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Paul - I am pretty sure that the "freaking disaster" comment was meant as a joke...or maybe a poke at those that keep talking about the downgrade...

Anyway, these numbers are actually pretty good and are probably ahead of the Windows XP adoption rate. Good news, as Vista is much more stable and secure than its older brother, XP.

--tayme

Pingback from  Windows Vista News  » Who's adopting Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008?

So, more than 50 percent of organizations using or testing Windows Vista state that its performance hasn't proven to exceed their expectations on key features and benefits, such as improved security, performance, and user productivity, among others.

Given the level of expectations that people generally have for Vista this sounds like a freaking disaster.

"So, more than 50 percent of organizations using or testing Windows Vista state that its performance hasn't proven to exceed their expectations on key features and benefits, such as improved security, performance, and user productivity, among others.

Given the level of expectations that people generally have for Vista this sounds like a freaking disaster."

That depends on whether they felt it met their expectations or not.

Pingback from  Najlepsze Programy, Recenzje, Informacje.  » Blog Archive   » Who's adopting Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008?

Some fodder for John and co.:

Claes Fornell, who conducted the user satisfaction survey, is of the opinion Windows Vista was responsible for the 1% drop in PC satisfaction:

blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/.../146664.asp

"A third of new PCs being downgraded to XP, says metrics researcher"

www.computerworld.com/.../article.do

"Some fodder for John and co.:"

Of course, that wasn't really necessary. I know that the iCabalists are furiously performing Google searches to come up with their own links to articles and blogs as I write this.

cesjr

For about the fifth time, that's normal for any new OS in a corporate environment. Microsoft has had that "downgrade" option available for as long as they've had enterprise licenses.

Here's how it works in as simple english as I can make it. Please don't make me go even simpler...

If you're in a big company you have lots of computers.

Lots and lots and lots of computers.

All of those computers are running the operating system you standardized a couple of years ago.

You buy some new computers.

Uh oh. Those new computers don't have the same operating system as all those lots and lots and lots of computers you already have.

Oh. No. Now what will you do?

It takes you a year or so to do all the tests you like before you certify a new operating system.

What will you do?

Will you have lots and lots and lots of computers with the old OS and a few with the new one?

That would make it hard to teach people how to do their jobs. You'd have to write two versions of each manual just so the pictures match.

That would make it hard to build software install servers. You'd have to support installs on both systems.

Yay!

Here comes Microsoft to the rescue.

They say you can use the old operating system you standardized on with your new computers and when you are ready to move to the new operating system you can move all of them.

No need for two sets of training

No need for two sets of setup servers

Yay!

That simple enough for you?

@shark - I don't consider John an iCabalist...but, cesjr on the other hand has already lived up to expectations...Lindy won't be far behind.

Of course, mikegalos will be along soon with his empty innovation talk, and waethorn with his LIAR comments.

It is all so very predictable.

--tayme

Actually tayme, I was here with my "how condescending do I need to get before I keep seeing the same drivel over and over again" post.

What was your reason for posting?

"I don't consider John an iCabalist..."

No. But since he considers everyone who disagrees with him to be a WinJihadist ...

@mikegalos - Read the first post in this thread and you will see. There are any of us here that see good in all OSes and find them each useful, in their own way...then there are those that believe only they are correct, and to hell with the rest. You seem to be in the latter group.

This is the problem with everything in our country...and in my opinion, may just be the undoing of a once great nation!

--tayme

Mike is right, that is exactly how every release of Windows has ever been deployed in a corporate environment.

The real question is whether the conversion from old OS to Vista is happening at a faster or slower rate than previous Windows update cycles (Win 2000/ Win 9x to XP). What Paul has posted doesn't tell us anything, other than a survey was taken. There is no comparison, and one may not even be possible, between the old cycle and the current cycle. No control for market growth, or corporate growth/contraction, using something like a control group of companies. At least, there is no hint in Paul's post that this is being done, and I haven't seen anything like that.

Anyone know of an actual statistically valid comparison of the Win XP adoption cycle compared to Vista?

tayme writes: "Paul - I am pretty sure that the "freaking disaster" comment was meant as a joke...or maybe a poke at those that keep talking about the downgrade..."

Actually, tayme, Paul's mocking himself in a good-natured way. He's the one who famously labeled Vista "a disaster" before its introduction, thus setting the template for the rest of the tech press to follow forevermore. Thus spake Paul:

"Promises have been made and dismissed, again and again. Features have come and gone. Heck, the entire project was literally restarted from scratch after it became obvious that the initial code base was a teetering, technological house of cards. Windows Vista, in other words, has been an utter disaster. And it’s not even out yet."

"Anyone know of an actual statistically valid comparison of the Win XP adoption cycle compared to Vista?"

