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)
Re:+1 Funny (Score:5, Funny)
Re:+1 Funny (Score:5, Funny)
Mrs. Ballmer: Stevie! Stevie! Your operating system SUCKS! I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)
Steve: Mooooom! I'm doing a THING right now! Can't this wait? I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)
Mrs. Ballmer: No! It's too big and it's bloated and it SUCKS! I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)
Steve: FINE! I'll send someone over to install it for you! I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)
Mrs. Ballmer: Fine, honey! Will you be coming over tonight? I'm making spaghetti! I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)
Steve: Ooh! I love your spaghetti! I'll be over around 7! I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)
Mrs. Ballmer: Wonderful! We'll see you there! I'm going to F***ing KILL YOU! (Throws chair)(Exits)
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.
Re:+1 Funny (Score:4, Funny)
Vista actually is the greatest OS ever, if you choose the definition where greatest means largest.
Re:+1 Funny (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but if you're running a support site for Vista you'd expect the stats to be skewed. It'd probably be even higher if most of the users didn't have to revert back to XP to be able to connect to your website at all.
(Joke, but it illustrates the value of such anecdotes.)
Re:Still (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still (Score:5, Insightful)
I have nothing to lose, apparently.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
mysterious (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Still (Score:5, Funny)
That is, if you know a guy named Mac, otherwise you may need to give her to Mike or John.
Re:Still (Score:5, Funny)
There are two fatal blunders a man can make:
1. Never start a land war in Asia
2. Never try to divorce a divorce lawyer
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thankfully she is smart enough to solve the windows issues that pop up, so this scenario actually works.
funny note... to avoid support calls from the mother in law, I gave her an old IBM laptop running ubuntu. The only time she claims it didn't work was when the ISPs DNS was in the toilet.
Re:Still (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Still (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still (Score:5, Funny)
I think I've had enough of Ubuntu. I'm going to try Gentoo next.
Re:Still (Score:5, Funny)
Interestingly enough, if you install Gentoo it will not only blow up your car but actually build you a new one.
From raw materials.
Make sure you specify USE="steeringwheel trunk windshield". You'll have to wait a while though but it will be worth it. It will rebuild itself every week or so and occasionally change colour for no accountable reason.
After three years you will discover that USE="-clutch" would have been a good idea when it suddenly becomes a manual shift without warning. You should have paid attention to the build logs when emerging --deep --newuse world. Oh, and it goes like stink most of the time. Ok so sometimes you have to fix it yourself by renting a foundry and full workshop and talking to Formula 1 mechanics but hey, this is a ~x86 car.
Re:Still (Score:4, Funny)
~S
Re:Still (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Still (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you want wmv playing under kaffeine, I'm guessing that installing libxine1-ffmpeg would fix it.
For Ubuntu users, if you want to get stuff working in gstreamer (i.e. for totem), you might want to install w32codecs or w64codecs (found in medibuntu), gstreamer-0.10-ffmpeg, and gstreamer-0.10-pitfdll (this last one provides support for the w32codecs DLLs), along with ubuntu-restricted-extras.
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.
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Funny)
Why I myself am about to ditch OS X in favor of gadget... err Vista.
If you can't see the insurmountable value of gadgets, and that their existence warrants a 7 year development cycle, multiple delays and feature reduction not to mention complete industry IT overhaul and user re-training, then, you sir are not a visionary, and should promptly log out of this site, and clear your history.
Good riddance I say!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I *want* swooshy 3-D graphics stolen directly from OS X!
I *want* the Blue Screen of Death in 5.1 surround-sound!
I *want* to play solitaire on an x86 box that has 8 gigs of RAM and a 200 gig hard drive!
You sir, are an anti-Windite!
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:A lot of value... (Score:5, Funny)
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.)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A lot of value... (Score:4, Funny)
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:A lot of value... (Score:5, Informative)
From the article: Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system.
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?
funeral's saturday (Score:5, Funny)
Re:funeral's saturday (Score:4, Funny)
Am I reading that right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Am I reading that right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Back there, while Lotus was cramming everything to fit in 640k of memory, MS was making Excel w/o concerns for machines, and they got to ship earlier.
Than, by the time 1-2-3 shipped, modern machines were cheap enough, so people went with Excel instead
It really makes sense, in a way.
