XP Sales Still Outpace Vista
Things aren't getting better for Microsoft's oft-maligned Vista OS - released nearly one year and half ago. Last month, just days after Microsoft's PR machine began bragging nearly 180 million licenses of Vista have been sold, the tech site APC diminished those bragging rights reporting Hewlett-Packard (number one in PC sales worldwide) is still "overwhelmingly" shipping system pre-loaded with XP over Vista.
Dan Warne, of APC, reports HP is indeed selling Vista licenses but preloading almost all its machines with XP. That wasn't a talking point in Microsoft's Vista PR campaign.
On June 30, Microsoft officially killed XP in favor of Vista, but left a loophole for customers to be able to buy a Vista license and then downgrade to XP until 2009. Reacting to customer demand, HP has taken full advantage of this technicality, which begs the question of how many other computer makers are doing the same thing?
Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money working on damage control for its Vista OS since its debut last year. Redmond recently started a mammoth $500 million advertising campaign to battle back Apple's growing market share and to defend Vista. Microsoft's first phase of this new campaign is its own version of the Pepsi challenge called the Mojave Experiment.
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Whoever transcribed the quotation from HP left out a very important fact and then ascribed that quote to the global situation.
The fact left out is the true source of the quote which is in the oritinal article which "said Jane Bradburn, Market Development Manager, Commercial Notebooks for HP Australia."
The quote and figures (not stated of course) are for Australia, not the U.S. and not the world, and even then only apply to machines shipped with a Vista Business license. It in fact does "sell" a copy of Vista. A check on the HP website for this option points out that this option is only available for businesses, including government and educational entities which are expected to purchase at least 25 units per year. A Vista install disc is also included.
Just think, - if Microsoft had only spent that $500 million on upgrading XPs Operating System, instead of an ad campaign about how great the Vista OS is, - what kind of great OS would windows have now?
Just think, - if Microsoft had only spent that $500 million on upgrading XPs Operating System, instead of an ad campaign about how great the Vista OS is, - what kind of great OS would we have now?