Mom Blasts Ballmer Over Kid's Vista Experience 767
Lucas123 writes "While on stage at a Gartner's ITxpo conference today, Ballmer got an ear-full from the mother of a 13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer she decided only two days later to switch back to XP because Vista was so difficult. Ballmer defended Vista saying: 'Your daughter saw a lot of value'; to which the mother replied: 'She's 13.' Ballmer said that Vista is bigger than XP, and 'for some people that's an issue, and it's not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1. But machines are constantly getting bigger, and [it's] probably important to remember that as well.' Says the mother: 'Good, I'll let you come in and install it for me.'"
+1 Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of value... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer's comment seems really prick-like to me. It probably wasn't meant as such, but still.
Am I reading that right? (Score:5, Insightful)
He basically told her, "You're wrong." (Score:5, Insightful)
As it is, people just shrug their shoulders and say, "Who is John Galt?"
Sooo? (Score:4, Insightful)
> She's 13.
Love/Hate Relationship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, "she's 13" is not a valid retort for why it shouldn't matter that she found value in it. She obviously knew how to use it more than the mother did.
Ballmer was in an impossible situation here. He could make her look the complete fool and catch hell for picking on that woman, or let her 'win' and catch hell for letting a woman beat up his operating system. He chose the right route, for once.
For the record, Vista was the wrong route.
I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a machine that runs 98 tolerably well and upgrade it to XP. Pain. Take a machine that runs XP tolerably well and upgrade it to Vista. Pain. Nothing is new here. You upgrade your OS and you'll probably need to upgrade your hardware too. And purchasers that doesn't realize this only have themselves to blame. Did I just agree with Steve Ballmer? Damn it, get me a razor blade...
Re:Sooo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He basically told her, "You're wrong." (Score:4, Insightful)
They're probably wondering who let this troublemaking person in here. Don't we screen attendees for product loyalty?
I love how people like Ballmer throw around the word 'value' The product is actually a hook, designed to get you tied into Microsoft's other products and services - Office, MSN, media content through their partners, etc. If it was about an operating system it would fit on one CD, require a few megabytes of memory and be secure. Windows is not an operating system, it's an environment bundled with an operating system.
Value = Subjective (Score:5, Insightful)
Some buy their cars for the greatest reliability. Some for performance or efficiency. Some people buy their car to have the newest and flashiest on the block. Some for safety. Some because they know the brand or it's what their friends have.
And some people just fall in love with the color or, wow, big cupholders or heated seats, and they're sold.
Re:Am I reading that right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that sound like they're proud to be bloat and have no plans to reduce because machines are getting bigger?
No, but it makes sense in a twisted way for MS. What are they averaging, 5 years between major releases? When you have that long between releases you have to balance the featureset you want to include against the fact that it's going to be a long time before the next OS release. As a result, it makes sense that you design it such that the full 'experience' will just barely run on a decent new machine at release.
This does illustrate the utility of more frequent releases.
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:4, Insightful)
The kid wasn't having difficulty, the mother was.
From her comments, I doubt she even installed XP. It probably came preinstalled, and her complaint is with the complexity of installing any OS.
Ballmer's comment was spot-on - the daughter saw value in Vista's widgets - and the mother's response was fallacious and nonsensical ("She's 13" - so what, her opinion means nothing, while her ignorant, incapable mother's should be taken seriously? Children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.)
Oh yeah let's bash MS !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer was probably thinking "either you or your daugher or both are just stupid" but knew he couldn't say it so he was trying to be passive and just said some BS to try and get the lady off his case.
Why I am a (Mac/Linux/Fill-in-the-Blank) user (Score:5, Insightful)
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm a home Mac user.
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, yea, every new release faces nostalgia of the previous release blah blah. It's way worse here.
Average people call Vista shit. Businesses run away from it.
The Vista brand is ruined. Now even if they fix Vista, the brand will never recover.
I hope Microsoft learns something from this. First impression lasts forever. Don't release software unfinished.
Machines are *NOT* getting bigger (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sooo? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the retort from the mother is basically
why does /. still have a subject line?! (Score:5, Insightful)
DUH!
Re:Love/Hate Relationship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Love/Hate Relationship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite wrong. 13 year olds see a lot of value in Zwinkies, expensive ring-tones, and fake plastic jewelry. So when it comes to deciding value, "she's 13" is a perfectly good answer. (Next time you have a grand to spend on a home project, ask your 13 year old to be in charge.)
Secondly, nowhere there does it say that she knew how to "use" it. What does she know how to use? She saw some eye-candy and wanted it for herself.
