Gates: 'Vista's had incredible reception'

Microsoft founder responds to comments from CEO Steve Ballmer that analyst forecasts for Vista revenue were "overly aggressive."

The story "Gates: 'Vista's had incredible reception'" published February 21, 2007 at 5:27 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[ppgreat]

Are these guys on the same page?!?

This isn't a to-may-to, to-mah-to clarification.

This is the two top execs at Microsoft contradicting each other.

People have been questioning some of Gates' public statements of
late and this is just more fodder for the notion that he is out front
and out of touch.

It's one thing to spin and another to be dizzy.

[Schratboy]

Vista's "Incredible" Reception? Yea, sure!...

Gates may be truthful. When initial users installed the product they exclaimed, "Incredible! This crap has even more holes in it than XP. Freaking incredible! I'm not more secure now than I was before. Vista is freakin incredible! I shouldn't be surprised.
:)

[airwalkery2k]

Vista is the new WMD

I think this goes by the old strategy that if you say something enough, it will be reported on and eventually people will believe it's the truth.

[Lindy01]

Then

you look at the sales data and relize your comment....is just like the WMD in Iraq....total garbage.

[Bevo4138]

Gates not Contradicting Ballmer

in·cred·i·ble ?adjective
2. not credible; hard to believe; unbelievable:

-from Dictionary.com

[FellowConspirator]

Very credible.

I'll buy that financial analysts had
unreasonable expectations with regard to Vista.
Most people, even at MS (if you read the
employee blogs), were on board with Vista being
nothing to write home about. Certainly IT folks
worth their salt knew how it would be received.

Gates is pointing out that Vista is selling lots
of discounted Windows XP-based PCs (as has been
reported int he press) -- and he's tickled that
some of them even wanted a copy of Vista. Who
would have expected anyone to want Vista?! Not
MS, certainly, so there you go -- it *IS* and
"incredible reception".

[Seaspray0]

Microsoft Spin

incredible reception - perhaps it is well received by those who have so far bought it. Note that Balmer did not say "sales numbers are high." Perhaps Microsoft execs are taking their cues from the movie "Thank you for Smoking" where you can make any product look good. To Mr. Balmer: I like XP and haven't seen a good enough reason to spend $$$ to upgade it to Vista. Neither can many of my associates.

[RompStar_420]

Vista is nothing, wait until Exchange 2007

While most people are obsessed with Vista, that's not the only product that received major changes. For Example, are you an IT guy, manage microsoft servers, IIS or Exchange ?

What are you running now ? Exchange 2003 ?

lol

Exchange 2007 will only be available in 64-bit (only), a 32 bit version was made, but it is unsupported and for internal MS use and some special people might get it.

So that server you got, guess what, if it ain't 64-bit, it gotta go and it only supports selective 64-bit CPU from AMD and Intel, the older 64-bit Itanium processors are not supported at all.

And that's just 1 of 100 supprises that you will be told about or maybe not :- )

[wolivere]

And so?

Most firms run a 3 year to a 5 year life cycle. I know for us we run a 3 year, due to hardware maintenace costs beyond the 3rd year.

But anyhow how many servers sold in the past 3 years does not support 64bit?

If you are a firm that will upgrade to 2007, you most likley are on leading edge so most likley will have the hardware to support it.

If you are like others you may be running one version behind. And thus this has not effect on you.

[Lindy01]

????????????

First off Vista will be sold to millions...upon millions of users mostly with new PC's and done so very quickly, like in the next two years. How many PC's does Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer and Toshiba sell each year? 98% of them will come with Vista...so it will market penatration really fast.

Microsoft sells hundreds of copies of Exchange each year...maybe thousands. The upgrade cycle for going to a new Exchange platform can be anywhere from 3-7 years. Lots of companies sat on Exchange 5.5 for a very long time and only moved to Exchange 2003 (by passing Exchange 2000) because MS was dropping support for it after 9 years.

Any company wanting to move from Exchange 2003 to 2007 has not problem upgrading to 64bit CPU's....heck most probably are running Exchange 2003 on 64bit capable servers since both Intel and AMD have been selling 64bit CPU's for more than two years...and most people moved Exchange 2003 in the last two years.

Besides the major advantage of Exchange 2007 being 64bit....is Exchange server consolodation with real support beyond 4gigs of ram and 4CPU's....they moved to 64bit because the customers wanted it.

Man the CR@P on this site that is stated.

[Xenu7-214951314497503184010868]

Life After Vista: The Best is Yet to Come!

OS X

[Razzl]

the last circle in hell...

...is reserved for big-time fibbers and spinners. People like Gates and Cheney and Bush and Billy O'Reilly and Saddam's propaganda minister will all have nobody to converse with but each other...and lots of time on their hands...

[DrDreg]

Reality Ablation Field

Viz these comments, and Mr. Gates' reality-denying screed of last
week, it is clear that The Chairman exists in a bubble. His awkward
behavior on The Daily Show, walking off stage before they could
get to commerical, his confused ranting against Apple, OS X and
Jobs, and this most recent statement suggests that he does not
wield a reality distortion field, but a reality ablation field.

