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Microsoft Pleads With Consumers to Adopt Vista Now
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Jun 20, 2007 06:06 AM
from the our-os-is-so-awesomez dept.
from the our-os-is-so-awesomez dept.
SlinkySausage writes "Microsoft has admitted, in an email to the press, that 'some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they've heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release.' The company is now pleading with customers not to wait until the release of SP1 at the end of the year, launching a 'fact rich' program to try to convince them to 'proceed with confidence'. The announcement coincides with an embarrassing double-backflip: Microsoft had pre-briefed journalists that it was going to allow home users to run Vista basic and premium under virtual machines like VMWare, but it changed its mind at the last minute and pulled the announcement."
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An anonymous reader writes "VMWare released a white paper detailing its concerns with license changes on Microsoft software that may limit the ability to move virtual-machine software around data centers to automate the management of computing work. Two choice quotes: '"Microsoft is looking for any way it can to gain the upper hand," said Diane Greene, the president of VMware.' And, '"This seems to be a far more subtle, informed and polished form of competitive aggression than we've seen from Microsoft in the past," said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. "And Microsoft has no obligation to facilitate a competitor."'"
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MS Offers Vista Upgrade Pricing To All 395 comments
SlinkySausage writes "With a vague whiff of desperation, Microsoft is offering anyone who downloaded one of the betas or release candidates of Vista upgrade pricing for the full version. The 'special' deal is a sweetener for the fact that the betas will start expiring and becoming non-functional from May 31st. APC Magazine in Australia writes: 'Windows Vista is starting to look like those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale... All stock has been slashed, save $$$, why pay more?'" Perhaps Microsoft is cognizant of straws in the wind such as a recent InformationWeek survey indicating that 30% of business have no intention of moving to Vista, ever.
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Microsoft Pleads With Consumers to Adopt Vista Now
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Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thought not.
How about against IP violations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do I need it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they made an updated version of XP that didn't add restrictions and was refined to be more efficient I would be interested in buying it. I'm not interested in anything that is new in Vista. Slow animated transitions? (I took them out of XP too...) More complex visual displays? A completely redesigned layout that isn't more efficient or intuitive?
Now why would you expect me to want to buy this again?
Re:Do I need it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do I need it? ??? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.gamezero.com/)
One of my friends calls me every other day begging me to put XP on his computer because nothing works in Vista, and I've told him he needs to atleast wait until his 30-day warranty period expires, and I don't think he's going to make it. He bought a brand new HP desktop with 1GB of RAM and the GeForce 6150. He only runs two progams, WoW and Picture Publisher Pro 10. Both of them failed right off!
I've wasted two evenings now trying to get PP10 to work correctly including setting the app to run in XP compatibility mode. No good, cursors get corrupted, screen refresh fails, no end of problems. Since this is what he uses for his secondary income, this has to be resolved. The program does everything he wants so "get him to buy a new paint program" is not on the table. He was also loosing his mind to get back into WoW so he's already bought an extra GB of RAM and upgraded the system to a GeForce 73xx series card just to get a barely tolerable frame rate.
Contrast this with my wife who bought the exact same systems spec but with XP preinstalled and the system screams. Games run great, 3-D apps run great. It's like night and day. MS can go screw themselves. They want people to run Vista, they better start sending out some major checks to us "family and friends technicians" to put up with this BS, I don't have time for it and 100% of the time I'm slicking Vista off every computer that comes to me. The real kicker is MS is still profiting off of this because of the people that have to go out and by a copy of XP to make their computer work.
Grumble grumble grumble
Re:Do I need it? ??? No. (Score:4, Funny)
(http://loewald.com/)
I wonder if they offer special downgrade pricing?
Re:Do I need it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The pricing for me to upgrade to Vista is ridiculous. XP is pretty stable for me so why the hell would I move away from it? My office and home machines all run fully patched XP Professional installs.
More to the point the SO uses AutoDesktop and AutoCAD. They WILL NOT RUN on Vista.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://bakahoushi.deviantart.com/)
I have two computers at my desk. A 7-year-old Pentium III desktop and this laptop, an IBM T-43p. The desktop is extremely slow, but serves perfectly fine for music, photo, and document storage. The laptop I'm using has a smaller HD, but works great for playing newer games and any application too powerful for the aging desktop.