I agree that Vista is the wrong route, and that Ballmer was in a tight spot. Nevertheless, he took 7 years to create that tight spot, and he just reaped a bit of what he sowed.
Re:Value = Gadgets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh really... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Love/Hate Relationship? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, wait, what? The 13 year old daughter liked the widgets. Mom explicitly said that's why the daughter wanted it. Maybe we can assume Mom thought shelling out >$100 would at the minimum be neutral (hopefully improving) every feature she came to love about XP. Instead, the experience degraded. The 13 year old daughter, who has probably never worked a day in her life, nor is she likely to for another 2-3 years, is unable to grasp the value of the money it cost to get the OS upgrade, so is unable to judge the value of the product. Just because she knows how to use the widgets better than Mom doesn't mean she can weigh the value of the money it took to buy the upgrade against the other things that money could have been used for.
I side with Mom. The girl is 13. Her opinion matters, but her opinion is not the only thing that matters.
Re:Value = Gadgets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:+1 Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is what you get from someone in a position like Ballmer's. Somewhere way down deep in the org chart someone was tasked with finding data that supports the assertion that Vista is the greatest OS ever. After looking through hundreds of charts and tables and graphs, and throwing them all out (issues per install....can't use that one) they probably discovered that the total number of issues, across all 50 or so copies they've sold so far, was lower if you weighted by the total lines of code in Vista.
That is what you get from the Ballmers of the world. One line of marketing. Never any raw data.
For the linux on the desktop folks.. (Score:5, Insightful)
As we've all learned for ourselves now back when we started CS/IT/ENG/whatever, we constantly evolve using what we started with as a base. I can trace my usage of linux/unix now back to first using NextStations and IRIX boxes back in school.
What is Linux/Ubuntu/younameit doing to capitalize on the 13 year old market? What does Linux offer a teenager, or better yet, why would a teenage want to use Linux? Social interaction, gadgets/widgets, entertainment, etc may seem like a waste of purpose and time to us hardcore nerds, but these are very important to non-tech types. Once the 13 year old is interested, then the whole 'get em early' evolution begins.
A great example is the XO laptop. The XO has considered the social target audience of the product like few other hardware and software developers previously (except maybe Apple). As such, every review of the laptop so far by a schoolage child (the target) loves it. For Linux to succeed on the desktop for the masses, developers needs to consider what the desktop for the masses actually is - not what developers think the desktop to be where the masses adapt.
Where's the Beef? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would've been a lot more interesting if she'd challenged him about the actual problems she encountered...Perhaps she did, and it just wasn't captured? Ah well.
Should it be any different? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Insightful)
From her comments, I doubt she even installed XP. It probably came preinstalled, and her complaint is with the complexity of installing any OS.
From TFA, it sounds like mom installed the OS and then spent two days fighting with inadequate drivers and other problems. She specifically states that "It's safe, it works, all the hardware is fine, and everything is great" when she refers to XP. The fact that she indicates hardware in there makes me think there were hardware issues with Vista.
I'm sure the daughter's friend had a good install of Vista, though it was likely due to purchasing a new computer, not upgrading an old one. Seems Vista sucks on anything not brand new. Contrast that with my Linux box here, running on an old Pentium 4 with an outdated video card. Runs blazingly fast, even with Beryl installed and running. I guarantee I couldn't turn on the flashy effects in Vista if I could get it to install on this same machine.
Re:Should it be any different? (Score:5, Insightful)
The intent seems admirable if it were altruistic, but Microsoft have shown their predatory stripes. They very nearly undid the major anti-virus industry by initially refusing to include that large business sector in to see their code. Microsoft would certainly like to hold all the cards, but that very attempt could have doomed them as businesses would want to know why Norton, McAfee, etc are not there to protect them because Microsoft believed (the very company which left so many security holes in Win95, Active X and Win XP) they could do a better job of protecting the buyer.
Microsoft bundles average quality products and gives their own line of products the inside track, which have hurt competitors for years. You might check your system performance monitor to see how much memory is being used when you first boot up and like to know why 380+ MB of memory are in use before you launch your first app. Microsoft have preloaded a tonne of library code in case you might run Explorer or Office apps. That you don't have Office doesn't seem to derail the boot process from including them to occupy your memory anyway. All this to make Microsoft's apps appear to load faster. Try loading a competitor's apps and see how many seconds you have to wait for them to open up.
The ulitimate in useability is to keep the damn system lean and let the user decide how much crap they want when they build/install and OS. You should always be able to go back to the distro and add more, but you don't really get a choice with Windows, do you?
