Scoble Bites The Hand That Fed Him

An anonymous reader writes "The Times Online points out a post that Robert Scoble, former Microsoft blogger, put up on his site recently. In essence, Scoble has moved 180 degrees from his former blogging tone, saying that 'Microsoft Sucks'. More specifically, he is highly critical of Microsoft's online policy. In Scoble's words: 'Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that's in it to win then I don't get it. ... Microsoft isn't going away. Don't get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn't winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where's the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo's Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That's how you win.'"

It's a trap!

...former MS blogger... How obviuos must it be?

Re:It's a trap!

In fact it happened something just like that with Paul Thurrott and WGA [slashdot.org]
Besides, is anybody gonna trust one guy whose name begins with "SCO" anymore? :)

Dunno about trap

Dunno about trap, or it's just that MS no longer pays him to do PR.

It's funny how a lot of people previously were taking it as the truth, _whole_ truth, and nothing but the truth, just because he's such a hip blogger. I even remember getting modded down and getting some annoyed responses before, when I pointed out that it was his paid job to show the good parts only. "Noo, it must be all spontaneous and 100% the complete uncensored, unbiased picture, because he says so! He's so hip and irreverent that he even bravely told Ballmer to write a memo that's good for PR! He said that MS lets him write whatever he wants, good or bad, so if he doesn't show anything bad, surely nothing bad exists at MS." Not an exact quote, because I'm too lazy to search for the thread right now, but that was the general gist of it.

Now it turns out that when his paycheck no longer depends on MS, he suddenly discovers some bad things about MS too. Who would have imagined that?

So let me just say again, to everoyne: Look folks, do exercise some healthy skepticism when a conflict of interest is _that_ blatant. When people's paychecks depend on the King (or CEO, or whatever) liking what they write, there's rarely even a need to put an explicit "thou shalt present me as the Messiah" clause in their contract. Either they figure it out on their own (like this guy seems to), or natural selection takes care of it.

You can see that from ancient times to the present day. From the Pharaoh's scribes in the Old Kingdom to Pravda (or Faux News) journalists in the 20'th century to paid corporate PR/astroturfing/whatever, the same theme is there: the Pharaoh/Emperor/King/Beloved President/CEO/whatever is nothing short of perfect, and the enemy/competition/etc are a bunch of vampires or sloped-forehead orcs. And that those who didn't figure out that that's what's expected from them, found themselves "restructured" out. (Though, depending on the time and place, that could mean more fun HR personnel management methods, like beaheading, feeding someone to the crocodiles, or putting them at the top of a sharp stake. How's that for upwards mobility in the organization?;)

And that when you're interviewed by the CEO's/president's/etc personal pet PR guy, you put on your best smiling face and proclaim yourself happier than a dog in a cat show. When the guys from Pravda came to Ivan Ivanovich's door, what do you think Ivan said? "Oh, I'm so unhappy under the communist party's rule"? Heh. Most of those interviews weren't scripted either, just everyone knew that it's not like it would even make it to print if they don't say what's expected of them. So what makes anyone think that when Ballmer's personal blogger entered someone's office anything fundamentally different happened?

Briefly, take your infos from less biased sources.

Re:Dunno about trap

Sure, you're completely right. No doubt. I just wanted to grab some "funny" karma points, but, as i got modded as insightful, this tactics clearly didn't work out...

Re:Dunno about trap

Maybe I've just had my fill of spindoctoring - especially as I live in the UK and have Blair et al to content with but these days I tend to warm to and give my business to firms who admit they make errors.

If something goes wrong, I don't want it spun to the nth degree to make it look like a good thing or to cover a CEO's back so they can be sure of their bonus. I want it to say what happened and what they're doing to fix it.

While we're at it, most CEO's bonus's are based around them being able to lie and mislead as much as possible - they're petrified of admitting to any sort of failure or error. That is a crazy situation. They should earn it for doing a good job, not their ability to hide a bad one.

