Opinion: Think of a number

That’s an awful lot of copies for a ‘flop’. I can think of any number of local software developers who’d be throwing large rooftop parties if they shipped that many copies of their code. I can think of any number of pub bands who’d be utterly apoplectic if they’d sold that many copies of their latest CD.

But of course, in the mega-world of PCs everything is relative. And what everyone wants to know, is how many of those shipped copies represent actual running on the desktop copies? Depending on which media story you last read that could be anywhere from zero all the way to 139,999,998, allowing for the fact that even its biggest fanbois would admit to a couple of no shows. But chances are that a good percentage of that 140 million represent actual running code on real PCs.

It’s possible that most of them are laptops, since those things seem to get upgraded sooner than desktops, and a shiny new copy of Vista comes with each one. This is probably because those who can demand a laptop are further up the food chain than the deskbound order entry clerks, and also because, let’s face it, what they do with their PCs is less critical. That’s not to denigrate the excellent work performed by those at the higher levels of the food chain, it’s just that they do stuff which usually won’t corrupt the next delivery to or from the warehouse.

Armed with this new large scary number I’ve decided to roll out Vista desktops in a client’s new branch office. It’s a small office, with a need for just two PCs and a backend SQL Server. The office goes live this Thursday, so expect a report towards the end of the week on what went wrong. Or maybe it will all just work as planned. Hey, anything is possible.