DrDreg
www.drdreg.com

[Thomas, David]

Ablation?

. I know you are trying to impress. However, improper word
usage simply won't do.

ablation |??bl? sh ?n| noun
1 the surgical removal of body tissue.
2 the removal of snow and ice by melting or evaporation,
typically from a glacier or iceberg.
? the erosion of rock, typically by wind action.
? the loss of surface material from a spacecraft or meteorite
through evaporation or melting caused by friction with the
atmosphere.

[Bertbaby]

AstalaVista Billy!

They can't even get on the same page regarding the marketing you can only imagine what the development cycle was like for this $*@!

[DrDreg]

two minutes windows install

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbf9tOGwno" target="_newWindow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbf9tOGwno</a>

[wolivere]

All though intresting

And? please explain. Have you seen a slew of (Secuirty Alerts) breached systems? No.

Are there issues? sure are, and who are these people with issues? Nvidia with poor driver support? a 680 chipset released to fast with MB manufactures scrambling to keep people from cooking there ram on 680i boards? the 8800 video card which is having issues left right and center with vista driver support really poor?

Or is it the people trying to instal iolo after seeing on there site VISTA compatible!! then buying the software and finding out they can't even install it. So they install it on there XP box only to have there AV software scream about the rootkit SM7 installs?

Or is it the people with a system that meets the low end of the spec requirement and then try and run the top end of the product and go *** why can't I run this?

Or is it the MAC people saying who needs to upgrade? I just install my CD on any mac and bingo. So yes I brought my old MAC I in, and plunked it on my APPLE fans desk and asked them to install it. No? Okay I then grabed my 1997 Vintage power mac and install it? No? ahh okay I understand.

Stangley though, company who are selling new PC's with Vista installed are seeing a sales surge? Why? many people held of PC purchases and waited.

This is the same trend we saw earlier.

And for all the screaming from our AV friends, who made a fortune runing on the Microsoft cloak, wow stangle every single one of them has releaed Vista compatible software.

Oh wait you mean your Direct Downloaded Atari Vintage games don't run with the open gl emulator, becuase your ATI or Nvidia driver has a sub note saying Open GL support limited at this time?

No, maybe its I can run my games on my Linux box on wine its easy. Well yah I know the sound screws up, yah I know my mouse vanishes from time to time, yah I know I need to redo my wine configuration on each game patch...

No I swaped out my video card on my Linux box and now I can't load my KDE. Or was that wait my linux kernal only has a 128k foot print no KDE3 or Gnome loaded stripped down..

Wait no its Novell is pushing Linux!! oh wait what happened with Wordperfect? you know the once all mighty wordprocessor? Wait IBM is pushing linux... wait its HP thats surging in the Server field..

No its LINUX has a 25% market share.. no wait thats 25% of the new server install market.. hmm who is grabbing the rest.. no wait Microsoft is eroding.. wait, they had increased growth in the Desktop and Server OS field..

Wait.. I forgot where I am posting..

[NWLB]

People are buying computers now because...

...they know they can't upgrade the OS, and since they'll have them five years, they can't wait, and can't run Vista on less hardware. No real choice.

Personally, I'm still not buying a new system until 08, and may not get Vista even then. The games out there, aren't going to mandate Vista for awhile, I use no apps that need it, and if I want the MS version of all the free gadgets I get already.....wait I don't.

Billy's ego prevents him from shutting his mouth and dealing with the foundation he should be focused on.

[Too Old For IT]

Vista = Win ME Part Two

...

[onlyauser]

Went and check out Vista and decided I can wait for sure!

Vista is beautiful and I liked it, however, I do not want the problems this early release may cause. Many applications like 3d applications that rely on openGl do not seem to be functioning as well as they should yet. The video card companies need to polish their drivers better for Vista.

XP is working great for me right now. I choose to wait until Vista crosses the release speed bumps and not budge until SP1 at the least. I was going to purchase a new computer early this year but the release of Vista convinced me to wait until it has a service pack released.

[Rocco73]

Bottom line is...

Don't own Vista and don't want to right now. I run XP SP2 and it runs fine and plays nice with most everything..now. According to my research here and other places on the 'Net, Vista has too many hardware driver issues, gaming issues, software issues, few applications made to take advantage of it and..don't quote me on this but the features that are touted and hyped about Vista are only available in the two most expensive versions. But, from my experiences with Windows since 1992 and the average user, consumers are like small children in that when you dangle something shiny and new in front of them that is newer and shinier than what they have now and they will inevitably take it. Not knocking people and their smarts, but that is the way it is. Microsoft is the dominant player in the world for Os's and will continue to be no matter what for the forseeable future. Don't like it, either deal with it or switch to Linux or a Mac. This is a great forum.

