Vista selling really well, says Ballmer
STEVE BALLMER IS IN no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling “incredibly well”, he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today.
"Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world," the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on, "45 per cent of all of new business PCs". Which is enlightening, since business users are about the ony buyers of new PCs that get a choice.
Ballmer, speaking at a press conference at the Vole’s new Strategic R&D centre in Herzeliya, said overall, Vista, "has had a good unit volume market reaction." He said he was happy with sales of the product to date.
The Microsoft CEO addressed comments that the company’s new operating system was half-cocked, and that user response to the OS had been luke warm at best. He admitted there was no question there were things people had not responded to well and that “application compatibility in Vista was not as high as many of our customers would have liked.”
He added: “That is improving, not because we’ve changed Vista, but because the applications are getting upgraded to be Vista compatible.”
Whether Vista really is an upgrade, or just something of a weighty and awkward downgrade can still be argued, but Ballmer puts the problems down to the “tricky” balance between compatibility and security.
“What we have learned is that maybe our customers care a little bit more about compatibility and a little bit less about security” he ventured. He added that it always took people a while to get used to new things and that Vista was no exception.
“When you change the look of your product, you always think it looks better, but your users always have to get used to the new one”.
“I think we’re going through something of a process whereby Vista users are still getting used to Vista after moving from XP”.
Ballmer also noted the Xbox had been "a funny product for us" and that the company had struggled for a while trying to figure out how to make money out of it.
"The same applies to Zune," he laughed, "except we still haven't figured out how to make money out of that one." µ
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It may be "selling" well as consumers really have no other choice when buying a new PC. I have to wonder how many of these PCs are having Vista uninstalled as soon as it is plugged in.
i was just going to post something 5 minutes ago but guess what vista crashed and i had to restart my laptop.

who would of thought it ?

he's having a bit of a Dr Strangelove moment
You're not fooling anyone you know. 

As for your music player, this says it all. 

http://www.anus.com/zine/news/zune-anus.jpg
The new computers at my company come in with Windows Vista preloaded. It doesn't stay on the machines for long since we load a corporate XP image onto them. Unfortunately we are probably helping out with Vista sales figures.
I was in PC World the other day.

They had a pile of Vista Ultimate packs at £50, reduced from £200.

I was almost tempted but with Windows 7 just around the corner...
Read article on Multiplier & its control of final dram core & CPU speed. When Started OEM ultimate this Microsoft Computer Bundle set itself to 4 automatically. It did run ultimate, yet over first two months grew worn quickly.

Had to Throw In Clones. Activation Held & with some updating Now multiplier changed automactically to 8. Now it Smooth Running Machine.

In article; although couldn't copy it, shows that multiplier of 4 rests whole gizmo to astounding ONE low speed, NO Matter How Fast It Thinks Its going.(about 800Mhz/s)

At Multiplier of 8 All Levels up to 333 Mhz/s core are available. While at 10X its clear sailing thru 400 mhz/s. Basicly, Ultimate is Complex & older machines Freak Out & set internal automatic multiplier Way too Low. Check Yours if Ultimate is Balkie. Recently in Malware Testing in Jan'8 Ultimate took Few Hits, first Ones in previously virus free enviorment.
Those new viruses Add Up Too.Yet Fairly minimal Damage To machine. 

Ultimate is Coming To Pace, While Most Vista Computers less than Home Premium are NOT Vista NT6(New Stuff), Yet Sell Computers, those versions of Vista(NT5) Have always Worked Even In My Ultimate Beta Testing Trials, When Breaking Ultimate Down to NT5 on Older less compatible integrated graphics machines.
thomas drashek
To summarize Mr. Balmer's comments, those people who don't have a choice have Vista and those who do have a choice more often than not choose to avoid it. It must be nice to run a monopoly. No matter how bad things are, you can always fall back to that fantasy world where you pretend that you're successful because of the virtues of your product.
STEVE 'BALDY' BALLMER IS IN no way disappointed with Windows Vista.

Wot about the people that paid £350 on release for ultimate to BETA test a OS????
(me not being 1 of em) :D
Just a little "note". They don't sell it, they stick it up in the darkest place of your body with no lube. You get Vista or get Vista, now choise. 

At least here in Latin America you are death on the water. I personally visited several stores and they said there is no chance to downgrade to XP or choise anything else on every Laptop or Desktop PC they sell. I would LOVE if people could choise and then see the results...

And please, I work as IT, visiting several big enterprices and ALL OF THEM, downgraded to XP inmediatly by using their licensing schemes with MS. The funny thing is this *ss h*l* counting that as a "great" Vista sales.

