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Windows Longhorn imaginatively named Windows Server 2008

In 100 days after its January launch, nearly 40 million Windows Vista licenses have been sold, announced Bill Gates at the 16th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). The milestone has Microsoft claiming that Windows Vista is the fastest-selling operating system in history.

“As of last week, we've (sold) nearly 40 million copies,” Gates said. “That's twice as fast as the adoption of Windows XP, the last major release we had.”

Of the near 40 million copies of Windows Vista, 78 percent are premium editions that feature advanced features and the Aero user interface.

Gates also revealed that the formerly code-named Windows Server “Longhorn” will be called Windows Server 2008.

Acknowledging that the blandness of name choice for Microsoft’s next server product, Gates joked, “We've been working hard thinking about it. We played around with a couple different ideas, but what we are going to go with is...Windows Server 2008. We know it's a surprise for us to pick something so straightforward.”

Despite Gates’ apparent happiness with having the fastest selling OS yet, things weren’t always rosy at Microsoft when it came to Windows Vista. In February, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that piracy was to blame for the slow initial sales of the new operating system. Then in March, the software company announced that the sale of Windows Vista licenses more than doubled those of Windows XP during its first month of availability.



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Forced
By XToneX on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Forced
By jrb531 on 5/16/2007 9:14:51 AM , Rating: 3
Then there are some people who have had Vista since launch and have had very little issues... most certainly less than at the same time of the XP launch.

The only issue I had was with the horrid Nvidia drivers. A quick switch to ATI fixed that.

While Vista is not perfect the people who proclaim that XP is the end-all-be-all OS forget how rotten it was at launch. In time they too will be proclaiming that Vista is great why do we need (insert next OS).

Many people hate change. No matter what Micorsoft did they were damned. Leave XP as is and people say it's nothing more than a 5+ year old OS that has so many patches on top of patches that it could never be secure. Come out with a brand new OS and the same people say it was not needed.

How can XP be full of security holes yadda yadda and a POS a few months ago and not it's a sign of the second coming now that Vista is out?

Go figure. Vista is not perfect... no OS is but a few months after release it's prob the best OS I have ever used. Any flaws are mostly from vendors who has plenty of time to come up with working and stable drivers but dragger their feet - Read: Nvidia, Creative Labs, HP and others!

-JB


RE: Forced
By darkpaw on 5/16/2007 9:42:37 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Any flaws are mostly from vendors who has plenty of time to come up with working and stable drivers but dragger their feet - Read: Nvidia, Creative Labs, HP and others!


I completely agree here. Vendors had plenty of time to come up with working drivers and didn't bother. I run Vista on my media center machine and its been flawless for everything except 3rd party drivers. While the driver model in general is new, companies had nearly two years of Vista beta to get working drivers going. Most of them did not even start on their drivers in ernest until after Vista launched.


RE: Forced
By SquidianLoveGod on 5/16/2007 9:48:23 AM , Rating: 1
I had no issues at all, In-fact the only issue was the fact I had to use official ATI drivers instead of the Omega's.
It even picked up and installed ALL of my hardware, Sound, Networking, Wireless, Blue tooth, even my monitor got a new max resolution of 1280x800 where-as with windows xp I was always limited to 1280x1024.
Still, It looks pretty, but for me at least it isn't my operating system of choice, I loose almost half of my battery life, Thus the switch back to XP, And also I had Issues with Popcap and Gamehouse games.


RE: Forced
By ATC on 5/16/2007 11:54:31 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
even my monitor got a new max resolution of 1280x800 where-as with windows xp I was always limited to 1280x1024


Do you have the res numbers backwards or am I on glue?


RE: Forced
By PrinceGaz on 5/17/2007 5:19:00 AM , Rating: 3
If he was limited to 1280x800 with XP, he should have tried installing the monitor's .inf file.


RE: Forced
By dgingeri on 5/16/07, Rating: -1
RE: Forced
By darkpaw on 5/16/2007 12:40:18 PM , Rating: 2
And XP reports back its activation status every 60 days or so. For a bit it was doing it weekly will some security researchers called MS on it. The only good thing is you might be able to manage avoiding installing WGA in XP, but even that is difficult without manually blacklisting it every time it is updated.

