Judging by its initial sales, Windows 7 is certainly proving more popular than Vista.
Microsoft sold 234 percent more boxed editions of Windows 7 than it did Vista in the initial releases of both products, according to research released Thursday by NPD Group.
In actual dollars, Windows 7 has also been more successful than Vista. However, early discounts on pre-sales copies and a lack of a promotional boost behind Windows 7 Ultimate led to revenues only 82 percent greater than those of Vista.
"Ultimate was a much bigger part of what Microsoft did with Vista, whereas this time I think they not only kept the price very high, but really kept the focus on the Premium product and the Premium three-pack," explained the author of the report, NPD's Stephen Baker, to CNET News. "Most of the promotional fire that they've put out there has been focused on those, for example, 'Buy a computer, get a $50 copy of Home Premium.' The pre-sales were all pretty much focused on Home Premium."
The numbers provided by NPD include both the initial sales of Windows 7 following its release on October 22 and pre-sales data from the discount program that Microsoft launched in July.
NPD declined to release actual sales figures for Windows 7, but the percentages help tell the story.
Web statistics firm Net Applications also found early adoption of Windows 7 to be strong.
(Credit:
NPD Group)
Sales of PC hardware running the new OS didn't fare quite as well. Though growth in PC sales for the Windows 7 launch was at its highest level for the entire third quarter, it wasn't as strong as during the Vista launch, showing a 6 percent decrease from Vista's initial days.
A mixture of different factors affected the sales of Windows 7 PCs, notes Baker. Vista was launched in January, which traditionally offers a better sales environment than October. Also, the new OS was hurt by sales of PCs with older operating systems, which made up 20 percent of all sales during Windows 7 launch week. In contrast, PCs with older operating systems made up just 6 percent of all sales when Vista hit the market.
Baker doesn't think the current recession had a bearing on the lower PC sales for Windows 7's launch. "We've seen pretty strong sales growth on computers all year regardless of the recession," he said. "People have been buying more units of PCs all year than they had in 2008. At least from a unit perspective, we haven't really seen much impact on the consumer PC market from the recession."
Some businesses midway through upgrades to Vista are asking for Windows 7 instead, a Microsoft executive said at Thursday's launch event in London.
"This is the first time that we have had customers talking about slipstreaming the deployment of one OS into another version," said John Curran, who until recently headed the Windows client group in the U.K.
About 15 percent of business computers in the U.K. have Vista installed.
Ten large companies in the U.K. have already begun deploying Windows 7 on a total of 300,000 machines, according to Microsoft.
"In terms of the numbers of seats being deployed at launch, we are well ahead of where we were from a Vista perspective," Curran said.
Read more of "Vista jilted for Windows 7 midway through upgrades" at Silicon.com.
Intel's sales chief said Wednesday he expects Windows 7 to deploy at a faster pace than Vista did.
Intel sales chief Sean Maloney
(Credit: Intel)Intel made a splash last year when it said there was "no compelling reason" for Intel's IT department to upgrade to Windows Vista.
"This time I think it will go faster," said Sean Maloney, speaking Wednesday at the Intel Technology Summit.
"There was a reason not to deploy Vista because you're waiting for service pack X or (because of) compatibility issues," he said.
"There are really good reasons (to deploy Windows 7) for the business client. You've got compatibility mode that takes away that argument," he said. "Security, power management. A lot of good reasons," he said.
Maloney's comments were focused on business, but he said "consumer will happen, too."
He also addressed Netbooks saying that Netbooks will not attract first-time buyers. "The first time you buy something you want the real deal," he said, referring to mainstream laptops. He also reiterated a recent Intel theme that Netbooks will become more of a market targeted at children.
The race to faster boot times is on.
MontaVista, an embedded Linux company based in Santa Clara, Calif., said Tuesday its latest system is able to boot in one second and released a video that shows a vehicle dashboard system going from cold boot into a "fully operational" state in that time.
