sort of gold standard of what's-what with functionality and feature adoption are the same users who whined and complained and screamed bloody murder that Windows 2000 was faster, smaller, and better than a then-bloated Windows XP... ::yawn::
I love reading countless first or secondhand accounts of people absolutely failing to install drivers (are you downloading new ones? Are you even using windows update?), people who whine and bitch and moan about UAC (fucking disable it already, seriously, why bitch about having to click "Continue" 20,000 times when it takes a whopping 5 clicks to kill UAC permanently), people who whine bitch scream kick and tantrum about Aero when they skimped out on the GPU the first time around (back when it was common knowledge Aero would require a Pixel Shader 2.0 compatible GPU), and on and on and on...
I laugh. By the time you get the collective sand out of your womanhood and install Vista and actually _use_ it (I say _use_, because I honestly believe most of you enterprise users gave it all of 10 minutes), all the rest of us will have moved onto Windows 7, and history will repeat itself again.
I work for a very large corporation. We just upgraded from Win2k to XP a couple of years ago and I doubt we'll be upgrading to Vista any time soon. The problem is that whenever there is an OS upgrade there are risks of breaking older software. It's just too expensive when you're talking about licenses across thousands of machines and custom designed software. Vista complaints notwithstanding, there are plenty of valid reasons why companies don't want to upgrade. Most of all, it's just extremely costly.
Let's see it could be that network printers do not function properly or the lack of drivers for equipment that is already installed or the incompatibility with equipment or interoperability issues... the list goes on and on, but it is getting harder ti find drivers for the newest equipment.
Hey nerdtalker,
Maybe instead of bashing people for being noobs and assuming that the stoopid people don't know what they are doing you should stop licking Steve Balmer's ass long enough to realize that Vista is a pain in the ass for a lot of people.
Personally, I've been using it since Feb 2007. Initially, I liked it. After 1 year and a half I hate it and want to get rid of it.
Aero glass is OK, but how come Vista needs a minimum of 128MB discrete video card, yet Mac OS renders Aqua just fine with integrated graphics?
Why does Vista take 2 hours to copy a 16GB file when XP took less than 10 minutes? Yes I have SP1 and all the patches installed, thanks.
What sense does turning off Vista's touted security features make? Isn't that why people were supposed to like Vista? I had to turn that crap off before I chucked the machine out the window.
Why do freshly downloaded, signed drivers from various vendors frequently fail to install? Yes, I know how to go to a web site and get current drivers for things. Why do you assume that nobody does this?
Where is the cool stuff we were promised?
Why are there 7 (more?) freaking versions of Vista?
Why does my system (Core 2, 256 ATI Video, dual 250 GB SATA 3, GB Ethernet) run 30% slower with Vista compared to XP?
I could list a ton of other issues...
I fail to understand why you people love this OS so much. I suspect that you either make your living supporting it, or really enjoy spending all your free time keeping you system running. I don't hate Microsoft, I've been a more or less loyal customer since the early 90s, skipping only Win Me, and I've been perfectly happy with Windows 2000, XP and 2003. My core 2 system with 2 GB of RAM running XP runs Photoshop CS3, Dreamweaver, iTunes, Firefox, PHPMaker, Navicat, Safari, Opera and IE, all at the same time, and very fast. My Vista machine with 4GB of RAM is noticeably slower, and it is much higher spec'd.
Vista is truly disappointing, and you can bet that if Apple screws up this badly you'll hear that from me as well: I'm nondenominational, I just expect shit to work as advertised, and Vista doesn't.
@CraigJ
"Why does Vista take 2 hours to copy a 16GB file when XP took less than 10 minutes? Yes I have SP1 and all the patches installed, thanks."
Try installing that patch on a PC with more than 128MB of RAM and we'll see how long it takes. 2 hours? Seriously, man. What the hell kind of BS are you throwing around?
It's funny how anybody who wants to bash an OS now also lies about how long they've been using it. You know, nerd CRED.
"Why does Vista take 2 hours to copy a 16GB file when XP took less than 10 minutes? Yes I have SP1 and all the patches installed, thanks."
XP takes me 400 years to transfer that file, vista does it in 0.024 seconds. Yes, I have nothing updated and running original Vista x864. Yes I can make up things too.
