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Print E-mail del.icio.us 39 comment(s) - last by Aloonatic.. on Jan 28 at 5:50 AM

Microsoft releases its quarterly financial report and gives itself a pat on the back

Microsoft released a glowing analysis of its Q2 results earlier yesterday.  The report focused heavily on strong sales and takes a rather self-congratulatory tone, which may sound eerily familiar to some recent Macworld attendees.

Microsoft describes sales as "robust" leading to revenue increasing to $16.37 billion, a 30% growth.  However, the large increase in revenue Microsoft acknowledges is due in part to $1.64 billion in deferred revenue from the second to third fiscal quarter of 2007.  Without the deferral the revenue increase would be a more modest, but still respectable, 15% increase.

Despite somewhat sour opinions of the operating system around the Internet, Microsoft's Windows Vista is clearly not hurting for sales.  A total of 100 million Windows Vista licenses have been sold.  Exactly where this places Windows Vista when compared to competitor Apple's OS X is unknown.  According to Apple, 2 million copies of Leopard were sold in the first week, roughly matching Vista's initial sales pace by some estimates. 

Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms and Services Division at Microsoft, expressed happiness with Vista, stating, "We are pleased with the progress of Windows Vista in the market.  We’ve hit our stride with partners and customers and are looking forward to the release of our first service pack later this quarter."

Microsoft also pointed in the report to the positive progress in its Zune business, including the release of new flash based iPod shuffle/nano competitors, though it declined to list specific sales figures.  Microsoft also reported that the total number of Xbox 360s jumped to 17.7 million worldwide, up 70% from the previous year.

Microsoft recently faced rough PR and legal times, as it is under investigation again by the EU after already surrendering one major fine.  Further, new reports allege that Microsoft skipped quality testing and knowingly released defective Xbox 360 hardware to beat Sony to launch.



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Humor
By TomZ on 1/25/2008 2:37:43 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
A total of 100 million Windows Vista licenses have been sold. Exactly where this places Windows Vista when compared to competitor Apple's OS X is unknown.

That's funny, Jason - you seem to imply their sales could possibly be roughly comparable. LOL.




RE: Humor
By MatthiasF on 1/25/2008 2:52:41 PM , Rating: 5
According to figures from MacWorld, there have been more copies of Vista sold than there are copies of Mac OS X in the wild.

Source:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/01/macworld-mac...

quote:

Since its release at the end of October, the OS has sold five million copies, which means that 20% of Mac users are using it.


Five million at twenty percent equates to 25 million total Macs with OS X.

Vista sold 100 million copies so far and most of us haven't even bothered to touch it yet.

I think that's pretty impressive for an operating system that's such a huge pain in the ass.


RE: Humor
By Griswold on 1/25/2008 3:14:25 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
I think that's pretty impressive for an operating system that is claimed to be a huge pain in the ass.


There, I corrected it for you.


RE: Humor
By Samus on 1/25/2008 6:26:13 PM , Rating: 3
haha. i agree wholeheartedly


RE: Humor
By Mitch101 on 1/25/2008 3:18:16 PM , Rating: 3
Lately Vista has been very good to me. SP1 should make it the way it should have been released.

Graphics performance is still not on par with XP but if you disable the DX10 components its close if not faster in some games on Vista. The problem is you need a $230.00+ video card to be happy with Vista and gaming otherwise you will just complain about Vista being slow in gaming. When they make the Sub $100.00 video card then Vista will be where its at.

Its a learning curve but I am adopting Vista finally.


RE: Humor
By othercents on 1/25/08, Rating: 0
RE: Humor
By Griswold on 1/25/2008 4:09:03 PM , Rating: 5
Sometimes the problem does indeed sit in front of the keyboard, though.


RE: Humor
By Mitch101 on 1/25/2008 4:11:53 PM , Rating: 5
PEBCAK
Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard


RE: Humor
By Oroka on 1/25/2008 4:26:21 PM , Rating: 3
PEBCAK

*added to personal vocabulary


RE: Humor
By diablofish on 1/26/2008 2:38:35 PM , Rating: 3
I also use PICNIC:

Problem in Chair, Not in Computer


RE: Humor
By Aloonatic on 1/28/2008 5:46:36 AM , Rating: 2
You guys are so funny, legends in your own comments.

The truth is, there are a lot of problems with Vista, hence the constant updates and the need for a service pack after only a year.

The same was true of XP of course (I couldn't tell you when sp1 came out for Xp tho) but I'm sure you have never had any problems with that either as you mere presence in front of a machine can make it work without any problems.

I don't know why so many people get so defensive when someone makes a reasonable comment about the shortcomings of Vista???

Vista is having problems but they are not all necessarily of MS's making. Driver support and such is still a problem.

Can we not all stop these silly "I'm so amazing" comments and admit that Vista isn't perfect either?

No OS is!

There are problems with Vista, even if they are simply where icons are placed and the look of file explorer etc, so the question is; are they really worth it to the average consumer?


