Microsoft Pleads With Consumers to Adopt Vista Now 912
SlinkySausage writes "Microsoft has admitted, in an email to the press, that 'some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they've heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release.' The company is now pleading with customers not to wait until the release of SP1 at the end of the year, launching a 'fact rich' program to try to convince them to 'proceed with confidence'. The announcement coincides with an embarrassing double-backflip: Microsoft had pre-briefed journalists that it was going to allow home users to run Vista basic and premium under virtual machines like VMWare, but it changed its mind at the last minute and pulled the announcement."
Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thought not.
Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
XP is the end of the line for me and Windows. We've had a long and bumpy relationship, but it's over now. Time to move on.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows XP was a major improvement over Windows 95/98 (which is what most people were using when XP was first released) but Vista is a major step backward. Not to mention horrendously bloated and absurdly over-priced.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
a "fact rich" statement (Score:5, Insightful)
What's in it for me? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Those who already have a PC, are reasonably knowledgeable about it and are quite happy with how it's all running. What's in it for them? Re-learn how to do a bunch of tasks only to wind up with exactly the same as what they've already got but with a few extra bells and whistles.
2. Businesses. What's the benefit? Microsoft likes to peddle things like "increased productivity", mainly because it's impossible to measure and hence impossible to argue with. I would, however, point out that "the IT department having to make sure that everything runs on Vista, scripts don't break and users don't get confused with an interface change" doesn't increase anyone's productivity.
3. Those who either don't have a PC, or do but are unhappy with it (probably because it's dog slow under the weight of all the spyware, but they don't know that). This is the only group which may go with Vista - but they'll go with whatever the PFY in the store tells them to go with. If Apple started offering sufficiently generous kickbacks to retail partners, you can bet that their market share would go up quite a bit.
Re:MS's greed is there worse enemy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Ofcourse if they got rid of all that crap they *MIGHT* actually have an operating system that will run as fast as XP and people will consider buying it. Until then its doomed to rot on the shelves with all the intelligent IT people badmouthing it (which is where most customers get their info from)
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Drink the Kool-Aid© (Score:3, Insightful)
It would also demonstrate, yet again, that in the world of technology marketing trumps quality every time.
they think they should wait for a service pack (Score:2, Insightful)
Vista doesn't do anything (for me) that XP doesn't do - it just costs more, requires a more expensive PC and supports less of my hardware (and probably software). Result!
Why Microsoft Fears Virtualisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap, efficient virtualisation totally throws most of the downsides of multiple OS booting out the window (no pun intended). Suddenly you could run Linux or OS X as your desktop and totally ignore Windows until you need to run a Windows program. Windows thus goes from the Master Control Program of your computer to just some shared library that a program loads in order to run. This represents a loss of control over the user, and the one thing Microsoft fears the most is the loss of power, regardless of how small the loss is.
Microsoft loves your money, but it loves your obedience even more. Being able to discard Windows from your sight when you don't require it means you're not being a good little Windows user. Therefore, you deserve to be punished, hence the licensing restrictions.
How about against IP violations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
No, most customers get their info from the highstreet PC retailers who are pushing Vista as the New Big Thing the everyone should have.
Whatever MS do, their operating systems are guaranteed success because they come bundled on machines - most people will buy whatever they are told is the latest thing. The majority of people don't buy preinstalled machines based on an informed decision of what a specific version of Windows will or won't do for them.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like it don't use it, just don't be a karma whore. Sure Vista can be slow but then running vista on 512mb of ram is like running XP on 128mb's, something you shouldn't do. Can we actually see a compelling reason rather than the usual rants?
Re:MS's greed is there worse enemy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shame on Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were really minded towards science and altruistic academic improvements, their OS would consume less resources [and power] yet still get the same amount done as before. It would be more standards compliant to make development cheaper and more reliable, it would embrace all vendors of software, even the OSS side, etc.