The one-second timing may not be directly translatable to a desktop Linux OS environment, however, because booting a full-fledged OS requires additional drivers and processes to be launched.
Intel's Netbook Linux OS, Moblin, is also eyeing fast boot times. The chipmaker recently partnered with Phoenix Technologies, which produces a fast-boot technology called HyperSpace, promising to bring the technology to the Moblin project.
The software consists of a stripped down Linux environment with a browser and Wi-Fi software, meant to go from bootup to the Web quickly.
According to reports, Moblin integrating HyperSpace should be able to go from off to the Web in less than 10 seconds.
Competitor Canonical has also said its latest release Ubuntu 9.04 is focused on booting faster.
Victoria Ho of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.
Microsoft has released the second service pack for its Windows Vista and Server 2008 operating systems.
Vista SP2 and Server 2008 SP2, which pull together various updates to the operating systems that have already been rolled out by Microsoft in a piecemeal fashion, were uploaded to Microsoft's Download Center on Tuesday. The two service packs are combined in a standalone package that lets system administrators deploy and support both client and server updates in one operation.
(Credit:
Microsoft)
Microsoft has not said precisely when the service packs will be rolled out as automatic updates, although Microsoft blogger Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog post on Tuesday that this would happen "sometime during the coming months."
Once the service packs become automatic updates, business customers who want more time to prepare for the implementation of SP2 can use the same blocking tool that Microsoft provided for Vista SP1, LeBlanc wrote.
Some of the updates included in SP2 cover third-party application compatibility, such the new ability for Spysweeper and ZoneAlarm to work with POP3 e-mail accounts. Microsoft has also included version 4.0 of its Windows Search technology in the new service pack.
SP2 also adds support for the Bluetooth v2.1 specification, improves performance for Wi-Fi connections after resuming from sleep mode, and makes it possible to natively record data to the Blu-Ray optical disk format. The service pack also adds support for Via's new 64-bit CPUs.
For enterprise customers, SP2 fully integrates Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization environment into Server 2008. The service pack also introduces the ability to manage server and desktop power management settings via group policy.
The standalone installer for both service packs--aimed at system administrators--weighs in at 390MB for the x86 version, and 622MB for the x64 version.
Those installing SP2 through Windows Update will, however, get away with much lower data usage, as that service only downloads the bytes that are changed. Using this method, the x86 versions of Vista SP2 and Server 2008 SP2 will involve 43MB and 47MB of downloads respectively, and the x64 versions will involve 60MB and 90MB of downloads respectively.
There are a few prerequisites for the installation of Vista and Server 2008 SP2, one of which is that the first service packs for the operating systems must already be installed.
IT managers who publish applications with Citrix XenApp will also need to install and configure Terminal Services (TS) Licensing before installing Windows Server 2008 SP2, otherwise their Citrix clients will not be able to connect to the server.
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Updated at 6:25 p.m. PDT with comments from Hewlett-Packard.
Longstanding latent demand for PCs packing a new version of Windows is set to be unleashed, following Microsoft's nod Monday for a holiday release of Windows 7.
Laptop shipments should get a boost from Windows 7.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)"There's a lot of pent up demand for Windows, particularly in corporate, which by and large passed on Vista," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, a market research firm. "Dell and Lenovo should be relieved."
PC sales ground to a halt in the fourth quarter of 2008, after several years of consistent 15 percent quarterly growth, according to an IDC report issued earlier this year.
Windows 7 could change that. "The holiday timing will, of course, benefit consumer-oriented (PC makers) like HP and Acer," Kay said.
Windows 7 may also slow the migration to Apple's operating system. "Defections to Mac may slow. So, Apple won't be entirely happy," Kay said.
And how big is Windows 7 for hardware makers? "Win7 will have the fastest adoption curve of any new rev since Windows 95...I think you'll see adoption earlier than usual in commercial because the code is so stable. The old adage about waiting for SP1 (Service Pack 1) may not be as relevant this time around," he said.
