W2k's Journal: No you idiots, Vista isn't selling badly at all

At first it was amusing to read comments from slashtrolls-in-denial claiming that Vista is "selling badly". But now I am seeing people moderating those comments to +5, Insightful, which is downright WRONG. Vista isn't selling badly at all, not by any reasonable standard of measurement. Google for "Vista sales" and ignore the obviously biased sites ("Microsoft-Watch.com", yeah THAT sounds fair and balanced). What do we find?

Sales of Windows Vista to businesses were stronger than expected during the operating system's debut month, according to a report from NPD Group.

Sales of Windows Vista have helped Microsoft post a forecast-beating 65% rise in third-quarter profits.

More than 20 million copies of Windows Vista were sold globally in February 2007, the first month of sales since its widespread consumer release.

Microsoft posted a net profit of $4.93 billion, or 50 cents per diluted share, in its fiscal third quarter ended March 31 versus a profit of $2.98 billion, or 29 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

... easily doubled the numbers managed by Windows XP, which itself had record sales of 17 million units in the two months after its release in October 2001. Putting the company's success in perspective, however, Windows marketing director Bill Mannion noted that the results were good but not out of line with his employer's goals.

I'm not a rabid MS fanboy but I think Vista is a fine upgrade to XP. My most recent laptop came with a "Vista capable" sticker, it installed without problems and has been running mostly smooth since. I don't exactly feel any pressure to upgrade my older workstation to Vista, although it's certainly got enough hardware to handle it. I do wish Microsoft would have spent a little more time polishing certain rough edges before public release. But in most areas, Vista is an improvement over XP. Saying it's "not an upgrade" is being ignorant at best.

In summary, whenever you see "poor Vista sales" on Slashdot, whoever is writing does not deserve an Insightful, or even an Informative. They deserve a -1, Wrong. And if you think ~20 million units and $5 BILLION net profit constitute poor sales, and that Microsoft should be worrying, then you must live in a very special (as in Special Olympics) world, and I would love to see what kind of sales figures you would consider "good".