In essence, I'm set. Why should I spend so much money to experiment on an OS that:
A) is so far unproven
B) Will not run properly on my desktop
C) does not support all my devices
D) See, cost.
As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I use what I have, and it works just fine. So, where's my incentive to change?
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.nodomain.org/)
Aside from being slow as molasses and able to burn through a laptop battery at twice the rate that XP did, it's recently
decided that I don't have permissions to see the network status.. so all I get is 'connection status: unknown access is denied'.. also making it impossible to see whether I'm actually connected to anything without going to the command line and using ipconfig.
Oh and the wonderfully inconsistent permissions don't stop there. 'ipconfig
Oh and there's the utterly broken file copy. Try copying a directory from one place to another when it requires elevation. It'll do one of two things:
1. Ask for elevation, then when you confirm do absolutely nothing.
2. Ask for elevation, copy about 10% of the files then silently stop.
I could go on for hours... Advice for anyone thinking of installing it before SP1 comes out.. don't bother.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://users.aol.com/rsclient/)
The most braindead part of Vista copying? You can't copy from a network share to a local subdirectory -- you first get an elevation, and then it's refused. But you CAN copy from a network share to the desktop, and then from the desktop to the local subdirectory without an elevation. As afar as Microsoft is concerned, it's not about where you're coming from, or where you're going to -- it's all about the journey
DEC: all your network are belong to us
SUN: the network is the computer
Microsoft: the network is evil! EVIL!
Re:Microsoft: the network is evil! EVIL! (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.macondobits.com/)
They couldn't replace it with MSN.
All unpatched MS systems directly connected to the Web get infected in minutes.
Web apps are making some desktop apps obsolete.
They are afraid... very afraid.
Short summary of LUA and UAC (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_privil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control [wikipedia.org]
The short version: no, not new to Vista; the idea's been in the *nixes (and before?) for yonks. Windows NT/2k/XP did have different privilege levels but few used them for various reasons, everyone just ran as admin all the time (which was the default). The differences in Vista are, firstly, no-one runs as admin (the "administrator" account you create by default is actually a standard account in every way except that you don't need to enter the admin password every time you elevate); two, applications can request to elevate to admin privileges on a task-by-task basis if they need to (pre-Vista setup programs and the like are heuristically 'detected' and automatically told to request elevation for their entire runtime), and three, there's a ton of backward compatibility stuff to try and mitigate the effects of every program written before 2007 wanting admin rights because they're used to them -- even going so far as to virtualise
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday February 21 2003, @05:17AM)
Remember, this is a step above the Well, It Works On My Computer Award.
You're really on fire right now. Keep it up!
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://chris.sartoris.org/)
I couldn't even make it through the 4-5 months that you did... Not because I hated it, but because I was trying to get work done.
My company rolled out Vista on several of our technician laptops to get us familiar with the OS. The problem is that those technician laptops are constantly going out on-site to diagnose/repair assorted network issues. And Vista, even the business version, just doesn't work well with Cisco equipment.
There's no telnet utility. Not a big deal, since I install PuTTY anyway... Except that PuTTY didn't seem to like Vista and crashed constantly. Hyperterm is also gone, which again wouldn't be a big deal with PuTTY - but PuTTY kept crashing. I was completely unable to get the P/S/ASDM to work reliably through IE7 (thankfully it worked fine through FireFox). And then there were the constant prompts for elevation - ipconfig, network properties, NetStumbler.
In the end we had to reformat all the technician laptops and re-install Windows XP just so we could get our work done.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Funny)
2- New MS games DX-10 exclusive games. If they make games so good only 10% of the windows PC users can use them, you definitely should be part of that elite.
3- Aero. No kidding, it if one of the 5 best looking UI of the moment.
4- No need for a good anti-virus. Well, at least no good anti-virus available anyway.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather have older hardware then support DRM. You're forgetting about Mac or Linux as alternatives to DRM-ridden Platforms.
[2- New MS games DX-10 exclusive games.]
What PC game is going to make me want to upgrade to DX-10? Halo 2, Halo 3?
I can play both of those on the 360. If there's some game that absolutely will not
run on DX-9, then I'll just go without and stick to console games, as I am doing now.
[3- Aero. No kidding, it if one of the 5 best looking UI of the moment.]
I agree its very pretty looking, but as others have pointed out, I can achieve nearly
the same look on XP using software. Its not a selling point if its easily replicated.