@ CraigJ
Where are you getting this "minimum of 128MB discrete video card" crap from?! I run Vista on a year-old middle-of-the-line Acer machine with only integrated graphics, and it works smooth as silk. Seriously, dude, if you're gonna throw "facts" around to support your arguments, at least do us the courtesy of using real facts!
And just so we're clear, I'm running Home Premium with all those nice graphical goodies turned on, Aero theme included.
Basically Craig is either lying or incompetent.
Which one is the money on?
@Dan. 4GB, dual SATA 4.0 drives.
@get. Try running Areo with Intel integrated graphics and let me know how that works out for you.
I laugh that you ass holes defend this piece of crap.
Now, I wasn't going to comment, but Craig! SATA 4.0!? How did you get your hands on such a future technology? SATA 3.0 was just announced, and not yet on the market, but you have 4?
My money's on lying _and_ incompetant.
@CraigJ
Integrated graphics... like on this GX620?
It works perfectly.
You should really use Vista before you grill it. Then you wouldn't seem like such a moron.
willing to bet your not using linux or unix. dont give poeple shite about adapt.
seriously
Dramatically? I opt for unnecessarily. It's a good thing I impose my will on everybody who trusts me to make their computer work properly. Otherwise they might be using XP/Firefox 1.0/AVG or some other combination of archaic garbage they don't understand. I think everybody needs to man-up and admit they hate Vista because there isn't an equivalent of XP's DH8FV key floating around.
Hacked vista is abundantly available, why do you think all those 12yo's always post vista is so great? Because they bought it? Saved $800 bucks doing a paper-route to get vista ultimate is what you thought?
And the flaws/oldness of XP is NOT solved by vista, it's just the same with DRM and new graphics but with the same 'legacy' issues, the fixes in as far as available are minor.
Also firefox1.0 would autoupdate.
@Wwhat
Every OS has issues. right now, im on a macbook running tiger and it freezes up, has wifi issues, and goes to the lowest screen brightness every time it boots up. no system is exempt. that includes the "wonderful" windows XP. ill stick with my tiger-based mac and vista x64 based dell, thank you very much. and btw, ive gotten thousands of blue screens on XP. ive only gotten one on vista since i got it, and i adopted it 3 days after it came out.
WHAT?! Apple told me it works like it's supposed to! You're lying!
@ WWhat a wonderful comment.
Apparantly my volume key reference missed you by a few yards. I meant that there isn't a volume non-activating copy of Vista that's 100% original bits. And 800 dollars bucks would buy you 4 copies of Vista Ultimate by the way. Maybe we should inform the 12 year olds.
@mike
I have had the similar results. I installed the same time as you and then did x64 three months later. My lappy is x64 and my media center is x64 now. Never seen a blue screen on ANY of them. Can't say the same for XP.
Well I guess it's to your credit that you are not on the up-n-up of the current warez scene, somebody has to walk the straight and narrow I guess :)
Incidentally about the other comments; people claiming tons of bluescreens on XP are as amazing as those that claim vista is and was flawless from day 1, make you wonder why MS released those fixes with extensive FAQ's on huge blunders and shortcomings with each fix, hell it took more than a year to patch it to enable SLI on vista didn't it? And that's just a 'minor' flaw.
And yeah all OS's have issues and flaws, but there are flaws in XP they could have fixed years ago that are there in vista too, and no I don't think I need to have to list them to regular XP or vista users that aren't self-delusional because they must have come across them, no matter if they choose to deny it in public.
I tend to read the full description of some updates MS rolls out (most people do not, and even less so after automatic updates became big) and it's amazing how old some of those bugs are and how silly the flaws, and how extreme some are, and that's just the critical ones they were forced to fix, in XP and vista both.
Well, I think we should all take the computing advice of mike. What with his 1000s of blue screens, we are forever unworthy and humbled.
IMO -- 35% is a "low" figure. I'm glad to see that most enterprise companies are seeing that Vista is a much more stable OS than XP.
Unfortunately, the lameass company I work for (over 200,000 employees) will not switch to Vista. However, there's much to be said for job security.
Your company has a shoddy IT staff if their XP isn't stable.
Incidentally, I have a vista partition, so me you won't sell vista is so much more stable.
Vista Ultimate 64-bit works VERY well for me. Just as well as XP.
It's probably because I actually have a computer that can easily run it though.