Systems get bigger because they have to - to be able to run Windows.
Re:Still (Score:5, Insightful)
I have nothing to lose, apparently.
Re:Oh really... (Score:3, Insightful)
>
And it's even easier for me to install a waffle covered with maple syrup in my DVD player, but that won't make it work any better.
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately I couldn't really find anything specific that caused the switch back. Was it the kid's choice? The mother's?
Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Am I reading that right? (Score:2, Insightful)
In a year or two the high end box I have will be very inexpensive to purchase, so focusing on performance to the exclusion of other factors (security, stability, etc.) won't help you out in the long run.
Sam L.
Customer Service
Solid Documents, LLC
saml@soliddocuments.com
http://www.soliddocuments.com/ [soliddocuments.com]
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the funniest thing about Vista's gadget system is that (still, in 2007!) when your resulotion gets changed (by a game, for example -- happens to me far more than once a day ) the gadgets in the lower and right-most portions of your screen get pushed up/left, and have to be moved back manually. For the love of god, people, anchor the things to the nearest edges.
Re:Still (Score:3, Insightful)
Cart
Want piece in the bedroom? Pay attention to the wife and give her good service.
Re:I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The XP->Vista is much closer to the 9-X transition.
Re:Value = Gadgets (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fine dear."
Three days later...
"Mom, I can't figure out how to use this. Where's my music? How do I get my pictures off my digital camera? How come the printer won't work? Why does it keep asking me these stupid questions?"
After three days of that, I'd be pretty hot under the collar too.
Re:Still (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong move indeed. First off, you shouldn't have removed XP until you knew Ubuntu did what she needed. Second, you should have started her off on Kubuntu, which will at least have a familiar interface.
As for your mysterious file format and your "forgetaboutit" OOo install, we'll need more info to refute/help you on those ones. I find that anyone who has used Office XP or earlier tends to enjoy using the latest OOo, unless they have a bunch of VB macros that don't work quite right, or some badly-created templates that don't display correctly.
Really, the only problem I've found so far for normal users is that Word documents don't always convert indices and other complex objects correctly, and need to be re-formatted once imported into ODF.
Re:Still (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Value = Gadgets (Score:3, Insightful)
XP, for all its security holes, updates, and service packs, was a comparatively stable platform (NOTE: I'm not saying good; just stable), which most home and business users could learn to navigate with relatively little difficulty. Now along comes Vista, and this person -- with presumably some technical acumen -- experiences a 2-day exercise in frustration, trying to get things to work. One naturally expects that things will improve and become easier to use as successive generations of what is much the same thing are developed and released, not WAY more difficult!
To cite the revered car analogy: the first automobiles didn't come with adjustable seats, power windows (hey -- there's the Vista successor: Power Windows!), an electric starter motor, or even a steering wheel sometimes. But with time and redesign, succeeding generations sure became a lot easier to use, didn't they?
So the real question she was asking is: Howcum Vista, the latest generation, isn't easier to use than XP?
Re:Not an OS (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Question for the geeks here... (Score:4, Insightful)
This kind of cruft certainly doesn't make an OS any easier to secure, but in the interests of creating a reasonably stable platform for developers, you can't just re-write the entire feature set every few years and expect software to be ported. It seems to me that if well enough thought through it's very possible to make a secure OS while remaining mostly backwards compatible (e.g. by emulating old and insecure features on newer hardware).
Re:Still (Score:4, Insightful)
re: The "tank" analogy, continued..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the GNU crowd has mixed feelings on all of this. Some think it's great and bought one of these "OS X tanks" themselves, while others still can't grasp why people would want anything other than exactly what they offer for free.
Re:Am I reading that right? (Score:1, Insightful)
Imagine, if you can, if Vista ran on the smallest system available today. Perhaps $200 for the hardware, and $200 for Vista. OEMs would see that MS is taking all the cream (as they actually are). OEMs want to ship Linux because they can make a profit doing that.
Re:Still (Score:2, Insightful)
It's amazing how often people forget that cardinal rule of security, isn't it? Of course, leave it to MS to have their new OS beat people over the head with it. I am SO sick of the UAC popping up when I run programs I've proven to myself are safe. Why isn't there a way to say, "Yes, I'm sure I want to run this program, and don't freaking ask me again!"?
Re:Still (Score:3, Insightful)
Okaayyyy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying a teenager doesn't understand value, just shows that you don't understand value. Value is absolutely relative to the individual, and it varies wildly based on fashion, personal experience, age, sex, race, everything.
