Posted on 08/24/2007 3:41:50 PM PDT by Salo
MS admits Vista challenges BY SAMANTHA PERRY , ITWEB FEATURES EDITOR
[ Johannesburg, 24 August 2007 ] - Microsoft SA has conceded there have been difficulties for resellers and end-users around the launch of its Vista operating system. It states there have been problems with its communications to its channel.
Microsoft Windows business group lead Colin Erasmus says these communications were not properly planned. It has three campaigns in the pipeline for this year to rectify the situation, he notes.
Local distributors, OEMs and resellers have been battling with bulk image blasting, the time and expense of downgrading unhappy customers back to Windows XP, and second-line support.
Says Tarsus CEO Pierre Spies: “Vista doesn't support bulk image blasting; it's just not here yet. We believe the product was launched too soon. [Microsoft has] a lot of catching up to do. Corporates are buying new machines with Vista on and downgrading to XP, in anticipation of Vista being ready in the next two to three years. They are buying the licence, but do not plan to use it until the product is ready.”
Spies says the situation is interfering with the company's business model. “We're taking serious flak. We've got people arriving in droves to downgrade.”
He says the company is downgrading roughly 25% of the Vista machines it sells. ”Consumers are not taking a long-term view like the corporates are, they just want it gone.”
Support overload
This, he says, impacts support because the company has to handle calls from customers, as well as the clients that arrive at its offices wanting downgrades. Further, he says, this impacts corporate roll-outs, which are far more time- and resource-consuming without bulk image blasting capabilities.
The cost to downgrade, for which Tarsus charges customers R100, is around R400, says Spies. “In the last two months we have downgraded 4 000 units, and that excludes the big roll-outs.”
Microsoft's Erasmus says OEMs can click here for information on ImageX, a command-line tool that enables OEMs and corporations to capture, modify and apply file-based disk images for rapid deployment. Systems builders using the OTK kit can click here.
As far as downgrades are concerned, Erasmus says: “Downgrade rights exist for OEM Vista Business & Ultimate editions to Windows XP Professional. The customer/system builder can contact the downgrade call centre on 0800 995 637, choose option four, and tell the operator they want to exercise their downgrade rights to obtain their product key for XP Professional.”
Acer SA country manager David Drummond says his company's main concern is that there was some delay in the market, while customers waited for Vista's launch. “We haven't seen compensation for that slowdown in terms of demand.”
Discontinuation of XP
Acer SA took an average of 30 Vista-related calls a day through March and April, regarding patches, drivers, and information on how to downgrade. This has now fallen to around five a day, Drummond says.
Vista machines have been in store since end-January, he notes, but Microsoft's channel launch only took place on 8 May, “and we are still in some discussions as to how to transfer customer calls that need to be escalated. Currently, we call Microsoft and then call the customer back.”
Drummond adds Acer is still getting calls from customers who purchased XP machines with Microsoft's Technology Guarantee, which entitles the customer to a free upgrade to Vista. “The complaints are around the fulfilment centre not responding, or unilaterally cancelling some customer orders. We've had multiple complaints about the centre,” he says, noting that most customer calls, however, were for downgrades not upgrades. “The legalities around that took months.”
“Microsoft is aware of the delay in some CD shipments and is currently diligently working on resolving these delays. We can confirm that if customers did submit the correct documentation timeously, that their CDs will be shipped to them,” says Erasmus.
Also of concern, says Spies, is the scheduled discontinuation of XP.
“At this stage,” says Erasmus, “availability of XP to OEMs will be discontinued at the end of January 2008 and for system builders at the end of January 2009. The decision to extend availability will be a global decision and will be based on feedback from the channel.”
Erasmus says partners or customers needing assistance can contact Microsoft on 0860 22 55 67.
One of my systems is about to go down. I don’t want to go to Vista for the new system to replace it. I’m looking at an imac. What a cool machine!
My biggest problem will be a sign program that was built for Windows 3x.
If I can get a work around on that, I’m going to be getting the imac. The prices are even comparable now to what I am used to paying for PCs.
It was only supposed to be a temporary work Vista ;-)
ROTFL!
Why Jokar, whatever do you mean?
Maybe they’ll get it right the next time, or the time after that.
Win95 sucked (crash city), 98 was better, and I have no big complaints with XPPRO.
I'm a technical person and I like Vista!
I installed the x64 edition on my HP laptop. I used a Windows XP x64 driver for my Dell laser until Dell came out with a Vista 64 one. I'll admit I can't get an old HP laser to work but I can live without it. There are some other drivers that HP has only for 32 bit but I'm making due. I'm never going back to 32 bit!
.
Does it run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP? You might be able to run the program within a Windows Virtual Machine (Parallels or VMWare) on top of OS X...you can also check if that program runs in the open source WINE (Windows emulation layer) on Linux or BSD, which I suppose is easily ported to OS X.
Placed behind a proper hardware firewall, you may be more "secure" than many others, although the security is only because 3.11 is so old (and its market share is so low) that it's not really a target any more.
In the university where I teach
none of their software will work with Vista.
I recently bought a new computer
and deliberately chose an older model
that still had Windows XP, not Vista, installed.
Two problems I can think of - one, some of the features promised (the new file system, for example) weren't delivered, and second, the hardware requirements and the price have tended to force potential users to wait until the purchase of a new machine to use the OS. That's fine if Microsoft can wait that long, supporting XP the entire time. They didn't want to do that and I understand perfectly why not.
Apple could move into the breach, I think, but that would require a reduction of price beyond their customary model. But the market share is out there up for grabs. The various Linux distributions have made huge strides in ease of installation but the proliferation of versions hasn't really helped marketing matters a lot. Nobody with a Vista or OSX machine has to ask "which distro?" With Linux they do.
Somebody will move - the market is demanding it. It will be entertaining to see who does first and who does most successfully. That'll be small comfort for us poor SOB's who have to support them all... :-(
I have an old licensed and unused copy of Win XP around here somewhere, and thought of installing that on this notebook, but the geeks at Best Buy claim that there are keys in the motherboard or something, so that if I try to install XP on this Visduh machine, it will not work, and that further, the various drivers in the machine will not work with XP. Does anyone know if this is true or not?
It was built for 3.0 but works perfectly with XP Pro which is what I run on all of my machines presently.
Are you using Trumpet Winsock?
the geeks at Best Buy claim that there are keys in the motherboard or something, so that if I try to install XP on this Visduh machine, it will not work, and that further, the various drivers in the machine will not work with XP.
*groan* Good one!
I’m not shocked *you* like Vista. :-)
OS X is good technology. It's going to be on my next computer. I'm not upgrading to Vista.
then by definition it is not stable. i frequently run my linux box for six or eight months between reboots...
I have Vista Ultimate and I’m very happy with it. Unfortunately I can’t find a good statistics package that will run on it that doesn’t cost over $2k. For that reason alone I haven’t been able to convert over fully.
Why did I cross over to the dark side? In a word..Fusion.
With my Mac Pro and Fusion, I can run Windows XP perfectly in a “virtual machine.” It does everything I used to do with my XP box, plus I have the “security” of running under OS X. I can also have another virtual machine running Linux at the same time. Since I need to get proficient on all three OS’s, this is a great money saver (compared to having three machines) and even if I had set up my old box to dual boot Linux, I could only run one OS at a time.
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