DRAM Makers Suffer Due to Lackluster Vista Adoption

quixote9 writes "We've heard conflicting estimates of how widely adopted Vista has been. Now comes some hard data. DRAM makers ramped up to meet the huge expected demand for more memory needed by Vista. Except the demand hasn't materialized. Now they're suffering. Alternatively, maybe everyone's cleverly hacked their Ultimate Aero Glass Vista to fit on their old PCs."

Or maybe

[by Anonymous Coward]

people are using Vista without Aero Glass?

It /is/ possible my friends.

Re:Or maybe

[DrunkenTerror (561616)]

I thought they called that "XP".

Re:Or maybe

[daeg (828071)]

XP SP0 ran fine with the computers at the time. In fact, XP Pro runs perfectly fine with 512 MB of RAM and Outlook + OpenOffice + Firefox (with things like browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers set to be very memory conservative). The problem comes in with drivers and other packages that users feel the need to install: overambitious virus protection, spyware detection, image editors, etc -- most of which have features the traditional home or office user don't use or don't need.

HP drivers, for instance, are notoriously gigantic to the point that at least a few people refuse to buy HP printers -- on the order of several hundred MB just to print. The standalone drivers are often incomplete. The HP package insists on installing an auto-updater, too, because if anything needs a 12MB resident program to check for updates, it's your printer.

Re:Or maybe

[by Anonymous Coward]

This is the beginning of the end for microsoft.

Yup. Now if only we could get Netcraft [slashdot.org] to confirm it...

Re:Or maybe

[Grishnakh (216268)]

Most of microsoft's money comes from corporate license agreement for Server level OS's, Exchange type stuff and the legions and legions of other business productivity software.

Huh? I thought most of Microsoft's money came from Windows and Office. With Windows, I thought most of that money came from license sales on desktop platforms, both for consumers and businesses. With consumers, most probably comes from OEM sales (Dell, etc.), and with businesses, most probably comes from site licenses.

MS is well-known to have a monopoly on desktop OSes, not server OSes. It would stand to reason that they make the most money, then, in desktop OS sales.

(On a side note, am I the only one blown away by the fact that Apple can get a way with saying that the iPhone is a revolutionary devise? The thing costs nearly as much as a laptop and the only "unique" function that I can see is the digital rotary dialing system....).

We'll see. After all, the original iPod wasn't received with much enthusiasm here on Slashdot, and look at where it is now.

Personally, I don't think it's going to be that much of a success (at least here in the USA), for the same reason mobile telephones in general aren't much of a success here (what I mean here is yes, everyone has one, but people don't bother with the premium features that much; they just get the cheapest phone available, myself included). The reason here is the locked-in nature of the cellular providers; you usually can't use your phone with different providers, the phone is locked in so you can't use all the built-in features, you have to purchase everything (ringtones, MP3s, etc.) from your provider at astronomical rates, etc. Because of this, Motorola actually is taking a big hit in their business, as is my company which is a supplier to them. Sure, the cellular providers are all doing fine, because people want/need cell phones, but anyone trying to make money on cellular technology (i.e. more powerful embedded processors, flash memory, etc. needed for premium features) is having a hard time since everyone is just getting the cheapest, most basic phone they can.

Re:Or maybe

[AK Marc (707885)]

http://www.belshe.com/2007/01/04/microsofts-revenu e-breakdown-2003-2006/ [belshe.com]

Re:Or maybe

[jgrahn (181062)]

If you haven't tried Linux yet, plug in Ubuntu, its like Windows only free

Thank you, I'll be using that phrase against a few Ubuntu-users I know.

Re:Or maybe

[Technician (215283)]

Thank you, I'll be using that phrase against a few Ubuntu-users I know.

Actualy, when you show the reasons it's not Windows, it's an easy sell. Yesterday I demo'ed Ubuntu. Our visitors wanted to know what made it diffrent and what's all the fuss about security. I was already booted up and online as a normal user. They were quick to note wow, it runs Firefox. I showed the menu and how it works like Windows and had much the same menu items such as accessories, games, etc. Then I explained the not so same as in Windows everyone is an administrator by default.

I turned over the computer and had them try to change printer settings, internet settings, display settings. I even had them go into another user's directory that was shared and asked them to delete any file. I then showed them the file permissions. I then explained these are the defalt permissions. I then showed how the common Windows exploits such as web pages with a Windows system error look very out of place on Ubuntu and hidden known file extensions are not a problem. There is not much exploitation of running a picture attachment on Ubuntu called MyNakedWife.jpg.exe and why it won't run if clicked on in Ubuntu. It asks if you want to save the file or what program to open it with. It just doesn't install a rootkit with no prompts like what happens to Windows users who only see MyNakedWife.jpg.

