Few can argue that Windows Vista, at the very least, didn’t really go the way Microsoft would have wanted. The initial release of of Vista was fraught with problems and the public perception hasn’t recovered since. Even while Vista is today a pretty stable operating system, it cannot shake the negative press it received in the initial days.
But, is it fair to call it a failure?
That is exactly what Jason Hiner did in a post on ZDNet entitled “Top Five Reasons Why Windows Vista Failed”. Let’s address his five reasons:
5. Apple Successfully Demonized Vista
This is true. Apple has successfully painted Windows as old and boring in the “I’m a Mac” ads. The commercials are genius, but would not have been nearly as successful if Microsoft actually had an adept marketing department. Microsoft’s public relations consistently proves to me that it is grossly out of touch with their audience. Microsoft can market to the enterprise, but they just don’t “get” the consumer mindset.
So, score one for Hiner. Apple was successful here, and the reason is because Microsoft is inept at marketing.
4. Windows XP is Too Entrenched
This is also true, however I don’t think it is “too entrenched”. Microsoft simply took too long to get Vista to market and, in the meantime, XP gained such a strong footing that it is hard to shake loose. That said, people would still switch to Vista if they felt they had a compelling reason to do so. The fact that there is no compelling reason is the true problem here, not that XP is too entrenched.
OS X Tiger was pretty entrenched before Leopard came along, yet Mac users went for the upgrade in droves. Why? Because there were compelling reasons to do so and not an endless parade of problems attached to the upgrade.
3. Vista is Too Slow
There is no doubt that Windows Vista runs slow on older hardware. Vista is very bloated and, as Hiner points out, has over 50 million lines of code. My guess is that Microsoft expected more people to just upgrade their hardware as a result of Vista and, no doubt, many did so. But, there are a lot of consumers who simply don’t want to get new machines. And for them, Vista is way too slow.
Not only that, there is a new wave of super-light, ultra mobile computers on the market which just don’t have the hardware to run Vista. These systems are pretty popular and end up running some variant of Linux or perhaps Windows XP. The market doesn’t always respond to “bigger the better” marketing. There is a large market of consumers out there who like lightweight systems and Vista simply exempts them.
2. There Wasn’t Supposed To Be a Vista
Hiner points out that Microsoft was intending to go to a subscription-based model when it released Windows XP. The idea was to get people paying a yearly fee for access to the Windows experience. This is why XP began requiring product activation, because Microsoft would disable Windows on your PC if you didn’t pay the subscription fee.
Microsoft rightly realized that this was a stupid strategy and flipped back to the shrink-wrapped software model after XP’s release. Hiner’s point, I believe, is that Microsoft’s switch mid-stream led to a delay in Windows development. XP was originally intended to be the last named version of Windows, with everything after that being incremental. Perhaps switching back to the prior model took them time to get in gear.
1. It Broke Too Much Stuff
When Vista was released, there was a barrage of complaints about people’s hardware not working. Driver incompatibilities were rampant and this is perhaps the single biggest source of damage to Vista’s reputation. Debates spread on who was to blame for this. Was this caused because Microsoft ditched the hardware abstraction layer and failed to properly work with third-party vendors? Or was it caused by vendors who dropped the ball and were simply unprepared for Vista? My view is that there is truth in both stories. Microsoft kept changing things with Vista prior to the release and therefore left an uncertain environment for vendors to invest in creating Vista drivers.
Regardless of blame, Vista did break a lot of things. The problems have been almost completely solved today, but that initial public relations nightmare has not worn off.
My Bottom Line
Calling Vista a failure depends on who’s point of view you’re looking at. From the consumer standpoint, I would say that it isn’t a failure. Today, Vista is a pretty solid operating system. Yes, it remains bloated. Yes, it fails to offer very much over Windows XP. But, it is more secure than XP. If you have the hardware for it, I see no reasons not to use Windows Vista. However, the fact that we can even ask the question on whether it is worth upgrading lends itself to the argument that it is a failure.
