Why "Vista" Nick White Left Microsoft

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week Nick White, Product Manager for Windows Vista and blogger at WindowsVistaBlog, announced that he was leaving Microsoft. Geek.com previously interviewed Nick about what SP1 for Vista was all about, so they sat down with him yesterday to get the details behind his departure, his proudest moments at Microsoft, a few regrettable moments, and more."

Re:Vista windowing

[Tony Hoyle]

Uhh.. often when you move windows on OSX the *whole* window flickers... at least since the 'leopard graphics update' that screwed everything up. And that's on a top end MBP.

It's not only microsoft that can fuck up graphics.

Save your time - he said nothing

[ahabswhale]

I read the whole article and nothing was actually revealing probably because he failed to say anything negative whatsoever about his former company (and everyone has something negative to say about their employer), yet he offers no real reason why he left but it's supposedly an interview about his leaving Microsoft... Sorry for the run-on sentence.

Re:What a bunch of convoluted nonsense

[nsayer]

I'm sorry, let's call him what he is: Shill

Folks, words have meanings.

Specifically, in this case, a shill is "an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others."

Now.

Can you produce any evidence that while this guy was blogging for Microsoft that he in any way hid his affiliation? If you can't, then he's not a shill. He may be something else, but that being the case, you should have picked the correct word for whatever it is you want to call him.

ZZZzzz....

[mrobinso]

He had me at:

"PR had a voice in what content appeared on the blog but they were only one stakeholder among many."

It was the only statement he made that had any substance. And if you think for one minute there never has been, isn't, never will be a muzzle on this dude:

[geek] "What feature did you want to see in Vista that was dropped at the last minute and why?"

[nw]"I came onto the Windows team too late to have an informed opinion, and what I do know should probably remain non-public information. Sorry."

Pffffft.

My take

[Archangel Michael]

Marketing Droid speaks Marketing Noise, to people who really don't care.

"Did you ever post something that Microsoft wished you hadnâ(TM)t?

The first post I put up was on the use of BitTorrents to distribute Beta 2, and I gave it a rather sensationalistic title. It got senior managementâ(TM)s attention, and from there we had a blank check to engage anyone we needed in order to get the story in time for it to be relevant to our readers. So while it was perhaps a risky route to go in the short-term, it was that story that ensured our blog was apportioned the resources necessary to get the job done right. In short, Iâ(TM)d do it again and in the same way (only Iâ(TM)d blame it all on my managers :) )."

If you read this, he never answer the freakin question, as asked! In fact, he said he'd do it again. I don't know if that was sarcasm, which doesn't work well in written form, or what.

Why can't people ever answer the question? Seriously. Crap crap crap. I just wasted 5 minutes

Re:What a bunch of convoluted nonsense

[hondo77]

Merriam-Webster also defines shill as "one who makes a sales pitch or serves as a promoter".

Very boring article, don't bother to RTFA

[gilesjuk]

Someone who has held a position like that is unlikely to fight back and burn bridges by slagging off Microsoft. In fact you would think he still worked there given the positive spin his article provides.

There's no way he'd ruin his career by giving us any dirt on Microsoft and Vista, future employers wouldn't like that. He's probably signed an NDA anyway.

Regrets?

[MoeDrippins]

Can someone point out the regrets? I couldn't find any. Neither could firefox.

Re:Save your time - he said nothing

[gujo-odori]

Heh. I'm a former Microsoft employee and I have loads of negative things to say about Microsoft. Some positive things, too, but the negative list is far longer and contains more "heavyweight" items. He may be under heavy NDA, but OTOH I never signed anything regarding not saying bad things about Microsoft after I left, and I was a manager there, FWIW. Probably, as others have suggested, he doesn't want to piss off Microsoft by saying negative - if truthful - things about Microsoft or its products.

On the third hand, so to speak, I will tell anyone who asks what I thing is good and bad about MSFT, and I don't mind saying that in the relative anonymity of /. either, but I'm not sure I would want to put my negative opinions up in a well-read forum with my real name attached. MSFT is a 900 gorilla with 1000 pound lawyers and by far the most paranoid place I ever worked, so I can't say as I blame the guy.

Re:I'll give them another chance:

[Nullav]

2001 was seven years ago.

Re:Propaganda

[Technician]

'm not so convinced you've even *used* Vista/Office 2007 (as is the case with so many who spew out the same garbage reasons why M$ is the suxorz). Nice rant/push of Ubuntu, though.

You got me there. It's my wife's new machine. She got it for school. She wanted to connecto to the home LAN. No prob, gave it what it needed to get on the web. Set it up to use our networked printers, and inkjet and laser. She wanted to transfers her stuff from her very old Win ME laptop. She transferred the files to the Simple Share NAS in her folder. She couldn't log in with the new Vista laptop to get her files...

My using Vista has only been a support nightmare. Ubuntu takes about 15 minutes to point to 2 HP printers on a LAN using CUPS. The Vista machine really tried to find the Windows IIS server. MS version of //192.168.19.106/lp1 covered 3 dialog pages with the names just enough diffrent so you needed a Google search to figure out how to enter the info. The naming conventions are much like Favorites vs Bookmarks. With a stand alone printserver with an IP address instead of a name, makes connecting a Vista machine a big task for a newbie to Vista. It took 2 hours to configure 2 printers, and another 4 hours to find why Vista couldn't log into a Simple Share NAS where everyting else including Windows 95, Mac, and Ubuntu. can do it easily. I have the username, Workgroup, password and had to make a registery change to fix it.

After blowing the day just to get it up to the bare minimum functionality (printing, backup/restore, WWW) she was ready to use it for her classes. She asked for help setting up the projector for the video clip, so I set it up in the presenter mode so the Windows icons didn't show on the big screen (dual monitor), started the show, dimmed the lights and took a seat. A few minutes into the clip, it simply vanished off screen leaving an empty desktop background. Brought up the lights to troubleshoot and went back to the laptop and found the dialog box...

You are right. I don't use Vista. I've seen it let us down. We use my laptop for video clips now. I don't have to wait for the FBI warning. The movie just starts and doesn't die unexpectedly for some random nag screen.
Shhh.. With Acid Rip, clips can be simply saved on the hard drive and can become part of the slide show, but that's a DCMA violation.. Shhh... it works great, but not on Vista.

To get things done, I use something besides Vista.

Re:Propaganda

[jimicus]

Erm... It's the way most people get a copy of Vista. The license permits this crap... So out of the box, it arrives very badly broken. This is Vista's fault. That crap should be on an included CD just in case you are interested in any special offers....

I would point out that a few years ago Microsoft got a minor rap across the knuckles for refusing to allow OEMs to install non-Microsoft software.