Re:Dunno about trap

I think the part...."no longer pays him to do PR." kind of makes this a non story. I mean YE FLIPPIN GODS.....he's NOT biting the had that feeds (that fed....FED him). He no longer works for Microsoft. So who gives a rats ass that he says something bad about Microsoft. It's also not the first time! He's been making comments about Vista since it came out (which he still wasn't working for Microsoft then) and the comments have not all been good. So what I want to kno eis why the hell did this story get posted? Because it's going to generate page views on Slashdot. That's it. Hell it got me to post and all of you too.

I agree, just one comment to add

Just because his paycheck is no longer coming from M$ he didn't become significantly more reliable. Who knows, he might get paid from elsewhere. Or just writes the crap out of spite. Once compromised, ever compromised.

Who does microsoft execs listen to?

When you have the microsoft fanboys and employees complaining or pointing out problems, you have to wonder exactly WHO does microsoft ask for opinions and ideas of why their products aren't doing well?

Monkeys on typewriters?

Re:Who does microsoft execs listen to?

When you have the microsoft fanboys and employees complaining or pointing out problems, you have to wonder exactly WHO does microsoft ask for opinions and ideas of why their products aren't doing well?

Monkeys on typewriters?

Traditionally Microsoft hasn't asked anybody when their products weren't doing well. They simply set about either making life so difficult for any competitor and users of his products that the competitor's market share dwindled down to almost nothing or they simply eliminated the competition altogether which forced the consumers to buy Microsoft products. Whenever they couldn't do either of those two things their products often fail. Microsoft products comparatively rarely seem to enjoy huge success on their own merits. I'll admit that despite all the hullablaloo about the demise of Netscape IE was a better browser than Netscape 4.x. Not that IE was anything to cheer over, somewhere between versions 3 and 4 it simply began to suck less than Netscape did. Of course nowadays IE is pretty much beaten by Firefox and Safari (at least IMHO). The MS Office pack is also a fairly good product, after c.a. Office 97 or so it actually became usable for something more than writing letters and short essays!! Their OS and Server products, however, have generally either sucked or been uninspiring at best and their databases are nothing special. It remains to be seen how they do on the Mobile Phone market with their Windows Mobile where they compete against Mobile Phone OS products like Symbian and Linux, and the digital Music/Media market where they are up against the iPod. MS seems to be doing fairly well on the game console market although they haven't exactly succeeded in assimilating it completely into their collective.

Re:Who does microsoft execs listen to?

When you have the microsoft fanboys and employees complaining or pointing out problems, you have to wonder exactly WHO does microsoft ask for opinions and ideas of why their products aren't doing well?

I have heard some read Slashdot. If they do, I can toss out a suggestion.. Don't sell the boxed version at an order of magnitude more than the OEM version. My older hardware has been getting upgrades to Linux because the upgrade cycle does not make sense for the software. A $650 PC should not need a Multi-Hundred dollar copy of XP Pro and $400 copy of Office.

After being given a Power Point presentation to show for a guest speaker, the Office 2000 on the Windows 2000 laptop presented the text a page at a time instead of a bullet at a time. Instead of spending lots of money for a software upgrade, I tried the same presentation on the same laptop running Ubuntu with Open Office. It worked like a charm. If MS Office was a $40 upgrade, I may have considered it. Due to the many versions, Professional, Small Office, Standard, & Home and Student, I figured a full upgrade was too expensive when an alternative works fine.

Wake up and smell the coffee. You have new neighbors and they are setting up shop in your back yard. Monopoly pricing and high priced retail versions are on their way to a dead end.

Just for the record, 3 of my older PC's now have Ubuntu. I only get a new version of a MS OS on new hardware. There is no reason to spend big bucks on a software upgrade.

And Ballmer's response?

It appears you are angry and agitated. Here, take this chair!

MS Profits on Ignorance

Frankly, I think the average consumer is intimidated by a perceived need for serious technical know-how to be able use just about anything other than MS (with the exception of Mac). Others probably aren't even aware of anything other than Microsoft and Mac.