Intel--whose processors will power the lion's share of Windows 7 PCs--is upbeat. "Our early testing is showing improved battery life for consumer notebooks, so Windows 7 should continue to improve the consumer experience," said Jeff McCrea, vice president of Intel's Consumer PC group, in response to an e-mail query. McCrea added that Intel's processors and chipsets work well with the initial beta version of Windows 7.
Hewlett-Packard is working closely with Microsoft, looking toward Windows 7 upcoming release. "We are working closely with (Microsoft) as they develop Windows 7 to make sure our customers can take full advantage of the latest features," HP spokeswoman Anne Finnie said Monday.
And PC graphics chip suppliers like Nvidia have been finessing their Windows 7 drivers in anticipation of a release of the operating system. "Windows 7 users now have the absolute latest in performance and support," said Dwight Diercks, vice president of software engineering at Nvidia, in a statement, referring to various technologies Nvidia is now supporting in Windows 7.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--The popularity of the Netbook caught Intel by surprise--more than once.
The initial demand for Netbooks caught Intel--and almost everyone--by surprise.
(Credit: Asus)Shipments of this category of inexpensive, ultra-light, handy laptops--almost all powered by Intel's Atom processor--are set to hit at least 20 million units this year, about twice the number shipped in 2008, according to IDC. But if an analyst had suggested these numbers to Intel in March of 2008, executives would have dismissed the forecast out of hand--or laughed.
This failure, by many in the industry, to grasp the significance of the Netbook, forced Intel into perpetual catch-up mode at the beginning. "I'm the one who had to explain to our factory--I'm really, really sorry I miscalled the demand," said Noury Al-Khaledy, general manager of Nettop and Netbook Computing at Intel in an interview last week. "And the next month, I didn't quite get it right either," he said.
"I think we under-called how easily people would comprehend how useful the device was," he added. For the record, Asus launched the phenomenon with the Eee PC in late 2007, followed in 2008 by Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and Dell, among others.
Al-Khaledy continued. "I think there was sort of this pent-up desire for an affordable, portable, Internet-access light editing sort of device and many of our customers--with our help--nailed it. They helped us so much."
One of the distinct advantages that Intel Atom-based Netbooks have over other similar devices--such as those based on ARM processors--is Windows. ARM-based devices today don't run Windows XP or Vista--and won't run Windows 7. Intel-based Netbooks can run all of these operating systems and versions of Windows 7 may run as well, or better, than XP on Netbooks.
"People bash (Microsoft) all the time. But then what do you really want to buy?" Al-Khaledy asked. "People really do want Windows...the XP attach rate was really, really good." Though Al-Khaledy praised Asus' initial Eee PC and its Linux operating system, some consumers were disappointed when they found out that it wasn't Windows.
"The Linux thing wasn't clear to people. If you think you're getting Windows and then you get home and it isn't (that's a problem)," he said.
And what impact will Windows 7 have on the Netbook market? Pricing will be critical. Unless Windows 7 is priced aggressively, Al-Khaledy doesn't see it as a catalyst necessarily for a spike in Netbook sales. "I don't see it as a big tipping point. It's all about pricing. If you have to pay $30 more for Windows 7, it might make (consumers) pause. There's just not a lot of margin in the box," he said. "(But) if Microsoft prices Starter and Basic aggressively, why wouldn't you?"
... Read moreA download page for Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate was prematurely posted by the company and has since been removed, according to a statement issued Thursday by the software giant.
Windows 7, Microsoft's next version of its operating system, is in the process of undergoing its final draft, or release candidate (RC). And although the software giant has been silent on when it expected to roll out its RC and industry reports have previously speculated April, the posting of the premature RC page gave a May 2009 timeframe, according to a report in Ars Technica, which has screen shots of the landing page.
Microsoft, in a statement, said:
The Windows 7 Release Candidate download page posted on TechNet as part of the regular testing of Microsoft properties and was removed as the Windows 7 RC is not available at this time.