I've never seen one. Comparisons of Vista's penetration to XP's current penetration serve no purpose. OK. So Vista is adopted by 10% of the companies as opposed to 80% for XP. I cannot conclude if Vista is a success or a failure solely on that statistic. I need to know how XP was doing during the same phase in its lifecycle. I'm sure these analysis firms have statisticians. Doesn't even one of them freaking understand this?

muyrdocdv

There have been various studies that show it slightly higher (the ones Microsoft tends to publish) and slightly lower (the ones Microsoft bashers tend to publish) but it seems that within measurig tolerance the conversion from XP to Vista is going at about the same rate as the conversion from Win2K to XP went.

Basically, it seems to be progressing at a rate that's surprising nobody who is familiar with corporate installs in either direction. It'll be interesting to see what the 64-bit migration rate is over the next few years.

"The Vista Tracking poll indicates that since the previous tracking poll conducted in February of 2007, the number of organizations using and evaluating Windows Vista has increased from 29 percent to 48 percent."

Serious question. Is that 48% figure really anything to crow about? What I mean is that, 29% only 3 or 4 months after the launch of Vista seems pretty good..... and then 18 months later .... only a further 19% have joined the Vista using/evaluating club.

Pingback from  Windows Vista News  » re: Who's adopting Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008?

O/T:

Has anyone tried this?

blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/.../146518.asp

I would love to try this out, but we haven't upgraded from Office 2003 yet.

"No. But since he considers everyone who disagrees with him to be a WinJihadist ..."

Not true at all. He gets a lot of crap on this blog, but John's posts are consistently well reasoned, informed and honest, much more so than Mike's, who tends to resort to cheap bashing when he's not endlessly babbling about technical advancements of operating system's in the 60's. He likes to pat himself on the back a lot for the assumed quality of his posts despite this though.

Good.  Vista is certainly better than the coverage it has generated, and maybe that's seeping through to people now that they've actually tried it.

Shark, I upgraded to Office 2007 in all 3 of my PC's. I really think it's great. The kids are 7,7, and 8 and had no problem with the transition. In first grade, they made a PowerPoint presentation about colors using 2003. Again, they found about everything in 2007 themselves, or learn quick when I showed them.

No matter how any anti-Microsoft or anti-Vista tries to attack a Windows OS, they still keep on selling. The same tactics keep being used since way back, yet the people still keep buying them. It is amusing seeing how people are complaining, yelling, whining, moaning, groaning, and screaming how bad Microsoft OSes are. Yet they keep on selling.

If Windows is really so bad, how come so many millionaires and billionaires were generated from them? How come the average Joe keeps buying them? The answer I keep repeating is that it gets the job done and the criticisms aren't strong enough to justify a change.

Vista's reputaton is slowly being redeemed. Yes, Macs will continue to sell just fine. Apple can win without making Microsoft lose. Jobs said so himself. There are plenty of human beings who don't have a PC. Approximately 6 billion or so. So there's plenty for Apple and Microsoft. They can play nice and not be rude about it. In this one instant, Microsoft and Apple can both have their cake and eat it too.

So far my Vista machines are still running. Thats 14 months and counting. Even when Seven comes out, Vista's lower prices will prompt sales, since it will be the more seasoned OS. This whole thing will start all over again. When we have these same arguments in 2010 and 2011, hopefully we can come up with better answers.

Did you see where Microsoft has hired Jerry Seinfeld for it's big ad push, starting in September?  The ads will feature Seinfeld and Bill Gates.

online.wsj.com/.../SB121928939429159525.html

The funniest thing about the "Switcher" propaganda is that idiots claim they found that too many things changed in Vista that they got frustrated and switched to a Mac and never looked back. So, they couldn't find a couple of new features on Vista, but then went ahead and got used to a whole different scheme of organization and layout in OS X?

The craziest of these hack stories I've heard is the Chief Editor of PC Magazine on an NPR podcast. He says "Vista has so many new features, it is daunting to the user! The Macs are not as complicated and easier to use, and people continue to migrate to Macs because of this."

So now, Vista is bad because it has too many new features? The story thus far had been that Vista didn't bring enough new things to the table to warrant an upgrade from XP. Damned if you do.. Damned if you don't.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, damned if you're Microsoft, not if you're not.

Raaj, the funny thing is that there are new stuff in the last two 10.x releases tht friends never use as they don't know what it is.

Subcomander Zerohitman, I saw a Mac commercial last night which did not bash MS at all, but had the PC in a Pizza box claiming to be hiding to surprize college students as they are migrating to Macs, and then he mentions that it one reason is that it uses MS Office well. It's about time those ads shifted gears.

