Posted on 05/27/2008 10:31:41 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
Switching gears. Walt asks about Vista and the lousy reception it’s been given. Is Vista a failure?Ballmer: Vista is not a failure. Is it something we’d like to improve? Of course. Is it something that with 20/20 hindsight we’d do differently? Sure, he confesses. But Vista has sold a lot of copies, he adds.
Walt jumps in and asks about the percentage of Vista sales that result in downgrades to XP. Ballmer dodges. Gates looking a little depressed.
Walt asks if Vista has damaged with Windows brand.
Gates says Microsoft’s philosophy is to “do things better.” And Vista has given us lots of opportunity to do that, he notes. (Audience laughter.) There are plenty of lessons out of Vista–compatibility and other issues vendors are concerned about.
Ballmer says that according to consumer research, the No. 1 complaint about Vista was the change to the Windows user interface.
The conversation turns to Windows 7, which Microsoft hasn’t said too much about. Clearly, the company has learned from the media beating it took over the defeatured and perennially delayed Windows Vista. Indeed, in a post to the Windows Vista blog today, Microsoft’s Chris Flore noted that Microsoft is being very careful about releasing details about Windows 7. “What is a little different today is when and how we are talking about the next version of Windows,” Flore wrote. “So, why the change in approach? We know that when we talk about our plans for the next release of Windows, people take action. As a result, we can significantly impact our partners and our customers if we broadly share information that later changes. With Windows 7, we’re trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners. This means sharing the right level of information at the right time depending on the needs of the audience.”
Well, apparently this is the right time and the right audience, because we’re about to get a Windows 7 demo (Oh, one more thing …. Here’s hoping Microsoft shares only those aspects of the new OS that it doesn’t end up de-featuring at a later date.)
Ballmer says what we’re about to see is “just a snippet” of Windows 7.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at allthingsd.com ...
Only problem is, we have over 2000 customers we’d have to switch over. That’s not likely to happen.
Gates and Balmer are copy-cats. They are always behind the curve, waiting for Apple to innovate so they can copy its good features years later.
Vista is junk that should never have been allowed to be automatically installed on new PCs. We have regretted that we didn’t have Best Buy take it off before we bought our last machine.
I recall a live teleconference when MS was rolling out Win98.
The presenter claimed it to be ‘the most tested, the most stable’ Windows ever.
The presenter reached over to the laptop to press the magic key and reveal the marvelous Win98 to the watching techno world.
[Click]
[BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH]
It was a ROFLMAO moment that went down in computer techno history.
Microsoft pushing multi-touch for 2 years from now is just going to sell mac’s which have this technology already today on the MacBook Pro’s and coming soon to the whole line is my bet if Microsoft does the marketing for this “feature.”
“[BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH]”
I remind Free Republic of the real truth in this matter: the media. I was there during the “OS Wars” between Windows and IBM’s OS/2. By any measure, OS/2 was a better OS, more secure, more reliable, more efficient, more functional, than Windows.
OS/2 was based on a solid, modern object-oriented foundation. Windows was a kludge of patches tacked on to the ancient DOS foundation. Many of those patches are still in current versions of Windows.
But the media was in love with Gates, Microsoft and Windows. The media pulled the same crap on OS/2 and Windows as they now pull on liberals vs conservatives.
Windows flaws were not reported by the media. OS/2’s features were downplayed. IBM was “bad” while Microsoft was “good.”
I was there. I remember Mary Jo Foley and her ilk mis-reporting everything.
The media gave us Clinton, they gave us the current Democrat congress and they are trying to give us Obama.
Blame Gates and Ballmer, but the real culprits concerning your computer problems were the media. They are responsible for your “Blue Screens of Death” and your hours of wasted time trying to solve Windows-based problems.
If Linux would get its act together and come out with one ‘distro’ [whatever the heck that is], it might make some serious inroads. For example, if Linux came out with one desktop home version, they might effectively challenge MS’s Windows Home.
