Forbes Says Vista Not People Ready

Diomedes01 writes "Daniel Lyons has an opinion piece up on Forbes.com about a recent press conference held by Microsoft, and the results are anything but flattering."

Rejection

[kc0re]

People reject OpenOffice and reject even Mac, because they don't know any different. They have been "programmed" to use Microsoft Windows, therefore, until they are told different, they will continue to use Microsoft Windows.

We can sit around all we want and say stuff like "when people get tired of (malware|viruses|spyware|whateverelse)" they will switch to (Linux|Mac).

It's just not true. People will switch when they are told to. Nothing else. Until Companies FORCE people to switch, there will be no switching.

All empires

[dalroth5]

...fall.

trying not to troll

[psbrogna]

Delay + Delay + Delay + Bad Review ...

I hate to add fuel to the fire but these sound like indications of a flawed design & development environment...

Opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when has an Opinion piece become a piece of tech news? Oh right this is Slashdot. As long as the opinion piece is Anti-MS then ya'll can just pat yourselves on the back and bash MS till there is no end in sight and feel good about yourselves.

Do we care what Lyons says anymore?

[tpgp]

After all, he's the author of such 'provocative' articles as Who is Pamela Jones? [forbes.com] Linux's Hit Men [forbes.com], Linux? No Thanks. [forbes.com] and SCO's 'Smoking Gun' [forbes.com]

He's a troll, and an inconsistent one at that.

The final paragraph of the linked article

Why not at least switch to an Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) Mac? Apple's new operating system is stable, reliable and easy to use. The applications are simple, gorgeous and work well together. And they're here. Today. Steve Jobs must be waking up a happy man this morning.

Really explains alot. I presumed this guy (with his anti IBM, Novell & Linux stance) was an MS shill. Turns out he's just another Apple fanboy.

Re:My Clinically Inept Siblings

[gowen]

He's an fucking fashion designer! What the fuck would he know about computer software?!?!

He knows that if you suck up to its manufacturer [windevnet.com], and let them use you as their publicity bitch, you'll get a serious discount.

Re:Do we care what Lyons says anymore?

[MasterC]

...he's just another Apple fanboy.

According to eldavojohn [slashdot.org] (I don't care enough to verify it) he owns apple stock. So I guess that upgrades him from just fanboy to I-like-my-money-so-I-won't-bash-my-investments fanboy?

Sort of like

[DaveAtFraud]

Dan Lyons saying something bad about a Microsoft product is about like FoxNews (you know, "Fair and Balanced") saying something good about a liberal politician. Next thing you know, Dan will be saying good things about Linux and FoxNews will endorse Hillary for President.

Yes Yes M$FT sucks we know we know

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hate Microsoft as much as the next guy. But seriously, I think I must be one of the few on here who's actually had it with all the M$FT bashing in spite of hatred of Microsoft. Why? Because it seems that Open Office and Macs get a free pass on here, while there is a serious bias towards Microsoft being negatively reviewed. Meanwhile any inferiority in Mac OS X and Apple monopolistic tactics are openly defended by an army of fanboys. A lot of Windows users simply DO NOT LIKE the Mac. And rather than figure out why, the Mac elitists claim the fault must lie with the user.
"Find Open Office hard to use? You must be a moron."

I've had it with the love fest with anything that is not M$FT. Can we stop putting "I hate M$FT" opinion pieces on here. And also let's have REVIEWS, and not unbalanced free passes for Mac OS X and Open Office. IE7 does have some cool features like Quick tabs, and the leaner interface etc.

Before the IE7 hate dogs talk about security, let's not forget Mac OS X does have issues too, they have had remotely exploitable security holes they had to fix. Except none of the fanboys were even aware.

Windows hasn't had a wormable network exploit since SP2 (thanks to the firewall).

I have used the Vista betas, they're fine. If someone is going to go on a hate M$FT bash fest, that's fine.. but I don't care about it. I want scientific analysis.

Re:My Clinically Inept Siblings

[avdp]

It's usually considered to be a conflict of interest. That's fine for you to do it, but generally journalist (in as much as this guy is a journalist at all, he mostly writes trash for Forbes) are supposed to refrain from it. Not required by law I don't think, just an ethical/professional thing.

Re:Do we care what Lyons says anymore?

[tpgp]

According to eldavojohn [slashdot.org] (I don't care enough to verify it)

Errr, you linked to speculation posted by someone less then 20 minutes ago. I don't believe eldavojohn actually knows whether Lyons owns stock or not.

IBM doesn't innovate?

