Print - The 'Duh' Starts Now: Weighing In on the Vista Launch

With the tagline "The Wow Starts Now," it seems like the Windows Vista launch was almost designed to be ridiculed. After all, how could the Vista launch measure up to Microsoft's famous Windows 95 launch?

The answer, of course, is that it can't, and analysts are already beginning to criticize Microsoft's Vista launch and marketing efforts. I suppose it all comes down to how you measure such things. In 1995, only a small percentage of people had computers and those who had even heard of the Internet were accessing it via a pokey dial-up connection that squealed in your ear if you inadvertently picked up the telephone receiver while you were downloading your email. In other words, Microsoft was able to position Win95 much more broadly back then because moving to Win95 was a monumental improvement for virtually everyone.

However, times have changed. Many people in developed nations own or use PCs, and the capabilities of OSs have improved dramatically over the years. The Internet is common and typically accessed via fat broadband pipes. Heck, it's even common for consumers in North America, Asia, and Western Europe to access Internet sites and services via their cell phones.

What else has changed? When Win95 was launched, few retail stores sold the OS, so long lines at midnight madness launch events gave the system a more exciting send-off with more people showing up per store. This year, 39,000 retailers in the United States alone stocked Vista the day it was launched, making for shorter lines and shorter waits. And of course, most people who buy Vista retail packages will do so from online retailers such as Amazon.com, which, incidentally, reported exceptionally high demand for the product. Unfortunately, images of people clicking "Buy Now" in a Web browser don't make for exciting news reports.

But what about compared with the recent video game launches such as those for the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, you say? Those drew strong crowds of people waiting outside of retail stores overnight. Surely, Vista was a dud compared to those products. Not at all: The PlayStation 3 and Wii were in very short supply, whereas Microsoft pumped the retail channel full of Vista. It will never be hard to find or purchase Vista; consumers can easily walk into a Best Buy today and purchase the Vista version they want. There was no need to run out into the cold January night when you could order (or preorder) Vista from the comfort of your couch. Heck, you can even download Vista from Windows Marketplace if you want.

But let's bring a bit of reality back to the equation for those of you who are still worried that Vista is going to chug along with slow sales and disappointing returns. Even in its most conservative public estimates, Microsoft said it expects to sell more than 100 million copies of Vista by the end of 2007 and more than 200 million copies by the end of 2008. Frankly, the numbers will probably be quite a bit better than that, considering that more than 200 million PCs will be sold each year.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company expects to sell more than five times as many copies of Vista in the next three months as it did during the same time period after the Win95 launch. Yes, the market is bigger today, Ballmer admitted, but part of the reason is the excitement for the product, which was five years in the making. To put it simply, Vista was a blockbuster waiting to happen. The fact that few people lined up outside stores the night of the launch says more about the maturity of the market than it does about Vista's performance.

@Paul Well said. All comparisons to Windows 95 are moot. It's a very different situation now.

"Put simply, Vista was a blockbuster waiting to happen." So much for the train-wreck, eh Paul?

Vista would sell like hotcakes even if it were a trainwreck (which is surely isn't). As the default OS on any new PC shipped, it can't help but be a hit. "Yes, the market is bigger today, he admitted, but part of the reason is consumer excitement for the product, which was five years in the making." Please. The size of the market is the only statistic that matters here. "Consumer Excitement" for Vista is something that just doesn't really exist outside the Tech Enthusiast community, sorry.

@lotsa: "The size of the market is the only statistic that matters here. "Consumer Excitement" for Vista is something that just doesn't really exist outside the Tech Enthusiast community, sorry." The same was true with Windows 95. And unless you're a fan of Macs, a new MacOS means little to you.

The only "Wow" is that Microsoft finally has a new version of Windows out in 5 years that sports a better user interface and other features Mac OS X users have been enjoying for as long as 5 years now. We all know the majority of consumer Vista "purchases" will be in the form of: 1. Vista (Whatever Edition) being preinstalled on a new PC. 2. Windows AnyTime upgrades from preinstalled lesser versions of Vista to higher versions. Joe Sixpacks who picked up a new XP PC between last fall and today will buy the various upgrade editions they qualify for. They'll even pay extra to have the Geek Squad do the upgrade and perform "personalization" service. They might get a second "Wow" in the form of unexpected hardware upgrades. ("When I bought the PC, the guy at Best Buy said Vista would run on it. He said 512MB of RAM should be plenty.." "Well, sir, that was before MS changed the specifications and..") Hobbyists will snatch up the lower-priced, full-version OEM copies. Windows IT Pros here will steal their corporate MSDN copy to peform their home installs.