Vista, in my mind, is basically a GUI change [not upgrade, just change] and explorer.exe re-write.
Put this in your noodle and ponder. Windows is the least standards compliant OS in the world [that is in current production], and YET they can't even keep their own software working with it. That is, they hold all of the cards and still can't make a play. That speaks volumes as to the quality of the shite software they put out.
When something like OpenOffice breaks in Fedora, you could say, well it's not Fedora's fault, they're aiming at UNIX/Linux standards by using industry standard libraries [X11, motif, glibc, etc, etc, etc], and the software just didn't work. But when people write for the proprietary Windows libraries and then Vista goes and breaks it all, that's just amazingly shotty engineering.
Tom
Thanks, but no thanks... (Score:4, Insightful)
But, but... how can this be?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:1, Insightful)
I find it amusing that people call it a flop... I thought it hadn't sold well enough to be even that good.
They'll probably do the same thing Intel did with their processors, in the PIII and later generations, but with Windows.
Go back to an old tech, but with tweaks, and change the name.
P3 -> [new structure] P4
---------> [P3 derivative] Pentium M -> [Pentium M derivative, with the two good elements of P4] Core2
Windows XP
-> [New "features"] Windows Vista
----> [Mostly XP, with an optional Aero from Vista, and a few other tweaks] *Achieve OS
*I strongly suspect a change in the OS name in the next few years, it'll probably be something suggesting either network or productivity.
bad plan (Score:1, Insightful)
I've spent most of this week trying to set up a Vista machine for one of the sales team in the place where I work. I've been genuinely startled at how bad it is - basic stuff simply doesn't work. For instance it randomly looses its network connection, or refuses to connect to a standard Windows network, for no discernible reason. IE7 crashes on start-up (this is on a brand new laptop with the manufacturers default install - probably caused by an add-on crashing but there is no quick way to determine which one), randomly sends incorrect machine ID information to the database server so it looses its DB connection periodically. And I'm getting really strange SQL errors reported in the main application which make very little sense. Oh, and it takes t takes about 5 minutes to be responsive on a boot, and about 3 minutes to shut-down. Vista isn't ready for serious use - stick with XP if you need a Windows machine.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
The people bitching about vista here are the same ones who bitched about XP, and before that, windows 2000.
No compelling reason to switch (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Office may be Microsoft's saving grace yet again. A few of my users are on the new 2007 Office and I must say it's a massive improvement in productivity and ease of use over any office suite out there. I had been pushing to replace our Microsoft systems with a free operating system and OpenOffice, but Office 2007 will make that a much harder decision. $800 per workstation (Vista+Office) is nothing if I can get more out of my workers and not have to retrain them on OpenOffice.
I'll still move our servers to Linux, or preferably, BSD. Office 2007 doesn't help me there.
Re:Compatability? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a computer that is almost 4 years old; what are the specs?
Desktop computers haven't gotten all that much faster (excluding some insane gaming rigs out there). Why should people go out and buy a new machine when their 3-4 year old computer is comparable to most new computers? The same is true of printers/scanners/etc.
If it isn't broken, and works well, why replace it? If your "upgraded" OS won't work with it, then it's not much of an upgrade is it.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have two computers at my desk. A 7-year-old Pentium III desktop and this laptop, an IBM T-43p. The desktop is extremely slow, but serves perfectly fine for music, photo, and document storage. The laptop I'm using has a smaller HD, but works great for playing newer games and any application too powerful for the aging desktop.
In essence, I'm set. Why should I spend so much money to experiment on an OS that:
A) is so far unproven
B) Will not run properly on my desktop
C) does not support all my devices
D) See, cost.
As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I use what I have, and it works just fine. So, where's my incentive to change?
Bad "word-of-mouth" among ordinary folk (Score:5, Insightful)
I had not discussed Vista with either of them. Short story: Both of them bought new PCs this year, both of them after Vista's release. My wife wanted a Dell but ended up picking up an HP at Staples because Dell told her she couldn't get a Dell PC with anything but Vista. My son wanted a Dell and, as it happened, it turned out he _was_ able to get a Dell preloaded with XP, and that's what he got.
