Microsoft...WTF?

[HardDrive]

I couldn't decide if I wanted to make this a long, melodramatic post, or a short and sweet one.

I guess short and sweet is best.

Article about Microsoft being complete jerks and allowing JUNK machines that could barely run Vista basic be marketed at 'Vista Ready' over the holidays:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23406638/

The comments from their own execs are particularly damning.

WTF?

I quit my job as a consultant/trainer at a Microsoft gold Partner last August. I was burned out. I was disgusted. I was sick of feeling like the training classes we offered had turned into thinly veiled upsell opportunities. I was F*CKING SICK of Microsofts new product lines. Products that really are great on their own(Sharepoint comes to mind), but MS decides to spin together insane dependancys between the products, so that you can't get 'full functionality' unless you pony up for another bazillion dollars worth of ***** your organization doesn't need.

And now I hear about this crap.

Believe it or not, despite the moaning and groaning from the Apple and Nix folks, Microsoft really did used to be a pretty dynamic and exciting company to be around. I spent 10 years of my life evangelizing their products. I made some damn good $$$ doing it to. But these days they seem to have moved to a Best Buy model, where every single contact point with the customer is seen as an upsell moment.

And lets just state the obvious about Vista: This product is a fat piece of ***** that has basically failed. Oh sure, people are using it, because their new computers are coming with it installed. But enterprise customers and power users have turned their nose up at it, and for good reason. Whats the selling point? "Try new Windows Vista, now chewing up 90% more CPU cycles! And don't miss our exclusive 'Ask the user for admin rights' 1432 times per hour feature! Your going to love it!"

Believe it or not, that WAS the short version.

Microsoft......wtf?

[dd74]

Um...why should any of this be a surprise? I knew as soon as Microsoft informed me my seven-year-old IBM was Vista ready when it had trouble running Windows 98, that the time had come to buy a Mac.

[rammstein]

I really, really , really don't get Vista. The only thing I've been told is that they have that cool, pretty cascading windows thingy. I use Alt-TAB. I am fine with that.

I am also fine only needing a gig of ram

[HardDrive]

Originally Posted by dd74

Um...why should any of this be a surprise?

I'm not surprised. I'm just disappointed.

Dunno. I was OK with them being ruthless and cut throat. I'm not OK when they start being dishonest with consumers, and profiteering off their loyal enterprise customers.

[slodave]

Yeah, but Microsoft just lowered the prices on Vista, to encourage users to upgrade.

All in all, Windows 2000 was great and for a few people still works. My current laptop has had XP PRO and it only BSOD'd once and that was really my fault. It has been very stable with everything I have installed and uninstalled.

I don't get Vista. I have two clients running Vista, one wants to go back to XP, the other loves it. It really don't like the damn security checks - YES, I WANT TO INSTALL THE PROGRAM!!!

[YTNUKLR]

or being able to change file extensions..

or being able to run a *****load of programs that they don't have drivers for yet.

or trying to simply CONNECT TO THE INTERNET:

I have wifi here. I used to have a mac ibook, when I opened it out of the box, it was on the internet. I did not have to do one single thing except turn it on.

When I got this damn vista desktop, it kept trying to connect through some weird pathway, requiring some password from my LAN that doesn't exist. Flat failed to connect on any wifi, because it keeps asking for passwords. So, after much frustration, I just connected a damn 50 foot ethernet line to the box. So now I get to trip over that when I wake up in the morning.

There are some stocks that I just won't ever buy because of what I think of the company now: Best Buy, MicroSoft, and UPS.

Fuc 'em. It's really too bad that good businesses can go bad, but you just have to cut your losses and only move up from there.

[island911]

Vista has some good speed advantages for 64-bit multi-processor machines. Also some cool features for tablets. The biggest problem I've had Vista was running old hardware (drivers).

[mikester]

Vista is bad, I'm working a couple of projects where I have to interoperate with various Operating systems and Vista can be a real pain.

It isn't just Vista that has you 'confirm' every damn button click, apparently the new McAfee internet security suite includes the 'feature' as well.

bah humbug.

My XP computer has been solid as a rock for a long time now. W2000 was pretty darned goot too. I'm very happy with XP and if MS came out with a product that was all that and some smokin' boobies I'd be all over it.

What could they improve on XP anyway?

Well, I imagine 64-bit could be better so I think that hardware optimization would likely be the best bet.

I think XP is fairly secure and the controls they put into Vista are lame. They destroy the user experience and turn a computer into an unusable box laced with toxic heavy metals.

I really like Mac OS but haven't been able to really make the switch since my work uses XP. Ideally I could just run Linux...