As long as I don't have to drag the disk onto the trashcan to eject it Im happy.

"Windows IT Pros here will steal their corporate MSDN copy to peform their home installs." Don't be angry because Microsoft supports its developers.

sticknick: No gloating, please :-) Back when Paul Thurrott accused Vista of being a "train wreck," it most certainly was the epitome of a train wreck. And lotsamystuff is right. Only a tech enthusiast would be interested or excited by Vista. My parents, on the other hand, would look at a side-by-side comparison of XP and Vista like cows at a passing train.

mwrisner: I'm not gloating, I'm just pointing out Paul's flip-floppin' I mean, last summer, Vista was a train wreck and OX X was the apple of Paul's eye (hehe get it? Apple? I slay me!). Now Apple is bad, bad, bad and Vista is a blockbuster - based on a weird stat like: "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company expects to sell more than five times as many copies of Vista in the next three months as it did during the same time period after the Win95 launch." Of course they will!! There are easily five times as many computer users as there was back when Windows 95 came out. Yet Paul will laud this, and then turn around and nitpick Steve Jobs when he says "Apple sold twice the amount of laptops than we did last year at this time." And I though I was back and forth on the whole computer thing. Paul's turning into a politician. Anyone remember when Zune was coming out? How about when it actually came out? Paul trashed left and right it before it even hit the shelves (or his doorstep for that matter). He praised iPod as being the best mp3 player on the market. Hands down. "What the hell is MS thinking? Zune is horrible!" Now if you head to the Windows Super Site hes actaully doing a head to head comparison because "maybe Zune ain't all that bad after all?" Sheesh. At least there is one thing about guys like David Pogue, you know where they stand 100%. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand Pogue, but at least I know what his fight is.

That being said: Firefox needs a grammar checker to go along with it's spell checker... I just re-read my last comment. Yikes! You can tell I didn't major in English ;-)

"The same was true with Windows 95." Not true, my friend. I remember the story that ran during the coverage of the W95 hysteria where a woman walked in to her local store and wanted a copy of Windows '95. "What kind of computer do you have?" she was asked. "What? You need a computer?" The W95 hype went WAY beyond the tech enthusiast crowd. It was, truly, a one-of-a-kind product introduction.

MSDNAA Vista went live to east coast subscribing universities today. Product: Windows Vista Business DVD 1 Download @ $0.00 USD = $0.00 USD Method of Payment: No Charge 6628MB If you have the privilege, I suggest going for it.

And I also believe the bonch permutations owe an apology. Along with everyone else who complained that at the time of RTM Vista, the Zune's interface was not Vista compatible. I believe the common retort was, "Itunes already works for vista, why can't Zune work?" Well... iTunes __still__ doesn't work with Vista, and Apple is begging for users to not upgrade. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6330913.stm

"Well... iTunes __still__ doesn't work with Vista, and Apple is begging for users to not upgrade." If iTunes doesn't work with Vista it means no one cares about Vista. Just ask lotsa.

@lotsa: "The W95 hype went WAY beyond the tech enthusiast crowd. It was, truly, a one-of-a-kind product introduction." See, and I don't remember any of my non-tech fans being all that entralled with Windows 95. I'm willing to say that may just be my impression.

I was in line with 30 other people in front of a small shop to buy a copy of World of Warcraft. Now that's what I call a successful launch.

I am guessing that the "flip-flop" if that is really what this is, would be necessary for Paul when you consider the resources at his disposal. The beauty of Vista is in the eye of the beholders that are enthusiastic wihtin the IT environment. If you do the kind of work Paul does, then Vista might be a like fresh air when considering the boring nature of XP after a period of time. Security and search have improved (again only in the eye of the beholders) and Vista has finally adopted the visuals that have been around for years in the Linux and OS X environments. While this forum is IT oriented, it is still prudent to consider the general consumer (you know those people that don't really understand the computer and OS as the complete communication tool) and how they have an effect on the economical and social impact of Vista. Vista (in my opinion one of Microsofts worst products to date), will eventually get the kinks worked out and become "the" operating system where percentage is concerned. As it stands now, it is rushed, full of grammatical errors, buggy, and assuming where understanding the user is concerned. But we have to understand that Microsoft had to release the product when they did. As for the consumer world, most could care less and when they buy a new pc with Vista holding the reigns, they will adjust after downing a few more seltzers to calm the nerves. Paul had to flip-flop whether he can admit that or not because it is a matter of his well being within his working environment......fortunately, he has done this in a subtle and graceful way without being ridiculous. At least he hasn't gone off the deep end like Mr. Gates in making statements ill-advised as such where interviews (consider the Time interview fiasco) promoting how innovative and revolutionary Vista is. Frankly, Vista is far from being both or even either one of revolutionary and innovative.