DRWAM,

The only way college students would even look at Windows is if they're tricked into thinking it's a pizza isn't bashing Windows?

Mike,

"If you're in a big company you have lots of computers.

Lots and lots and lots of computers.

All of those computers are running the operating system you standardized a couple of years ago.

You buy some new computers.

Uh oh. Those new computers don't have the same operating system as all those lots and lots and lots of computers you already have.

Oh. No. Now what will you do?"

What you do is construct enterprise software and systems that use standard data protocols so that the particular box, hardware or software, that is on the end of any particular wire doesn't matter.

You don't use Exchange, use POP/SMTP/IMAP. You don't use Office, you use an open format (although this issue is basically solved now).

You use open, interoperable standards. This can be done, but thousands of "IT people" have tied their livelihoods to the proprietary stuff from Microsoft.

If you do far enough back in time, which is not so far, 10 years or so, Microsoft Word, just to give one example, won't even read its own files.

It is really time to "unask the question" on this entire issue. The answer is not to keep jamming round pegs into XP-shaped holes; the answer is to make the client OS irrelevant.

I don't especially care if your client of choice is XP, Vista, Win2000, OSX, what have you. This corporate "strategy" of building enterprise software tied to a single vendor is really stupid. Good for Microsoft, bad for everyone else.

chuckb84

If "standards" never changed or when they did change had perfect backward and forward compatibility you might have a point. Reality shows that's never been the case.

In reality, the best source for backward and forward compatibility is when one decision point must provide migration solutions to maintain their customers. A "standards committee" made up of representatives of companies W, X, Y and Z (or their proxies) have very little motive to maintain compatibility with an existing standard if that market is controlled by company V's product. Typically, they will break compatability to stir up the market and give their products a fresh start.

chuckb84

The other thing that happens, less often than my earlier example but still does happen, is when the dominent player in a market, say Company V again, gets themselves and their friends to have enough seats to control a committee. This typically happens when the standard is obscure at first so they load the committee before anyone else realizes there's money in it.

Then what happens is that Company V blocks any change in the standards that would allow anyone else to innovate. Since they control the market for products using that standard and have locked down what can be done, they've assured that the best anyone can do is duplicate their product and competition disappears.

A variation that can happen after a few years of this stagnation is when Company V DOES allow upgrades to the standard but only when they have spent a few years developing a new version of their product. They then propose a new version of the standard that exactly matches what their new product does (possible with patents in place covering all easy implementations) and use their voting control to make their new product the only "standards compliant" solution available for several years while the competition catches up.

In short, "standards" aren't that standardized.

And we could go into pages on "implementation details" and de facto standards that get tagged as "standards compliant" once a competitor read a vague standards document differently than you do.

Mike, that's not how it was presented. I don't think that it can be inferred as well. I think that since PC [Hodges] stated that the laptop of choice at Colleges was a Mac, PC would surprize them to to get a look at Windows by hiding in a Pizza box. He never stated that theonly way they will look at Windows is if he hides in a Pizza box. However, you can infer a compliment to Microsoft since PC said that [MS] Office works well on a Mac. That's a compliment to Microsoft.

DRWAM

You should probably watch it again (It's on the Apple site)

@DRWAM - I'll have to check that ad out, I haven't seen it yet...it sounds like it might also be inferring that Windows (Hodges) can run on a Mac (Pizza Box)...maybe it is pushing Boot Camp.

--tayme

tayme

It really has nothing to do with Boot Camp. It's just mentioning Office as a feature of the Mac (If it implies  anything about Office, it's saying Office 2008 for the Mac is essentially the same as Office 2007 for Windows)

The ad's really more about saying that the only way a student would even look at a PC is if they were tricked into thinking they were getting free pizza instead of a PC.

The opening is "Hi. I'm a Mac", "and I'm Free Pizza"

"Did you see where Microsoft has hired Jerry Seinfeld for it's big ad push, starting in September?  The ads will feature Seinfeld and Bill Gates."

blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/.../146761.asp

In another instance of the press showing bias:

"Keep in mind that we haven't actually seen the ads yet. The WSJ report says they're slated to debut Sept. 4. But already the idea is being panned. For example, Seth Weintraub has this post on his Computerworld Apple Ink blog: Ten reasons why the Seinfeld-Microsoft partnership doesn't work.

In the meantime, people have been digging up old screen shots of Seinfeld's television apartment, which often featured a Mac on the desk in the back corner. (See my find above.) Maybe the ad agency behind the campaign, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, will position the comedian as a Windows convert. Or perhaps they'll just avoid the issue."

It's a freaking ad. Does one know for sure or even care if Brooke Shields actually uses Colgate Total or if Peyton Manning is a Sprint customer? No. They're actors who get paid to do this.

