Microsoft, Technology

100 Million Copies of Vista

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After Bill Gates mentioned that Vista has sold 100,000,000 copies so far during his speech at CES, I didn’t really react one way or the other. But now that a couple of days have passed, I find myself wondering:

  • How many of those are actually in use?
  • Do those include the free upgrades that were shipping at one time?
  • Do those include people who bought a computer with Vista but then downgraded to XP?
  • Are volume license upgrades included in the hundred million?

    • The bottom line is that the more I think about it, the more that 100,000,000 seems inflated to me. For Microsoft shareholder benefit, I’m sure the number is real. After all, once Microsoft registers a sale, it goes to the bottom line no matter if the person uses the product or not.

    I think an interesting question to ask, particularly in the face of Microsoft’s “Windows Genuine” program is, how many copies of Vista have been ACTIVATED? I’ll throw out a number and see what people think: half? Could 50,000,000 copies of Vista have been activated since the launch? I would love to find out.

    In today’s world of serious market share challenges from other vendors, I believe it’s just as interesting to hear how many copies of Vista are in use as it is to hear the raw sales numbers.

    Technology

    LinkedIn – Anyone Home?

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    About 18 months ago my sister suggested I create a LinkedIn profile and build up my network, which I did over the course of about 10 months. Then I stopped using the site because it wasn’t giving me anything besides the opportunity to say that I have X number of people in my network. In addition, I had issues with the site in that its features seemed less than “well thought out”.It’s the better part of a year later and I have to say that as a user, I’ve noticed literally NO new features, changes, or modifications to the site. Perhaps that is because I have the lowest possible membership, which I’m willing to accept, but in almost a YEAR there are no noticeable changes and (at the same time) the problems with the site are still there?In today’s world of Facebook, MySpace, and the like, I find it curious that LinkedIn doesn’t appear to be keeping up. If anyone can prove me wrong I’m happy to admit it, but as John. Q. User (or Russ Nemhauser) I can’t say that I see anything new. 

    Apple, Microsoft, Technology

    XPS One – Nice Try, But…

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    Dell announced their XPS One model and I’m a little shocked that the prices are so high. The sticker shock is reduced as you get in to their higher-end models, but for some reason they all only have a 20 inch screen. You can’t go any larger. They’ve obviously tried to model their new line after the iMac, but all they’re going to do is impress people who have never seen an Apple iMac before (especially the new models released earlier this year).

    I would have thought that a company like Dell would really shake things up with some aggressive pricing, but that just isn’t the case. Another thing they have going against them is that Vista appears to be the only OS they’ll install.  It seems that that their recent back-tracking to offering XP and their recent option of Linux would have led to choices for consumers, but … nope.

    Microsoft, Technology

    Still Making Waves, Huh?

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    Today for some reason I saw lots of articles discussing Vista and its adoption (or lack thereof) by the consumer as well as the business user. It’s been almost a year since Vista was released and people who are giving it a shot only recently have kind of re-started a wave of negativity that began right around the product launch.

    It is not that I expected Vista to change between January and today. But as I read these articles that have started to sprout up again I can’t help but remember the way Vista was “received” by Microsoft employees when I was on contract up there earlier this year. People often complained about having to reboot the computer when waking it from sleep because the screen stopped working. They’d complain about the performance. Others just complained because they were happy with XP. But alas – it was a corporate directive that (what was initially a select group of) employees install Vista.

    The other dynamic I noticed involved Microsoft employees wanting to be supportive of the company and voluntarily installing Vista on their newer laptops. These people would invariably run in to the known issues and just accept them as part of The Microsoft Tax.

    I’m quite curious to see what Microsoft does with Windows 7 and to what degree (if any) the comment “Vista will go the way of Windows ME”  will come true. How many people will just stay on XP, given what we know about Vista, and wait until 2010 when Windows 7 is targeted to be released?