WGA blows, but its not like MS can use it to just turn off every copy of XP or like you said every copy of Vista in 5 years. When it was first launched it did have a very high false positive rate, but that has been mostly fixed. If MS just turned off everyone's old OS to force upgrades, they'd get their asses handed to them in court.


RE: Forced
By TomZ on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Forced
By mars777 on 5/17/2007 1:06:09 AM , Rating: 2
quote:

quote:
Appearance should never, ever, ever, go ahead of stability and operational fitness with computer programs.

With this statement, you are showing that you know absolutely nothing about Vista. Vista is not simply a re-skin of XP.


Excuse for the language but you are talking SHIT.
Vista is an XP (NT kernel) with user-lan drivers(ton of problems but had to be done for DRM), DRM infected(even in drivers) and new UI(Avalon - Aero).

The most beautiful features were left off (fileystem, shell) to implement DRM in every aspect of the OS.

And before you ask:

Had it. Had problem with 7800GT, had problems with SATA RAID, had problems with Audigy ZS.
Deinstalled it. It is simply shit.... For at least half a year Vista will be simply SHIT.


RE: Forced
By mars777 on 5/17/2007 1:09:49 AM , Rating: 2
user-lan should read user-land.

And again excuse me for the language.
I'm and excellent programmer ranging from assembly to .Net, that tried every windows up to date but...
when I remember the pain with Vista, i got to burst...


RE: Forced
By TomZ on 5/17/2007 1:23:32 AM , Rating: 1
While I'm sure you feel your 1 hour of experience with Vista made you an "expert," you still don't seem to have a clue about Vista. So I compiled the following list of new Vista features for you. You already know about Aero, so I'll leave that off.

- improved shell
- instant search
- Windows photo gallery
- Windows DVD maker
- SideShow
- Shadow copy
- integrated Windows Update
- speech recognition
- Bitlocker
- Readyboost
- Readydrive
- Superfetch
- WDDM
- new audio driver model (not sure the name)
- IPV6
- kernel transaction manager
- user-mode USB drivers
- kernel patch protection
- WIM image format
- multilingual user interface (dynamic)
- UAC (some would say a bug, not a feature)
- WPF
- WCF
- WWF (workflow, not wrestling!)
- CardSpace
- transactional NTFS

I'm sure there are more, but I'm tired now. Check out Wikipedia if you want a more comprehensive list.

Again I say, Vista is not a re-skin of XP. Anyway, enjoy your XP!


RE: Forced
By codeThug on 5/17/2007 1:31:29 AM , Rating: 2
Most of which could have been added to XP as an upgrade for a nominal price.

But now you get to buy it all over again plus an additional 1 gig of ram to make the pig fly.

what a deal...


RE: Forced
By TomZ on 5/17/2007 1:36:05 AM , Rating: 1
Funny, I'm typing this message on an old 850Mhz, 512MB laptop running Vista. You must be one of those Vista "experts" that I was referring to in my previous message. This machine was originally "designed for" Windows 2000.


RE: Forced
By codeThug on 5/17/2007 1:46:29 PM , Rating: 2
Sure it will work, if your willing to wait long enough for it to boot. And what else did you have running on this "Hot" little box you speak of? Nothing I'll bet. If you like Vista, then stick with it. I'd rather get some work done.

You must be one of those MicroTologists, brain washed by L. Ron Ballmer.

Vista is like sugar. It tastes sweet, but it rots your teeth.


RE: Forced
By peternelson on 5/17/2007 8:51:47 AM , Rating: 2
Whilst most of those are irrelevant to me,

I DO like the fact Vista supports DirectX10 for next gen gaming and graphics apps on the latest cards. I DO like the fact I can run true 64 bit (without lack of drivers from 3rd parties as was the problem for XP Pro 64 bit edition).

I DON'T like the fact I can't run my own drivers (or ones I want to) on 64 bit mode without them being signed first. I'd rather have the ability to authorise what I want to run, thankyou, particularly if I wrote it myself to run on my own hardware.


RE: Forced
By MaK2000 on 5/17/2007 11:17:54 PM , Rating: 2
I have not had any issues with Vista and was not forced nor was anyone else. I don't praise Vista by any means and openly warn people not to run it if their computer is even two years old and maybe not even if it is one year old. If you are building a new machine than it will run outstanding. I am running Ultimate x64 and it is faster and more stable than XP. I am yet to have a single BSOD in 3 months of use. It is a huge step up from RC2.