They were concerned about replacing Windows due to the many Windows only programs. I then gave them the directions on compressing the Windows partition, repartitioning after booting Ubuntu and dual booting.

In short, being like Windows by having familiar menu's and running Firefox is a plus. Being not like Windows in default security was the selling point. I think they will be dual booting by the end of the week.

Re:Or maybe

[croddy (659025)]

Linux is not "Windows, only free", [oneandoneis2.org]
and those of us answering questions in the IRC channel would appreciate it if you'd stop saying that.

Thanks.

Re:Or maybe

[by Anonymous Coward]

Those of us asking questions in the IRC channel would appreciate if you'd stop posting on Slashdot and get back to answering us!

type in the article

[ptr2004 (695756)]

I think the OP meant DRM makers and not DRAM makers :)

Par for the course

[fishthegeek (943099)]

It's been well acknowledged here that Vista sales are roughly only equal to XP over the same time measured. OEMs were already standardized on 1GB (not low end of the market) of ram prior to Vista and Vista does run adequately on a GB of ram. What did they think would happen? Most of the PC market has been riding the MS/PC roller coaster long enough to have a feel for the time to buy and will likely hold on to XP until mainstream support has ended.

Re:Par for the course

[SparkEE (954461)]

I'm not the type to defend windows, but.....

I don't think it's fair to look at the RAM utilization of an idling box and declare that using x% is bad. What would be the point of the OS not using the RAM that's sitting there? If I were writing an OS and knew I had RAM to spare and was idle, perhaps I'd be pre-loading the most used applications into RAM for faster startup. I think a good OS would almost always be using the RAM available in some way. It saves nothing to let it sit there.

OTOH, I have no idea if windows RAM utilization is due to the OS being smart of dumb. I simply don't like to see the idea of idle RAM usage propagate as a valid metric of an OS.

Re:Par for the course

[Charcharodon (611187)]

Nothing wrong with a car analogy, it's just that you used the wrong one. Super Fetch is more like having magic gnomes that are constantly putting stuff in the trunk of your car that they think you might want to take with you, but they'll instantly take it all back out if that turns out to not be the case.

See car analogys can be good, but you have to have magic gnomes to make it work.

Re:Half of expected value.

[kilgortrout (674919)]

This is revisionist history. People did run out and buy windows 95. In fact, they stood in line overnight to get it. Let's face it; the bloom is off the rose. Things have changed considerably and no matter how you spin it, vista has been met with a lackluster reception. It's not that vista is so bad(it is but so was win95), it's that people don't care one way or another, i.e. windows is no longer cool. WinPCs are even parodied in the Mac adds as the dorky guy and everybody laughs. Believe it or not, there was a time when windows was the cool thing, at least in some circles.

Lower prices?

[PixelSlut (620954)]

If the RAM manufacturers are building up stocks of RAM that nobody is buying then maybe they'll start pushing the prices down further to make it more attractive. Then those of us who are using Linux benefit again from Vista's lack of adoption. :)

Maybe

[HalAtWork (926717)]

Maybe the people care more about doing work than how they look doing it? Eye candy is nice, but it's not necessary. It's not going to make or break a purchase in the way that productivity enhancements would, and even then, people make do with what they have. The more versions that get released of whatever software, the less incentive to upgrade as it gets closer to "it works", and less people will care about improving the software the further along it gets. Throw money in and then people have even more reservations!

Re:Maybe

[NoMaster (142776)]

When I bought my MacBook and friends commented on the glowing Apple logo on the lid, I explained "that's so people can tell how pretentious you are from the other side of the coffee shop!"

It will come, don't worry.

[mlts (1038732)]

I'm not saying this is good or bad, but DRAM sales may lag now, but eventually people will be moving to Vista when it becomes the sole option on new machines.

RAM getting cheaper is always a good thing, mainly because on 95% of most people's machines, the biggest performance bottleneck is RAM (or lack of) forcing apps to swap.

Will Reverse

[MrCrassic (994046)]

Of course this was to happen! Microsoft showed its investors and key manufacturers that the OS release will be on par to its Windows 95 explosion, which everyone knew was not going to be the case. Times Square ads, articles, and lots of other forms of attention only brought a weak demand in the market. Windows XP was good enough, and consequential events like these show that.

However, I'm pretty sure that, as the article points out, this falling trend will reverse itself when back-to-school season starts and people need to upgrade their old machines to keep them running or up-to-date.