Both my wife and my son are what you might call computer-literate, but neither of them has any love for computers. They browse the Web, they do a little word processing, a little spreadsheet, they download and print pictures from their digital cameras, and don't buy new computers until they're forced to.
In my wife's case, she'd been using Win98 SE on a 2000-vintage Gateway. (She picked Gateway because she liked their cow-themed boxes and because in 2000 they had retail "stores" that catered to non-techies). What forced her to buy a new PC was the lack of updates for her Win98SE version of Norton Antivirus, and for IE--and the increasing number of websites she visits that cause her version of IE to hang or crash.
Her approach to me came about a day or two after Vista release and what she said was, "You know, I think I'd better buy a new computer now before I'm stuck with one that has Vista." What put her off of Vista was the impression she'd gotten from the mainstream news that it was a) brand new, and b) rough around the edges. Incidentally, she wanted a Dell, but ended up buying an HP because at the time she called Dell they claimed, truthfully or untruthfully, that they would not sell her the low-end machine she wanted preloaded with Vista. (The reason I even suggest untruthfulness was that the person she talked to said that Dell would not sell any PCs preloaded with XP to anyone nohow no way, that they had switched 100% to Vista, and claimed that every other computer maker had, too). So we drove to the nearest Staples and she bought a sweet little compact HP, new in its box, that had XP SP2 preloaded.
A couple of weeks ago, my son called asking whether I had any idea why performing a virus scan on his machine would make the screen go to black and make the machine reboot. Long story short: Bad fan on the power supply. After reviewing options, he decided that the option he liked was to buy a new machine.
Again, I had not discussed Vista with him. Again, _he_ called _me_ and asked whether I thought he should get Vista. He said he was leaning against it, "because Moose" (a friend of his) "says I'd be crazy to get Vista at this stage," but he was on the Dell website and couldn't find a home machine without one. He asked if I thought it would be all that crazy to get Vista. I gave him the most honest answer I could, which was that if you just want a plain-Jane reliable box, well, XP is mellow and mature and not too bad, while Vista is new and does have significant teething pains. I added that if he was going to go with Vista he should get Home Premium, not Home, because it would be silly to have the headaches and not at least get all the fancy new usability and UI good stuff, and that he should have at least double the minimum "recommended" RAM and disk space and should ask hard questions about the video card.
He called me back an hour later to say that he'd found that if he ordered the machine as a "home" system, he could only get Vista, but he'd found that the exact same CPU... which incidentally happened to be one Consumer Reports liked... was also sold under "small business," and ordered that way XP was an option. And the machine ordered as a "small business" system with XP actually cost a little less than the same machine ordered as a "home" system with Vista Home Basic.
He went with XP.
So, yeah, I'd say Microsoft has a problem. But I think it's a problem with Vista, not a problem with perception, and they'd be better off improving Vista than conducting ad campaigns. No ad campaign is as powerful as word-of-mouth and the word-of-mouth on Vista is bad.
And, just maybe, when Microsoft thinks about "customers," they should be thinking of my wife and my son and attending to their needs... not the needs of PC manufacturers and the RIAA.
Re:Um... (Score:1, Insightful)
Your suggestion that the productivity improvements you're seeing are attributable to 'faster machines, and possibly more stable software' doesn't sound like it has a very solid basis. How have you actually been measuring the relative impact of, say, faster processors versus UI improvements? Having used Office 2003 and Office 2007, I'm certainly convinced that the latter has the potential to substantially improve productivity for many workers.
What? You don't *WANT* Vista's crippling DRM? (Score:0, Insightful)
Doesn't everybody want a crippled OS that takes away control from the owner?
Oh, wait, you're not the owner. You're just the "licensee"...
