1. I am not an MS employee
2. I am not an MS investor

Joe starts this article off with "Microsoft asserted that.."
Notice the main word here "ASSERTED" !
Surely this shows for starters that he does not believe MS in first place, and this I contend goes to bias in his reporting.
As for "Gerado's" comment about "Rick" who was an oem supplier, he missed the point "Rick bought some licences and was going to buy more" what was wrong in that ! That supports microsoft's figures that OEM's are buying Vista doesn't it ? Well it does to me anyway.
"Fred" asked why is MS reporting on how Vista licences have sold .... simple people like Joe Wilcox pouring cold water on Vista's sales is the reason, and to show the market (and the stock market as well) that Vista is indeed ... selling.
A lot of commenters (including Joe Wilcox with his heading "Stacking Licences way Too high" which meant that he thought that MS was inflating the figures)said that MS was inflating the Vista sales figures.
Well I don't know if many of you people realise that it is against the law for a company to give false or misleading facts to the stock exchange.
So MS would therefore release ONLY true facts as anything would be illegal to do.
Many commenters called others who stood up for MS "MS shill's" yet they quite clearly had allegances to other OS.
I fail to see why a site called "Microsoft Watch" has so many people who go to it who do not use (curently) Windows, is it just to call people like myself what they are to their brand of OS??
I feel that it no wonder that MS is standing up for its new OS when people like Joe Wilcox and others are continually saying its a flop !
And as for the unsubstantiated bit about MS employees saying Vista was a flop, well that was a good piece BS wasn't it, it just shows that on this site even things are not true, are now "supposedly" true.
Second lastly a lot has been made of how insecure Vista is and that people did not think it was ready.
I will always remember the article done on this site in early November of last year entitled "Vista Ready? Not for me !" where Release Candidate ONE was reviewed and given the thumbs down, it was ledened with "bugs" ... yes it was ! But there was one thing wrong with it... Vista at that time had ALREADY gone past the the RC2 stage and had gone RTM (Release to Manufacturing) so the article was out and out BIAS in the extreme !!!
Sure Joe Wilcox didn't do it, but it is interesting to see who did .... Mr. Scot Peterson ... the editor of eWEEK, and then Joe Wilcox turned up and we continued to have more of the same !!!!

Now the last piece of information and also very important.
"Microsoft security strategy director Jeff Jones this week published a report comparing the security vulnerability profile for various high-profile operating systems in the 90 days of their existence. Surprisingly, Vista came out in front: Vista had 5 vulnerabilities in its first 90 days, one of them fixed, and one pending with a High severity rating. By comparison, XP had a total of 17 vulnerabilities in its first 90 days, 8 of which were rated High, when it shipped in 2001. The surprises, however, come when you compare the non-Microsoft competition. Mac OS X 10.4, a darling of the press, actually suffered from 20 vulnerabilities in its first 90 days, 8 of which were rated High. Worse, OS X 10.4 still suffered from 17 publicly disclosed but unpatched vulnerabilities at the end of those 90 days. "The data doesn't support [Apple's] marketing," Jones writes. Linux fared even worse: Ubuntu 6.06 suffered from a whopping 71 vulnerabilities in its first 90 days, 27 of those rated High. And there were at least 29 unpatched vulnerabilities in that OS after the 90 day period ended."

The source was bink.nu

Neil.... Your comment should be the article

Biju
I thank you very much for your comment.
I am just a pc user wanting a "fair go" given to both MS and the general pc community who use windows. So as not to be scared by all this negative propaganda going around at the moment.
Sure Vista is not perfect but really what OS is ?
And yes you other OS people yours is not either, so don't write and say it is. Be honest with yourself as well as us !

I notice that Joe has only made note of comments that support his case. Were you swayed by the many good points made by posters with opposing views?

I am admittedly pro-Microsoft since much of my living is made peddling their wares. I cannot fault them for adding SALES to channel partners to their SALES total. It would certainly be another issue if they used the same evidence to claim 20 million copies of Vista were in use.

Microsoft says that more than 20 million Vista licences have been sold, not that more than 20 million Vista installs are currently being used.

As far as I know, every time someone buys a PC with Vista preinstalled or buys a Vista copy from a retail store that's one more Vista licence sold. The story doesn't tell what the buyer is going to do (or not) with the OS.