Not my preferred indicator of systems "in use"

[Opportunist (166417)]

The licenses sold, claimed by MS, can be fairly accurate. After all, a sale by MS can still sit on the shelf of some retailer, or been force-fed to people buying new hardware. When it comes to licenses used, I'd rather take other factors into account. One would be hardware sales, but after all it's possible to turn off all those goodies, so I wouldn't call it the best possible indicator.

Personally, what I'd deem a very good indicator would be the sales numbers of the different licenses. I.e. how many of the "minimum" Vista licenses have been sold vs. some of the "useful" ones. We all remember WinXP Home and Pro, and how "useable" Home was. Generally, whoever got the "Home" edition of XP got it 'cause he couldn't get his PC without any license and tossing Home was cheaper than tossing Pro.

So it would be fairly safe to assume that a considerable fraction of those "force-fed" minimum licenses have been bought because there's no way to get the computer without any OS and the first command issued on the new crate was fdisk. So, pants down, how mand licenses of what level have been sold?

Translation:

[spun (1352)]

I paid $399 for Vista Ultimate. I thought it would net me beau coup geek cred. Now everyone's laughing at me!

Re:Translation:

[by Anonymous Coward]

It beaucoup, not beau coup. beaucoup == a lot, beau coup == nice hit

Re:I love cheap RAM

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

And it just keeps getting cheaper. Pretty soon, I expect Kellogg's to start stuffing a couple of gigs into boxes of Froot Loops.

It's a rollercoaster market

[WebCowboy (196209)]

Haven't memory prices dropped every day since it were introduced?

In fact they have NOT. Memory is, more than any other component in your PC, a true commodity, and it can be a volatile one at that. Like the market for gasoline it can sometimes be open to manipulation in the same way, though the major players are less apt to participate in collusion as petroleum refiners are notorious for doing.

I distinctly remember an incident involving a fire at a major DRAM manufacturing facility which produced a step change downward in global production capacity--this at a time when demand continued to grow at a healthy clip. Prices spiked even faster, and with a greater magnitude by far, than fuel prices did when hurricane Katrina took out all that refining capacity (we are talking doubling and tripling of prices here). In another incident it wasn't a drop in supply but a surge in demand sparked by the first Christmas season with Windows XP-equipped PCs for sale--inventory dried up and DRAM prices doubled.

aybe this is more to do with lifespan of memory than anything, changing design and automatically expiring themselves from the market.

That can have an effect on DRAM prices actually, except that the effect is opposite to what is happening today: when new memory formats come out it usually fuels demand and raises prices. Demand instead has been flat and prices have dropped. The problem is overcompensation to deal with the release of Vista (they were trying to avoid what happened when XP came out). Memory makers are lousy commodity managers in comparison to how those who produce gasoline, grain, metals, etc and really botched up--but MS also botched up and made the problem worse:

* Vista missed Christmas--it was in limited, corporate-and-developer-only release until January. Not only did this mean the vista launch couldn't take advantage of the shopping season, it also meant that the shopping season for computers itself was blunted as shoppers turned elsewhere for gift ideas (why buy a PC with crufty old XP when spiffy new Vista will be out and pre-installed on machines within weeks?). No demand there

* Though XP needs a relatively modest increase in resource requirements compared to its direct ancestor Windows 2000, the vast majority of the first XP adopters were moving from the DOS-based line of Windows (95/98/Me) and of all things what XP wanted the most over DOS-based Windows was RAM. DOS-based windows couldn't even properly use RAM over a certain level and most machines got to a certain level and stayed there because performance was maxed out. With XP, an old Win98 box could be make quite usable for a cheap price by simply plugging in more RAM. This fueled demand, which raised RAM prices.

* XP has been out for a VERY long time, and between all the service packs, updates and the demanding games and applications released in the past 5 years the demand for RAM has increased gradually even as the base OS is little unchanged. As Vista was released the minimum requirements were already met by most PCs up to a year old. This wasn't the case with XP, where so many crufty old PCs running Win98 were not up to the task of running XP.

* Vista is not different enough from XP to matter - turn off aero glass and to the casual user you have XP with a new UI theme--not much immediately useful comes right to mind. When XP came out it was targeted at legions of 98 and Me users, and 98 and Me were great stinking piles of crap compared to XP. Vista IS meaningfully better architecturally speaking but these advantages are only understood by computer scientists and software engineers. Furthermore, in the cutthroat market of PCs most new PCs are equipped with the featureless "home basic" edition, and that is what most users see, and that edition is well served by existing memory configs.

DRAM prices are like rollercoasters--they might have started at the top and will end up at the bottom, but all these external forces introduce "waves" that go up as well as d