"I'm glad to see that most enterprise companies are seeing that Vista is a much more stable OS than XP"
Dude, p->q |= ~p->~q!!! Just because over a third check it out and realize it's crap doesn't mean that a majority are duped by it. In fact "most" simply didn't blow their change on it in the first place. Read up, and try some basic logic while you're at it.
I think aleast 10% of those said their downgrade, are probably had old hardware like less than 1Gb of ram etc.. people people, before buy pc makesure your hardware is capable of running the require OS (the most important) is like try to put a civic engine in a Porsche.
In an enterprise environment, the vast majority of computer usage focuses on word processing, web browsing, email, and scheduling of some sort. In an educational environment, which ours is, the vast majority focuses on word processing, web browsing, and email. We have smaller labs with more powerful machines for the students working with graphics, but the backbone of the system, the workhorse workstations are not nearly as fast.
However, they don't need to be as fast, either. Richard, explain to me why you should need more than a gig of ram to type up a paper or to search the library database to find a resource. People don't come to the libraries on campus to play Crysis. They come to work. You don't need Vista with a quad-core processor and 4GB of ram to do so. The machines we have allow it just fine but would be gummed the hell up if we put Vista on them.
If you would like to donate money so we could upgrade the 1200 or so work stations we have on campus, then please contact me and we will get right on it. Until then, I won't be wasting our school's money for shiny buttons.
"server variants"? Does that include XP64, which is sometimes classified as Windows Server 2003?
That's because XP x64 basically IS Server 2003, in much the same way that Vista IS Server 2008.
Enterprise class looks at it from a cost/benefit perspective. If it would cost more money to buy all new licenses and then more money upgrading the older machines that could run XP but not Vista and then more money spent in man hours troubleshooting the inevitable issues that come up when you migrate a large company or university to a new OS, then why would they upgrade? There would have to be some real benefits to this and for many businesses and universities, there is just no big benefit to Vista over XP. Some OSes like OSX aren't often deployed over hundreds or thousands of machines in a company so they can be upgraded by the individual user who bears the responsibility for paying for one license and maybe new hardware if their old hardware sucks. Likewise, there are plenty of individual Vista users out there. Just for many there is no significant increase in productivity to justify the cost. When the benefits go up over time and the costs drop, it will probably be more common for businesses and other large organizations to upgrade their machines to Vista or 7. Until then, it's just not worth supporting 2 OSes.
Totally agree, that's the key for the whole thing. Money.
Enterprise users simply want the OS and that's it. They don't want the flashy UI,
To call Vista unpopular is just stupid, I bet Vista has sold more copies than Mac OS X entire life excluding the "downgrade copies" of Vista.
I think that's somewhat unfair on several levels. First off, if you buy an OEM computer you do not have much of a choice. Walk into a Circuit City and ask for a computer running something other than Windows Vista. The only one they will have is the Acer Aspire One. They'll also have 20 desktop models and 20 other laptops all running Windows Vista. Almost every single prebuilt you can buy only comes with Vista. Trust me on this - if XP was still offered, a very large and notable percentage would continue to purchase XP over Vista. Furthermore, Apple's business model isn't based on selling large volumes of software licenses; their model also involves selling you a computer.
The vast majority of Apple's computer sales are on machines in excess of a thousand dollars [iMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro, and Mac Pro all start over a grand, with the Mac Mini being the only exception]. I am not arguing whether or not OSX is good or not, or whether Apple is good or not, or whether their business model is good or not. However, you cannot compare Vista sales to OSX sales simply because they do it differently. And it's moronic to bash either by comparing one against another on these terms.
do you know WHY a large and noticeable percentage of users would continue to purchase xp licenses over vista ones? because of all the lies and disinformation spread about vista by apple.
Vista has sold more copies in 18 months than every copy of MacOS combined, so I wouldn't go calling it unpopular. Enterprise users are always slow to upgrade to new OSes.
Did they sell because people actually wanted it, or because there are no viable alternatives (monopoly on OS) and they had no choice (OEM)? Please, don't be a fanboy, its just sad.
At least mac and linux users use those products because they actually like them and find them useful. In a MS world, you "have" to use them, whether you like it or not, and you are more locked than most of you care to admit.
locked? you mean like being forced to buy your hardware from the same company that makes the OS?