Neil do you have reading comprehension disabilities or are you just praying we'll forget the real point among such senseless rant?

You say:

"As for "Gerado's" comment about "Rick" who was an oem supplier, he missed the point "Rick bought some licences and was going to buy more" what was wrong in that ! That supports microsoft's figures that OEM's are buying Vista doesn't it ? Well it does to me anyway."

I don't think I missed that point. Actually I added to that point. It is very clear to me that OEMs are buying Vista. It also very clear from Rick's comment that in his case he has sold only one fourth of them. I added to the point in a comment further down. In which I said that if OEMs buy, but don't sell there is going to be trouble. Either they loose money or return it for a refund, but one way or the other the product doesn't reach the end user. Now as a developer who develops for Vista. Don't you think that would be an issue???? It would for me if I was one.

I know what I would do with my Vista preinstall. Format C:

History is repeating itself.

When every new Windows OS release , everyone will comment negatively , for example in the case of Windows XP : http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2819126,00.html

Human by nature is comfortable with the status quo .

Most of us would not want to change anything except his girlfriend.

Please forgive Joe, as he is an ordinary joe

Joe -

Nobody cares. I can guarantee you that Microsoft could give a rat's rear-end what you think about their sales numbers.

Let me check --- Yep, Bill Gates is still the richest in the world. And you Joe -- well, you are just not relevant to anything anymore.

Robert Stinnett; Quote
"Yep, Bill Gates is still the richest in the world." No real need to make him any richer is there?

Next Quote of Robert Stinnett;
"And you Joe -- well, you are just not relevant to anything anymore." I would suggest here that Joe is relevant, as he sure got your ire up.

Also, I find Joe's article to contain a lot of thought you will not find everywhere. He might even make you think a little Robert. That would be a good thing.

Randy
I clicked on your link and was not surprised at all my friend !
It was the same then as it is now, and probably the same thing will happen when the "next" windows appears !
I just cannot get over people that are eager to rubbish Vista, and say that they are quite happy with XP, and yet way back in 2001 they probably said "exactly" the same thing about Windows 98 when upgrading to XP !
But Joe is a different "kettle of fish" he seems to me to be doing everything he can to rubbish not just Vista but MS as well !
Have a look at his stories from November last year and you will see what I mean, there is a common thread throughout. He doesn't like MS, not to mention his "pal" Scot Peterson and his article on this site in November "Vista Ready? Not For Me !"
And joe is a chip off the old block as far as I am concerned, taking after Scot Peterson.

Here we go again.
@Neil "Microsoft asserted that"... is biased language

I think 'asserted' is the proper term to use when someone is so blatantly inflating their numbers. 20 million in a month? Are you kidding me? Does anyone who has ever heard about Microsoft before 2007 take this statement even slightly seriously?

They're counting unsold retail boxes, unsold OEM installations and unused upgrade tickets issued up to 5 months ago. Frankly I'm shocked that they didn't just count all the 'Vista Capable' stickers while they were at it too!
They are lying through their teeth and you'd have to be pretty darn ignorant not to notice.

The '20 million sold' thing is not the point. It's the 'in one month' that people are having an issue with.

Well I don't know if many of you people realise that it is against the law for a company to give false or misleading facts to the stock exchange.

Microsoft is a convicted monopoly. They are paying daily antitrust fines in Europe at this very moment and have been doing so for months. I highly doubt they have any issue with inflating their stock in such a vague, roundabout manner, no one can make a court case out of that one press release.

I feel that it no wonder that MS is standing up for its new OS when people like Joe Wilcox and others are continually saying its a flop !

MS has obligations to its stockholders they've already spent $500 million on the Vista marketing campaign to tell us how 'WOW' it is. You will notice, however, that the 'Joe Wilcox and others' you are referring to is pretty much the majority of tech news at the moment.

I don't know why you've reposted the bink.nu vulnerability blurb again, this article is not about security, but I will gladly repeat my rebuttal:

Regarding the Linux thing, I have to remind people (who conveniently forget this fact all the time) that the bloated number of vulnerabilities are because they include all the applications that are available in the repositories.

Just browsing through the advisory list on Secunia: http://secunia.com/product/10611/?task=advisories
I see 'Ubuntu vulnerabilities' such as exploits for Inkscape, mySQL, libwpd, xine, ktorrent, gnupgp, python, tcpdump, Thunderbird, Firefox, php, imagemagick, samba, postgresql, gtk, squid, openoffice, fetchmail, xserver, avahi, mono, ruby, tar, libpng, QT, openssh, xorg, bind, and so on and so on.

