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How many of those numbers are new PC sales and how many are actual upgrades?
by raganwald 17y ago
How many of those numbers are new PC sales and how many are actual upgrades?
- mattmaroon 17y agoNo idea. It occurred to me after I posted that the question might be "why were Microsoft's expectations so low".
- josefresco 17y agoDoes that even matter? People always point to how many new OS purchases were via new machine buys but hasn't that always been the case? And even if it weren't does it matter how the OS gets on the machine? What's the distribution among Mac users, is the upgrade rate higher?
- raganwald 17y agoI think it matters because the OP's thesis is that XP is "good enough" and that Vista's competition is XP, not OS X. If Microsoft allows its HW sluts^H^H^H^H partners to offer a choice between XP and Vista with new machines, Vista sales reflect people choosing Vista. But if Microsoft doesn't allow their partners to sell new machines with XP, the sales numbers appear high but those number don't reflect anything except a large number of people that would have bought XP any ways. In fact, the numbers are crazy-bad with new machines, because some vendors insisted on the right to sell XP, and Microsoft gave them the right to downgrade Vista machines to XP. So even if a large corporate customer buys 1,000 systems with XP on them, Microsoft records it as 1,000 Vista sales! I'm interested in sales reflecting choice, but it is not clear to me how Microsoft's accounting practices help us understand that at all.