RE: Humor
By Oroka on 1/25/2008 4:25:14 PM , Rating: 4
Some people just dont like Vista because it is not XP. Alot of the buggy talk still floating around is from the betas. Only copy of Vista I have ever removed was Vista Beta 1 from my system. It just wasnt stable enough. I have been using Vista on my main rig and lappy since Beta 2. Once RTM was out, 9/10 of my issues with Vista dissappeared, the rest have been rectified with new software releases by the respective software makers.

Why do I have a higher success rate than others seem to have... I dont install Vista on a system that is barely able to meet min system requirements. On a newer computer with 2GB RAM and a medicore Videocard, Vista is a champ. My brother got a free computer from somewhere with Vista Home Basic on it, ran like shit. Quick check... oh, it only has 512MB DDR2. $30 2GB DDR2 kit... he hasnt complained since. If you have a decent system and dont count every FPS is your games... Vista is the best route.

I have installed Vista on... about 18 systems that I built and sold (Basic, Home Pre, and Ultimate), and not a single person has complained to me about Vista specifically.

Vista is not perfect, and XP is certainly not perfect. XP SP2 and SP3 should not even be called 'XP'. Other than a common interface, it is largly a new beast since way back in 2001.

If Vista wasnt around, people would still be bitching about XP. Wait for Win7/Vienna, that will be a much better M$ OS.


RE: Humor
By Locutus465 on 1/25/2008 4:44:10 PM , Rating: 2
Seconding just about everything you wrote... Heck, I just bought an HP Pavillion dv6609wm laptop with the following configuration:

Athlon 64 X2 (1.8GHz)
1GB Ram preconfigured (upgraded to 2)
160GB 5400RPM sata drive
GForcego 7150M (no integrated memory, shares main system memory).

I wouldn't game on this rig, but it's taking over my main development machine duties with SQL Server 2005 and VS.Net 2005 installed and the only complaint is a slow initial boot because of the extra resources taken by SQL Server, other than that the system runs like a champ.


RE: Humor
By Staples on 1/25/2008 5:13:57 PM , Rating: 2
I agree with most of what you say. Most of the negativity is without a doubt heresay. Well if you hear it on the internets, it must be true. And then everyone goes around repeating it. I love asking these guys what problems they have had to justify their comments and you would be surprised, most of them have no response because they have never actually used the OS.

I have been running Vista since Feb. It did have some stability problems back then in the fact that it couldn't stay up more than a afew days without being rebooted however now it works rather well. The NVIDIA drivers were not so good then either but since Sep, they are now comprable to XP.


RE: Humor
By wordsworm on 1/25/2008 8:29:28 PM , Rating: 2
Did you mean heresy or hearsay?

Vista Home Basic is a joke. Can you imagine choking a computer at 1GB of memory when you need that just to slowly chug along? You have to upgrade it just to be able to use a decent computer that can run it. Getting Vista 32 with 4GB of RAM isn't exactly the smartest thing to do either. Vista 64 is much better, as long as you're careful to make sure you have compatible peripherals and hardware, there's no reason to hobble your computer with 32 bit software.

I can't imagine why anyone would disable DX10. That's one of the biggest reasons for moving forward with the new OS. My 64 bit rig can run 32 bit 3dmark06 at 10k+, which is enough for most games.


RE: Humor
By Hydrofirex on 1/25/2008 7:58:56 PM , Rating: 2
I would never go back. I use XP and I cringe. It's so annoying the way it detects hardware - are you telling me I can't search through the start menu - where are my gadgets?! Nothing is wrong with Vista, it's just a bunch of little improvements that make it drastically superior to XP. I haven't had to fight Vista once to get it to do what I want - but XP was always a battle.

I chalk this one up to expectations. It's like when you hype the hell out of a perfectly good movie which is then ruined because it could never really be as good as you would like. And, this is actually mostly Microsoft's fault for stripping it of all the really compelling features. Hell, they even drew out the X64 transition by backing out of only offering it that way.

HfX


RE: Humor
By Locutus465 on 1/25/2008 4:38:29 PM , Rating: 2
My Geforce 7800GT only hurts with Crysis, other than that everything is about as playable as it was in XP. This wasn't the case initially, but it seems that nvidia is finally on the ball with drivers. Now if only if they would bother to update the nforce 4 sli (amd) drivers.


demand?
By headbox on 1/25/2008 2:47:01 PM , Rating: 2
I think Vista's "success" has to do with strong computer sales where it is the standard OS included with PCs. I doubt off the shelf sales are impressive.




RE: demand?
By maven81 on 1/25/2008 3:07:42 PM , Rating: 2
You'd be surprised... the best buy next to my house was sold out. Granted I don't know what their initial stock was, but I was still very surprised... If you believe the (anti) hype no one is dumb enough to be shelling out for the ultimate package...

I actually went out and bought the 64 bit upgrade, and aside from the UAC crap it works rather well. Not sure what all the complaining is about.