Every time I browse, Linux, I find a dozen different flavors of the OS and that many more desktop versions. That leads to confusion for non-technos (who don’t want to spend massive numbers of hours learning about all the different flavors) and those more interested in productivity than in programming.
Linux is working against itself by continuing the multitude of flavors. That may be fine for ice cream, but not for general computer use. All the variations makes the Linux world appear to be a disorganized playground rather than a serious operating system and desktop application software.
It was bad enough 20 years ago, when we had PC DOS or MS DOS or OS/2, GEM Desktop or Windows Desktop, WordPerfect or Word or Wordstar.
MS learned that lesson early on. They tried to make their productivity software (Office) so proprietary that it was incompatible with other productivity software. Corporate users told MS they would not buy their products without the capability to convert between MS products and other off-the-shelf products. MS balked, and their products wouldn’t sell. They finally capitulated and allowed ‘conversion’ programs to convert the productivity files.
I just don’t want to spend the time to learn Linux and determine the differences to find one version that best suits may usage.
I remember when OS/2 v2.0 was released: It was amazing. Same thing with Novell. Technically a far superior NOS to anything that Microsoft had out. But what did I constantly hear? "It doesn't have a graphical interface!" IT DIDN'T NEED A GRAPHICAL INTERFACE!!!
Although in this case I do have to share the blame. Novell has pretty much killed every excellent product they've ever produced or purchased. They couldn't market space heaters to eskimos!
Mark
I understand your feelings.. but to me.. thats what I like about Linux.. If I want to operate in Fluxbox environment I can.. If I want to operate in GNOME desktop environment.. I can. Same goes as KDE... or Enlightenment.. or XFRE...
Its about Choice.. plain and simple. If you do not wish to use Linux.. so be it.
I myself do not like Apple because you are trapped in a hardware path that is overpriced for what you get. The software is fine and I do enjoy the BSD/Enlightenment type desktop environment.
I use a Linux box and a Windows XP box at this time.. again.. its about choice.. I dislike what MS did to their office environment so switched to another office suite..
Good points. Ubuntu? Fedora Red Hat? Suse? Debian GNU? What the Hell-ux? System resource hog as it is, at least we know Microsoft OS’s will be there tommorrow.
You do know that Jobs copied the GUI idea from Xerox?
I’m beginning to understand why other nations have the government have complete control of the media. Not that I advocate that for the US, but the MSM is a monster out of control that destroys.
Just wow. It's not the bloat, the DRM, the driver compatibility issues or the huge resource requirements. It's the color of the lipstick on the pig that is the real problem!
This is why MS-Windows won't get better, folks.
Won’t ever happen. I’ve been a Linux developer (SW/HW designer) quite a few years now. The power is Linux is its flexibility. That is what allows it run on virtually any hardware (PC, set-top box, mainframe, server, embedded device like cell-phones and automobiles). Different machines have different functions: your cell phone has very different functions and capabilities than your automotive unit.
IMO, Linux was never really for the desktop/end-user. It’s power is perfectly suited for use in the computing machines users never see: the servers and routers that run the backbone of the Internet, and embedded devices that you never open up or see.
It was actually Jobs who said that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0UjU0rtavE&feature=related
When I did a search for your quote on Yahoo, they were all attributed to you:
No malice intended, and if Gates did actually say that I apologize, but I just happened to remember Job's "Picasa" quote and looked it up.
Thanks for relating your experience. Extrapolating that (the media’s influence) into the social/political arena is also useful. I agree with you. Couple that with dumbing down our society through control of education and you see how close the left has come to total control
I also think the election system has been gerryrigged (voter fraud).
Are we suggesting that Windows is just another bad liberal idea, full of unintended consequences? :-)
Historically, Linux is a server OS trying to work it's way out to the desktop. Windows is a desktop OS trying to work it's way to the back room.
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.