Re:MS Profits on Ignorance

Frankly, I think the average consumer is intimidated by a perceived need for serious technical know-how to be able use just about anything other than MS

Actually, I would argue the average consumer is intimidated by any software regardless of who makes it. Secondly, they most likely really don't know how to use Windows/Office as enough to get by to what they specifically want to do (surf, email, write printed letters).

The only reason most consumers use what software they use is because either:

A.) It came with the computer
B.) It was on the shelf at Best Buy/Stapes/Target/Walmart.
C.) Their relative/friend gave them a "copy"

Seeing that Windows and MS Office apply to all 3 rather easily it is a no brainier to why it is successful. It isn't that people are too familiar with MS products so much that they are unwilling to move on, but rather there is really no need.

Of these three reasons... Only C provides the opportunity for Linux and Open Office if they happen to have a relative/friend who is in the "know".

Best said from the outside

Its the kind of thing people promise themselves and their co-workers they are going to say after they leave. Its good for the people still there, and its good in the long term for any stock you own in your previous employer.

Yes, he is bad mouthing them, but its not like he is posting their private bug database on bittorrent. And Microsoft might be better for it.

Aw poor Scoble

Looks like he's spitting the dummy now that he is out of the loop. MS are not a search company, MS dont want to be a search company but as is the way when you are a perceived are the dominant IT player you must be seen to 'compete' with all the 'upstarts' to keep the share holders happy, so your business heads gob off about how stupid the opposition business heads are. I think most people are going to be very surprised when they realise where MS see their future and while they are currently getting slaughtered in many sections of the press over Vista they are quietly laying the ground work for the next phase, which is largely why there has been so little reaction from Redmond to the adverse press.

Re:Aw poor Scoble

Even for the dominant player, it does not make sense to try and compete with everyone. And many large corporations in other areas don't (do you see Daimler-Chrysler making extremely cheap cars? or Boeing making little sports planes?). I think this is a case of Microsoft hubris rather than necessity.

You picked a bad example there, Daimler are the luxury arm of Chrysler who are a major brand who feel compelled to compete in several car markets as with Ford, owners of Jaguar and Aston Martin (which they have just sold). While they both produce sports cars to compete in NASCAR and rallying etc, they are not racing companies but their presence on the start line boosts the brand image as a whole. And as for Boeing, they do a lot of subcontracting for the military and NASA. Again not their primary business but a good selling point for the multi billion dollar deals.

I don't think they can

I know this is absolutely begging to be modded Troll, but let's get real for a minute.

The web's been around a few years now. While they were late in recognising it, Microsoft have been taking the Internet seriously since before Google left Stanford University.

IMO, if Microsoft were able to develop "better search than Google.... better hosting than Amazon..." - they'd have done so long ago. As it stands, they can't even implement searching in their own OS (certainly not in XP - even with the Search addon, it's trivially easy to dig out something which returns zero results when it patently shouldn't) - and they've got far more control over that than Google has over the Internet.

Fact is, Microsoft's business plan has never been "build a better OS/office suite/mousetrap". It's been "build one that's good enough and market it as being better". But such marketing doesn't work so well in the Internet age because it's much easier to find out how much truth there is behind it, and AFAICT Microsoft still haven't worked that one out.

Re:I don't think they can

Microsoft have been taking the Internet seriously since before Google left Stanford University.

Have they? I havn't seen much fabled "innovation" coming from Microsoft on the internet. They only take it seriously where it could threaten their traditional revenue streams, not because they have any interesting or innovative ideas that could make the internet a better place. The internet threatened to be an open network that anyone could play on, Microsoft tried to get people to use MSN instead. Netscape threatened to make the web, a killer application, platform-neutral: Microsoft made sure they killed it with Internet Explorer and ActiveX. Standard compliant email servers threatened to make email platform neutral; Microsoft push Exchange and Outlook with gratuitous incompatibilities and a lack of open standards. When Google were just a search engine Microsoft let them be; when Google started to become an on-line application provider, Microsoft suddenly begin to roll out technology to counter the threat to their Office and Windows revenue. Let's not forget the whole early ".NET will revolutionise the entire internet once we work out what it is!" marketing circus that amounted to nothing.

