IT budges at all levels are expected to fall next year.

Thirty-eight percent of local government IT budgets will decrease in the next two years as a result of the current economic slowdown, according to a survey by the Public Technology Institute and Input.

even federal agencies are likely to feel the pinch in the coming year. Market research firm Input, which specializes in federal spending, predicts the federal governments spending on IT will increase at a modest 4 percent compound annual growth rate between now and 2013, from about $72 billion to $88 billion. That would be a historical low, when compared with the average 7 percent growth rate of the past two decades.

This will be the final nail in Vista's coffin and a good thing for software freedom. The DOT, FAA, UK Schools and other government agencies were already avoiding it. With budget cuts on the way, no one is going to migrate to new software unless there are significant savings on the other end. Red Hat expects to do well.

PCWorld has a similar article.

Thirty-eight percent of city and local government IT budgets will decrease over the next two years, causing a shift in tech priorities, according to a survey of 162 local and state CIOs. About half of the IT managers surveyed said they expected IT spending would remain flat over this period. Only 14% said spending would increase.

Failed banks don't buy IT:

Microsoft and California based Cisco to lose $4.3 billion in orders next year. While Cisco earns about three percent to four percent of annual revenue from the U.S. financial industry, Microsoft accounted for 22 percent last year.

Larry Tabb, Founder of Tabb Group in New York says, "Finance-industry technology outlays will sink 20 percent to $17.6 billion next year from an estimated $21.9 billion in 2008." "Additional mergers could affect companies' technology spending," said Suresh Kumar, the Chief Information Officer of Pershing LLC, a subsidiary of the Bank of New York Mellon that oversees $940 billion in assets.

The picture is worse, now that we know that bail out money is being used for mergers instead of new loans as intended. Fewer banks will spend less money than more banks.

Windows 7 suffered a no user intervention required remote root flaw before it was introduced:

The more than 6,000 attendees who will be walking away from the sold-out event with the Windows 7 operating system software in hand could have been vulnerable to an attacker exploiting the security hole. "The code that will be distributed at PDC for Windows 7 was put on CD before last week's security update was developed, so it will not contain the update," a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote...

This is to be expected because Windows code does not change much. 2000, XP and server 2003 were listed as sharing the problem.

Update, November 3: ActiveX is still a hole in Vista, and that has probably carried over into Windows 7.

Update 04/26/2011 Windows 7 does worse than Vista at world domination and Windows profits decline from 2008. Sales per desktop PC shipped fall to 66%. The figure is worse when you consider things like netbooks, smart phones and book readers.

Update 10/22/2010 Windows 7's first birthday leaves the company with little change to it's bottom line and can be written off as a commercial failure as Vista was. Microsoft has fired more than 10,000 since I started this log and the collapse is accelerating. Despite the hype, there have been no technical changes and business market share is in the single digits. I'm going to update this log, but in the mean time, please enjoy Techright's excellent Vista 7 Reality Log.

My Windows 7 sucks video collection is updated. This is where you can find real problems from real people.

The Vista 7 Failure Log as it was written.

Windows 7 is Vista 2.0 and is following Vista into oblivion because M$'s development method is broken and their business model has been discredited. Out for more than a year, The OS has not been taken up by business, M$'s revenue is flat and more layoff are on the way. Like the fictional "Mojave Experiment", Windows 7 is mostly a name change that inherits all the technical and ethical problems of Vista and general Windows design flaws. As evidence that M$ never learns,

• Windows 7 is even more DRM heavy than Vista was.
• their best idea for making money is to repeat the Vista Capable fiasco
• Windows 7 contacts Microsoft every time you connect to the internet. We already knew that Vista established encrypted communications to Microsoft that you can't turn off.

The death knell is already sounding for Vista 7, M$. now promotes Windows 8 as "the rebirth of Windows".

You are better off with Ubuntu. Vista's glaring issues, industry and popular rejection are explained here. "Cloud computing" M$ style is actually a way Vista 2.0 will deliver less to customers while demanding greater lockin from service vendors. The recession will take Windows 7 down faster than Vista and that will be the end of M$. Non free software was wrong from it's inception and is finally being rejected. This log will be short, M$ may fail before the 2010 Windows 7 release date.

