Interesting. Thanks, Aqua. 
:)
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.
I have XP SP2 and have no incentive to "upgrade" to any version of Vista. I'll just continue with what I have and consider installing SP3 for XP (when it comes out).
Good rule of thumb: Never trust the Geeks at Best Buy.
The 'geeks' at Best Buy are nothing more than salespeople masquerading as computer techs. If you forget every piece of technical info you ever knew, the one tidbit that you would want to hold on to is that the 'geek squad' knows little more than what they have been told to tell you by their corporate overlords. Should a knowledgeable, competent technician somehow slip through the hiring process, he won't make it long before he is run out of the store on a rail for daring to actually help someone.
In short, the geek was blowing smoke up your south end. XP can be run on a partition, as a virtual machine, or as the sole OS on your laptop. 'Keys' in the motherboard to prevent an XP install!! That's rich!
I had one tell me that the malfunctioning DVD drive in my moms laptop was a virus.
Tech Ping ...
Someone said SP2 is when it will be OK, like it was with XP. I am beginning to wonder...
ping
“bulk image blasting”? a little knowledge help folks...
I’ve been a Mac user since 1987, and I never liked those commercials. I did like the 1984 commercial and the Lemmings commercial, but for completely different reasons...I just thought they were interesting...could have been any product.
But I NEVER liked the whole smug attitude thing. I like using a Mac and I enjoy it, but if someone else doesn’t like it I don’t have a problem with that. A computer’s value to me is derived from the ability to get what you want from it. I don’t like Windows much, but hey...if there is one thing I have found, it is that there often dozens of different ways to perform a task on a computer, and everyone finds a way to make it work.
I always thought Apple should have focused on the way the hardware/software combo makes for a more organic and intuitive experience not the darn “You are an un-trendy person” approach.
My brother runs his one-man PC support company, and he says administering Vista is a complete pain in the ass. My company hasn’t even done any looking at Vista yet. (Not officially, at least)
Anyway...Microsoft needs to fix Vista for administration by professionals if they don’t want to start a long slide to oblivion. They better be careful, because...it can happen to a company that big. It has, and will. It is the nature of business.
Go with Linux; the final Windows upgrade. Windows is an old, creaking, antiquated operating system that is so 90’s. And it’s free !
I’ve never been in a hurry to upgrade an OS. Invariably it will have compatibility problems with other programs I need to work at home and most of these aren’t discovered until the product is at least a year old. I was running 98SE until about a year ago. We bought two machines recently and insisted on XP Pro instead of Vista. One of the selling points for Dell was they were willing to do this, as was the other company we purchased from, TracerTek.
A year ago I got my oldest daughter a MacBookPro (at her request - product of a great gene pool, no doubt); 8 months ago I got my wife and other daughter MacBooks, and I am anxiously awaiting the death of my 5 year old Gateway running XP to get an iMac.
OS X rules, Windows drools.
‘Nuff said.
Interesting. Thanks, Aqua. :)
That was the reason I replaced my old P4 2.8Ghz box: My old video adapter croaked and took the AGP slot with it. The fan on the card seized up thanks to a dust bunny and the GPU melted into the board and cooked the AGP slot, so I needed a whole new PC.
It was a good PC I had, going on seven years old with upgrades. Started life as a P4 1.6, and I added to it over the years.
I think that a lot of stability problems with newly released Microsoft OS environments that early adopters encounter can be avoided by using ab Intel reference motherboard and nothing but MS WHQL-certified hardware & drivers. I heard the same moaning about WinXP and it's 64,000 unfixed bugs when it was released, but now everyone talks about it like it's the most stable MS OS ever.
In the gaming scene I'm in, I really haven't heard a lot of people squawking about Vista problems. You need DX10 for all the forthcoming games, and everyone I've heard of that is having problems is loading Vista on borderline obsolete hardware.
Gotta say that anyone switching to Vista probably ought to get a whole new box. I put mine together for about $1000 from NewEgg.
That’s an insult to ME. I’ve ran it since it came out and it’s actually not a bad OS, with some tweaking. Current install has been in place several years, normally gets uptimes ranging from several days to nearly a month, and typically gets rebooted for AVG updates or shut down for storms.
Crashes are an extreme rarity and tend to signal something actually *wrong*, rather than “Windows being Windows”. Find me any OS that doesn’t crash with a dead cpu fan, on hardware that actually needs one...no cheating by counting some of the old heatsink-only iMacs :-)
Bad rep...totally undeserved.
(For anyone curious about the beastie that can run WinME well..it’s an ancient k6-3 450 mhz box, nothing remotely special)
“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?
The ‘geeks’ at Best Buy are nothing more than salespeople masquerading as computer techs. If you forget every piece of technical info you ever knew, the one tidbit that you would want to hold on to is that the ‘geek squad’ knows little more than what they have been told to tell you by their corporate overlords. Should a knowledgeable, competent technician somehow slip through the hiring process, he won’t make it long before he is run out of the store on a rail for daring to actually help someone.
In short, the geek was blowing smoke up your south end. XP can be run on a partition, as a virtual machine, or as the sole OS on your laptop. ‘Keys’ in the motherboard to prevent an XP install!! That’s rich!
I had one tell me that the malfunctioning DVD drive in my moms laptop was a virus.”
Hear Hear!
XP can be run on 64 mb as well, the recommened MB notwithstanding.
Geek Squad is a marketing ploy folks.
You won't regret that decision, only that you waited so long. I bought a used PowerBook G4 running 10.4 on Ebay over a year ago and I can barely stand logging in to a much newer XP computer. I can get on my Mac and never have to be told that my computer is at risk if I don't update the anti-virus, the anti-spam or the operating system.
Every few months, an update comes out and after I enter the admin password, it installs transparently, no reboot required.
Keys in the motherboard? Drivers in the machine? Set your beeber to stune! Like a mechanic telling you your muffler bearings need replaced. Even for Best Buy, that is pretty pathetic.
Yes, the iMac is cool, but it won't go down.
Sorry for the late ping--I was traveling back home yesterday.
“Yes, the problem is the customers. They’re too provincial to believe what we tell them is good for them. We never thought we’d see this day, but we’ll get them to come around eventually.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.