Microsoft talk big, deliver little and focus all their energy on crushing any threat to their income streams.

Re:I don't think they can

Have they? I havn't seen much fabled "innovation" coming from Microsoft on the internet

Oh, I don't know. They really did turn on a dime and go all out Internet around the time of Win95. In a space of 6 months they went from no Internet to Internet enabling just about every product they had. Taking it seriously wasn't their problem.

What was their problem was 'getting it'. They added 'Internet' but didn't understand what or why so most of it was of no real use to anyone. The fact that they seriously thought they could puish MSN as a better and quite seperate Internet shows how wide of reality they were. I remember trying it out when it first went live - tons of unique content, online magazines, software etc but all quite seperate to the rest of the world. Sort of AOL without access to the Internet. Quite crazy.

Re:I don't think they can

Fact is, Microsoft's business plan has never been "build a better OS/office suite/mousetrap". It's been "build one that's good enough and market it as being better".

More recently, they added the "do everything to maintain the Windows monopoly" strategy. This is in fact why Microsoft cannot "Ship [...] a better cross-platform web development ecosystem than Adobe", as Scoble would suggest they do. Cross-platform? Never.

Cross-platform tools are always created by Microsoft's competitors, not Microsoft. Java is cross-platform, .Net isn't (despite even Mono). Firefox is cross-platform, IE isn't. And so on and so forth.

Scoble suggesting Microsoft do something 'cross-platform' is a sign of ignorance, I would say.

Its too late

MS time to market sucks. They are too late, they slept during the bigest internet ekspansion. Its all invented. There last option is to buy there competitors or change focus to operating system development. Even VISTA is late and feels not as smooth as OS X.
There only advantage is the huge amount of customer base, who are using there current platform. I think its over. The MS ship is going down, slowly.

Re:Its too late

Its nice to see that the 'hooked on phonics' kids are growing up and posting on slashdot

Oh come on

He's not biting. He cares.

Hah!

Well done Mr, you've just said what the rest of the IT industry has been saying for years!

In there to 'win'?

That's the problem with Microsoft, they are so obsessed with winning that they forgot that in the end, they are a service company, and in a service company you serve your customers, not yourself! Stop wanting to take over existing markets on the Internet and start creating yourselves new Internet markets. About any Internet company I think of that has been successful has brought a new experience to it's customers: eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Youtube, ... they all had a compelling reason for customers to use their service.

On Internet you need 2 things to be successful, and Idea and money for development/marketing. They definitely have the money, all they need is NEW ideas to use their money on.

There is not bad PR...?

So what? M$ has realized that not many are willling to read only glorified blog posts about MS products. You have to have some so-called 'rebels'. At the same time, despite all the criticism, it looks that the author still sucks up to M$. In which case the whole thing is nothing more than yet another PR stunt.

What I don't understand in this case is what the hell this post is doing on /. ? You'd better give us some more about how much better Ubuntu is comparing to SuSe and we can have our holy war ourselves. Forget M$, this dying dinosaur...

Re:There is not bad PR...?

You'd better give us some more about how much better Ubuntu is comparing to SuSe

That's an interesting thing about Microsoft and Google, though, isn't it? After years of Microsoft-vs-Linux and occasional Microsoft-vs-Apple a lot of the geek tribal mindshare now seems to have shifted across to cheering for Google.

I consider myself a Linux fanboi in general, but the more time passes the more I find myself losing interest in OS wars and caring more about applications. Quite frequently I boot my desktop machine into Windows XP and spend the day mostly running Firefox, emacs and Cygwin because it's easier that way than trying to run the occasional Windows-only app on Debian (via Wine or whatever).