I am glad to see the first DX10 game demos coming out now since that is the reason I switched over and dropped so much money for a video card. People complain most about the UAC which is easily turned off, and on mine it is, and the x64 driver signing, which is also turned off on mine so that I can run Rivatuner, Vista can be made to run almost anything you want and enforce, ask, or openly let you do whatever you want. It is the fastest OS to date and the x64 versions rival the security of other x64 based OSes. It is Windows and will be attacked more than Mac or Linux and already is so it will never be as secure as the other two but it is a step in the right direction for MS and hopefully they will drop a lot of the old baggage with their next OS to make it only x64 and without all of the old code to let hardware manufacturers drop their baggage i.e. Intel's/AMD's support for all of the old code that lets it run the old OSes and some of the code buried in XP and even to a much smaller extent Vista. IMO GJ MS


RE: Forced
By FITCamaro on 5/16/2007 1:03:49 PM , Rating: 2
I've used XP since before launch and no problems.

Didn't have any problems with Vista when beta testing either.


RE: Forced
By Domicinator on 5/16/2007 7:56:16 PM , Rating: 2
Yep, I'm right with you on this. People will say XP is the be all end all until something comes out to replace Vista. Then everyone will be jumping up saying that Vista was so great and should never have been replaced. This happens EVERY time a new Windows comes out. People forget so quickly.

I for one have been using Vista since 2 weeks after launch, and I've had no trouble with it. And about a month ago, Nvidia and HP finally got their act together with good solid drivers for Vista, so now I'm especially happy.

I don't have any trouble with any of my games or hardware, and I don't have any performance issues. Yes, I have a pretty hefty gaming rig, but these days some of the new computers that Joe Schmoe can get at Best Buy have gaming caliber processors AND video cards in them, so anyone with a semi decent PC should be able to run Vista.

I'm not saying people don't have their problems with Vista, but I don't think it's as many as some of you haters like to think. Also keep in mind that a lot of people that bash Vista have never tried it or they are just angry because they're not quite ready to let go of XP.


RE: Forced
By leexgx on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Forced
By mars777 on 5/17/2007 12:54:20 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
The only issue I had was with the horrid Nvidia drivers. A quick switch to ATI fixed that.


You are nuts.
You actually have gone to buy a new graphic card?


RE: Forced
By TomZ on 5/16/2007 9:48:29 AM , Rating: 1
I don't see why folks like you are complaining about Vista. I've got it running on a bunch of machines, and it is working just fine. I can't imagine going back to XP.


RE: Forced
By arazok on 5/16/2007 9:55:56 AM , Rating: 3
Funny, I bought Vista to upgrade my XP machine, and find it hands down a superior OS....I guess the other 39,999,999 licenses were all new machines sold to pissed off customers.


RE: Forced
By novacthall on 5/16/2007 10:20:02 AM , Rating: 3
My thoughts exactly. Why on Earth do they FORCE me to take these newfangled operating systems when all I want is Windows 3.11FWG? And why, for the LOVE OF PETE, can I not put OS7.5 on a Macbook! All of this "newness" is really stifling my choices.

DOS4eva!
\m/ (>_<) \m/


RE: Forced
By rdeegvainl on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Forced
By darkpaw on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Forced
By TomZ on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Forced
By rdeegvainl on 5/16/2007 2:10:07 PM , Rating: 2
you are right, i wasn't too clear on that.
I was thinking more along the lines of, them not selling you the 2005 car that they have right in front of you because they just came out with new model X and want you to pay for that. And i agree the situation between selling cars and an OS are very similar, but people don't get harrased nearly as much as when they decide an older model car is right for them instead of the newest thing.
I am on the side of being able to choose.


RE: Forced
By hlper on 5/16/2007 11:01:33 AM , Rating: 2
I have to agree with the other posters who said they have had relatively few problems with Vista. I updated a few drivers, and things run relatively smoothly. However, I have to say I don't feel like Vista is any better than XP, just a bit more eye candy.

I was also going to say that I find it funny that occasionally Firefox locks up and Vista puts up a message that says the fault is in the Firefox software (which may be true). Then Firefox froze up and I had to restart my post. So, it aint perfect :-]


Wow!
By Enoch2001 on 5/16/2007 9:20:49 AM , Rating: 4
That's gotta' be at least 10 billion dollars USD in sales. Must be nice!