He should get his head out of the sand and take a good look to reality: VISTA SUCKS ALL THE WAY.

Regards.

Macufendo.
Wow, I am amazed! An INQ article about Balmer *and* Vista without the usual cheap shots and barbs attached to each sentence.

Mind you, I find them often funny, but it is refreshing to see an article without them every once and a while.
I work for a large mutinational corporation and my department has just received 60 new PCs with Vista Basic preinstalled on them.

Why Basic, you'd ask?

'Cos they had their hard-drives wiped and re-installed with XP the moment they got through the door.
Its been almost 18 months that its been out, lots of people use it and like it. Took me a good year to switch and get used to it. The thing works fine once you shut off all the microsoft spyware. 

Other than that, it is a fine operating system, and works quite well. Far more stable now than XP was at this point in its development.

Still FAR more organized than Linux, and much more versatile than MacOS. Wake up and find something else to beat on
Ballmers nose grew 2 feet today. I guess someones been a bit of a liar.

Seriously, This guy needs to shut up. He opens his mouth and foolish garbage spews out of it. They essentially force vista onto people.
We have a fleet of 1600+ desktops and notebooks. We re-image with an XP based SOE. Planning to skip Vista and go Win7 in about 2011.

Cost of change is too high.
I cant believe people are still so prejudiced against vista. I upgrded not to long ago from xp professional when it pissed me off for the las time and I havent looked back. Vista is just better than xp, hands down. I fix computers and whenever i have to use xp I fell crippled. Stop whining about vista already.
Is it just me or is that picture lacking a set of horns. Has Stevie been grinding them down like Hellboy?
Windows 8. For the next iterations of the Windows operating system, Microsoft plans to focus on enhancing performance for key components and applications of the platform. Starting with Windows 7, the Redmond company will work even intimately with original equipment manufacturers and system builders to provide them with the necessary resources to boost the quality of Windows PCs. 

At the same time, Microsoft plans to build and reveal to the world what it referred to as extensible platform for Windows performance analysis. Such a platform already exists and is in use, but available only internally, at Microsoft. In addition, machines running Windows 7 and Windows 8 will benefit from unique industry standard definitions Microsoft is cooking up that will enable benchmarking and evaluating PC System performance. 

With Windows 7, Microsoft will take the work done with Windows Vista in regards to enabling end users to perform basic troubleshooting tasks one step further through the introduction of a new breed of in-box diagnostics tools set up to detect the cause of performance issues. But the Redmond company's work will not be done with Windows 7. In fact, plans are already in place for even more complex in-box diagnostics resources for Windows 8. And, in Windows 7, the company will simply lay the foundation of what will come in the future. 
Out Yesterday, though read of Performance Diagnostics few weeks ago, little more insight.
Heck I can tell you BAD Performance is too many Processes going in Background Or gulp, malware.
drashek

You missed the chance to do some journalism there. MS keeps pushing "we have shipped X million Vista licenses" ... but the question is: "how many of those are actually in use?"

And Microsoft KNOWS the answer to that question - it'll be the number of copies that ping Windows Update.

Go on, ask them that one. And keep asking until they answer or clearly won't answer.
(lol) can gloss over the shortcomings of Vista as much as he likes, after all he's the boss. The result will be to create a situation in which MS can more easily lose their ill deserved monopoly. No complaints here. 

Yet while Vista flounders one can only fail to admire the singular zeal with which potential competitors fail to compete. 

I am referring of course to the other Steve -Cousin IT- Jobs. "Keep it in the family" boss of the MacMafia, who whines away but refuses to stray on the Uncle Steve's turf.

These company bosses are doing their shareholders more harm than good yet maintain a Pharaoic grip on power which offends reason.

But the door is open for a different kind of monster, bossless open sauce. Can non proprietary software organise itself sufficiently...? We have been asking this question for the best part of a decade, which is a long time in IT but maybe the revolution is coming closer with every yarn the current market leader spins.


"vista is selling"

Yes to OEMs, but how many OEMs are selling PCs?
We give customers a choice of Operating systems on our systems and in so far in 2008, 90% of customers have chosen XP home.
The inevitability of an upgrade...

We evaluated Vista, found it lacking any compelling reason to move to it. In fact, after reading about WGA, we felt that Vista was not usable in a business environment at all. (Now that MS has relaxed the 'reduced functionality' mode, this isn't as damning, but still - what's to keep them from reversing themselves again?)