In what land are you prevented from:
1) Buying a Mac
2) Buying or building a PC or PCs with Linux on them
Just because demand for these products is low doesn't mean everyone is in some kind of "prison." There is all the opportunity in the world for everyone to migrate away right now. It's just that the benefits gained in a migration don't merit the money spent (or any/all perceived losses of a platform switch) to the majority of folks so they stick with something they know that works well enough for them.
And Vista outsold OS X long before XP was removed from the market, I'm sure. :)
tha-don, you must be an idiot if you think that people buy Macs for the hardware alone. All Macs sold can run Windows XP and Windows Vista. However, have you ever heard of someone buying a Mac and using solely an MS OS on it? I dual boot, and I know others who dual and triple boot, but noone buys a Mac and puts just XP or Vista on it. People buy Apple for the OS, not the hardware, for the hardware can be cheaper had elsewhere. You can get Macbook Pro spec'd hardware for a thousand dollars less from Dell or HP, and you can get superior hardware from Sony. Your comment makes sense until you actually think about it.
"People buy Apple for the OS, not the hardware, for the hardware can be cheaper had elsewhere. You can get Macbook Pro spec'd hardware for a thousand dollars less from Dell or HP, and you can get superior hardware from Sony."
thanks for proving my point. what are you trying to argue?
za just got pwnt. apple forces you to purchase its hardware in order to run its os. with windows i can purchase whatever x86 or x64 based hardware i want.
ali, i fail to see how i am being "locked" in. i can purchase a computer with windows on it, i can purchase an apple computer and put windows on it, i can purchase a computer with windows on it and dual-boot/replace it with linux. soooo... how am i being "locked" into anything in microsoft's ecosystem?
please, don't be a fanboy, it's just sad.
@za
It always amuses me when someone says "Well on a Mac you can run Windows!" because on a Windows PC we don't actually have to run another operating system to use the programs we want.
- locked? you mean like being forced to buy your hardware from the same company that makes the OS?
It's called a complete solution, and forced is not a word to describe it. windows not walls....... how about an open door, maybe even an open source door. time to think outside the box MS has you crammed in.
its funny to see MS steal ideas, as well as your money but you will sit here and praise it to no end because its THE new os right??? MS is not the future of computers they are showing what they really are.... a phase, and sooner than later you are all going to wake up and see it, you will still hate me but thats okay im just saying it how it is.
its getting easier and easier for open source tools and commercial software that supports it work in the hands of regular users to admins around the world..... as if it wasnt easy enough already if you all think your as smart as you say you are.
- commence the hating now. i can care less because im trying to help you.
i always said vista was rubbish, you just know that 35% acounts for APPLE OSX USERS, nobody likes windows or uses it,
the worldsa bright, the worlds green, the worlds apple,
Ocean's 12 was the worst movie in the trilogy.
At least they made a vista ultimate, so people that insist on paying way too much for stuff can opt for a windows system too and aren't stuck with macs.
"nobody likes windows or uses it,"
somebody obviously has never heard of businesses.
i always said vista was rubbish, you just know that 35% acounts for APPLE OSX USERS, nobody likes windows or uses it,
the worldsa bright, the worlds green, the worlds apple,
Are you high?
"35% is "still a huge percentage, and way out of proportion for even the dramatically unpopular Windows Vista.""
Apparently Windows Vista is still dramatically popular for so-called journalists to bash, though. I guess being a lemming is easier than being accurate.
I can tell you that number is a lot more!!!
We at Nationwide downgrade our own computers after we buy them.
And we do this on ALL of the coputer we get!!!
That's what I wanted to say. I wonder what the percentage would be if they counted the IT departments who reimage Vista with XP, like I do.
Haha, thank god for Ghost.
It's not that Vista is 'bad,' it's just that when you are supporting a large number of users both locally and nationwide, there are just enough extra small issues, end user confusion, etc, that leads to more support requests. If you have a ratio of about 200 PCs per tech, that extra support adds up quickly.
Anyone that requests Vista can have it, since we figure that people that ask for it know a bit about computers (usually true, in my limited experience).
It's torture trying to support someone remotely with UAC up though (at least with Crossloop).
Now, I have never been a Windows lover, but I still can't figure out why Vista is so hated in the media (or for that matter, why XP is suddenly portrayed as so lovable). I have only had minor issues with Vista since getting it on my new computer almost a year ago, and most of those disappeared with SP1. Besides, it always more than made up for those minor bugs with its great new features.