So really to get an equivalent number you need to count the vulnerabilities on windows and every available program that runs on windows.

Or at the very least include the vulnerabilities in every program that works closely with the OS such as Outlook, IE, Media Player, ActiveX, Flash, Office, IIS, MSSQL, Exchange, etc.

Even that is still unfair considering the hundreds of supported Linux apps and the few dozen of Windows apps.

Neil: You deserve the run Microsoft Watch.

Joe: You DO NOT deserve to even comment on any blog.

Joe, good article thanks!

Guys if you are just going to attack the authors get lost. your comments are a waste of time to read.

Neil you bring up a few good points. but all in all vista is still a waste of time to upgrade too. for a few reasons.

1) You need a more powerful pc - Fact Vista Uses more Ram and processing power than XP.
2) Fact : the drivers are currently not very mature. (this point will go away with time) but as far as i know there are still problems for dual video card owners etc.
3) Fact : most of the revolutionary thigns about vista were dropped early in its development cycle
4) Vista doesnt IMO offer anything necessary (apart from Dx10 for the future of gaming)

In my opinion microsoft is pushing this so hard because they HAVE to. vista wouldnt sell on its own. (and i wish it didnt sell at all) seems to me microsoft just needs more cash and is passing this off to earn more money. i dont see any real need for Flip 3D: and i dont understand why they coudlnt just give DX10 to XP to the many millions who use it now. i do not see how Vista is a boon to any user atm. nor to any companies.

All you vista yea sayers might want to get informed on the real advantages of vista before shouting it praises (or demeaning someone who isn't). Oh while your at it. find something in vista that cant be done in xp (i already tried and tested a very nice 3d desktop modification for xp. SphereXP - which i think would be totally awesome with a little more work.) (apart from Dx10)

I am a sporting goods wholesaler/importer and my supplier counts all the things I buy from them as sales.
I on the other hand then have to sell those goods, when I see that sales are good (even though I have not yet sold all my stock, I order some more).
This is standard practice when you are selling and buying.
You do not wait until you sell out of something before you re-order, any retailer or wholesaler of ANY type of goods will tell you that.
Because if you do... you will lose sales, people will go elsewhere if you do not have a particular item in stock.
This is exactly what is happening in this case MS is selling to OEM's, retailers, etc.
When they start to get low they order more and MS counts these (as they rightly should) as sales !
Now although it is not said by anyone MS is a world wide company and therefore they sell to OEM's, retailers, etc. throughout the world, just because a particular person in one town in one state / country doesn't much sales doesn't mean that it is not selling.
Why not ? Because they (in this case MS) is selling to a few in every state, in every country in the world ! Not just the USA !
I am in Australia and Vista is selling not in large quantities but it is selling !!
Worldwide sales of 20 million if you think about it is really not a lot, as there are a lot of people with computers worldwide these days, I myself have three. One for work/play, one for my son and one for my daughter who is doing an advanced Diploma of IT.
So stop bitching about MS's sales figures and as one person said earlier wait for their reports to come out, then we'll all know won't we.
Just because you have something against MS doesn't mean that you can continually rubbish them, sure they have bad in the past, but you should take people on what they do, and not what you think they may be doing now.
If a person likes Linux, or MAC fine, but you don't have to rubbish other people just because they don't use what you do. We all think that the OS that we use is best... fine ! But don't try to crucify others because of it.
Has anyone heard of the saying "let bygones be bygones" or "each to their own" but as soon as someone says "mine is better than yours" that when trouble starts, so stop this trouble now people. It's a new OS lets all get on with life !

Great article, well-balanced and fair. Show us the Activation/validation numbers, MS. The evidence is what matters and the evidence is clear: Vista is not being adopted in huge numbers by end users. What is MOST SIGNIFICANT with the Vista intro however isn't that consumers aren't volunteering for the purchase price/hardware cost slaughter Vista imposes, but that the historical total suck-up by the computer press that was common with all previous new Windows intros has all but vanished. Listen to Podcasts like Leo Laporte's tech Guy or his Canadian cable TV help show, or the TWIT podcast, and you'll see that people are buying Macs more actively in place of Windows, now that, thanks to Vista's baked-in DRM hardware hit, Macs are comparably priced AND run a bug-free more lightweight OS. No paying more for hardware just to support pervasive DRM on the Mac.

