Posted on 04/24/2008 8:44:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer on Thursday offered a glimmer of hope to fans of the company's XP operating system, saying customer demand may see the company reconsider a decision to stop selling XP in June.
But Ballmer was adamant that "most people who buy PCs today buy them with Vista."
"That's the statistical truth," he told reporters at a press conference at Louvain-La-Neuve university.
"If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter," he said.
Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves by June 30 have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.
Ballmer said the customers buying PCs with XP are IT departments who are having trouble shifting old machines to newer technology.
Some 160,000 people have already signed an online Save XP Web petition who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010.
Ballmer said he was very confident that Microsoft's US$44 billion (euro27.6 billion) offer for Yahoo Inc. was "a very good price."
He refused to say if the company plans to appeal against a fine of euro899 million (US$1.3 billion) that the European Union levied in February.
Microsoft has until the first week of May to launch a legal challenge against the EU decision that it had not obeyed a 2004 antitrust order to share communications information with rivals.
Joking with the press and even breaking into good French, Ballmer acknowledged that he's finding it hard to keep up with social networking on the Facebook Web site.
"I do have a profile on Facebook," he said. "It's hard to keep up. I get many friend requests from people I don't know."
"There's about 10 Steve Ballmers and I'm only one of them. I'm the one who actually has a picture that looks like me on it!" he said. "I'm hitting a golf ball, that's the real Steve Ballmer."
He was in Belgium to open a Microsoft innovation center in Mons that hopes to boost new startups in the country, creating some 200 jobs over the next three years.
Do Badgers have tails?
If not, then that animation is even more disturbing that I thought.
/johnny
I think Bill Gates got out just in time. Balmer and Vista will rip Microsoft up.
“I spent 3 weeks trying to get Vista to connect to my home network. Never got it to work. It took 2 minutes with the Mac.”
________________________________________________________
It only took 2 minutes to hook up Vista to my home network.
Drivers could be a problem.
Odd how that happens when they are offered no alternative, isn't it?
The real important things in life!..............
That's because they have no #^$&@!(@&#$!$ choice!
That's like stating calmy that people bleed because they have been sliced open...
If you work for MS, you must take a course in Obfuscationary Facts.....
Then your best bet is to build your own. If you buy a new PC from one of the big PC manufacturers that has been "certified" for Vista, you will likely have hardware compatibility issues, and you won't get ANY support because the computer was made for Vista. I had a client who recently bought a new HP and also purchased XP Pro separately to install on it. I went to do the install for him and the setup would totally crash at the very beginning. If you are able to just get XP installed and running you can probably use another computer to go online and find the drivers for individual hardware components on the new computer, but expect no help from the computer maker.
You have mixed up two proverbs - “Great minds run in the same channels” and “ Fools think alike.” Which is it? LOL
>> “Great minds run in the same channels” and “ Fools think alike.” Which is it?
Well, in my case, unless “run in the same channels” is a euphemism for “stuck in the same rut”... maybe I’d better plead the fifth. Or at least a six-pack. :-)
A six-pack of Heinekens, I hope.
Nah, I'm an Oatmeal Stout kind of guy, myself.
Cheers!
(say... does this beer make me look smarter?)
Same here, one older laptop with XP & one Vista with SP1. Haven’t had any problems, I enjoy the features each offers.
On the Vista system, youtube videos won’t go to full screen, just blank. I read their tutorial and my system appears to comply, so haven’t figured out yet what I have to do.
***I have one laptop that runs XP, and I do all the heavy lifting with that one. One running Vista, so I can help my clients that have Vista, and this one, which has been on Linux for 4 years. I primarily use it for FR and for server stuff.***
Do you mind sharing how you get youtube to go to fullscreen? -- I've never been able to figure out how to do that (We have three brand new machines, all have XP).
Thanks in advance.
Personally, I have no desire to switch to Vista because I don’t want to upgrade my hardware. Everything I’ve read says the system requirements Microsoft lists for Vista are on the low side. I have a laptop and two desktops that are running perfectly fine on XP now but they would all be minimum power machines with Vista. No thanks.
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