It's ironic to me that Apple has had so much success attacking the first Windows OS to actually give Mac OS X a run for its money. The one issue I have with Vista is the relatively large memory demands, which don't pose a problem anyway on a reasonably modern computer, so what's the big deal?.
As for why the general public is so hesitant to adopt the new OS, I suspect it's mostly due to bloggers' and the mainstream media's voracious appetite for those fun Vista bashing stories, combined of course with Apple's annoyingly embelished, yet effective marketing campaign against Vista. (BTW, do you think it's possible there's an ulterior motive behind Apple's warning people about Vista's [exaggerated] drawbacks?)
I don't get it either. What about volume shadow copy? Maybe next time Microsoft should make it look like the bridge to the Enterprise and captain Picard asks you what files you wish to retrieve. If there isn't a copy available then there's some animation involving Klingons saying all your files are belong to us. Maybe then people would know that Apple's Time Machine is nothing new.
Almost nobody I know who uses Vista knows about all the great things it can do but everybody I've met who uses a mac knows all about it. The parental control in Vista is fantastic as well. I've sold it just for that feature many times.
I work for Big BLUE. We're slowly moving to Vista. Not because the O/S is horrible.. but, it takes a long time to port and certify hundreds of applications (if not more than a thousand) for a company our size.
So, when a new lappy arrives, we rebuild it with XP.
I've been on Vista 64bit for a couple of months. We have two MAC users in the house who Love Vista and don't get why XP users hate it. I rolled back to XP for about a week... went right back to Vista. I finally GET what MSFT is doing with this O/S.
The moment engadget & other blogs start using Vista, they will "get it" to.. That is, if they haven't all moved to MAC's.
P.S. Our MAC users have their problems too, ask them about power management, wi-fi and display issues...
What does networking have to do with anything? You keep on talking about MAC [addresses] and whatnot. Throw DNS, UPnP, RJ45 in there, and we have a party! The computer is a Mac. Just like it's not WINDOWS. Or DELL, or GATEWAY. Mac refers to Macintosh, not to some ABBREVIATION.
Pet peeve, but on the actual subject matter, you are spot on. It's not so simple to shift the entire infrastructure. In ours, we are just going to wait until we have money in the budget to get hardware upgrades. However, we still don't yet see any need for Vista over XP since there are few noteworthy gains.
Could this be more obvious? Of course Enterprise class customers downgrade new machines to XP - you don't mix and match your OS's without upgrading the entire Enterprise, for support reasons at the very least.
I actually find it odd that only 35% switch back to XP. While new machines tend to avoid having most of the issues I get with Vista (lack of legacy driver support), I still find my machine to be a little sluggish as I compile and sync code. I also get aggravated when I have to click ok several times when I perform an administrative action, plus I hate having to modify the properties of shortcuts to "run as administrator". Once I upgraded my machine to 4GB of RAM I saw an improvement in performance, but I still spend more time compiling than I used to. I guess it means I get payed to surf the web and stuff, but it hardly helps my employer.
This has nothing to do with Windows Vista at all, most large companies control costs by keeping tight control over the desktop environments, Vista hasn't been around long enough to merit upgrading all the desktop and notebook computers to Vista (much larger cost than delaying the upgrade).
Due to legacy compatibility issues most Fortune 100 companies had at least a 2 year lag period before Windows XP was pushed to the desktop environment (after XP SP1 was released). The 35% statistic actually seems low.
The difference is when XP was rolled out most users were begging for the OS, but it seems as if Vista won't have the following. Lets just hope that Vista SP1 quells the uproar.
The main difference I see is this. Windows 98, 98SE, and ME were steaming piles compared to XP. XP was easily 50 times more stable, with much better peripheral support as well. It was a significantly more robust operating system. Vista is more stable than XP. In what,
Hrrrm...cut myself off somehow.
Anyways, the cliffs:
XP was 50x more stable than 98/98SE/ME
Vista is maybe ten or twenty percent more stable than XP. We're talking increments here. Before XP, it was assumed your computer would crash fairly often. That isn't the case anymore. Vista's not nearly as much of a game changer; it's more evolutionary compared to the massive chasm between 98SE and XP.
Meh. we did the same thing when Windows 2000 and XP was out. we stuck with what we had until the latest and greatest matured. The same will happen here. Nothing new other then fabois looking for something to pick on.