[4- No need for a good anti-virus.]
Ok, so the OS finally achieves a level of security that it was expected to have
about 6-7 years ago, good for them.
----
I am not planning to use Vista at any point in the near future, and I will advise anyone
I know to, if not shun completely, wait for a while.
MS seems to not get the point that Customers will not move over to unproved and unstable
platforms when they have the exact opposite available: Stable, Proven platforms (Mac, Linux, XP/2000, etc.,).
That they would resort to these kinds of tactics is a VERY telling sign of how much they are desperate to
save face and try and make some money on MILLENNIUM EDITION 2.0.
....Or not. Some facts here, please (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Informative)
No, vista is differently -- but equally -- broke. MS did fix stuff like having stupid directory names (e.g. "Documents and Settings" -> "users"), etc., but compensated by adding UAC and DRM stupidity.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday March 21 2007, @01:43PM)
I don't know about some other company, but my users are MY guinea pigs, not Microsoft's.
Re:Yeah... Are they going to indemnify us? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.lostrange.com/index.htm)
What's the problem? That's exactly what he said.
Non-working apps killed Vista for me (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.widescreen.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday February 15 2006, @07:44PM)
The big kicker for me was that I was completely unable to use Ulead's Media Studio Pro, which is my video editing software. The laptop has a Firewire port, so that made it a big plus for me to be able to do some editing on the laptop when I'm not at home. Thanks to the new way that Vista talks to the hardware, MSP was useless for all but basic editing. The Preview window didn't work and the audio didn't work, which made it impossible to be able to sync up audio and splice video segments together. Changing the compatibility mode in Vista made no difference.
On top of that, I needed to download a Vista-compatible DVD of Stuido 10 Titanium from Pinnacle's site. It was a free download and it worked fine as far as I could tell, but I'm glad that I have FTTH/FIOS because it was a 1.4 GB download!
There are also a number of other issues with Vista that cumulatively made me decide that enough was enough, like the initial issue that I had where my account would work fine but my wife's account, which I set up as an administrator-level account, couldn't log on stating that she didn't have the rights to log on. (!!!) I bought a 160 GB hard drive from NewEgg, threw it into the laptop, and installed XP. All of my hardware and software are working just fine. And now Microsoft is trying to push me to go back to Vista? They can kiss my ass. It's not happening.
Re:Non-working apps killed Vista for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Woe is them (Score:5, Funny)
(http://stylus-toolbox.sf.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 15, @11:50AM)
Vista! Applied directly to the
Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.sammamamma.com/ | Last Journal: Friday June 15, @01:49AM)
XP is the end of the line for me and Windows. We've had a long and bumpy relationship, but it's over now. Time to move on.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 05 2006, @05:31AM)
MS is going to lose a lot of their market share in the next few years, with Linux picking up most of the server business, and the Mac getting the desktops and laptops.
-jcr
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
In a brief moment of sobriety, Microsoft will rebuff Windows XP and possibly even release a new variant of XP such as "Security Enhanced XP." That's my prediction anyway... but hey, I was right about Vista being a flop.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Um... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 23, @09:58AM)
When ME was released, Microsoft had two very-recent codebases to work with--the NT and 9x series. Both were recent, and both had strengths and weaknesses. There was nothing wrong with picking bits and pieces from each in order to meld XP. Not so with Vista. Now they have the Server 2003 codebase and the XP codebase, four and six years old respectively. And Microsoft are trying to get away from the XP codebase.
So now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they have this new, shiny, potentially-better platform in Vista, but it is plagued with average hardware support and multitudes of teething problems. On the other hand, they have the old and busted but very compatible XP. If they were to rush out a new OS, they'd have to base it on one or the other. To base it on Vista would be pointless, as Vista will be updated/patched anyway. To base it on XP would be a humongous step backwards, particularly because of all the money invested in Vista. In other words, I don't think they'll come out with a WinXP SE. I sure wouldn't mind the big laugh we'll all have at their expense if they do, though...
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://angrykeyboarder.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 02, @10:07AM)
With that said....
___
I don't get it.
Considering what a vast improvement security-wise, GUI-wise and feature-wise Vista is over it's predecessors, I don't understand why it's so unpopular with people who've not even used it.