When you say that someone of a different demographic from yourself "doesn't understand value", what you're really saying is that you don't understand them, and that, therefore, you think the things they value are meaningless.
There are a lot of people who will profit from those people and their "meaningless" values, while you sit smugly telling them they're stupid for valuing those things anyway. Microsoft has become a monopoly doing this crap. It's heart and soul why Office beats the crap out of Open Office. OSS people need to take the needs of non-geeks seriously.
Re:Am I reading that right? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is an inflection point somewhere in 2002 or 2003 where average hardware became sufficient for the vast majority of user tasks, and newer hardware spends most of its extra power waiting for the user to do something. If newer hardware were more expensive, it would be annoying; given that it is generally cheaper, it's pretty cool.
Re:WOW: Windows On Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
And it does matter how large it is, as the Win32 code has to know how to deal with being called from 16 bit code.
Re:Still (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet he cant export these world class movies in a format that is easily playable on most platforms.
So his world class video editing software he specifically configured it from the normal mpeg or other standard format to the incompatable WMV?
maybe he should learn how to use his editing software. Vegas, Premier, Canopus and Avid all default to standard formats for export, and those are the only real video editing apps available for windows. if he did this on a MAC and final cut he really screwed up.
Re:Not an OS (Score:3, Insightful)
"All of Debian" probably includes support for more architectures than any version of Windows has ever even run on and apps allowing you to do so many different things that most humans are not even able to go through a list of their descriptions and understand what the apps are for. Are you seriously comparing that to what's shipped with Vista and the size of it?
Re:Question for the geeks here... (Score:2, Insightful)
By contrast, every new version of Windows seems to throw out huge chunks of the old system, and replace them with (often similarly ill-considered) 'new and improved' chunks -- and there are parts of Windows that are a side-effect of intentional mines put in to trip up competitors' products. Much of that weirdness has now been entrenched into Windows because Windows developers have been forced to work around and/or use those same logic-bombs.
Re:A lot of value... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I'll give you the Network and Sharing center makes it harder to get to some of the screens it did before. Other options though.. I don't recall any that are harder to get to than with XP. Of course, if you expect things to never change I guess you'll have a hard time, but much of the re-arranging does make a lot more sense.
UAC is incredibly annoying and not a real safety feature as the average user will become so frustrated by the popups' frequency those warnings will not be read, the end user will simply click 'continue' so he or she can use the damn thing. UAC isnt about improved security, its about Microsoft being able to say 'oh, well its' the user's fault for clicking continue'.
How is it much different than Linux prompting for a root password in Gnome or KDE to perform an administrative task? To be fair, its the applications that are misbehaving, by requiring admin access when they don't really need it. As new versions of software are released, this problem should subside. In the mean time, it does get one thinking about what is going on. Certainly, such prompts shouldn't appear just by visiting a web page.
I give you an example of Vista's 'improved' interface design - changing the date and/or time. Under XP its simple - double click the clock in the lower right hand corner of the screen and presto! you can change the date-time.
Under Vista, you need to click on the clock, then click on a lick 'change date and time'. Which opens up another dialog box.... which has a button labeled 'change date/time'.... clicking on this button.... brings up a UAC dialog. Click continue. Hurray! I can change the date and time!.
I'm sorry, its been a couple of years, but is changing the system time not an administrative function in Linux? Can you just willy nilly change the clock there as well? IIRC, I had to dive into a command prompt to adjust the time, there wasn't any kind of GUI at all to do it. Seriously though, what requires you to change the clock setting so often? So yes, its more clicks.. but do you really spend that much time changing the clock or looking at your network settings?
XP to Vista - a double click to 4 mouse clicks. Nuff said.
So your argument is that when you do need to change the clock, it takes more clicks now. I have to wonder... how often are you changing the clock that this matters at all?
Re:Question for the geeks here... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you remember back in the day, OS/2 was supposed to be the wave of the future. Nobody seriously doubted it was a better OS, the problem is that it required a princely 16MB of RAM at a time when you were lucky to have 4MB. The problem may have been that Microsoft learned the wrong lesson, piling on more features while striving to avoid outstripping the resources customer machines were likely to have. The problem is that you can't have an OS that is complex, resource efficient and secure and stable.
So it may be that Vista feels like a step backward, camouflaged with a bunch of superficial frippery. But when you are on the wrong road, you do have to backtrack to get on the right one. The real question is whether a desktop OS ought to shoulder so much complexity. None of the killer aps of the last decade depend in any way on Desktop OS innovation.