Textureglitch raised a point that needs some serious media coverage: "OEMs are actually selling laptops that are too weak to run Vista Home Basic at a useable speed. Why? Because MS pulled Windows XP out of the sales channel.... the [now] "one and only" [Vista] OS can't run on it properly, or the OEMs can sell it with an OS that is completely out of proportions with the hardware."

The fact that very clearly seriously under-capable laptops are being sold to consumers--some with 512K RAM and Vista Home Basic!--is a serious indication that the value equation of the PC has been seriously downgraded by Vista. The real price of such laptops is obtained by factoring in the cost of up to 4 gigs of RAM (or at least 2 gigs), as well as ensuring the video has real Vista capability and the CPU real Vista speed. That is why people are holding off on Vista.

There is a big distinction between Vista for personal use versus corporate.
Vista is not ready for normal corporate use. We have 150 licenses for Vista as part of our Select agreement. I believe we have used two of them. Based on the results we had from our test, we are not deploying Vista. I'm sure they counted our 150 in their sales numbers.

I don't believe Joe is specifically trying to "rubbish" Vista or Microsoft. I can't claim to read the mind of Joe but it would seem that it is more a matter of pointing out that they have lost their way somewhat over the years. As a customer, I certainly feel they are not focused on addressing business needs. They seem intent on changing things for changes' sake without really addressing any underlying issue.

As we are fairly closely tied to Microsoft's technology, I hope they figure it out soon.

Disclaimer:
I am not an MS employee.
I do not own stock in MS.
I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollar on MS software.
This constitutes my personal opinion and should not be construed as an official opinion from my company.

textureglitch you failed to note that a lot of the apps you mention and are counted as Linux vulnerabilities also run on Windows. For example: MySQL, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, php among others.

But it is pointless to discuss matters like this with Neil and company as they've never been under the Microsoft umbrella. For them there is no other thing but Outlook, asp, MS Office and SQL Server 2005.

Silly number nitpicking aside, Vista a clearly a success. Get over it, Joe.

I look forward to using Vista, when it comes preinstalled on my next computer.

Neil Neil Neil. Now I see the foundation for your missed judgement on this issue.

"I am a sporting goods wholesaler/importer and my supplier counts all the things I buy from them as sales."

You should have started with that! Let me get this real straight up front. I totally agree with you and your suppliers' position of counting everything you buy as sales. Let us all run through that again. Don't want you miss quoting me on this or any other thread again. I totally agree with you and your suppliers' position of counting everything you buy as sales.

Now I also want you to realize that software is not the same as golf clubs or tenis rackets. If you see a surge in tenis rackets sales. Do you go out and build more tenis courts? You might!

But see all tenis rackets work on all tenis courts. Microsoft's proposal is contrary to that. Tenis rackets that don't work the same on all courts and in some cases not at all. That would give you second thoughts about building that court wouldn't it?

Now I'm looking at the Callaway site and I don't see any coupons for the X460. Had I bought one say a few months ago would I have been able to upgrade it to the FTi? Guess not huh. Sporting goods wear out, software doesn't.

Am I making my point clear? Well just in case I'm not. We never really know with you. I'll drive it home all the way. You can not extrapolate your sporting good's experience to operating systems and software development.

To finish off I'd like to ask you if you have the activation stats on Vista. Do you? I'd really like to know how many changed their X460 to FTi.

Ok, my thoughts on this issue... Microsoft stated their sales figures. They sell to OEMs and the likes of Best Buy, CompUSA, Fry's etc. That is who they sell to. If they sell through a distribution chain, those are their customers. For the most part, I assume they don't track their re-sellers sales. Maybe you all should be asking THEM for their sales figures, not Microsoft. If some of you don't care to believe their figures, I bet Microsoft isn't concerned. I'm sure they only care if Wall Street believes their figures.

I am not a MS employee, investor or devotee.

On a side note....back when MJF was here, this seemed to be a fair and balanced blog. All of you imagine this..... Microsoft Watch occasionally wrote POSITIVE things about Microsoft!!!!!!! Ever since 'the new management' started writing this, it has been one big long Microsoft bashing. I don't think everything they do is great, but come on..... everything they do is always bad?