2007 Marketing Birth, it was clear that Vista had failed as soon as M$ announced MinWin. Windows 7 is promissed to be everything GNU/Linux is and Vista is not.

• 10/18 - Eric Traut of M$ promisses MinWin, aka Windows 7, will be small and stable like GNU/Linux.

See my Vista 7 Hype Log for categorized marketing hype put out by compliant journalists and below for a chronological listing that includes the market and technical failures that inevitably followed launch.

2008 More Marketing

• 01/22 - Release promised in second half of 2009 to freeze the market.
• 03/28 - Promises of modularity
• 10/27 - Rooted before it was introduced thanks to legacy code going at least as far back as Windows 2000. Windows security remains a complete failure.
• 10/28 - As soon as people got their hands on it, they say it's more Vista suck and worse. All the bloat, all the bugs, fewer applications and less compatibility. My takeaway: Migrating to GNU/Linux from XP will be easier than either Vista or Windows 7. M$ combats these bad reports with a flood of damage control hype [2].
• 10/29 - UI Slammed as bad copy of KDE. It's too early to tell, but they won't be able to catch free software speed and performance.
• 10/30 - "Mixed Reviews" is the polite way to say it sucks. If you offered it, some people would put nuclear waste under their kids bed and regret it later.
• 10/31 - Beware of good reviews, M$ has bribed bloggers with expensive gifts, really there's a pattern to it.
• 11/09 - Roughly Drafted predicts Windows 7's failure even if it's technically perfect because OEM's are tired of paying the Windows Tax for the pleasure of competing in a fierce low margin commodity market.
• 11/10 - Benchmarks show Windows 7 is just as slow as Vista and should have been offered as a service pack upgrade.
• 11/11 - Another, thourough benchmark concludes " Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits [still 40% slower than XP] while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues.".
• 11/19 - Inquirer thinks, The recession dooms Windows 7, even if it's perfect.

