Vista not helping Acer's PC sales
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Blog: The PC maker revised its revenue projections saying Microsoft's Vista operating system hadn't boosted sales as expected.
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A surge in sales of Windows-based PCs and laptops, prompted by the release of Vista, could push down Apple's market share in the first quarter of the year, according to Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster.
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Microsoft is set to offer either free or discounted Vista upgrades to those who purchase new computers during the holiday season, press reports indicate. To qualify for the coupons, a PC would need to be purchased after October 28 of this year.
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Don't believe the spreadsheets Steve Ballmer has played down the hype surounding Vista sales saying some analysts have taken an overly optimistic view.â¦
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Currys and PC World owner DSG sees sales rise, but says profits will be hurt by poor sales of Vista-related goods.
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(InfoWorld) - As Microsoftâs five-year-long development effort slouches toward completion, details began to emerge last week that showed the company is (finally) gearing up to release Windows Vista after the new year, as promised. Pricing information popped up on a Canadian Web site, and Amazon.com told visitors that the new OS would be going out on Jan. 30, only to replace that date with a squishier âEarly 2007.â Finally, by the time you read this, Microsoft has promised to release the penultimate test version of its Vista operating system, dubbed âRelease Candidate 1â to an army of testers around the world. Are anticipatory chills running down your spine? They shouldnât be. Because a Release Candidate must be stable enough to allow corporate buyers to evaluate the product for deployment, Microsoft will have done quite a bit of work to RC1 over Vistaâs previous beta incarnations; so get set for a number of improvements. On the other hand, because of this concentration on stability, donât look for any noteworthy new features. Hereâs what Vista RC1 will likely have to offer: Installation: A late beta release dubbed âPre RC1â received kudos from more than one online reviewer for the improvements in this area, and rumors out of Microsoft say RC1 is the first version of Vista (or any Windows version) that has seamlessly installed on a variety of new notebooks and desktops â no muss, no fuss, and with full detection of PC Card and USB peripherals. Graphical interface: Aero has reportedly given Microsoft quite a few Advil moments, and even Beta 2 users were reporting intermittent difficulties. Look for this to be smoothed out in anything that receives RC status. That doesnât mean, however, that you should try to run it on your anemic graphics subsystem from 2003. Microsoft recommends at least 32-bit-per-pixel graphics capability. To you and me that means that for really smooth Aero-nautics, you should have a DirectX 9-capable 3-D accelerator card with 128MB of dedicated video RAM. If your test box lacks this video muscle, RC1 will support a non-Aero interface for weaker or older PCs. Audio: Microsoft has been having trouble with audio in even its most recent Vista Beta release. Toolsmixer controls are intermittently absent, and audio playback is often interrupted or missing. This should be solved in an RC1 release. If youâre a systems or network administrator, RC1 wonât be much different from Beta 2. The new release will ship with Internet Explorer RC1 installed, but even that has few differences from IE7 Beta 2. There will be a new, easier-to-use integrated backup tool, but itâs of little interest to corporate users whoâll most likely be using a centralized third-party app or Windows Shadow Copy. The pricing and availability info â coupled with the OSâs slow march toward âgold,â aka a finished version of Windows Vista ready for manufacturing â shows that Microsoft is serious about meeting its ship date. However, the key criterion for Vista RC1 will be stability. If it installs smoothly, runs smoothly, and gives us the full Vista experience that Microsoftâs been promising, consider it a success. If not, itâs back to the drawing board.
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Only Disconnect Bill Gates has defended sales of Windows Vista after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer chided analysts for being "overly aggressive" on the company's effect on the PC market.â¦
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By Pete Bach, The Post-Crescent, Appleton, Wis.  Feb. 20--Microsoft's new Vista operating system is wowing buyers less  intensely than expected, but a couple of Fox Cities computer professionals say  it's got a lot of pluses.
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Talking the talk Analysis Microsoft's $500m Windows Vista launch on Monday was the culmination of months' of heavy sell intended to persuade the company, as much as everyone else, that not only is the operating systems is essential to users' computing needs but also that it will translate into sales gold.â¦
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Direct sales aren't working the same magic they once did for the PC maker. Can it now cash in at retail?
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The $710 million deal gives Acer a leg up in its battle with Lenovo, but important hurdles must be cleared before Gateway will turn around its lagging sales figures.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan personal computer vendor Acer Inc. expects its computer shipments to increase 30 percent to 40 percent this year, a reduction from previous sales forecasts.