Here's a challenge for anyone willing to try...
Can someone point me to ONE article JW has written about Microsoft that is positive from beginning to end? I sure can't remember one.

IMO, if MS said the sky was blue, Joe would write an article about how MS was lying and it's really red.

Scott, that could be

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/web_services_browser/microsoft_reorganizes_search.html

Microsoft Reorganizes Search

Which oddly got only two comments. One asking if the images were done on a Mac and Joe's response that indeed they were.

I didn't see any Neil posts or that of any other Microsoft supporter/shill saying "hurray, we'll take over Google!!"

I honestly don't know what people expect out of Microsoft-Watch? It's just Watch not Cheerleading. It shows the data and asks the tough questions.

If you want vanilla news go to microsoft.com and get your self satisfied.

I don't know how you can dismiss Vista Express Upgrades here so easily, since you couldn't actually order them online until consumer launch day. Microsoft even stated that figures were counted for "online orders" not the bundled coupons that shipped with XP copies.

Also, Microsoft changed their policies for only counting sales going into the channel, not out of it, because they'd have to audit every single channel partner reseller and system builder. Do you honestly think this is feasible?

"The fact that very clearly seriously under-capable laptops are being sold to consumers--some with 512K RAM and Vista Home Basic!"

512K** is a little short IMHO. ;) I haven't seen a computer like that in about 20yrs now (it's supposed to say 512 MEGS).

Honestly though, I've built systems with 512MB of RAM and Vista Home Basic and it runs better than XP on the same hardware, mainly due to better cache control and SuperFetch. Everyone that claims otherwise (as you did through your reference) has either not used such a system, or is regurgitating FUD from the Apple or Linux camps. Systems that sell with Vista Home Basic are designed mostly as internet-boxes and for basic productivity anyway, and are NOT designed for high-end computer use. 512MB and 1GHz is just not sufficient for today's high-end applications. Who wants to try video editing with current software on 512MB on any Mac or Windows machine, assuming the current versions of software even load? How about any current game (or even one from the last two years) on a 1GHz system, 512MB of RAM, or with only the capabilities of the Intel GMA 950 ? Ain't gonna happen, but I'd like to see you try!

Leopard will also have 512MB as it's minimum requirements, but Apple resellers are getting indications from Apple that Leopard will perform optimally on a new computer with AT LEAST 1GB of RAM, which mirrors Microsoft's sentiments about Vista. Also, Apple is highly recommending that resellers don't push Leopard upgrades on users of PowerPC Macs and to recommend new computers for those users (one can only predict that this means the code is no longer optimized on PPC machines) - OUCH! I happen to know a few people that work in stores that sell Apple products, and they've told me about receiving letters from Apple's partner centers and distributors about this.

"The real price of such laptops is obtained by factoring in the cost of up to 4 gigs of RAM (or at least 2 gigs), as well as ensuring the video has real Vista capability and the CPU real Vista speed."

I rest my case. The RAM point is complete FUD. You've been watching too many Mac ads. Video having Vista capability? Any reasonable video card made from the last 3 years supports Pixel Shaders, and thus Aero. Vista-speed CPU? The minimum recommendations are a 1GHz, but dual-core processors have also been out for nearly 3 years.

"thanks to Vista's baked-in DRM hardware hit"

Where have you been? This "hardware hit" from DRM has already been disproven. It has to do with decoding high-bitrate HD content from HD-DVD or BluRay, of which Mac's don't have yet. The DRM poses very little performance hit whatsoever over and above what the video takes to decode. I'd like to see how those with iMac's and the sad notebook CPU's under 2GHz and GMA 950's fare with decoding a BluRay movie. Oh, and the DRM support is REQUIRED for playback of such content, so you Mackie's are not getting off so easily. Neither are Linux users that want to do things legally.

"Macs are comparably priced"

That's rich (or rather, you'd have to be to buy a decent Mac). I compared a Dell Latitude business system a couple months ago to a MacBook Pro with the EXACT SAME SPECS (except for OS), a 3 year warranty, and equivalent versions of the latest version of Microsoft Office for both platforms. The Dell system came out to just over $2300, and yet the Mac came out to OVER a whopping $3200!!! So almost $1000 difference, and FOR WHAT?! Thanks, but I'd rather keep the G-Note and buy a full version copy of Photoshop and still have money to spare. That's some affordability, right thar!