So if it's all about applications now it becomes clearer why Google are so popular. Search, mail, maps, documents... a lot of their stuff seems well designed and easy to use. Oh, plus it's cleverly funded so I don't pay anything. Compare with MS Office which is expensive, bloated and often hard to use.

That's never been their plan

Release better products? Compete on product quality? That's not the Microsoft way...
Do you really think they will spend all that money and effort to produce better products than google/yahoo/etc ?
No, they will leverage their desktop monopoly to push their search. Their search engine may be crap, just like IE is crap, but when 95% of desktop computers sold comes with their search engine as the default, very few people will ever bother looking for anything better.
Aside from that, how will they find something better when the search engine they use is designed to lock customers in?

About time

"In Scoble's words: 'Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole)."

MS was a late comer to the internet and little has changed since they came around. In some ways, you'd think MS has simply been waiting for the internet to peak and go away, so they could get back to having the full attention of users when kool-aid time comes around. Scoble's rant is just more evidence that their business model spanks of a rigidity that mimics the tobacco and music industries (resisting change) where respect for the client isn't even considered, much less demonstrated.

Scoble is going to be slapped around with 'what took you so long to wake up and smell the coffee?' retort so much that I'm surprised he choose that particular route for his dump this time. I want to know what is really behind his new attitude...

You should write for Cobert

...business model spanks of a rigidity...

I'm not sure what that means, but I like it anyway. That's right up there with Cobert's "flaccid with anger". Can't wait to be in the middle of a really important high-level meeting and announce some part of the plan "spanks of rigidity."

They'll still be wondering what it means on the plane home. Adding that to my quote tiddler. ---->

All you need to know is

"If you have a technical issue with Microsoft, it's faster to search their database with Google rather than their own search engine" Times Online [timesonline.co.uk]. Get your act together guys!

Re:All you need to know is

MSDN too. If you are a MS developer, just add "site:msdn.microsoft.com" to your google search. Hurray!!!

Pro-MS

I think he's fairly pro Microsoft. I mean I am Anti-MS, and when I read this I say: "Yay, go Microsoft! Just go on like that."

Scoble, you missed an important point:

Mediocrity is the new progress.

Ship more useless web apps!

Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where's the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo's Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?)

Yeah! More useless web apps! That'll show 'em!

criticism != biting

While some marketing departments may believe that the only good publicity is good publicity, I don't think that's the case. Microsoft's biggest risk is becoming irrelevant, and even being criticized is better than being ignored. Besides, if the criticism is something fairly obvious, it's not like it's going to be news to people who have actually tried the product.

MS should focus on core

MS should focus on its core competency, which is hardware.
Drop all these other side projects like the search engine, the news site, the OS..
Go back to making great mice, keyboards and joysticks.
They used to be the best, and now that they are sidetracked with all these other projects they are losing focus, and it's starting to show.

Train Wreck

The truth is that M$ has pretty muched sucked since 2000. It took them a whopping 5 years for them to get XP working properly.

And Vista/Visual Studio 2005 is pretty much a train wreck for C developers. We used to be able to rely on the development environment. In fact, that area was always a significant innovation for these guys. No more. Fire Steve Embalmer before it is too late.

And the evidence just keeps rolling in:
http://www.microsoftweblog.com/2005/11/05/problems -with-visual-studio-2005/ [microsoftweblog.com]

Udell

Let's see how Jon Udell behave.

Hah

Microsoft didn't make all that money by innovating or being better than their competitors. They made that money by doing a better job of selling their products to their customers.

They still do.

Rikes!

Did someone not get their Scobie snack today?

Not Gates vs Ballmer, but Silverburg vs Allchin

Longtime current and former Microsofties dont see the problem stemming from Ballmer becoming CEO, they see it as the result of Brad Silverburg losing the internal power struggle with Jim Allchin back in 1997. Silverburg had browser responsibilities and was preaching that Microsoft needed to start transitioning to the web in a much more substantial way, including MS Office.