Is Seinfeld really that popular in the States? I have to say, I don't know anyone who thinks of him as anything other than annoying, dull, and very unfunny.

"Is Seinfeld really that popular in the States? "

Not as popular as he used to be, but the show is still popular.

Trivia: Eli Manning, the NY Giants quarterback and the winner of the Phoenix Super Bowl is a big fan of Seinfeld. The local channels in Green Bay, WI actually canceled airings of the show while Eli was in town for the Conference title game against the Green Bay Packers.

MIke, the ad is definitely not saying that the only way a student would even look at a PC is if they were tricked into thinking they were getting free pizza instead of a PC. That really cannot be remotely inferred, IMO. Given the colleges recommend the hardware and software, PC is showing the Mac one way that he will trick a student into looking at a PC. There could be millions of other ways that he is not showing, like putting the ad on a beer can or in a *** magazine. However, you can [remotely] infer that without Office, students may not be choosing a Mac. Also, they choose to have the Mac look down at the PC, rather than put it on a table, which gives the idea of looking down on a PC. What makes our opinions, or actually my opinion irrelevant, is the other ads at the site, the worst being 'Sad Song'. While it will take more for me to feel sorry for the behemoth MS, as I would not mind any persecution with over a 90% market share and no none even close to becoming significant in the near future [even at peak record Mac sales, they did not even make a dent], those types of ads really stink. As tayme posted, Apple needs to show what a Mac can do, rather than Vista bashing. I just ignore it [obviously], but those Apple ads may give a bad message to many. While Apple is the David to Windows Goliath, it's looking more like Windows is the gentle giant and Apple is becoming a bully or a little pest. Also, think of how many associate pizza [something they like very much] with a PC, which could also be something that they potentially like. I guess it's how you look at it. My wife thinks that those cute little gray squirrels will attack her! Some people may think that clowns are evil monsters.   Also, Jerry Seinfield just made a hit movie called the Bee Movie. It is definitely the time to use him. For gosh sakes, Apple used a dancing Jeff Goldbloom to introduce the first iMac. I like the guy but the ad was real lame. The Fly lives on!

Peace.

Holly crap did I go off topic and didn't even know it, so sorry.

Back OT. Our IT [my offices] have the Vista licenses ready when we switch, but we are waiting for a big entire system upgrade which won't even take place this year. The IT guys cite that the upgrade offers easier implementation and security, improved networking and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember. Bu our digital dictation system and transcription system is soooo old, that I barely supported XP. To prevent a potential disaster, we are waiting to replace with a newer more robust system,then roll out Vista. We replace PC's every 2 to 3 years, so it's plausible, but the very old software is the problem, not Vista. I couldn't begin to know what IT at the hospital is doing.

"Also, think of how many associate pizza [something they like very much] with a PC, which could also be something that they potentially like. I guess it's how you look at it. My wife thinks that those cute little gray squirrels will attack her! Some people may think that clowns are evil monsters.   Also, Jerry Seinfield just made a hit movie called the Bee Movie. It is definitely the time to use him. For gosh sakes, Apple used a dancing Jeff Goldbloom to introduce the first iMac. I like the guy but the ad was real lame. The Fly lives on!"

:-) I don't understand.

Vista sure is a disaster.

Check out some of the latest ads.. including Vista Blues. It's all funny cause it's all true.

movies.apple.com/.../apple_getamac_sadsong_extended_20080519_480x272.mov

Although Calming Teas is great too.

The whole Mac world is trembling now that Seinfeld is gonna be pushign Vista. Typical lame Microsoft. Have an old sitcom comedian to do their spiel.

www.apple.com/.../ads

@DRWAM

(Checking my ears for the bobbed surgery of a Vulcan or Romulan.)

Since when did I become Romulan? I always had my eye on the Captain's chair.

LOL..

I did see the Pizza Box ad. Cute. Its more the attitudes of certain Apple users and some of the misinformation in previous ads that I was speaking to. I don't insult Mac users at all. I was talking to one a few nights ago at work and we actually had a lot in common as computer users.

Later.

"NCC-1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D." - Scotty.

Subcommander is also Vulcan as in Subcommander Topal, obviously one of my favorites. I completely forgot that it was a Romulin officer too.

(In my best Homer Simpson voice.)

Mmmmm, Subcommander T'Pol....

(Jolene Blalock, gorgeous example of why I wish they all could be California Girls.)

I've been talking to some of the local customers that stop by my work. None of them are downgrading to XP and frankly are surpised how good Vista is. I think Apple's history shows that anything can be redeemed.

Macs were on the decline in the mid 90's. Then with some changes and advertising, things got turned around. Look where they are 11 years after Macworld 1997.

Ya'll have a great weekend.