Microsoft’s partners want Vista bashing to stop
By Jonathan Schlaffer
It’s amazing that at this juncture that Microsoft still has any partners left but it does and those partners want the company to stop its own bashing of Vista which they say is making selling Vista more difficult; as if it wasn’t hard enough. Some partners claim recent statements from Microsoft have undermined efforts to sell the operating system.
CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted as calling Vista "a work in progress" which is to say that Vista wasn’t ready for release but was released anyway. Ballmer is known for saying whatever is on his mind and he also said that XP would be extended if there was demand for it, well there is but the official line from Microsoft is that it won’t be.
Despite that, Dell and HP will be offering XP past the June 30 expiration date by using the XP downgrade rights included with certain copies of Vista which Microsoft will still count as a sale of Vista because the Vista install disc is still included with the system.
ChannelWeb reports, Brian Williams, president of Advantech NW, a Gresham, Ore.-based solution provider says Vista is reliable and solid when deployed correctly in a controlled environment.
"We’ve completed our deployment to Vista internally, and we’re finding that we can support it in controlled environments and that it does work right."
But, Susan Bradley who is with a Microsoft Small Business Specialist asked Microsoft to stop talking about Vist’s shortcomings because that makes selling the operating system harder.
"I’m not asking you to lie to your customers nor your partners, but a little Vista love out in the marketplace would go a long way to showing me that you understand that your business impacts [our] business."
Things have changed at Microsoft. Instead of trying to say that Vista is the latest and greatest, Microsoft has backtracked and said that its not perfect but the company is working to fix those problems. Yes, it is and it’s called Windows 7 and it will be here in 2009 or 2010.
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April 29th, 2008
“Some partners claim recent statements from Microsoft have undermined efforts to sell the operating system.”
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Let me see if I got this straight, its the “partners” (not Microsoft) that wants the bashing to stop. Oh I see.
So then the “partners” should just ignore the all important corporate IT world who pretty much are holding on till Windows-7.
The “partners” should ignore the average consumer who just wants a computer that performs as well or better than the last OS.
The “partners” should just ignore complaints, that Vista cannot be installed on older computers or even Vista capable computers.
The “partners” should just then also address the tiny PC market then. After all, the “partners” want Vista to succeed so don’t extend XP Home anymore…..even on those tiny laptops. Just run Vista on the tiny PC’s.
Oh wait… Vista can’t run on those tiny laptops?.. Oh sorry…I can’t say that…thats Vista bashing…..
Let Linux have that market. Hey great idea!
Wow (pardon the pun), I’m glad the “partners” straightened this out. Now I need to go out and buy Vista Ultimate for my Pentium III computer with 384 MB Ram, I can’t wait to try out Aero on it, and since Vista is a new OS it should run faster than the Windows 2000 I have on it now.
April 29th, 2008
Partner Love never existed at MS. Countless partners cheat on MS. MS cheats on partners countless times. There’s no place for love and freindship in a con-game that is the MS distribution network. So many have actually shut shop and moved to other industries or selling mobile phones and hip gadgets.
It’s all about money, honey. If MS could make more money out of Linux, they would do that, too. Sadly the license doesn’t allow them to embrace, extend and extinguish.
I for one am extremely pleased at the channels getting back some of their own medicine, from their “masters”. poetic justice.
April 29th, 2008
Can’t we all just get along? Let’s just watch this several hundred times and all will be well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MfFjlF_BkM&feature=related
I was so hoping Lil’ Stevie would go into Soprano mode and start wasting these saps.
April 30th, 2008
I wanted to say this before, and forgot to, so I decided to write this on the page of the most recent article.
Did you nottice that new Mac vs PC guy commercial where they say that Vista is a bunch of different peices of code put together, because of MS buying out many companies to implement there software into MS software. Well, many of these companies they buy over, they keep many of there emplyees, and hire them as MS employees.
Also, did anybody realize that OSX is based on Unix code? So, what does that mean? It means that OSX is actually a really good looking reversion of an OS that was originally made in the 70’s or 60’s or whatever. At least the current incarnations of Windows are based on the NT code base, and that, unlike Windows 9x/ME were not based on the old school DOS based Windows, it was a new code base. Windows XP was the first incarnation of the consumer OS being based on the NT code, and every version after XP will be based on it too, Vista, 7, and beyond.