RE: Wow!
By chiguy2891 on 5/16/2007 9:41:26 AM , Rating: 2
i wonder how much they invested into Vista for development, marketing, distribution, etc.


RE: Wow!
By creathir on 5/16/2007 10:46:09 AM , Rating: 3
Lets see... lets say 5,000 coders worked on it...
Avg salary $75,000...
It has been in the pipe for 5 years...

That puts a rough estimation at around $1.875 Billion to develop.

- Creathir


RE: Wow!
By Crazyeyeskillah on 5/16/2007 11:08:01 AM , Rating: 2
try multiplying that by 5-10


RE: Wow!
By creathir on 5/16/2007 11:45:54 AM , Rating: 2
Oh I am sure it is quite higher than that. I am just showing that it can add up REALLY fast.
Coders alone would put the guestimation around there.
- Creathir


RE: Wow!
By Samus on 5/18/2007 8:46:07 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, the actual production cost of VISTA probably hasn't even broken even yet with its enormous sales. I'm sure it cost at least 10 billion after marketing, OEM contracting, hardware compatibility, support, coding, project management, etc.


RE: Wow!
By MrPieGuy on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Wow!
By arazok on 5/16/2007 11:39:21 AM , Rating: 3
6 billion is the correct number.


RE: Wow!
By tuteja1986 on 5/16/2007 11:44:47 PM , Rating: 1
Well more that... with marketing , cort cases and all patent case !!


RE: Wow!
By Googer on 5/17/2007 1:21:23 AM , Rating: 2
Actually I know about what it costs Microsoft to sell the OEM disc and the total sales comes to <v>roughly 1.2 Billion US Dollars in 100 days!


Tech Gurantee
By Slaimus on 5/16/2007 11:14:58 AM , Rating: 2
I bet half of those are the result of the MS Tech Guarantee program. I bought a copy of XP specifically to get the 2-for-1 deal during this period.




RE: Tech Gurantee
By Lazlo Panaflex on 5/16/2007 11:58:04 AM , Rating: 2
I bet 97.8% are the result of the CompUSSR liquidator continuing to dump them @ nice discounts......... ;-)


RE: Tech Gurantee
By slacker57 on 5/16/2007 2:49:30 PM , Rating: 2
From my experience, I'd say this isn't so. CrapUSA's "liquidation" scheme was pretty transparent that it was serving CUSA's interests and not the customer. Every high-priced item was intentionally shipped to the stores that were staying open just before the percentages would be high enough to even think of calling it a sale. One example, in my experience, aside from Vista would be keyboards. I had been looking at Razer Tarantulas, which they regularly sell for $100. At 20%, they had an entire 3-shelf section full of them. When I came back at 30%, they were all gone. But mysteriously, there were 100s of generic $10 108-key keyboards in their place where previously there had only been a few. I could be wrong, but I doubt that many gamers were just camping out for these keyboards waiting to save an extra 10 bucks.


RE: Tech Gurantee
By Lazlo Panaflex on 5/16/2007 3:12:06 PM , Rating: 2
I know, dude...I was being sarcastic...heh ;)


RE: Tech Gurantee
By slashbinslashbash on 5/16/2007 4:23:56 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, most of CompUSA's closing sales sucked, and definitely there was that kind of manipulation going on, but I bought a copy of Vista Business and Office Pro 2007 for 60% off. Hard to argue with that. Also I bought an Asus P5B for $55, which isn't too shabby either.


Doesn't surprise me...computers are a dime a dozen
By masa77 on 5/16/2007 10:58:59 AM , Rating: 1
When you can purchase a PC for less than $500, it's no wonder they've sold 40 million copies. I wonder how many of them are actual upgrade copies and not OEM licenses with a new PC.




By JamRockaz on 5/16/2007 11:12:20 AM , Rating: 4
Well it really dont matter if it was upgrade, retail are even oem copies, the fact of the matter is those copies are out the door and and sales are up. I should of baught stocks when i was originally going to but heh Its not too late


By peternelson on 5/17/2007 8:35:45 AM , Rating: 2
It actually DOES matter.

It would be extremely interesting to see OEM vs retail figures for each of the Vista versions. eg Ultimate etc.

Also in which countries are they sold? eg in the UK we pay much more per copy than US customers.

For example the margins will be very different.
For example the likes of Dell may buy OEM copies in bulk before the customer actually buys the computer with it on.

