Vista Reaches 100 Days

Published by Omkar Joshi | Filed under Microsoft, Windows, Vista, WinHEC

Windows Vista has now been available to consumers for 100 days, finally reaching its first significant milestone, but has Vista been a success?

In March, Microsoft announced that Vista sales had broken all previous sales records, with more than 20 million licenses sold in its first 30 days, doubling the rate of its predecessor, Windows XP. This announcement was followed in April with Microsoft crediting its better-than-expected Vista sales for the company’s record quarterly revenue of US$14.4 billion.

Nevertheless Vista continues to be shrouded by controversy. Numerous high-profile technology bloggers have written many articles about switching back to XP or even migrating to OS X, as a result of Vista’s problems. On the internet, there are also many stories about Vista’s lack of software and hardware compatibility, with some even suggesting that Vista be renamed Windows Me 2, after the abysmal release of Windows from 2000. Some desperate bloggers have gone so far, that they’ve even attempted to break down Microsoft’s earnings in a desperate bid to prove that Vista isn’t really selling as well as Microsoft claims.

So what really is the truth? It is expected that Microsoft will be answering these and many other questions in the coming weeks, now that it has reached its 100 days milestone. It is also expected that more information will come out during next week’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC).

In 2006, PC makers sold about 230 million PCs worldwide, and analysts expect PC sales to jump 8 to 11 percent this year. If we assume that Vista is installed on most of those PCs then that should lead to some pretty good sales figures for Vista. Microsoft has made a conservative estimate of 100 million installations of Vista by the end of 2007. According to Microsoft, corporate sales of Vista – despite all rumours – are actually close to twice that of the previous record holder, Windows 2000.

These figures from Microsoft are also backed up by Gartner Research. Gartner Research claims that by the end of 2007, Vista will be installed on 4.2 percent of all business computers. In contrast, Windows 2000 was only installed on 2.6 percent of all business computers after one year on the market. These figures are based on percentages of the overall market, so Vista is not getting a sales boost because the PC market is much larger today. Additionally InformationWeek Research has reported that 25 percent of the 612 businesses it surveyed are currently deploying Vista, and an additional 17 percent plan to begin deploying Vista before the end of 2007. According to InformationWeek Research this adoption rate is much higher than it was for previous Windows versions.

A main source of the negative publicity for Vista comes from articles written by high-profiles technology bloggers. However, as it turns out none of the problems these critics face translate into prevalent, real-world problems. When I installed Vista on various machines I did run into a few compatibility issues, but there were no problems that weren’t fixed immediately after Vista’s consumer launch in January. So why do all these complaints continue to arise?

Due to Vista being a major Windows update with a completely revamped driver model, newly secured kernel and a new graphics stack, it is obvious some compatibility problems do exist. At its launch, Vista was definitely behind in its support for antivirus software, although the antivirus vendors knew about Vista for many years before it was eventually launched. All five major antivirus vendors have Vista compatible software available on the market now. The very public uproar about supposed compatibility problems has largely obscured reality. The majority of devices and applications have no compatibility issues with Vista.

When Vista was launched in January, there were 1.5 million Vista compatible devices. At present there are 1.9 million Vista compatible devices. Microsoft says that represents 96 percent of all available devices. According to Windows Client Partner Platform Group Director Dave Wascha, Microsoft was “more ready with ecosystem coverage – that is, application and device support – with Vista than we were with any other OS release. This was a five-year effort aimed at getting our partners and customers ready.”

Additionally, Microsoft has added new features to Vista which enables consumers to provide Microsoft with feedback should something go wrong. As a result of this feedback Microsoft is making fixes at an unprecedented rate. More importantly, Microsoft is identifying the device driver incompatibilities that are causing the most problems and fixing those first. Of the remaining 4 percent of incompatible devices, which is around 70 000 devices, only 4 000 of them account for about 80 percent of the problems. “This is our bogey list right now,” said Wascha. “So we’re on the phone with vendors, flying out to meet with them, and getting these issues addressed. Once that’s done, we’ll do it all again.”

So what exactly are the criteria for getting a device to work in Vista? Wascha says that Microsoft fixes or creates drivers for all devices that generate 500 or more user reports. “We have legions of engineers dedicated to this one purpose,” Wascha said. “And we will continue to churn through that list.” The only exception, of course, is drivers for devices that are no longer sold because the company that made them went out of business. “Unfortunately, the answer there is that it will never work,” Wascha said.

In some ways it seems Microsoft is caught in a catch-22. Consumers want the company to be innovative, but often don’t like the side effects of that innovation. An example of this is Microsoft changing the graphics architecture in Vista to make it more visually exciting. This resulted in users complaining that their video card were no longer compatible.”Some people have had a less than stellar experiences with graphics cards,” Wascha admitted. “This is a tiny minority of users. Unfortunately, it’s been a vocal minority.”

According to Wascha, the problems that bloggers have been complaining about have never shown up in Vista’s instrumentation. It seems that these bloggers actually chose to opt out of Microsoft’s feedback program. When Microsoft does release fixed drivers, none of these high-profile bloggers ever follow up their initial posts crediting Microsoft for correcting the problems. “We sit here and wrack our brains,” Wascha said. “The drivers are out there.”