Rocco

[t8]

Stick with XP, 98, & Google

Stay with your current OS and download 'Google Pack'.
All Vista is in XP with features they copied from Apple and Google like Desktop Search.

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html" target="_newWindow">http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html</a>

[aabcdefghij987654321]

In Gates' dictionary:

incredible (adj.): Lacking conviction or enthusiasm; indifferent: gave only incredible support to the incumbent candidate.

[TechMad]

Vista does not = ME

I've seen a few posts where people have compared Windows Vista to Windows ME. There is a big fundamental difference. Vista is coming pre-installed on tons of systems. I don't recall system builders make a concerted push to include ME on pre-built systems. Whether you like it or not, if you buy a pre-built PC, which the majority of users do, you are going to have it forced it down your throat anyways, so get used to Vista, your going to be seeing a lot of it in the near future, it ain't that bad... That is unless something like Ubuntu Linux catches on... or Macs take over... hey, I can dream right. Besides it ain't that bad..not worth rushing to upgrade, but something to consider on your next system purchase or upgrade.

[GGGlen]

Oh yeah they did

Back when ME was released, I worked as a tech for one of the US's
largest CompRetailers, and every machine from every company on
the shelf IMMEDIATELY switched their pre-loads to ME. Not only
that, we were directed to offer "free upgrades to ME, while you
wait".
What a nightmare that was!!!

[jcenteno]

What's Bill smoking

I wan't some of that Bill,I tried Vista and it really dissapointed me, nothing new, maybe with a good marihuana roll Vista could be nicier, but I keep looking at the Vista's box and there's no marihuana, maybe I should complain to MS support asking for my roll, but it would take weeks to get an answer, so you know, I'll stick with ubuntu+beryl, that with MythTV is a real real cool thing. Vista? Not for me , thanks.

By the way, I already was running Ubuntu in my machine, after Vista's setup my grub boot dissapeared, so I went to IRC, to ubuntu channel, and bam, 15 minutes and my problem was solved, that's support.

[thedreaming]

Bill Gates

I would love to meet Bill Gates and ask him where he buys his pot. That's some good stuff if he thinks Vista's reception has been incredible.

Last night, built a machine for a client, installed Vista Home Premium. He more than meets the specs for Aero graphics but couldn't get them to work.

Most of the motherboard drivers were instantly rejected by vista and replaced by automatically.

So the client has a killer gaming rig with home basic graphics.

He asked, "Is it too late to get XP?"

[TechMad]

yeah but...

You could still find Windows 98 SE computers even after ME was released for a while. You will not find any computers loaded with XP in the near future, MS is really behind Vista wholeheartedly unlike the beta that was ME.

[wwjunk]

Vista, an icredible flop

Worst thing MS does is to keep adding bells and whistles when they can't make the basics work right.

Don't bother me with 3d, just give me an operating system that works right and doesn't crash.

I am running XP Pro, preinstalled on an IBM product and I can't tell you how many times I have to hold down the power button because XP froze up the machine completely.

MS can blame the hardware and the applications all they want, BUT, it's still the OS responsibility to manage the show.

[jmdunys]

Vista is OK

But nothing to shout about.

In the past weeks, I tested many OS on my laptop as a project for a charity.

As far as stability, performance, and adaptability, the winner was (surprisingly to me) ... Ubuntu 6.10 with Beryl.
Evolution connects to Exchange server with no problem and is a worthy replacement for Outlook (even opening someone else's calendar, working with Exchange rules, setting up delegates and out of office, etc.)
OpenOffice works better than expected and no-one knows if a document hads been created or updated by Office 2003 or OpenOffice 2.1
Sound and Wireless connectivity work flawlessly.
Printing is very good.

Although I am an XP and OS.X power user (I even tested OSX86, which is very nice), uBuntu blew them away. I am as shocked as everyone else...

PS: Solaris 10 is really really nice. I was quite impressed, actually. But their version of Evolution does NOT play well with Exchange, Firefox does NOT play well with Java (which is funny really), and the sound and wireless drivers are not up to scratch.

[hender650]

Vista & Gamers

From what I am reading Vista is a disaster for a lot of good &#38; expensive games. I am not going to rush into Vista until Gates fixes the game compatability problem. I am told that will be around the middle of 2008. Hendo

[Tui Pohutukawa]

"The reviews have been fantastic"..???

The man is deluded. Did he ever read any of the major reviews?
CNET about Vista:

"Windows Vista Ultimate.
Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP."

"Windows Vista Home Premium is essentially warmed-over
Windows XP Home Edition. If you're currently happy with
Windows XP SP2, we see no compelling reason to upgrade."

"Windows Vista Home Basic is essentially warmed-over Windows
XP, Windows XP SP3. If you're currently happy with Windows XP
SP2, we see no compelling reason to upgrade."

"Windows Vista Business is essentially warmed-over Windows XP.
If you're currently happy with Windows XP SP2, we see no
compelling reason to upgrade."