Well, I've made the switch. So far I'm happy, although Vista has 'goldfished' to my primary system, fitting happily in 1150MB of system memory where XP sat in 700MB, with roughly the same activity occuring. I can confirm SPDIF works absoltely fine out the box, MS kept their promise to 'leave it to others'. Responsiveness is superb in the network stack. Performing a VCS payload transfer from XP Pro > Server 2003 Enterprise held a throughput of 35MB/s sustained, through 1Gbit pipe. Vista performed the same task, to the same server, at a mighty 58MB/s sustained (thats 484mbit/s in cable internet terms or a blistering 475,000kbit/s in old 56k terms). To see if iTunes was really 'broke' in Vista, I gave it a shot. It very much is. Installs clean, executes clean... but if you play music, expect jerks, alot of them. To be honest however, I don't see where the superb responsiveness of vista is. I mean, it's ok, but I was running XP Pro on a system that had vastly more resources than the XP kernel could ever hope of needing on its own, so it was always very responsive, even with VS2005, Outlook, AIM, iTunes, 20tabbed Firefoxes, 5 or 6 instances of explorer, and remote controlling a server or two. Mind you, Vista still can do all that and stay responsive, but when I did that in XP, I still had 500MB to play with in system memory, and both CPU cores had a bit of headroom. In Vista, less left to play with. But hey, it's all pretty, very pretty. Window animations have that brutal solidness that Microsoft does so well. With xgl and osx... they just feel unstable, like it could glitch and revert; vista feels native. Now I wish MS would force standardization, Vista makes that iTunes interface look deplorably ugly. MS kept functionality with their new form, and that's why Vista will sell. Apple doesn't have a problem with tradeoffs... that's why sometimes my iPod won't turn off.......

will, Vista's drive caching uses more memory than XP's. mind you the minimum requirements are higher for Vista too, but if you check the amount of RAM that Vista reserves for drive caching, it's usually twice as much as XP on a system with 2GB of RAM.

oops....double post....i thought it stalled, so i stopped the page load and added a bit. XP

@will84 The reason Vista uses so much memory is that it stores your most frequently used programs in memory. That is why it is so responsive. If you load another app, Vista will release the memory. It is *not* using the memory for system processes.

Well it's odd, now with the same stuff open after a few reboots, it's only using around 500-600... eerie...

"who shook the tree? the orc fell out." Well, "Waethorn", if you're worried about falling orcs landing on your head, you should get back under the bridge where you belong. ;-)

sorry that place is reserved for you and bonch. there's no room for a threesome. you guys have fun though. ;) XP

You know it seems to me that the memory hogging and so on with Vista should be unneccessary. There are always tricks, but what in the world is the problem there and why? I guess this is just one of the issues that stands out and doesn't really support the need to go with this system. Even more frustrating, I have the slots and specs available for 4 gigs of RAM....but if I remember my reading a week ago, Vista only supports and off number...something like 3.9 or something.......which makes adding impossible.......or am I misinformed? If not, what is with that......Waethorn......?????

depends on the system. some systems will support 8GB of RAM because they tap into 64-bit addressing. 32-bit addressing systems support a maximum of 4GB. this is not dependant entirely on what the CPU can do, but is dependant on the memory controller, which may have tighter restrictions than the CPU. the most common reason why a typical system can't address a full 4GB of RAM is because the 32-bit memory controller has reserved address space for your video card between the 3.5 to 4GB of memory addresses, which will mean that physical RAM mapped to the same address space won't be seen by the system. this is common for most video chipsets and is not related to the OS, sorry. blame your chipset maker for not supporting 64-bit addresses, even if your CPU platform supports it. most Intel server platforms don't have this restriction because the video addresses are WAAAAAY up high in the 64-bit realm, even for server chipsets that only support 8GB of RAM. this is because all current Intel server chipsets are designed for 64-bit server computing. to avoid the problem, it's safest to buy a desktop motherboard that supports a maximum of 8GB of RAM. that's a sure sign that it does 64-bit addressing. video address space is almost always in the last xxxMB segment of address space that the chipset supports. sometimes chipsets will still limit the amount of installable RAM even if the address space is much larger. often this is a synthetic limitation because of what current technology will permit. XP