2009 Massive Hype, Early Industry Rejection and Quietly Dropped Features.

• 01/02 - "Leaked" to "Pirates", [by M$] like someone wanted it and the usual security problems.
• 01/12 - Burnt by Vista, PC makers do not expect Windows 7 to create sales for them.
• 01/10 - Beta released, with much hype, to unsuspecting public. Steve Ballmer hypes privacy violating deals with Facebook, Verizon and Dell.
• 01/12 - Fist patch released it fixes a bug that ate MP3 files but leave a SMB flaw open. You will have to buy the fix when they finally decide to sell it.
• 01/16 - Reviewer pans Windows 7 online lockin. If you like Google, Yahoo or any other non M$ online service provider, stay away from Windows 7.
• 01/18 - Even WinSuperSite SuperFanboy, Paul Theriot has issues with the UI, "Windows 7 is turning into something that is simple, but not easy. ... Microsoft apparently can't make consistent UI. ... [users] will pay the price."
• 01/19 - Computer World's Michael Horowitz bemoans Windows 7's UI "change for change's sake", " Microsoft ... is doing it's best to drive away existing customers [of windows and office]." He concludes that people forced with unwelcome UI changes should move to Open Office, Apple and Linux.
• 01/29 - Rejected by Georgetown University, it's like Vista all over again because it is Vista.
• 02/02 - Vista 7 won't run on netbooks. They swear it will but will only sell netbooks with "starter" editions. Remember Vista Capable? It's like Vista all over again because it is Vista.
• 02/04 - Malware trick of the kind Windows is famous for is demonstrated for Windows 7. All M$'s security band-aids, like signed code, do is make it harder for users to use the software they want or clean their machines of the inevitable infections Windows suffers.
• 02/05 - Benchmarks show you are better off with Ubuntu. Really.
• 02/15 - There will be no extra toys for the Ultimate Upsell Version because M$ can't afford "out of cycle" development.
• 02/16 - Windows 7 will come DRM like Vista. It's hard to call any DRM worse than another because no violation of software freedom should be considered acceptable.
• 02/20 - Beta testers complain that the Win 7 beta test is a sham.
• 03/05 - Ars Technia calls UAC a broken sham but only a move to normal Unix style privilege separation and permission schemes will bring real security. That won't happen because M$ will never let you be the root user.
• 04/02 - Matt Assay bloggs M$'s OEM partners push for GNU/Linux on Netbooks. He thinks it's because OEMs don't like being pushed around by big bad M$. That may be true but a more likely reason is that Vista is still broken and won't fit on small, power efficient machines and that Windows 7 is still Vista.
• 04/16 - CNet's David Rosenberg laughs at M$'s greedy scheme to cripple Windows 7 Home.
• 05/11 - The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian details Windows 7 as the usual M$ "cynical scam". Forced updates, shutdowns every two hours for the RC, and tech press manipulation win dis-honorable mention. Because of these and other denials of your rights, he concludes, "If you buy Windows 7 or even use it, you are an idiot." RMS would agree. For the last 25 years he has pointed out that non free software owners claim the right to terminate your use of their software at any time for any reason. You might not have believed him 25 years ago, but Windows has had the technical mechanisms to back up and exploit that threat for years.
• 06/08 - The upsell begins. If nothing else convinces you that Windows 7 is Vista, the sale of "upgrade rights" before the OS is shipped should. It's the Vista Capable fiasco all over again. Who in their right mind would trust M$ with a promissed ship date and promissed compatibility after that?
• 07/10 - Steven Sinofsky is the man holding the bag for the Windows 7 release. Good luck, Steve!
• 07/12 - Ubuntu wipes XP and Vista 7 in file system benchmarks, a critical performance bottleneck.
• 08/01 - Netbooks, the only market segment that's doing well, remains well out of reach of Vista 7. Windows 7 RTM brings a PR spurt of some tired promisses and excuses.
• 08/05 - Nasty memory leak derails RTM and voucher hype by threatenting to push back Vista 7 availability. Vista is still not ready for widespread use.
• 08/07 - SJVN of Computer World, says "It's time to get rid of Windows," because security failure threatens social networks and commerce. Windows 7 is explicitly condemned as being no better than any other version of Windows.
• 08/12 - Business as usual makes Windows 7 security just as bad as any other version of Windows, so M$ came up with a clever way to lie about it.
• 08/15 - M$ super fanboy, Rob Enderle now pins his hopes on Windows 8 for the "Rebirth of Windows". Vista 7 is dead before it hits the shelves.
• 08/15 - Early user trouble. Windows 7 broke itself in less than a week.
• 8/25 - As you might expect from Vista, Windows 7 has terrible battery life
• 8/30 - M$ will charge you $210/hour for Windows 7 backward compatibility advice. This makes it clear that they expect lots of problems and want to make lots of money with them. You are better off with Wine, Virtual Box, or Crossover Office.
• 08/30 - More stories of upgrade pain come out and prove that GNU/Linux is easy to use and upgrade.
• 09/03 - Windows 7 propaganda is laughed at in public by Best Buy employees.
• 09/05 - UAC is still broken and Windows 7 does not meet Federal computing requirements.
• 09/08 - SMB2 for Vista and Windows 7 has a unique, remote BSoD flaw that reminds everyone of the toy OS's glory days.
• 09/24 - Digitimes says Windows 7 won't drive PC sales.
• 10/22 - Official Release, it sucks from day one.

2010

• 01/18 - Windows 7 fails to drive sales. It's Vista all over again.
• 02/02 - Microsoft's dubious numbers show a flat bottom line for the first year of Windows 7. Like Vista before it, it has not caught on and is not a money maker for the company.
• 3/1 - Intel Windows 7 migration stumbles, just like Vista did. This is not a surprise because Windows 7 is Vista. It is likely that Intel was never serious about migrating to Vista, Windows 7 or other version of Windows.
• 4/28 - Windows 7 earns less money in its time than Vista did. Microsoft is unable to sell expensive licenses and Windows 7 has even less momentum than Vista.
• 5/27 - People burnt by Vista do not turn to Windows 7 for relief. They no longer trust Microsoft and are looking for alternatives that work, such as GNU/Linux.
• 10/28 - Don't be fooled by channel stuffing and revenue shifting, Windows 7 sales failed to move Microsoft's bottom line. It's as if nothing happened.
• 10/29 - IE 6 addiction prevents Vista 7 migration. Wine has run IE6 for years and it is easy to virtualize XP with GNU/Linux but Windows 7 "solutions" are forbidden by Microsoft's EULA.