Since it is inevitable that, at some point, XP will not be an option (I'm thinking years from now), we are looking towards migrating to something. Since that something isn't going to be Vista, we're looking real hard at Linux, Open Office and a few other cross-platform applications.

Right now (with XP), we've removed MS Office 2k3 and have installed Open Office. We replaced IE with FireFox, ditched our Windows Server infrastructure (including Exchange) in favor of Linux. We now use Evolution as our e-mail client. The idea is that, while still using XP, we get our users comfortable with alternative applications. When we make the switch to Linux desktops, I doubt many, if any at all, will notice the change.

The moral of this story is that migration from XP to something else is inevitable. It is only a matter of time. We're not going to pin our hopes on Windows 7 being any more compelling than Vista is. While home users may be able to stick with XP, as a business, we have to plan for the future. An adage comes to mind: If you fail to plan, then you've planned to fail.

-Mike

If you aren't happy about Zune and Xbox sales, just enforce legislation (or de-facto legislation through sales&marketing) that demands every customer in the US to buy one. Works with Windows too.
Start counting, I erased Vista completely on my computer after I bought it. And installed another OS. 

But to get the hardware I wanted I had to buy a system with vista.
this is what is called male cow excrement... I bought a laptop for my girlfriend (HP pavilion dv6780se) and according to the "HP representative" XP could not be installed on this system at all.... in his words "there are no drivers", well with a nifty little piece of software called nlite I downloaded the intel ICH8 drivers and "introduced" them to the XP image and low and behold I got it to recognize the HD on the system .... for a guide look up http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/resolving-setup-did-not-find-any-hard-disk-drives-during-windows-xp-installation/

now all hardware is working no problems at all and wow look the laptop can play games and all no problems no lagging and wow no slowdowns/required reboots anymore, who would have thunk it.

Keep dreaming monkey boy.
In a word : no.
You can like Vista all you want, be my guest. Lots of people liked their Lada's, but that does not make a Lada a good car.
Vista is the worst offense MS has ever committed against its customers. People like compatibility more than security ? Not really, Ballmer. People sure wouldn't mind security from virii and malware, what people do not like (at least the people who have not been brainwashed) is security that goes against them and prevents them from doing what they feel they have the right to do.
Aftar all, you're not the police, Ballmer. If I want to be a criminal and rip a CD or a DVD so I can play it on something else, well it's my business. You have no right to stop me.
Of course, the real problem is not for the hackers. Security measures have rarely stopped them before, and concerning DRM, they have never stopped them yet. It's the honest people who suffer. It's the real and proper owner of the home tapes that suddenly discovers that his shiny, new Vista machine won't convert his home tapes anymore because he doesn't have the copyright. And who says so ? Vista DRM says so, because a home tape is not listed in the authorized works of RIAA/MPAA. So his own, personal tapes get blacklisted.
That is why Vista is a pile of crap. I cannot accept that a computer decides what I have the right to do. An OS is only there to launch the applications I want to launch. I decide, not the computer, and certainly not based on the monopolistic criteria of a bunch of powder-snorting dinosaurs.
If you accept it, good on you. I don't, I never will, and I will always say so and why it is so so that the future victims will get a chance to hear why they should avoid Vista at all costs.
To all those people who buy Vista-loaded kit and then erase it in order to install something else, thank you (on behalf of Uncle Steve) for throwing money at the Microsoft retail monopoly - you can wipe the self-congratulatory smiles off your faces and, for those of you clinging to XP, forfeit any right you have to complain about Microsoft putting out mediocre offerings in future.

Now that the French have finally ensured that people have the right to buy stuff without unwanted stuff (eg. Microsoft products) bundled, or can at least get a rebate, perhaps the rest of us will eventually get the same benefits. In the meantime, the smart thing to do is to punish Microsoft by not just buying their stuff "because it was free on my new shiny gadget".
It's kind of nice that Microsoft keeps increasing the resource usage of its OS, in one important respect: it makes the standard spec of PCs increase. It runs badly on older PCs, but then I'd never install it on an older PC. I'm probably going to wait until 2010+ at which the Vista on a new PC will work just fine, AND I then get some 16GB of RAM to play with. Well, 13GB after Vista has taken out its chunk.

Having looked at Linux both in circa 2000 and today, it seems it hasn't really got anywhere. It's the same messy system with cosmetic improvements for the most frequently used features. Once you start trying to use unusual or less-widely-used programs, it's back to the command line and compiling everything yourself. At least Windows programmers know something about how to make a decent package.