[cairns]

VISTA- a really poor copy of last years Mac OS.

I love my Mac. But we run XP at work and have no plans to change.

[id10t]

Lets not leave out the DRM issues...

[legion]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

I was F*CKING SICK of Microsofts new product lines. Products that really are great on their own(Sharepoint comes to mind), but MS decides to spin together insane dependancys between the products, so that you can't get 'full functionality' unless you pony up for another bazillion dollars worth of ***** your organization doesn't need.

I built my first web page using Notepad (HTML editors did not exist yet) in 1996.

Two years later (1998 I believe), FrontPage hit the market. I'm not quite sure why I did this, but I opened my HTML in FrontPage, made zero changes, saved it, and uploaded it to the server.

My web page stopped working. When I tried to open it, I got errors that said that I needed all sorts of server extensions. I was baffled. There was NOTHING fancy in this web page. Just some text and some images. That's it. I opened the HTML in NotePad, and saw that FrontPage had extensively modified my HTML--making calls to server extensions left and right. Upon further research, these server extensions were available from Microsoft for something like $50 a pop (more than I could afford as a college student). So simply by opening a previously-working HTML document in a Microsoft product, I now had to pay Microsoft something like $200 to make my web page work with Microsoft products.

Needless to say, I restored a backup copy of my web page and uninstalled FrontPage from my PC. I was so disgusted that Microsoft was trying to shake me down for something that could easily be done with standard HTML--no server extensions required.

I guess my point is that I've been seeing this "upsell" behavior from Microsoft for at least 10 years.

[Paul_Heery]

Originally Posted by Jim Allchin, (Then) Microsoft Co-President, Platforms & Services Division

I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. ... our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are and really understanding what the most important probems are customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products.

...

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows applications software ... If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

Jim Allchin wrote this in an internal Microsoft email on January 07 2004. Allchin retired in early 2007 - on the day that Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista operating system to consumers.

[Joeaksa]

Still using W2000 on one machine here at home (main server) and XP on everything else. Just got a new Dell and formatted it within an hour of plugging it in and installed XP on it.

Microsoft just is not learning and still trying to shove bad products down our throats...

[Rot 911]

I was just reading that MS has not dropped the price on the XP software because so many people are buying it to install on their Vista computer.

[MattKellett]

Originally Posted by Kurt V

I was just reading that MS has not dropped the price on the XP software because so many people are buying it to install on their Vista computer.

Kurt - O think you just nailed it on the head!!! They make Vista crap, so anyone who buys a new system preloaded with Vista, will then run back to the store and buy XP!!! Genius - what a great marketing ploy

[Sapporo Guy]

I wonder what really is happening in redmond ?!?!?
Has Apple really got them on the run or is it LINUX?

With all the talent at M$ they really could do something better but their company committees are just bunking the hell out of them.

Sure Intel might have put pressure on them to OK un-Vista machines but ... come on ...


Years ago when OSX went public beta my friend and I came to the conclusion that M$ is gonna take it up the anterior vortex if they don't do something radical. lolo, years later our prophecy is coming true.

Maybe, M$ should just buy Lindows or some other distro and copy Apple's approach
Actually, Sun might be the company to buy. Solaris was awesome years ago and they have some interesting things going on that could put the big bad wolves into hunting form again!


intersting notes:
M$ $150 million investment got lots of Apple code that helped XP become stable.
M$ code is riddle with " F$%#$% M$ " comments


Weren't XP Pro and XP Home different base OS code?
Pro coming from the NT line and Home coming from the ME line?

[onewhippedpuppy]

Won't buy a computer with Vista, I see absolutely no benefits, and lots of issues. Hint, Dell small business models can be ordered with XP pre-installed. Vista is XP with window-dressing and lots of problems.

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

We run Windows 2000 on the desktops here at Pelican. There are very few incentives to even upgrade to XP - the desktop machines work perfectly fine.

-Wayne

The incentive is when you can no longer get security patches, but thats not until 2010, or whenever they decide to change the date again.

[HardDrive]

Originally Posted by Sapporo Guy

Weren't XP Pro and XP Home different base OS code?
Pro coming from the NT line and Home coming from the ME line?

No. Everything since 2000 is NT architecture.

[Sapporo Guy]

I read that M$ is actually working on a new system
Might be that Vista (errr LongHorn) was really a long stretch into the sakjflskajsf;alfhwuieh ?!?!? have no clue what they were thinking.

The original specs sounded awesome and was actually worried about my beloved OSX but the released product was such a disappointment that I didn't even feel any joy over M$ getting kicked around by Apple