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
I got the chance to experiment with Vista at work. I played around with it for 5 minutes... and made a decision...
I switched. I switched my home computer from Windows 2000 (which I've happily used faithfully for... 7 years) and Windows XP (which I've hated since its inception) to Ubuntu Linux 7.04.
We have another happy customer. I've been running Ubuntu for neigh on... a month now. No serious problem to speak of... I've rebooted it twice for updates... and a couple times to get extra things working. Aside from that, I've been thrilled, and wont ever switch back.
The problem with Vista as I've seen it (in my grand 5 minutes of experience with it) is that its not designed for usability. Its designed to market itself. "Oh look, its so pretty! I want that one!" And then people buy it... and hate it because it lacks some fundamental usability bits that I felt it could have used.
Ubuntu is:
A: Pretty! Right out of the box (so to speak) the default styling leaves me thinking that its been designed with a user in mind. Sleek, with pleasing colors, and an interface most people could pick up in a few minutes.
B: Cost effective! It's a free download, and the default installer will install the OS on most common PC's in the market with no upgrade required. Not to mention that the text based installer will install it on many low-end or aging PC's as well.
C: Functional! I had very little trouble getting all of my hardware to work. Most of it required NO work at all. Even in windows I have to install driver updates to get things to work 100%. Ubuntu worked pretty much out of the box and required only 1 additional tweak to get my video card working 100%, and 1 tweak to get my mouse working (All 5 buttons, the way I *WANT* them to work).
And so yeah, when you say Microsoft has done Linux a favor... Your right! I think if people give Linux a try at this point, they'll be surprised. Pleasantly surprised, like I was. Linux could pick up some of that lost desktop market share.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather have older hardware then support DRM. You're forgetting about Mac or Linux as alternatives to DRM-ridden Platforms.
[2- New MS games DX-10 exclusive games.]
What PC game is going to make me want to upgrade to DX-10? Halo 2, Halo 3?
I can play both of those on the 360. If there's some game that absolutely will not
run on DX-9, then I'll just go without and stick to console games, as I am doing now.
[3- Aero. No kidding, it if one of the 5 best looking UI of the moment.]
I agree its very pretty looking, but as others have pointed out, I can achieve nearly
the same look on XP using software. Its not a selling point if its easily replicated.
[4- No need for a good anti-virus.]
Ok, so the OS finally achieves a level of security that it was expected to have
about 6-7 years ago, good for them.
----
I am not planning to use Vista at any point in the near future, and I will advise anyone
I know to, if not shun completely, wait for a while.
MS seems to not get the point that Customers will not move over to unproved and unstable
platforms when they have the exact opposite available: Stable, Proven platforms (Mac, Linux, XP/2000, etc.,).
That they would resort to these kinds of tactics is a VERY telling sign of how much they are desperate to
save face and try and make some money on MILLENNIUM EDITION 2.0.
Consumers Plead sell Vista at a reasonable Price (Score:5, Insightful)
The other reason I am not buying is the utterly insane price. My OS shouldn't be the second most expensive componenet of the entire system.
The only thing in the system I paid more thana the price of a copy of Vista for is the SLI Video Card setup.
Re:Why Microsoft Fears Virtualisation (Score:3, Insightful)
I crap you not (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, incompatible software isn't exactly my first complaint (SEE: DRIVERS), but that said I hear plenty of guys in the office grumbling every day because the company ordered their new laptops with Vista and their audio recording software won't work, or their phone data sync software, or whatever.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about some other company, but my users are MY guinea pigs, not Microsoft's.
Re:Um... (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? Half(*) of them still run 2000.
* Disclaimer: number pulled arbitrarily out of rear exit canal.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:3, Insightful)
When Microsoft stops releasing security fixes for XP and starts making sure new software only works right on Vista, like they did to 98 and 2000 when XP came out.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MS's greed is there worse enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
People used to tease us at Apple about this, back when I worked there in the nineties.