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/18.html [joelonsoftware.com]
Re:Am I reading that right? (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how I can pretty much do everything I do with my new lenovo T61 windows (formally vista, now XP) laptop, on my six (?) year old 1.2 GHz Sempron running gentoo.
Value = Gadgets (Score:5, Funny)
So the "value" that the woman's 13 year-old daughter saw were Vista's gadgets:
I'm glad the end-user is seeing so much value in Vista.
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.
Obligatory Neil Stephenson: (Score:5, Funny)
"With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free."
And:
"The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?""
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:Obligatory Neil Stephenson: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Value = Gadgets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Value = Gadgets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (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
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.
He basically told her, "You're wrong." (Score:5, Insightful)
As it is, people just shrug their shoulders and say, "Who is John Galt?"
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.
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.
Translated for the Lay (Score:4, Interesting)
Translation: We spent a lot of money packing it with bloat.
Translation: No matter how many versions we have, it's still one size fits all. The tension is generated because our developers don't lead normal lives and see things the way ordinary people do, which makes the end product obfuscated and confusing
Translation: We're banking on bloat, the more there is the longer it takes the crackers to find the exploits, but sure as the Sun rises, they will find them because more code has more holes.
Translation: Stock value. If we didn't come out with a new version of Windows everyone had to buy every few years our stock value would drop. We have to keep addicts supplied.
Translation: We rushed it to market. If we had waited until it was really ready we would have seen our stock drop. The premature release was purely driven by profit motives rather than care for our customers.
Translation: Revenue generating cycle - Bleeding edge, counting the casualties.
Re:Translated for the Lay (Score:5, Funny)
Translation: "Our Marketting Department spent 5 years changing the specs for the Engineering Department based on focus groups stuffed with hydrocephalic chimpanzees. We gotta get our money back before our stockholders show up with pitchforks & torches and lynch us."
Translation: "Our chimpanze focus groups are fickle as hell and constantly change their minds from minute to minute. This leads to developement team frustration, so we were forced to sedate them. That didn't work so well, so now we're trying lobotomies..."
Translation: "Our developers couldn't keep up with our changing specs. Don't blame us, blame the chimpanzes."
Oh really... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh really... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (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.
Sooo? (Score:4, Insightful)
> She's 13.
Re:Sooo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sooo? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the retort from the mother is basically
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.
Re:Love/Hate Relationship? (Score:5, 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: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: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.
Yikes! (Score:5, Funny)
Or, better yet (Score:4, Interesting)
The $350 Vista Desktop (Score:3, Informative)
The Geek always quotes the list price for the retail box when he wants to slag Microsoft.
This isn't "insightful," it is ignorant and foolish:
The Vista Basic laptop at Walmart starts at $400 Everex StepNote w/VIA CPU [walmart.com]
The Dual-Core Vista Basic desktop with 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD and a DVD burner at $350. Compaq Presario w/ Dual-Core Athlon CPU [walmart.com]
The Vista Premium HP Pavilion [walmart.com] desktop with 3 GB RAM, 2.6 GHz Athlon Dual-Core CPU, 500 GB HDD, and
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:I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a college student and needed to install MS Visual Studio for a project. Our CSE lab is partnered with MS through MSDN. We have access to most MS software. So I went online and noticed that Visual Studios 2003 Pro was on the website. (2005 is not available) Checked out the cd from the lab and went home to install it on Vista. After having trouble getting it to work I went searching for a fix.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa948854.aspx [microsoft.com]
So Visual Basic 6, created in 1998, is supported but software from 2003 isn't??
Re:I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I built my pc last september. I had to install 6-7 drivers including video, sound, chipset, etc for XP. I formatted and put vista on it in january (along with a new bsd install). I only needed to install a sound and video driver. It was less work for me to go to vista in that sense. I'm running x64 vista at that. On newer hardware, it's ea
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The XP->Vista is much closer to the 9-X transition.
Re:I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Neither my Linux nor my OS X needed hardware upgrades.
--
hint: try to look outside the cube...
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
why does /. still have a subject line?! (Score:5, Insightful)
DUH!
OS Wars (Score:4, Funny)
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.
getting bigger (Score:5, Funny)
Much like Ballmer himself.
Re:buy more chairs, Uncle Steve's coming over! (Score:5, Funny)
*click*
Uh oh (Score:3, Funny)
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:Question for the geeks here... (Score:5, Interesting)
That constant looking-over-the-shoulder (both your own and others') has got to result in a lot of the lost performancethat is being seen in Vista.