Well, sort of, not really. The fact is that Windows 2000 and Windows XP are based on almost identical kernels, with the former being based on NT5.0 and the latter on NT5.1. They were also released within a year and a half of each other. Windows 2000 hadn't become nearly as entrenched as XP is currently.
The correct comparison would be, "Well, we held on tight to that durn 98SE/Millennium Edition". But wait - that actually never happened! Everyone flocked to XP over 98/98SE/Millennium Edition because it was a huge jump. And that's how it was. The enterprise wasn't going from 2000 to XP. They were going from NTx.x to either 2000 or XP, or they were jumping up from the 98 series, and the fact is there was far more to be gained by making that leap than there is currently. Hence the backlash now that wasn't there before.
Well, there have been over 140 million copies of Windows Vista sold since January 2007. I have Vista 64 bit, and not in a million years would I go back to XP on my desktop. I actually hate using my laptop because it still has XP on it. Vista is far superior than XP in everyway.
You don't believe me go buy it. Check out the Mojave experiment to get an idea of how well Apple and other people have been able to bad mouth Vista.
The Mojave experiment isn't necessarily the best aspect of measuring usability. For one, the sample size is miniscule. Also, there were coaches guiding the subjects through the OS; if someone was guiding me through an OS when I first got my hands on it, immediately I would feel more comfortable with it since I would understand their thought processes. I'd be able to understand how they were laying things out based on what made sense to them, and adjust. Thirdly, it's not like the Mojave experiment compared Vista to Leopard or Ubuntu, for example. I feel like, were an equivalent to the Mojave experiment been conducted in those camps, the results would have been similar. Lastly, the group felt special; they were told they were using a special product and so assumed it would be super awesome.
If Vista makes you happy, then that is WONDERFUL. Continue using it. However, just because it works for you in your specific environment does not mean it is suitable for all scenarios.
Mojave is lame. Microsoft doesn't get it, and apparently a lot of people here don't as well. If you sit someone down in a controlled environment, with specific hardware, and give them an expert guided tour of almost anything you will get positive responses.
The problems start when the people get their new computer home and have to live with it, and try to find Add/ Remove programs, for example.
I was perfectly happy with Vista initially, but then I started to use it for real work. If it weren't for Virtual PC, and the ability to run virtualized XP I'd have long since wiped the machine and installed XP 64-bit...
Obviously most who have posted in this thread are home users & non-networked users who have limited peripherals attached to their "Vista" machines. I service small to mid-sized companies all day long & I can honestly say that "Vista" still has serious issues performing as required for these clients. The issues are varied & so persistent that every pc I've sold this year was downgraded to XP.. I just wish that people would search the various Vista support forums so they can see for themselves the issues that plaque businesses in moving to Vista before they post these unknowledgeable & stupid remarks..
To be fair:
In addition to several XP machines, we also have quite a few iMacs on campus, and a handful of PowerMac G5/Mac Pro. Almost every single ****ing update to Leopard screwed up the networking on those machines. Almost every single ********* patch required us to go in there, figure out what changed, and rectify it. These things would log in perfectly, and then voila, after the next software patch, would take 10min to log in, or they would just error out. Not cool. Not bloody cool at all.
To be fair:
In addition to several XP machines, we also have quite a few iMacs on campus, and a handful of PowerMac G5/Mac Pro. Almost every single ****ing update to Leopard screwed up the networking on those machines. Almost every single ********* patch required us to go in there, figure out what changed, and rectify it. These things would log in perfectly, and then voila, after the next software patch, would take 10min to log in, or they would just error out. Not cool. Not bloody cool at all.
I do the same.
With no issues in Vista.
Maybe you are overpaid?
The other 65% have Corp copies of 2K or XP, so worries.
Which "great new features"?
And I don't mean that facetiously. What is new for Vista that isn't available in XP?
Not that surprising. Its a win-win: Microsoft gets to claim Vista is a huge sales success, and Enterprise gets to keep using something that they are comfortable with, and have no real incentive to change.
Nothing beats an MBP with fusion Vista/XP/Ubuntu installs. 4 PCs in 1 FTW - you can support/test just about anything, anywhere.
We only have 5,000 users (we're in SF), but we've downgraded every machine that has come in with Vista. If there are any out there, we don't know about them. Users can't stand it and always ask for us to downgrade within a couple of weeks, and we know it's limitations well enough, and don't force it on anyone.