At least the NT code base was written in the 90’s, and mainly by MS employees, or emplyees of companies that it bought, and so those employees became there employees anyways. How do you think they have tens of thousands of employees. Some companies recruit good employees by doing some kind of traditional recruiting, while MS’s recruiting practices involve buying out companies and hiring there employees.
But what I really was trying to say was OSX= Old 70’s Unix modified, while Vista=90’s NT code base.
April 30th, 2008
The age or origin of the code doesn’t change the fact that MS hasn’t made a decent OS since W2k. Even though OSX code is based on outdated Unix, it functions more consistently and is simply better assembled. Too many cooks spoil the broth and if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.
MS has spent its time and money to try to make more money while Apple has spent its time and money making better user-friendly products. The FACT of the matter is, is that the only thing holding MS up from crashing into the crater it has dug itself into over the years is the shear prevalence of its applications and OS. There would be no way MS could enter a market as a start up today with the trash it rushes to market release after release. MS, Do some QA for christ’s sake.
April 30th, 2008
I’m hoping you are kidding about the OSX stuff.
You ought to throw out your video, audio and computer equipment because they all run on the same electricity technology from 1oo years ago.
MS operating systems run 90% of the commercial and retail business in the world. Just taking over a fraction of that would turn Apple into a smoking ruin. Apple is a nice, niche BSD distribution with a nice BSD GUI front end. It has almost no Server line and is woefully unprepared to support enterprise business.
It is ironic after beating the superiority of RISC processors for years, despite the huge amount of data to the contrary, it only became successful again after adopting the CPU every other computer had been using for years. The Mac is a PC with decent components. Period.
The FACT of the matter is a company that needed to pull engineers off Leopard to get the iPhone out is still sitting at the kiddy table of niche products. The sad fact is MS created the market and mass of users. I’m not real impressed with the small hardware choices of the closed system. Apple has lifted much of OSX from the FOSS community and returned very little. The only difference between Jobs and Gates is Gates gives a large chunk of his income to charity and won’t wear a turtleneck.
If you actually think Apple’s main objective is not making as much money as possible, I hope mommy and daddy know you’re using the computer.
May 1st, 2008
Thanks Ken - I agree with you entirely!
In fact, I have stated the same sentiment on several comments made to other threads posted on TECH.BLORGE.
Love them or hate them - what Microsoft managed to do by imposing Windows upon the PC world is enforce a kind of standardisation for end users in a way that had not ever existed before.
For those of you who date back to the 1980s, you may recall that the average consumer faced bewilderment on their first computer purchase, with a choice between DOS, Mac, Amiga and BASIC platforms. A tough choice indeed for anyone dipping their toe into the IT world for the first time. Everything was much more expensive than today, and there was no one-size-fits-all, no-brainer solution that was affordable to the average consumer. And you were often on your own in regard to technical support - not to many of us had friends that we could turn to when we didn’t know how to do something.
These days, PCs are cheaper and more powerful than they have ever been, and because of the ubiquity of Windows, we all benefit by the economies of scale.
If you are an IT illiterate embarking on your first purchase, a Windows box will get you started with the sound knowledge that you are bound to know someone who can hold your hand while you learn the ropes. You won’t have any trouble finding software, and there is a wealth of info, much of it free of charge, available for when you need some support.
Having said all this, I will readily agree that Windows is not the most secure, or resource efficient platform around, and I’ll also agree that other platforms may actually be more intuitive. Personally, I’m looking towards Linux and open source solutions for my future needs, but my employment ensures I’ll be married to Windows for a few years yet.
May 2nd, 2008
I found it funny how this site believes so hard that win 7 still will be the saviour when even the vista has some problems still.
Win 7 will be Vista based don’t you understand it? If you say that Vista isn’t ready yet how you can say win 7 will rock then?
May 2nd, 2008
Demand for the extended support for XP? Oh well my win2000 system still picks up updates from microsoft so I guess it’s still supported? What are you talking about really?
Only OS AFAIK what’s not supported by microsoft anymore is Win95/98/ME -line which they officially told that support is over for those systems.
May 4th, 2008
The way I understand it is ” the partners” are the ones screwing up the drivers.
The partners are the ones not writing new drivers so they can sell you a new product
and just like way back in the old days like Lotus 123, a partner, did not adhier to the programming rules and screwed things up when Microsoft made OS changes.
Supposidly there are safeguards in place but not totaly effective.