A spokeswoman for Microsoft did not have readily available details on how long the Windows 7 RC page was posted and when it was taken down, nor whether the May 2009 date listed on the download page is still valid.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has a notice posted on its site, notifying users Windows 7 betas downloads are no longer available on its site.
In a screen shot of the Windows 7 RC page captured by ARS Technica, it noted the minimum PC requirements called for:
1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher.
1 GB of system memory or more.
16 GB of available disk space.
Support for DirectX 9 Graphics with 128 MB memory.
DVD-R/W drive
Microsoft, however, noted the specifications could change and that advanced or additional hardware may be needed to watch and record live TV, or navigate through a "touch" screen.
Georgetown University is banning the use of the Windows 7 beta, informing students and faculty it will not support the trial version of Microsoft's latest operating system, according to a report in InformationWeek
The university's information technology group notes it generally does not support any beta version of software, unless otherwise noted.
And in the case of the Windows 7 beta, the Georgetown IT group reiterates Microsoft's warning that the beta could disable security software, as well as cause other hardware, such as printers and video cards, to function incorrectly, according to the report.
The university IT group, however, notes it will support Windows 7, once the final version is released and has been tested. Microsoft expects the final version of Windows 7 to be released at the end of the year or early next year.
Windows 7 beta is expected to be offered through February 10.
While much of the media is tripping over itself to mark the Second Coming of Windows (aka the Windows 7 beta), I am recalling the First Install of Windows Vista.
Although I have been running Vista without major incident since January of 2008, the initial switch in August of 2007 consigned me immediately to my own private Vista hell. Let's hope that Microsoft makes the upgrade to Windows 7 easier this time.
In a personal blog post written in August 2007, I wrote: "As more people experience the fiasco that is Windows Vista, I thought I would pile on. With trepidation, I upgraded to Windows Vista. My instincts were dead-on."
The upgrade from Windows XP went far beyond the typical upgrade woes: "I can handle the usual driver problems. But the last straw was a paid call to Microsoft that lasted four hours. I know that it lasted four hours because I remember being jolted out of the stupor of my support call purgatory by the phrase, "Thank you for being so patient over the last four hours." (For about two of the four hours, the Microsoft support person was remotely controlling my computer, and I was not present for much of that time.)"
Ordinarily, calling Microsoft for paid support is unthinkable, but at that time, I had little choice. "I had wasted so much time trying to configure Vista to work with some level of stability on my network that I just couldn't afford the additional time to figure it out on my own," I wrote. "Just so you don't think I'm an idiot, the Microsoft 'expert' had just as much trouble trying to solve my myriad problems as I did. In short, he was stumped."
In trying to think of ways to describe Vista at that time, I came up with my own code name for the program: Molasses. "The computer still hung in various situations and, to appropriate a phrase used by someone else, was like molasses. Also, as pointed out by fellow sufferers, going into standby is a crap shoot: the odds are 50-50 that you'll see the Windows desktop again. Vista seems almost ingenious at finding ways to hang, besides being just slow (I won't go into my docking-station woes)."
Reboots were excruciatingly slow. "Installing the constant parade of updates, which usually require a reboot, from various software providers can, alone, be excruciating, but Vista pushes this beyond the pain threshold. On my corporate Hewlett-Packard client (a presumably stable platform used in Fortune 500 companies across the United States), I can sometimes reboot Vista without incident, but more often than not, it goes into a 10-minute reboot holding pattern (with absolutely no indication from Vista about what it's doing)."
I had no idea what Vista was doing: "It may actually be using processor cycles to do something necessary, but you would never know it."
Granted, there were a few lucky people out there who upgraded with few problems. But I would submit that these few lucky souls used Vista on a relatively simple, straightforward workstation. Anything more complex--e.g. an IIS web server and a wireless network with a windows 2003 file server--and things could take on the consistency of molasses.