We have about 4% Mac's (VMware so that they can use Outlook instead of Entourage). The rest of the users are XP. Our engineers either have multiple boxes, or use VMs to get multiple OSs (Mac and XP, or XP and Vista, seems to be the trend). Almost no Linux on the destkop (even among our engineers--Mac is the front-end for Linux in our house. We are all testing Vista, but few actually like it (slower, many things that need to be worked-around, bugs, app compatibility). And yes, we all eat the dogfood for at least a couple of weeks after every change. We want to move to it when it will make us look good.
95% of our servers are Windows, but anything that requires creativity or real performance certainly runs on Linux.
Others I talk to have very similar numbers, although there is one small exception: larger corporations pay the extra for a downgradable copy of Vista, but they image their computers with a corp image. This shows a Vista sale, but not downgrade. I have yet to talk to anyone at a company larger than 100 people that is using Vista as a thought-through strategy. I'm sure there are companies that are running Vista and happy with it (likely new companies where all hardware is new and there are few applications), but from all of our experience, these companies are in the minority.
I've heard that Vista is the number one operating system of all time. I don't doubt it. Every new box sold is a Vista sale unless Microsoft is told otherwise, and PC and laptops prices have been relatively low, which has meant more boxes sold.
When you say Mac is the front end for Linux boxes, what are you saying exactly? OSX isn't Linux, it's FreeBSD which allows binary compatibility with Linux but certainly wouldn't be developer friendly, am I missing something here?
I work for the consulting division of an very large datacenter vendor...my division specializes in Microsoft products. From what I've seen, the adoption rate of Vista is about on par or a bit faster than XP was. However, in the long run, a lot will depend on the success of W2k8 adoption. There really is no sense in upgrading a client OS when the GUI is the only noticeable upgrade a typical user will see. However, compared to XP, Vista is a dream to deploy or support.
As far as users not being able to stand it - the bay area is pretty famous for that type of behavior, especially when it comes to Microsoft products.
Um, it sounds like he means he has Linux servers for Mac desktops. Wish I worked there.
That's really not the way you would say such a thing but whatever.
Quick Search in the Start Menu.
A much more stable core that is vastly less crash prone (long time XP and Vista user).
A front end that is hardware accelerated by your video card.
Superfetch. After having your PC on for a little bit, applications load practically instantly.
Your Profile directory structure is infinitely improved over XP's horrible My Documents.
A networking screen that is greatly improved and much easier to navigate, finding the tasks you need.
Sidebar, which isn't an external application that plagues your system, is extremely useful assuming you get the right gadgets.
Backup and Restore is many times better than XP Pro, and is fool proof, and gives you access to previous versions.
Explorer navigation is a fair bit better than XP.
This includes the changed address bar, which still has paths to your directories, but cleans up your current navigation making your steps back much more fluid.
While UAC is hated by some, i personally like it. I'm not installing apps all day, so i rarely see it. So when all of a sudden, something pops up, i take notice and make sure its intended.
The Games navigation system in Vista is neat. Its not amazing, but it keeps all your games in one location, making finding a game many times easier than XP.
and then there's Media Center. If this isn't the killer app for Vista, then i don't know what is. It surpasses XP's Media Center by a country mile.
Oh, and Vista finally made 64 bit comfortable. I'm surprised to see nearly half the PC's at Future Shop/Best Buy coming pre-installed with Vista 64. The 64 bit version is unbelievably stable.
There are really many others, but these are the ones that assure ill stay on Vista. And i seriously think people are insane for choosing XP over Vista, except on the rare case they have an older PC, which i can understand, or they might have unsupported applications, which i highly doubt (my company uses VB3 apps which seem to have no problem running on Vista, surprisingly. They still wont switch). Otherwise, there's absolutely no reason to not use Vista.
No, I think he meant stuff that was truly new and not stuff that was already available elsewhere and done better.
Explain.
Vista, such a piece of junk.. It just history repeating it self. There was a Windows 95SE then came the horrible Windows Mellinneum , which real was reported to be a beta to test before the release of Windows XP. Now the same thing. Windows Visa, and type of beta before Windows 7 comes out..
"35% of enterprise-class users downgrade to XP".
Just so its clear to all the apple fanboys here, all of them went from "Windows" Vista to "Windows" XP. They did not switch to Mac.
Thank you for your comments. Goodbye.
No, that would be the other 65.