Maybe that's the problem - they go by hearsay. I ran Vista betas for about a year before taking the plunge and upgrading in February.
I have no regrets, it beats the heck out of XP. The features they borrowed from OS X added to the desktop are awesome. Search is everywhere and the Vista equivalent of KDE/GNOME's Alt+F2 rocks. Flip 3D is nice, but frankly I rarely use it. And yes, security is indeed better than in previous versions.
What don't I like? UAC is annoying, but you get used to it.
And Hardware/Driver/Software issues? There are some, but my problem was really 64-bit related (So, just like in Linux, I gave up and went back to 32-bit).
Drivers for all my hardware and peripherals (with the exception of the crappy cheap TV turner card I had - which I never liked anyway and ditched for a better one) were available and worked fine. Heck, drivers for both my 2-year-old printers (Brother MFC 7820N, HP DeskJet 6820) came with Vista.
Maybe I'm just lucky...
No, Vista isn't a godsend and there are some minor things that irk me. But the same goes for Linux and it's desktops (GNOME/KDE/XFCE...).
But yes, Vista is a vast improvement over it's predecessors. And it took 5 years to get to consumers because the development team started over from scratch halfway through the development process (a fact that doesn't seem that well known).
OK, it does have stricter hardware requirements but not that much stricter. Go in to any computer retailer and look at the "cheap" computers they have running Vista. Most of them have hardware approximating what most consumers (who bought a box in the past 2-3 years) have already.
I got my computer at the end of 2004 and deliberately went "overboard" and a higher-end box. My roomies computer (bought a year later) is half as good and runs Vista just fine.
So once again, I don't get it.
So why aren't I in Vista as I write this? Because I use whatever OS suits my mood or needs at the time and Linux was and still is the 1st choice for this OS junkie...
Re:Um... (Score:5, Interesting)
I ran a couple of Vista betas and RC1. Vista's UI (sans Aero) is definitely an improvement over XP but that isn't saying a lot. Out of the box XP's desktop looked like a bag of M&Ms.
What Microsoft has yet to fix is all of the clutter. Yes Vista, I know a new USB device has been plugged in, I'm the one who plugged it in. Great, you have determined that its name is OEM CARD RDR 4-in-1. Now you've installed a drive. Now another. And then two more. Now you are notifying me that my hardware is ready to use. And if there are files on the card in the reader it keeps going. And if the files happen to be photos it is best to just unplug the machine as fast as possible.
Even with a 21" widescreen, desktop real estate (not to mention my attention) is too precious to waste by continuously blitting little messages at me from the system tray. And I'm trying to work up here, I don't want to read about participating in the User Experience Improvement Program.
Don't even get me started about managing focus stealing in any kind of intelligent way.
For my desktop purposes, OSX is well ahead of everything else. Ubuntu's latest release is quite nice, and it finally seems to be improving at a faster pace than the competition. But Windows seems to have stalled out. I haven't enjoyed using a Windows machine since the early Win2K days.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.feyknight.com/)
Based on stuff like your comment, I decided to leave Vista on it. It's easy to use! It's pretty! Sure it uses a lot of resources, but it's pretty and it's easy to use! "OK", says I, "we try this pretty, easy to use OS." I was concerned when it seemed to be using like 30% of the RAM resources at idle, but at least the computer had lots of RAM. Then I loaded WOW.
World of Warcraft is 2 years old. It wasn't exactly Quake4 when it was released. I played it quite happily on a P4 with 512MB of RAM and a crappy Intel video chipset. It was unplayable on my wife's new laptop. When I tried max resolution with all the video pretties turned on that I usually use on my Macbook Pro (almost a year old) you could literally watch the frames draw. When I turned the resolution down and turned off most of the video tricks, it was choppy and gave one a headache. I tried everything I could think of. Upgraded the video drivers and sound drivers (Oh, did I mention that sound was stuttering and broken too?) tweaked setting in the game, etc. Nothing yielded more than marginal improvement.
I put XP on that sucker. Now everything runs fine. Should I have chucked the whole OS for one app? Well, she LIKES that app. It's her FAVORITE app. Besides, if a brand new, decently speced computer couldn't handle a two year old mass market game, what could I expect from Photoshop? This was a computer built from the ground up and factory installed with Vista, I feel sorry for some poor sucker trying to upgrade.
Vista not from scratch (Score:4, Interesting)