[wishiwascool]

So Balmer says IBM doesn't innovate anymore?

Hmmm... check out a couple posts down on /.
Something about nanotubes and stuff... hardly innovation.

what a waste of time

[matt328]

This is why I hate blogs. I see a story on slashdot, and click through to the article expecting to find news. You know, a simple reporting of some facts. Only after reading the article do I realize this isn't news, its just some asshole bitching about Microsoft, and I really don't give two shits what he has to say. The only real news I can gather from this article is that Microsoft held some press conference or tech demo of some sort, and this guy hated it.

Slanted, one sided, inaccurate and biased blog entries are not news. Please stop subjecting us to them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:My Clinically Inept Siblings

['nother poster]

He doesn't need discounts on sewing machines. The companies that he contracts with to produce a half a mil of his latest fashion obscenity needs the discount on sewing machines. Tommy needs discounts on computers and software because his company neeeds to integrate with and coordinate with all of those other companies in their supply chain. Tommy needs to be able to send the numbers to his accountants firms. Tommy needs computers to work with his ad agency so he can convince even more sheeple to buy his stuff. I'm betting that, just like every other "idea" company in the U.S., Tommy has multiple hundreds of thousands tied up in hardware and licenses for software.

Re:Do we care what Lyons says anymore?

[sh00z]

I guess that upgrades him from just fanboy to I-like-my-money-so-I-won't-bash-my-investments fanboy?

Even a fanboy should have realized that Apple's stock peak back in January was likely to be the highest it's going to get for a LONG time. There's nothing the press can do at this point that'll pump up Apple's price. The next iPod is going to have to be subcutaneously-implantable nanotech to cause a significant bump. I am an unabashed fanboy, but even I sold (at 21* my 1996 purchase price) in January.

Re:My Clinically Inept Siblings

[sesshomaru]

That doesn't work on my Mom, "Ok, you pay me back for those four years of college I sent you to for your Computer Science degree first!"

I'll Use what the bossman...

[i_am_the_r00t]

puts on my laptop. I'm a sheep. Aren't we all?

Right now it's XP and Office 2003.
As long as I can hook it up to a projector and bore the crap out of a room full of people with 83 Powerpoint slides, The Bossman is happy.

I don't see big corporations being first in line for a shiny new OS that practically triples the minimum hardware requirement.

At Home I'll use whatever Valve software tells me to use so I can Play Half-Life 3. Sheep, remember?

Re:My Clinically Inept Siblings

[Elvis Parsley]

Sure, he's a fashion designer, but his business has the same IT needs as every other business. They do sales and marketing, buy from suppliers, sell to distributors and retailers, hire and pay employees and provide them with benefits, coordinate and pay for travel, and so on. In the modern business climate, he still needs computers for all of that, even if the activity underlying it all involves ultimately swaning about with charchoal sketches and fabric swatches.

MS botched PR 101

[Groo Wanderer]

It seems MS missed the basics of press relations. When you call the press out to a dog and pony show, we (yes, I am one) generally try to give a fair representation of what happened. Events and press conferences are generally one sided, IE good for the people putting on the act. So are trade shows, you get to see the shiny happy things, and there is no time or forum to dig in and see all the warts.

This leads to almost universally good news on all the applicable outlets. If the show is interesting, all the better, we will sit there and smile, taking notes and pictures.

Now, if you bore us to tears with stupid, irrelevant and wrong info, we will sit there for 60-90 minutes and think up ways to make your life pain, usually in the form of an article. We sit there, turn to the guy next to us and crack jokes about everything and anything, relevant or not. Nothing tends to be sacred.

Yep, the MS people botched this one bad, and the Lyons piece is a good example of this. They promised the moon, gave nothing, and did it in a way that from the sound of it was thoroughly unpleasant to watch.

And they are wondering why they got hammered. Duh. If you are going to take up our time, don't waste it. If you do, you almost guarantee your product will be panned.

As a corolary to this, fill the press section with syncophantic or bribed tame press, then do what you want. This is a time honored tradition that works well, but if you do it too often with sucky presentation, it will bite you, your costs will go up. Look at... well, that would be telling.

          -Charlie

P.S. Take this article with a big grain of salt. Anyone still defending SCO is pretty suspect in my book, but that is just one reporter's opinion.

"Microsoft can't afford to screw up like this"

[FridayBob]

But, of course they can! They're a monopoly, and there's nothing that Steve Jobs, the Open Source community or anybody else can do about it (well, the US Justice Dept. tried before Bush stopped 'em).