From Microsoft’s standpoint, it is probably a failure. Microsoft continues to parade high sales figures to prove that it is not, but Vista’s net impact on Microsoft’s reputation has been a negative. The only reason they have those Vista sales figures is because they bundle it with new PC sales. However, a respectable percentage of those new PCs end up bring downgraded to XP. So, that Vista sale is a mute point.
As far as a worthy extension of the Windows brand, I would agree that Vista failed to impress. And in that light, it is a failure.
All eyes are on Windows 7 and that, too, is testament that Vista was underwhelming.
David Risley is the founder of PCMech.com. He is the brains, the thinker, the writer, the nerd.
Sharron said:
10/7/2008 12:54 pm
Vista did more PR-wise for XP, Linux, and Mac, than any advertising campaign has ever done. Apple put the icing on the cake with their “I’m a PC” ads.
…And let’s face it; the situation as as you say: The sales of Vista are only as a result of people buying new machines preloaded with Vista. Personally I have 2 homebuilt machines which are both perfectly capable of running Vista with a little tweaking; but I’m sticking to XP at least until 7 is released.
I myself nearly moved to Ubuntu Linux when Vista was released, but due to issues stayed with XP on both machines. The only reason I’m not also running a Mac is that I have gripes with Steve Jobs’ (Jobsweh’s) strategies.
Overall I think Vista failed the public and it failed Microsoft.
From me personally it gets a *FAIL* sticker.
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Sharron reply on October 7, 2008 7:43 pm:
Just to add to the above:
According to my blog statistics; there are just over 5 times as many of my visitors using XP as are using Vista currently. This data has been gathered from the last week in July to date. The statistics have varied between seven times more and five times more visitors using XP throughout.
If I were to take my visitors as a representative random sample of internet users it would appear that Vista is a total failure and is having serious trouble.
On a lighter note; PC Mech’s owner will be pleased to know that in third place is Mac OSX; with about 3 1/3 times more visitors using Vista than Mac OSX.
Wandering completely off-topic now; 29.9% of visitors use Internet Explorer 6, compared to 23.7% who use FireFox 3, and only 21.5% who use IE7. FireFox 3 seems to be doing very well.
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Sharron Field reply on October 8, 2008 6:57 pm:
Wow: All of a sudden it looks even worse for Vista in the light of the fact that I just stumbled across a blog post I made in August 2008 in which I compiled blog visitor statistics as above over a period of six days…The figure I arrived at showing how many times more people were using XP than Vista was rather more than 7 times.
One of my conclusions, as stated in my blog post mentioned herein, months before this article on PC Mech, was “Vista is a failure.” :-
http://kkomp.com/archives/1466
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marc said:
10/7/2008 1:04 pm
Your bottom line is you’re afraid to step on anyone’s toes with a real bottom line.
People I know have been upgrading their XP machines with more RAM so they won’t have to buy a new computer with Vista. These are people who can easily afford new computers but don’t want to be stuck with Vista.
I’ve upgraded a Compaq tower and an HP notebook, both of which came with 32-bit Vista, to XP x64 Edition. Both owners are extremely happy to have noticeably faster machines without the annoyances of Vista.
From what I see out here in the real world, Vista is clearly a failure. If people will go to some length to avoid it and others are happy to be rid of it, what else can it be? It’s a colossal failure.
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David M said:
10/7/2008 9:36 pm
Vista 64 in particular, running on a relatively new computer is no worse than XP 32. This has been my experience at least.
It may have been a failure for Microsoft at first but I honestly don’t think it is any worse than XP.
You really have to try it on a new computer and quit reading all the negative articles that are constantly slamming Vista.
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alex said:
10/12/2008 4:57 pm
Well I`d say not a total failure, but I removed it since I first installed it on my quad core, it`s annoying and the biggest time waster. Not as friendly as XP SP3 either.
