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?