"run a bug-free....OS"

Obviously you're out of the loop, since some MoAB fixes are only just getting around to being patched - more than two months later. Maybe you should check your Software Updates history if you don't believe me.

Another good article, thanks for the insight.

Hey, isn't MS already working on a new operating system? I recall seeing something on the MS website about a new system being rewritten from the ground up.

Sorry, but I see nothing positive in the article you listed. If you mean it isn't out and out bashing, I might give you that. It's very matter-of-fact except for a few derogatory comments.

How about an article where it says MS did a good job at something?

I am not talking about people's responses, I can ignore the Steve Jobs plants just as you can choose to ignore the 'Microsoft supporter/shill' as you see fit. I am talking about the articles that are written.

I don't want cheerleading, but it was not always so negative before.

"Hey, isn't MS already working on a new operating system?"

As soon as one operating system gets out the door, they start up on the next one. That's not to say that they don't do user-interface research studies and such in the interim - there's always several projects on the go. Naturally, Longhorn Server will be the current major project, and Vista SP1 will incorporate Longhorn's updated kernel, among other updates, including one to the Media Center software in Vista Home Premium and Ultimate. The next Windows version will be a minor upgrade. According to their updated schedule, they want to keep minor upgrades (new versions) every 2-3 years and major version upgrades every 5. So in about 2009, expect there to be a new interim Windows version on the market. Since it will be minor, and free support for Vista will last until the next major version, it won't be as compelling for users to buy as the jump from XP to Vista was. That said, it will likely be the only operating system sold with new PC's from that point forward, until the major upgrade in 5 years time. The next Windows codename is Vienna. Microsoft hasn't announced ANYTHING about it yet.

Scott: positive end to end: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/channel/vista_to_pc_makers_youre_welcome.html.

And no comments! Plenty of others. Almost no comments on them either.

My two cents.

Not to mention these Brick:

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/web_services_browser/office_live_gets_more_lively.html

and the flagship!

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/early_office_2007_retail_sales_exceed_predecessor.html

4 comments on that one.

For all of you who can the articles that YOU want to find, there is one important thing to note about them.
They all have have a very low amount of comments, all the high commenting stuff is when the bias comes to the front.
Unfortunately when I tried to search for the real goods they were before February and are now no longer viewable.
My favourite was just when Joe started at Microsoft Watch and it was done by Scot Peterson (editor of eWEEK) Vista ready? Not For Me!, nothing wrong in the title until you read it was about RC1 and Vista had already gone to RTM !!!
Talk about out of date and not to mention that RC1 had heaps of bugs in it, which he knew that way he could give a false impression on Vista, This particular article had well over 60 comments
And what the article where a person was killed when a crane collapsed into a building, and the killed person was working on the marketing of Vista, Joe had a real riot on his hand over that one, so much so that he had to APOLOGISE for his incentative remarks !!! That was a doozy !

Hey I have got one that is current for you !
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/web_services_browser/will_microsoft_see_double_click.html
In it Joe does a story on microsoft.
And he states in his first line:
"Rumors are circulating that Microsoft could acquire DoubleClick. Whether that is true or not, Microsoft is ready to spend what it takes to catch up with Google."
And to back his story up he give A link to the Wall Street Journal.
And it is reporting on what ... yes you guessed it ... a RUMOR !!
So Joe has done all the "facts" and figures on the premise of a RUMOR !!
Great Journalism Joe, how to make a rumor into "fact" !!

"Yesterday's post on Windows Vista license sales—more than 20 million by Microsoft's reckoning—has generated lots of comments."

Not to mention criticisms of your reporting - but hey, honesty is situational right?

"So, I will make that challenge to Microsoft. Why don't you tell us the number of Windows Vista activations?

Um, because customers have min 30 days to activate and can extend that for up to 120? Because corps have their own activation servers and I'm not sure what frequency that gets reported back to MSFT? Because it could provide info on piracy issues that are not something they want to publicize?

"Even if Microsoft refuses to release the number of Vista activations, the company's fiscal fourth quarter should tell all."

Duh, which is why your tempest in a teapot, breathlessly delivered, is really of little import and certainly not worth 2 dedicated posts and a podcast.