Allchin convinced upwards that Microsoft needed to keep the jewels propriatary, and he won. Silverburg left, and you can trace Microsoft's decline from that very day. I was not a Silverburg acolyte at the time, in fact, I was on Allchin's side. But clearly, we were wrong in a big way. There was no hint of a Google at that time, and the focus was stabbing Lotus Notes in the heart, kicking AOL to the curb, and those little fuckers at Netscape who said they would bury us.

Hindsight is a bitch. Microsoft should hire Silverburg back, put him in a room with Ozzie, and change the company. The stock has done NOTHING for too long. Ballmer, are you reading this? You know its true, tubby.

About time

You are coming to a sad realization.
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Crisis, hunger, and denial

John Kennedy once said:

When written in Chinese the word, "crisis" is composed to two characters. One represents "danger", and the other represents "opportunity".

Microsoft is in crisis, but they are not willing to acknowledge it. It seems to me that they would rather spin everything so that no one notices it. The last time they had a crisis (being late to the Internet and world wide web) they responded admirably.

But that was a different world. These days their monopolistic practices have been exposed. Competitors are not afraid of them. Microsoft is defending too many fronts, many of which they created (Xbox, Windows CE/Mobile, etc.)

More importantly, Microsoft isn't as lean and hungry as they used to be. They are living off the the wealth of Office and Windows income. However in other areas, they have not produced. Windows and Office are their crutches but if those products start to fail, MS has nothing to fall back upon anymore. As with the release of Vista, it is apparent that they have lost focus of their core products. With Office, Microsoft's problem is that older versions of Office are good enough.

A decade ago, Apple faced a similar situation. Except Apple didn't have reserves MS has today. That forced them to get lean. Whole product lines were cut while the company refocused. They scraped their old OS and developed a new one. Some credit Jobs with getting the company's comeback as he was the driving force behind it. Right now, there is no one at MS that seems is doing that. If the recent relevations from Allchin are true, his managers (Ballmer, Gates) are not focused.

Who cares?

Why does anyone listen to this guy? His blog is a poorly-written pamphlet filled with entries that are either obvious, moronic or both. What does he even do? Doees he have some kind of job, other than writing crap about stuff he has no clue about?

Can we just ignore him until he does something of value?

Nah; how you really win is ...

Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative ... That's how you win.

Nah; what you do is sit back and wait for the "smart guys" to develop something new that people seem to want. Then you invest minimal resources in making shoddy ripoff, so that you have resources left over to agressively market your product to the majority of people who can't tell quality from shoddy.

This is how IBM made their billions. Then Bill Gates & Co. took the idea (and a lot of IBM marketing) and ran with it. It worked quite well for both of them. And they've both managed to bankrupt most of their competitors who have the silly idea that quality counts for more than a tiny corner of the market. Yes, there's a market for quality, but it has always been a specialy niche.

Of course, to pull it off, you have to start with enough marketing clout to overwhelm your competitors' marketing efforts. IBM worked their way up, by building quality products until around 1960 or so; then they figured out that as the market leader they no longer needed quality, and switched all their efforts to marketing shoddy products. Microsoft started with an "IBM PC" advertising budget larger than the total budgets of their competitors, and have never had to make a quality product. These days, unless you have a few billion $$$ to spend, you can forget about taking that path.

It'll be interesting to see if a company like google can actually succeed and become a stable mass marketer before Microsoft finds a way to squash them with an inferior knockoff.

Remember this the next time someone says...

..."Sure, I'm paid by X, but it doesn't affect my objectivity."

I have to disagree

I think that Microsoft should just stop trying with anything internet. Just focus on the Operating System. Let Adobe, Google, Amazon and whoever else take care of the applications and the internet. They are doing us all a disservice by even trying.

Not 'biting the hand the fed him'

Rather than 'biting the hand the fed him', Scoble is leveling harsh public criticism in an attempt to get the company to do better.

I sure hope they don't win, because...