See what happened when they got organized?
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
The DRM in Vista is NOT there because the RIAA lobbied for it. It is there because Microsoft wants to do an end-run around the content distribution and software industries and establish themselves as gatekeepers to all PC-based media&software and, with the eventual rise of the M$ home media/entertainment hub (complete with wmv-squirting, color-coordinated Zunes and souped-up, remanufactured Xboxes), of all media full-stop. They plan to do this (at some point in the next five-six years, when Vista and Vienna are sufficiently prevalent) by simply turning off the tap and not allowing ANY non-DRM-ed media or software play/run on their boxes - 'cause by that point they will be THEIR boxes, not yours anymore. Does the last computer you bought come with a TPM chip? How about the next one you'll buy?
This, incidentally, is Microsoft ripping off yet another page from Apple's playbook. Oh the delicious irony - Steve Jobs, hoist by his own platform-lockdown petard.
Do I need it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they made an updated version of XP that didn't add restrictions and was refined to be more efficient I would be interested in buying it. I'm not interested in anything that is new in Vista. Slow animated transitions? (I took them out of XP too...) More complex visual displays? A completely redesigned layout that isn't more efficient or intuitive?
Now why would you expect me to want to buy this again?
Re:Non-working apps killed Vista for me (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Non-working apps killed Vista for me (Score:2, Insightful)
I see that as a big issue.
Especially as Windows is toated as a multi-threaded platform capable of doing more than, you know, one thing at a time.
If 1/4th of the CPU is taken up just running the OS, what will happen when you actually want to get something done?
Maybe 20-30% of the cpu isn't a big deal to you, but when you're on a deadline, it's a big difference to me. it's esentially making that dual core 3ghz processor down to a nice 1.8 ghz proc.... permanently.
Re:Non-working apps killed Vista for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, of course...! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do I need it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The pricing for me to upgrade to Vista is ridiculous. XP is pretty stable for me so why the hell would I move away from it? My office and home machines all run fully patched XP Professional installs.
More to the point the SO uses AutoDesktop and AutoCAD. They WILL NOT RUN on Vista.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't get how people could dislike Vista so much? I don't get how people like you (self-described fanboys) can cling to their opinion that Vista is some kind of an adequate improvement.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well there's your problem!
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, man. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for everybody.
Believe me. I've been doing tech support over-the-phone for the past 2 years. Vista is far from in perfect working order. Half our calls are people who installed Vista looking for the latest & greatest and they can't get sweet-fuck-all installed because of compatibility problems. Including, but not limited to:
- Drivers that don't work
- Apps that don't work (including Antivirus and Antispyware software - and before you say it, Windows Defender misses A LOT)
- Permissions Errors (despite use of Admin accounts and disabling UAC)
- OS reboots on startup, and the WinRE (Vista's new recovery environment) doesn't catch it like it should
and a host of others.
Troubleshooting doesn't fix it. Formatting and reinstalling the OS doesn't fix it.
Take it from me:
Vista.
Is.
Broken.
Get the Facts?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Boy, I hope it is as accurate as there "Get the Facts" web page that talks about how it's cheaper to buy Microsoft products than it is to use free software. You know the "Total Cost of Ownership" thingy that only looks good on paper if you assume you already own all of the Microsoft software.
Yeah, upgrade to Vista people. It's slower. It's showing itself to be buggy. Your drivers may not work and it breaks most of your software but hey, it's new.
The sad part is that they are going to shove it down people's throats.
Re:Do I need it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah.
The only killer thing in Vista is directX 10.
I could give a shit about the widgets, the new (terrible) UI (I already have to deal with it with office 2007 in XP), the slower desktop graphics, the extra pretty stuff.
But eventually, after the cards drop in price, I'm going to want to play a game that needs DirectX 10. And I'll have to go to vista.
How is this news, anyway? COMPANY SELLING PRODUCT URGES EVERYONE TO BUY IT.
~Wx