Oh, and I forgot to add that many haven't yet received their upgrade - as has been widely reported. Ergo, they couldn't have installed and activated yet. But I guess you'd be happier if MSFT dropped ALL of those from their statements? After all, that would provide a more accurate picture right? LOL.

Paul
Activations alone will not support the figure of 20 million licences sold !
The licences have not all been sold to the end user.
The OEM's, retailers, etc. are holding stock, so as a consequence I would not expect the activations to be as high.
Have a think about it and you understand what I mean.
Sales from Microsoft will not translate into the same number of activations, if they did no one would have any stock ON HAND would they !

I forgot to mention also Paul are you thinking of sales just in the USA or WORLWIDE !
As microsoft would not be saying just the USA alone, now have another think about it.
20 million worldwide is not actually a lot is it, specially now when a lot of people now want to access the internet for business, school, pleasure, or whatever reason.
All the other OS's are able to put windows down, and now the latest ads are from "Linux" with a girl no less, but if windows stands up to these people they don't like it.
And that's what I am doing standing up, now you watch them try and shoot me down, by saying really nasty things, about me, about Windows, etc.

It just came to me, are there any users out there that use "Linux" that are girls ??
Or was this just a cynical attempt by Linux to make their OS different from the "rest" ?
I would be very interested if there was !
As I don't think that there would be, and if there wasn't ...
Question: How do you Linux users feel about being represented by a woman?
The reason I ask this is that I got the impression from some Linux users that their OS was not for women.
It was MAN THING !!

It just came to me, are there any users out there that use "Linux" that are girls ??

Yes of course.

Or was this just a cynical attempt by Linux to make their OS different from the "rest" ?

I beg your pardon? What do you mean by 'from the "rest"'?? You mean the "rest" of the OSes out there are purely the domain of men? Windows and Mac are MEN ONLY? Please explain yourself because you're sure coming through as a chauvinist.

I would be very interested if there was !

Why? You want to score on a girl by your OS preference? I can hear you already "Hi honey, do you Linux?" Or maybe "Hey baby, want to come over and install Gentoo from stage 1?", followed by some Jonny Bravo moves.

As I don't think that there would be, and if there wasn't ...

More exemplar chauvinistic behaviour.

Question: How do you Linux users feel about being represented by a woman?

Hadn't thought about this. I don't think it really matters. Unless you're a chauvinist p*g.

The reason I ask this is that I got the impression from some Linux users that their OS was not for women.
It was MAN THING !!

I didn't know you were a Linux user too. Congrats! Just don't talk bad about women and blame it on other Linux users. Thanks much.

[quote]"Question: How do you Linux users feel about being represented by a woman?
The reason I ask this is that I got the impression from some Linux users that their OS was not for women."[/quote]

This is absurd. No one gave you the impression Linux was only for men, it is [i]your[/i] impression.

How to find out Vista sucks w/o paying for the experience?
Download it from a P2P of your choice.
Go to your local computer store, get the serial # from one of the demo computers. It is on the sticker on the back of the unit and in the "System" control panel. There is a way to use that # but I'll leave it up to you to figure that out.
Have not tried this myself but I hear it works.

You might think it is absurd, but... I am still waiting to see a comment from a woman !!
I feel pretty confident that I won't either, the reason is that my daughter is doing an Advanced Diploma of IT and part of the course was learning and using Ubuntu, I asked her her opinion of it and she said to me "that it is only for advanced users who want to customise their OS".
Not many "advanced users" are women ! As for my daughter she also preferred the "ease of use" of windows instead of Linux, and would not recommend Linux to a pc learner at all, and that my friends is why Windows has a much bigger market share than Linux will ever have, no matter what ads they do.

Vi$ta is bombing. Most people don't even know it's out. Talk to Joe Blow Americano, not IT/power users. They don't count. 1% of 1% of total sales there, folks.

Nobody cares if their PC has Vi$ta or not. They want their porn, their "stolen" MP3s, their iPods, Office 97 and games to work. They just don't care.

20 million sold? Doubt it. UPC/SKU scans don't add up. How can you get around those? Unless the units are stolen.

One thing I watch regularly are browser statistics as I'm a big firefox fan. Follow this link and scroll down about halfway. Notice the operating system statistics:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Of the machines polled .6% had vista in January and 1.2% had vista in February... Notice XP has not decreased. I'm not sure how accurate this information is or what it means, I just found it fascinating...

