From: "John Beamish" 

Cringely, as he so often does, has a good handle on this.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061208_001308.html

What we'll see for ourselves and read about over the next six months, then,
are users complaining about Vista instability, an inevitably emerging
vulnerability to hackers, and applications that don't work as well as they
do under XP. Enterprise customers will hold back in droves. But does any of
that make Vista a failure? Nope.

Those who are trying to figure out if Vista will be successful haven't yet
grasped the concept that Vista will be forced on the market, and in time it
will be the only operating system you can buy from Microsoft. Of course it
will be successful. Will people upgrade their existing systems? Of course
not. Microsoft operating systems are always designed for future PC's, not
for the installed base. Part of the plan is to make Vista work poorly on
current computers so we'll all have to buy new ones. This strategy has been
around for years and there is no reason to believe we won't fall for it
again. Sure, some percentage of people and firms will upgrade, but most of
the upgrades will come with whole new computers.

[a little later]

And think about it, what's the alternative to Vista, but Windows XP? Those
who don't jump to Vista right away will stick with XP, an operating system
into which Microsoft will no longer be investing, making it even more
profitable. So even if Microsoft loses they win. In 2007 at least, if
people don't like Vista they will, for the most part, still stick with
Microsoft rather than jumping to Linux or to the Mac. Maybe that will
change in future years, but for 2007 at least, Microsoft's empire is secure
and they know it.




On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:21:08 -0500, mike  wrote:

>
> http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37721
>
> ===
> THE SHY and retiring, softly-spoken CEO of Microsoft, Steve "Sounds of
> Silence" Ballmer is blaming software pirates for Vista's poor sales.
>
> Ballmer admitted to financial analysts that the predictions for Vista
> had proved 'overly optimistic' and he blamed the pirates in China,
> India, Brazil, Russia and other emerging markets.
>
> He said his final solution would be to increase the intensity Windows
> Genuine Advantage as part of an effort to squeeze more revenue from
> developing nations.
>
> Ballmer believes that one way Microsoft can bump up Windows sales is to
> tighten the screws on pirates. "Piracy reduction can be a source of
> Windows revenue growth, and I think we'll make some piracy improvements
> this year."
>
> He said that there was software within Windows Genuine Advantage which
> could be dialled up by the Vole to make it even more tougher for the
> pirates to take out.
>
> He promised that the Vole would "really ferret through how far we can
> dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer
> satisfaction".
>
> Of course he is ignoring the fact that a lot of people are not buying
> Vista because it does not offer much more than XP and Windows Genuine
> Advantage makes their lives a misery. Cranking up WGA might backfire.
>
> More here
> ===
>
>  /m

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