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By MAY WONG  SAN JOSE, Calif. - For nearly a year, television and Internet audiences have been seeing a familiar string of ads from Apple attacking rival Windows-based computers. With this week's release of Windows Vista, the newest jabs aren't any friendlier.
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In an interview with Financial Times Deutschland, the president of global #3 PC manufacturer Acer once again conveyed his overall disappointment with the lack of contribution he believes Microsoft's Windows Vista provides to PC sales, reportedly saying, "The entire industry is disappointed with Windows Vista."
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Configuring a PC around the minimum hardware requirements of an application or operating system may not be the best idea for users who hope to get the most out of Windows Vista.
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Acerâs TravelMate 2480-2779 laptop costs about $550 and runs Vista without complaint.
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(InfoWorld) - Notebook PC users who upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista may have to disable some of the new operating system's flashy graphics features to avoid seeing a decrease in battery life compared to Windows XP. The drop will come from the extra power needed to run the high-end processors, graphics cards and memory capacity required to support Vista. Microsoft has designed the new OS to deliver novel visual effects such as translucent "Aero" windows on the desktop interface and improved performance as a digital media hub. The business version of the OS was released last month with the consumer version due out next month. PC and hardware vendors see Vista as a windfall because it requires faster, more powerful computers. But just as sport utility vehicles burn more gasoline than sedans, the extra power comes at a price. "Vista demands more compute resources for a given application than XP does. So you need a heavier battery or you will have shorter battery life because of the greater demand for watts," said Phil Hester, chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), in remarks made at the company's annual analyst day in New York on Thursday. Dell Inc. also said that Vista's appetite for computing resources will increase its draw on battery power. "If Vista is run in full Aero mode, with none of the Vista-provided power management settings turned on, it is likely to demand more power, and have an impact on battery life," said Dell spokesman Ira Williams, in an e-mail interview. "That said, if you run Vista in battery-optimized mode (using non-3D interface), we would not expect the battery life to be significantly different from XP in that scenario." A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed that Vista will allow users to disable or tune down graphics as part of a power management package meant to keep Vista battery life on par with Windows XP. But she said the graphics have a smaller effect on battery life than other hardware in the PC. "Although it is true that the Windows Vista Aero theme and components can use more resources than previous versions of Windows, the relative impact to battery life is minimal," said Microsoft spokeswoman Kristin Farmer. "Microsoft is working with device manufacturers to ensure their device drivers are optimally tuned for performance and power savings. We recognize that battery life isnât just a Microsoft issue and involves our partnerâs decisions as well." Microsoft has designed Vista to allow notebook PC users to save battery power by turning down the screen brightness, volume, wireless networking and other attributes, according to the company's Web site. Vista also has a power-conservation mode called sleep, similar to the "standby" and "hibernate" modes in previous versions of Windows. A spokesman for Gateway Inc. agreed that Microsoft's power conservation steps can make a difference in compensating for the extra hardware. "We've done extensive testing and we haven't seen [shortened battery life]," said Gateway spokeswoman Kelly Odle. "While it is true that Vista has higher system requirements than XP, it also has more sophisticated mechanisms to allow for power savings." Still, users who need to preserve battery life will face a tradeoff in giving up some of the most impressive new features, said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC. "It's a common criticism that any new Windows OS will have a toll on battery life," Shim said. "If you look back at XP and Windows 98, it took a while for folks to learn how to optimize the hardware. And as the PC market continues to rely on notebooks to drive shipment growth, this will be a big thing." Notebook PC users can manage power by choosing to reduce the time it takes their processors and hard drives to switch into hibernation mode, turn off their sound and Wi-Fi, avoid running 10 applications at once, and turn down the brightness of their screens -- the one component that consumes more battery power than any other computer part, Shim said. Some hardware makers are also helping out, as they are striving to squeeze an extra 2 percent to 5 percent efficiency out of the chipset, graphics component and BIOS, Shim said. However, they face a limited power budget, since battery technology has not improved significantly in recent years, and PC vendors are unlikely to specify a larger cell, since that would add to the PC's size, weight and cost. "That can add up to savings, but it's not enough to overcome the fact that Vista is not battery-friendly," Shim said. Â