Not going to get into the Microsoft bashing. Really, now this may sound like it but in a few years after Microsoft has copied or made it operating system contain look alikes to all other programs that are now seperate. When that happens it will cause a big mess as all Microsoft has to do is void all previous EMULA's and require a person or company to upgrade to the new OS. At a yearly subscription. Like home owners how about $100.00 per month, Business $1000.per month. Now that is just for the OS. Others programs for $$$ per month.
This is just a senerio but could actually happen and even the goverment would be hung. Justice Dept. be dammed. Microsoft would be toooooo big for even the Justice Dept. to handle. Oh well, my two cents worth.

I take issue with your comments about shareholder bias. Even if some readers do own Microsoft shares, they are hardly likely to own enough that posting nice things about the company on blogs and news sites would make any noticeable difference to their share price.

In fact, most people who own a few shares are, first and foremost, workers. And you rarely ever see workers sticking up for their rights or saying anything that might improve their situation in this respect. If people can't see where their interests lie when it's made clear to them on a daily basis, what makes you think they'll recognise a few $K worth of shares as a valid reason to get active?

If, on the other hand, you're referring to some sort of intangible allegiance to Microsoft because they believe that owning a few shares means they're a part of something, then you're dealing with the same basic phenomenon that gives rise to the ever-annoying legion of fanboys - in which case, "conflict of interest" is not an accurate portrayal of their motives. They simply can't see the world with any sort of perspective and so totally irrelevant things become causes worth fighting for (or, at least, harping on about).

After reading all the posts on here, I have to agree a little with almost everyone. I have worked in IT for over 5 years for major corporations and a couple smaller companies, and I have dealt with multiple OS's.

I try to never develop a biased opinion, and I love most Microsoft products (they have the money, therefore generally produce nice stuff). Office 2007 has many many important and usable additional features that really make it worth an upgrade (especially for corporate networks).

But after beta testing Vista through its infancy and then testing it after release, I have come to the conclusion that Vista is NOT worth the cost for an upgrade. There is nothing in Vista that isn't already available in Windows XP (free or with software installs), other than DirectX 10.

But when you look at the performance hit from Vista, is DirectX 10 really going to improve your gaming or will Vista offset any of the NEW Games coming out. My friend just purchased a $4,000 Dell XPS laptop (that looks like a huge briefcase PC) with a Core2 Duo, RAID-0 (7200rpm sataI), 2GB Ram, GeForce 8 series card, and yep.. Vista. He has to turn every settings to low except textures in BF2 and run it on 1024x768 just to be able to play it. Now I have a system running an Athlon64 x2, 2GB ram, 2x GeForce 6 SLI, RAID-0 (7200rpm SataII) and I can run the game with most settings on medium to high AND at 1600x1200 resolution. There is no doubt in my mind Vista drastically affects gaming performance.

But I am not here to talk about gaming in Vista. But if you don't care about gaming, then why do you NEED Vista?? It doesn't offer any advantagous. If you just bought a gym pass that doesn't expire, why would you spend another $150 -$300+ dollars on another gym pass that will not get you anything extra. I think microsoft tried to hard to force Vista out on time. I truly hope Windows Server 2008 is not similar, as I have not beta tested it yet, but am looking to test our Tech Net subscription sometime this month.

Don't get me wrong.. I LOVE Microsoft, and I love open source and freeware. I use linux and apache at home for webservers and bandwidth management. I use Windows 2003 servers at work and home, and I use Win XP at home for personal, gaming, PVR, and in car MP3/gps system. For personal use, I really don't want splashy, I want fast and stable and effective so I can listen to all my downloaded mp3s and ripped dvds and use and test all my apps.

I leave the ball in Microsofts court to come out with something worth upgrading for and then I will be there, otherwise I let all my family, friends, and collegues know that Vista is a waste of money. You are just giving Microsoft $150-$600 dollars of your income so that you can do the exact same stuff you did before with a splashy new gui.

Cheers,

DethKnite

Just two minor points.

> So MS would therefore release ONLY true facts as anything [else] would be illegal to do.
--
I wouldn't advise to base trust in anything just because it would be illegal to do otherwise.

Regarding the "everybody says its a flop and then eveyrbody always upgrades anyway"... Not so. Remember Windows ME?