Well, What Did You Expect Him to Say? Windows 7 Is Selling Poorly?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 5, 2009 at 10:50 AM PT
Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system is selling quite well, according to CEO Steve Ballmer. In remarks at a press conference in Tokyo Thursday, Ballmer said that Windows 7’s first 10 days at market have been more successful than those of any of its predecessors.
“We’ve had a great response here in Japan,” Ballmer said. “Certainly we’ve seen initial sales be fantastic. The first ten days were bigger than the first ten days of XP or Vista or any other Windows launch that we have done.”
And indeed that would seem to be the case. According to research outfit NPD, Microsoft (MSFT) sales of Windows 7 in its first few days on the market were more than triple Vista sales for the same length of time.
Comments
No John, of course we ALL would expect Ballmer to say that!
What we would NOT expected is YOU to write this piece!
Apple and Google joined forces in windows-7 bashing ads! of course, they are ‘no evil’ corporations, right?
And tech ‘journalists’ all around the web seams to be stupidly wanting win7 to fail!
windows 7 is actually a REVOLUTION in personal computing!
Posted by Laputean Solaris at November 5th, 2009 at 11:11 amTouch screens were NEVER meant to small size screens!
Yeah, well I would expect no less from Mr. Ballmer.
Posted by Dest Naru at November 5th, 2009 at 1:20 pmHe always puts a positive spin on everything Microsoft to the point of absolute absurdity and usually winds up looking foolish in the process just as he does this time.
Apparently he is of the belief that if you say something to the press and you have lots of money it will magically come true no matter how ludicrous it is.
Ok, Windows 7 is pretty good I guess and no doubt a lot better than Vista but no one except the demented people are all that excited about it and I certainly don’t understand how sales in Japan can be that great when most of the businesses and schools in Japan including the Japanese government have moved to or are moving to open source as mandated by their national open source initiative and have been doing so since 2003.
I am going to have to regard Mr. Ballmer’s assertions as just more pep talk and MS lies.
Given the number of Windows users (some would say “sufferers”) who are stuck on XP following the disastrous Vista introduction, one would expect a huge uptake for Windows 7. It remains to be seen whether the introduction of Windows 7 will result in a net loss of Windows users as people take the opportunity to switch to Mac. There is some evidence to suggest that this is happening in larger numbers than Microsoft will admit – perhaps because XP users were waiting to see what Windows 7 had to offer before they made a move.
From early reviews it seems that Windows 7 is a considerable improvement on Vista, yet it retains the old Windows underpinnings, including the registry. In comparison to Snow Leopard, Windows 7 is old technology, leaving Microsoft at an ever-increasing disadvantage when it comes to introducing new features or driving performance improvements.
Apple had their own Vista experience – but they abandoned development of their old OS and started from scratch with OS X when they acquired Next.
Posted by Stephen Jones at November 5th, 2009 at 2:37 pmJohn, Ballmer said the exact same thing about Vista sales.
Posted by Stephen Antonucci at November 5th, 2009 at 4:26 pm> What we would NOT expected
> is YOU to write this piece!
Get a grip. Windows 7 has not proven itself yet, and certainly has not even begun to make up for the past. Windows has a well-earned reputation for technical failure. Acting like someone who disrespects Windows is way out on a limb is ridiculous. The onus is on partisans such as yourself to tell the rest of us why Windows has changed for the better, if in fact it has. The whole platform has been an ongoing tire fire for years and years now. Windows 7 still runs 80% of the viruses and malware designed for Windows XP. That means it is fundamentally not suitable for deployment. If you value your time and data and work so little that you can use Windows, then good for you. But don’t act like there is something wrong with the rest of us. You are the odd one out, even amongst Windows users, Windows is not popular.
Posted by Fred Hamranhansenhansen at November 6th, 2009 at 5:31 pmVista is not bad, it is really bad!
I purchased a new laptop in 2008 with Vista having been factory installed. You would think everything would run ok. Wrong. Doing professional voice recording was nearly impossible. The operating system was introducing scratching sounds in the recording every minute or so. We used another PC with completely different hardware, but in this case we had upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista; same problem! We had no such problem with Windows XP. Recently, we upgraded our 2008 laptop from Vista to Windows 7 Ultimate and the problem was immediately fixed. Go figure!
Windows 7 Professional Upgrade is a revolution in frustration:
I purchased two copies of Windows 7 Profession from Amazon. The information Microsoft provided at their website and the information provided on the Amazon site clearly states that the Upgrade is designed for Windows Vista. NO WHERE does Microsoft state that Windows 7 Professional can be upgraded only from Windows Vista Business! So if you have Vista Premium, you cannot upgrade to Windows 7 Professional. Microsoft’s Windows 7 page (at the time of this writing) did not make any distinction between upgrading from the various versions of Vista (Link: http://www.microsoft.com/Windo.....ault.aspx).
How can Microsoft have a site dedicated to introducing Windows 7, have a “comparison” tab, which lists and compare the various upgrade versions of Windows 7 (with upgrade prices), and give you the impression that all versions of Windows Vista is upgradable to all versions of Windows 7. I spent over one hour wondering and researching why I could not upgrade from Windows Vista Premium to my newly purchased upgrade copies of Windows 7 Professional. It is things like this that Apple is exploiting against Microsoft for good reason.
Windows 7 Professional is upgradable only from Windows Vista Business:
A little history; I had taken advantage of Microsoft’s early purchase promotion and purchased two upgrade copies of Windows 7 Professional at the promotional price of $99 per copy (List $199.99). Note, this promotional price is no longer in effect – it was a pre-release price only. Why Microsoft would advertise an upgrade product (Windows 7), provide the option to order the product online, tell the customer that they can upgrade from a previous version (Windows Vista), and not provide qualifying statement about upgrade restrictions, is besides me. Walk into any retail outlet, pickup an Upgrade copy of Windows 7 Professional and you will see printed on the box “This version of Windows 7 is designed as an upgrade for Windows Vista”. This is a false statement – and it cost me valuable time (and thus money). This is an example of the types of problem Microsoft needs to overcome in order to gain the confidence of the public.
A Message to Microsoft:
Microsoft, I am not a happy customer; all of our PCs are Windows PCs; this mess I am describing here still exists in the marketplace; you are frustrating the daylight out of so many people; so please fix this PROBLEM as-soon-as-possible.
Posted by Andrew Augustine at November 6th, 2009 at 10:32 pm