Also, this does not include those who bought a PC or laptop with cheapo vista home, then wiped it off and never used it just so they could install (free or purchased) Linux, Unix etc. It's sometimes the only way to get a good value on your laptop purchasing. ie sales <> userbase

It doesn't include those who bought Vista then hated it and went back to XP. eg because of no driver support for the peripherals they had already.

It doesn't include all the copies Microsoft gave away to people who had been part of the Vista Beta programme. Thus Gates figure may be including these as "shipped copies" even though they didn't generate $ revenue (unless you count shipping LOL).

I would also have liked to see further breakdown of 32 versus 64 bit adoption.

For that type of conference Gates ought to have supplied more detailed breakdown rather then just a headline figure. eg for driver writers: is it worth me compiling 64 bit drivers???


By peternelson on 5/17/2007 8:43:00 AM , Rating: 2
Also:

“As of last week, we've (sold) nearly 40 million copies,” Gates said.

Ah, so he didn't actually SAY "sold" precisely, you reporters put that in for clarity.

Did he actually say or mean "SHIPPED" by any chance, which would include the free ones to beta testers. Maybe just "agreed" eg signing a volume license (but the OS are not installed yet on machines) or oem deal where HP, Dell etc have agreed to install so many copies over say the next year?

The statement is vague.

For software developers, the installed base figure is more important and we may have to wait for estimates from Gartner etc to compare.

Also wasn't there a "Starter" edition for emerging / developing countries? How is that one shipping? eg to Brazil, India, Far East, Africa? It could add a lot to the volume of Vista "shipments" without proportionate revenue income.


Is that a Fact?
By jtesoro on 5/16/2007 9:55:05 AM , Rating: 2
What's going on? "Nearly 40 Million Windows Vista Licenses Sold in 100 Days." Is that headline a fact? With all the controversies about how well or not well Vista is doing, I came into the article fully expecting solid numbers backed by a reputable source. Maybe I missed something, but if all we've got is a quote from party with an obviously self-serving interest, then that headline is a very poor choice. Adding "Gates Claims" at the start or "- Gates" at the end should be the right way of doing it.




RE: Is that a Fact?
By slacker57 on 5/16/2007 3:04:03 PM , Rating: 2
Is anybody else getting tired of these journalism critics? Maybe you shouldn't come to an article with expectations in the first place. It's a headline on a Tech blog site for crying out loud. Oh, damn, with your insight, the committee that decides who should get the Pulitzer for tech blogging now will know Marcus is out of the running this year. Seriously, you were probably going to read the article anyway, so who cares what the headline is? If you think Gates is inflating the numbers, then your problem should be with him, not the headline of an article. Don't people have better things to do with their time? (I guess not since I wasted the time responding to this)


RE: Is that a Fact?
By jtesoro on 5/17/2007 12:35:35 AM , Rating: 4
While I understand your gripe on what you call journalism critics, there's gotta be a passable level that the writers should live up to. Sure it'll be looser than "traditional" journalists, but it better be there.

What you're implying is something closer to "anything goes", which I don't agree with. That'll make it acceptable to have something like "PS3 demand wipes units of shelves" as a headline just because the Sony guy made a claim like that. Not exactly, but quote <> headline nevertheless. Whether I would read the article anyway is irrelevant.


Hmmmmm
By cheetah2k on 5/16/2007 8:52:33 PM , Rating: 2
If they can sell that many copies of an OS the likes of Vista, I'll be interested in seeing how they do with Longhorn (aka Server 2008).

After all, Longhorn is the one we've all been waiting for..




RE: Hmmmmm
By darkpaw on 5/17/2007 10:06:43 AM , Rating: 2
Like all server OS, it'll be a slow pickup on 2008. I know a lot of servers are just now being transitioned to 2003 or within the past year.

Business change over will definately be slower, especially on the server side. Thats one reason MS gives a a much longer window on support for commercial products compared to their consumer versions.


Imagination. Phhht!
By Xenoterranos on 5/16/2007 10:02:47 AM , Rating: 2
Microsoft isn't about imagination, it's about Imagination Management.




numbers
By thartist on 5/16/2007 5:25:59 PM , Rating: 2
No one says that this is the amount if Vistas CHOSEN.
It's the amount of Vistas sold, in any way.

That's everything it is.




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