I sure hope MS doesn't win, because then we'll all be stuck using products and services that suck -- cluttered, cumbersome, and ugly.

Or better yet...don't win at everything!

I'd like to see MS just make software. Strong, reliable OS's and apps' that run well on all PC's and function well with legacy apps. OK, now stop your chortling. Instead, MS focuses on trying to win at everything, and they usually start out WAY behind. The two most glaring examples that come to mind are IE (back when Netscape had already established itself as THE leader) and Zune, when the IPod had already totally OWNED the portable music player market. I'm sure there are others, but that's what comes to mind ATM. I'd like to see MS stop trying to win EVERY race, and just focus on the one's it know's already.

Re:No one can describe it

Yeah, I remember everything at one time was going to be branded .NET. Didn't MSN Messenger become .NET Messenger for a while and now is Windows Live Messenger (but most people still call it MSN). Eventually if Windows Live is a failure you can see that name quietly disappear too.

Microsoft seem king of the pick a lame name and promote it strategy. I think they'd have been better sticking with the established MSN and improving it beyond recognition.

Re:No one can describe it

Yeah, they should set for one name and develop that, I guess they wanted to tie their web apps more to their desktop apps to give a sense of familiarity... But the worse part is even when they try to completely change their services, they still can't do it right.

Just look at their email. I have windows vista on another partition (for specialized programs that don't run on linux), well, it comes with Windows Mail. They changed their MSN/Hotmail service and you can download your mails on your desktop, great! So it's simple right, just use their new mail product to connect to the hotmail server... well NO! See their new Mail program is not 'Live' branded, so you need to download another Windows Mail, namely Windows Live Mail Desktop to use your hotmail on your desktop. And that new program logs in _before_ you can see your programs. How many mail apps do I need? And why do I have to sign in on MSN to read my other mail accounts?

And once you have installed Windows Live Mail Desktop, well it sets itself as the default program for reading your mails through windows live messenger. Worse part, it doesn't even work well with windows live messenger, since you usually have to delete mails in order for the number of mail notifications to be updated correctly!

All this money invested in locking customers into their live branded parts, such a waste! Instead of pouring money in 2 different programs, pour twice as much money in 1 and just set hotmail to work with pop/imap. Right now Microsoft has 3 completely independent email clients, 3! And none have actually been developed together, how stupid is this?

Where have we seen this before...

Right... Mid 90s. Apple Computer.

The parallels are shockingly simmilar. The big, bloated behemoth floundering under its own weight. The same reaction - to consolodate power, make things more proprietary, raise prices, and put a new and largely useless and mypoic CEO in charge. Business as usual, despite the looming cliff.

All while the smaller, leaner guys eat them for breakfast.

Right now, all I hear from my IT friends, co-workers, and so on is how XP is a disaster and wondering if there isn't ANY alternative out there. Because the OS isn't the big deal - it's when you have to lay out cold, hard cash to replace half of your PC that it is.

Re:Not Microsofts Fault

True! There's so much competition, these days they've gotta beat Google and Yahoo to the buy-out! Innovation? What's that, but something for those with the smaller checkbooks.

Re:You have to be kidding me

"I am a Linux Zealot. But I also use Vista and have a Zune. Am I sort of some kind of schitzo?"

No, you're a Microsoft shill POSING as a Linux zealot.

Jesus, wonder when these guys are going to get a clue and DROP THAT STUPID LINE ABOUT LIKING LINUX! It's a dead giveaway that you're a Microsoft shill!

I mean, really! It's like Secret Service guys showing up at hacker conferences in suits with dark glasses and earpieces in their ears.

REAL Linux users heavily criticize their (and competing) distros AND Microsoft. Windows shills don't. REAL Linux users don't spend time SAYING they like Linux, they DEMONSTRATE that they USE Linux. It's that simple.

It's simply a dead giveaway that you're a shill to start babbling how much you like Linux before defending Microsoft or bashing Linux. I mean, can't you guys get a different script from the Microsoft PR department?