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rasmasyean said:
10/20/2008 7:42 am
Forget all these “opinions” from people. Just look at some statistics. It doesn’t look like a “failure” to me. You’ll have to decide for yourself.
OK here’s some rough calculations:
18.33% of internet users are Vista
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=11
1.46 billion internet users
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Assuming the usage rate is consistent around the world…
1.46 billion * 18.33% = 268 million Vista internet users
The actually user base would be significantly less than the above number only if for some reason, Vista users surf the internet WAY MORE than all other OS’s to skew the percentage up to 18.33%. It’s probably more likely that that some Vista users don’t use the internet much because it’s for work mostly. Hence there is likely more than 268 million Vista users.
Hitslink logs statistics in the “rich” (and more regulated) demographics. Here Vista adoption is probably held back a little by expense. So that could mean that Vista adoption in other “poorer” (Gov’t don’t give a crap) nations is much greater than 18.33% since you can like buy it at the local fruit shop for like $1, etc.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate
Hey, if you include ALL of Asia? 500 million Vista users???
Also, check this out…
Vista - a $6 Billion Dollars Operating System
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-a-6-Billion-Dollars-Operating-System-44096.shtml
I don’t really know what the markup of it is but for simplicity let’s assume that they make $100 off each license on average (which is a conservative estimate wouldn’t you say?).
If my math is correct, that’s $18 billion dollars as of the last public claim of 180 million copies sold.
Microsoft: 180 million Vista licenses now sold
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/07/18/three-months-later-180-million-vista-licenses-sold-in-total
If my math is correct again…that’s TRIPLE the initial costs!
Of course they likely spent a little more after-market like for Jerry Seinfeld and stuff like that but I don’t think it’s anywhere near $12 billion dollars.
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rasmasyean said:
10/20/2008 7:52 am
Oh and here’s my “opinion”. I have Vista 64 and would never go back to XP. If you get a decent computer, Vista 64 with ample RAM is FAST. I have no regrets and did my research and everything. If you knew what Vista is just by starting off with Wikipedia, it’s enough to convince you that it is a big step from XP and worth the upgrade (provided you do it correctly). I would say that Vista makes XP seem like using a last-generation computer much more than XP made 2000 feel like it…both user-interface-wise, and technically. You just have to know what to look for.
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DavidEF said:
10/30/2008 9:51 pm
I think it’s so funny to see people write things like “no worse than XP” and “if you get a decent computer” when trying to defend Vista’s poor reputation. First of all, if “no worse than XP” is the best it can be described, it IS a failure. And, when compared to linux, “if you get a decent computer” denotes failure as well. There are MANY distributions of linux that are newer (by release date) and far more advanced than Vista, yet have miniscule system requirements comparatively. My favorite comparison is Puppy linux. There are at least two versions of Puppy linux that I know of that have Compiz graphics enabled by default (makes Aero look SICK, for real!), yet run in RAM, booted from a CD. They require a decent amount of RAM (256MB would qualify). They also require a modern GPU (for Compiz). The CPU is not so much an issue. Most computers made in the last 12 years would EASILY suffice for processing power! Yet, with specs this low, applications already installed on the CD, and many features you may never find in ANY Windows version, it speeds along happily. So, what does Vista do with the 15GB of hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and 2-core-or-better processor requirements, just to drag along slowly, lethargically? And that’s before you install any applications! I have a laptop that came with Vista pre-installed, but it is destined for Ubuntu greatness, soon. I’ve had enough of Vista to prove to me that it’s a failure. I personally know others who have come to the same conclusion. I helped one man get rid of it on both his desktop and laptop. He upgraded to XP on both. And, as ‘marc’ said above - “From what I see out here in the real world, Vista is clearly a failure. If people will go to some length to avoid it and others are happy to be rid of it, what else can it be? It’s a colossal failure.”
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