Unfortunately, Microsoft's customers (i.e. most of the world) are willing to wait a really long time before they give up on the Redmond giant. It's that damned critical mass that they've built up over the years: everything's geared to supporting Windows before anything else, from hardware manufacturers to ISVs to ISPs to media companies, etc. Even Google doesn't support anything but Windows for Google Earth! (okay, there's a Mac beta for it now too, but you get my drift).

Therefore, I figure that Microsoft's monopoly position can only be threatened if one of their next new operating systems turns out to be a total failure. If Microsoft aren't able to dump it and replace it soon enough with something better, only then will significant numbers of their customers begin to loose faith in them and move on to alternative operating systems.

Let's hope Vista turns out to be that dog.

Why people won't switch ?

[S3D]

From TFA:

It's amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.

Let me tell you big secret: Most people don't want to switch. They hate to have to learn a new system, new UI and new buttons. It's bad enough as it is. Think about 60 years old, who is struggling with office, e-mail and web, and calling his/her free tech-support(children) whenver he/she accidentally minimize window. Those people stay with XP as long as MS provide minimal support, that is fixing exploits. And may be even longer. So many people are actually happy of Vista delay, as long as it means longer support for XP. It would be even betted if Vista cancelled at all.

First Rule of Forbes

[nightsweat]

You DO NOT TALK about Forbes. Second rule, well you can guess.

Forbes is responsible for more wrong-headed ideas about technology in the executive suites than any other publication. Pay them no heed. Ignore them. They do not have a clue.

They may even be right this time, but that wouldn't make up for the multitude of times they've made technologists lives worse.

Re:Software Assurance and Date Slippage

[duerra]

As I understand things, many Software Assurance Plans, which were essentially forced on customers with the claim that Longhorn would be available, expire as of 12/31/06.

I wonder if there may be issues with claims salesmen made and this date slippage.

My guess is that is exactly why Microsoft is releasing Vista to certain parties still this year. The delay is only for end consumers of Vista, to which Microsoft has no contractual upgrade requirements.

Re:Do we care what Lyons says anymore?

[Angostura]

I love the way you carefully neglected to quote the preceeding two paragraphs:

osoft can't afford to screw up like this. There are free alternatives to everything Microsoft sells, like the Linux operating system and the Open Office application suite. Rivals like Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ), Red Hat (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people ), Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and, yes, IBM are pushing those programs big time.

Given Microsoft's delays I can't believe open-source stuff still hasn't caught on for desktop computers. It's amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.

Yes, clearly an anti-Linux, anti-IBM shill.

Re:My Clinically Inept Siblings

[localman]

Ethical/professional journalism?!? Ha ha ha. i should mod you "funny".

Cheers.

Re:Daniel Lyons Has a History...

[ThinkFr33ly]

Features I Love in Vista:

1.) The address bar.
The address bar in Vista allows for both manual typing of addresses, as well as a more point/click navigational scheme. I can click any of the folder names in my current path and it gives me a list of all sibling folders. Very handy for navigation. It also has a built in progress bar for when explorer is performing a long running task related to displaying the files in a folder. It even lets you cancel that task.

2.) The new start menu.
The start menu is SO much better it's ridiculous. Finding applications and files is finally a near instant task... even more so than with 3rd party desktop search tools. The new layout is, for the most part, clearer and simpler to use.

3.) Flip 3d.
It might sound cheesy, but it's actually a great way of switching windows. I find it at least as useful as Expose on the Mac... and, in some cases, its better because my windows don't get tiny and I can still see what's going on inside them. (It's all live too, no bitmaps here.)

4.) Task bar previews.
If you hover over a task bar button it will show you a live preview of the task. At first I thought it was kinda pointless, but after a while I started to like it. I find myself hovering over task bar buttons in vain on XP.

5.) Windows Mail.
SO MUCH BETTER THAN OUTLOOK EXPRESS. I don't like using Outlook at home. It's too slow, and it doesn't do newsgroups. Outlook Express has always been a pain, especially when talking about how it stores your e-mail / newsgroups. Windows Mail is more streamlined, a LOT faster, and finally has an easily to understand storage mechanism.

6.) User Account Protection
I love the fact that it's finally trivial to run as a non-Admin on Windows and still be able to get things done. You've always been able to do it, but it used to be a lot harder.

There are plenty of other things I really love about Vista... but I'm tired of typing.

Re:Daniel Lyons Has a History...

[ickoonite]

(It's all live too, no bitmaps here.)

So is Exposé, if that was your implication.

iqu :|