2011

• 01/05 - DRAM prices collapse, just like they did when Vista sales disappointed. It can confidently be argued that the Windows 7 sales spurt is over.
• 02/07 - Burdened by Windows 7 preinstalls, netbook sales falter.
• 02/12 - VMWare broken by "windows update".
• 03/08 - April Fools! Overworked admins get 64 patches for Vista 7. When this is done, they can tell users, "Now ur secure."
• 03/14 - Service Pack 1 is a system breaker [Register Article]. The automatically downloaded service pack bricks many OEM installs and system restore is broken too.
• 04/02 - Microsoft promotes Windows 8, another good sign that Windows 7 suffered poor corporate adoption and is already on the way out.
• 04/07 - Windows 7 has the same old driver problems as previous versions and the finger pointing is getting worse. The author argues that free software does better for users despite a lack of vendor cooperation.
• 04/26 - Windows 7 does worse than Vista at world domination and Windows profits decline from 2008. Sales per desktop PC shipped fall to 66%. The figure is worse when you consider things like netbooks, smart phones and book readers.
• 06/11 - File copy is still impossibly slow with Windows 7, copying 13000 files (4 GB) from a DVD to the hard-disk is extremely slow in Windows 7: 10 hours! Well, estimated. I lost patience after 2 hours and rebooted. Doing the same operation on Linux: 7 minutes.

Vista's name change to Windows 7 should be analyzed in M$ terms to understand the magnitude of failure it represents. Why did they bother to change the name for what looks like the same old code? As M$ put it:

In the face of strong competition, Evangelism's focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology

Specifically, Vista failed to gain critical mass, more developers took up GNU/Linux than Vista, home and business users alike rejected it and even the Wintel press came around. Instead of becoming an industry standard, Vista was completely defeated. Windows revenues declined and continued to fall further behind PC market growth. M$ took up the demoralizing task of starting all over again with little chance for actual code improvement. A nearly exhausted cash pile, plans to enter debt, defecting investors and the coming recession make them increasingly desperate and off track even as they bluster about patents and bludgeon Yahoo. Features are already starting to fall off. Paralleling and integral to the fall of the Windows monopoly is fall of their old binary document monopoly. They are forced back to littigation threats, obvious bribery and corruption, and vaporous promises they can't meet here or in the clouds while their competitors run circles around them. Vista proved once and for all that M$'s business and development methods are broken. Windows 7 shows the company is incapable of change, clinging to discredited methods like cult members to their idols. No rational person waited until 2010 to find out that Windows 7 is Vista 2.0. The world is moving on.

When M$ fails, non free software will quickly fall from dominance to niche markets and slowly fade away. Free software has proved it can get the job done without billion dollar advertising budgets, bribes and mindless slogging at companies and individuals. Honest and open cooperation is a better way to get things done. We have already won and we will all keep on winning as vendors see the light.

Boycott Novell has compiled an index of ISO corruption by country. It is easy for casual observers to dismiss individual incidents the impossible to ignore the pattern collected in this index. Groklaw has some related resources, the Massachusetts ODF-MS XML Timeline, a OOXML/ODF Resource, and a more general M$ Litigation Index.

How did I miss this beautiful statement of the obvious?

Vista is awful. Everyone knows it, including Microsoft, and now Microsoft's actions have made it clear that Vista is on its way to the Microsoft junkyard ... Vista, even after SP1 arrived, is junk. Using Vista, instead of XP, is just dumb. ... Why not, instead of waiting for 7, which may or may not be any good, try desktop Linux or Mac OS X?

I'd say that using XP instead of GNU/Linux was even dumber than using Vista. GNU/Linux has cost advantages non free software will never be able to match. The sooner you move, the better off you are. Vista and Office 2007 show that the M$ lock in is a dead end. Customer loyalty is rewarded with pointless, work wasting changes.

"Vista has failed" comes from this story.

Windows 7 formal introduction to developers brought mixed reactions. One developer said he would take it home and stick it on his kid's PC. Others had doubts about this reworking of Vista.

"It looks like a re-packaged Vista [with] a little bit of eye candy," said Daniel McGloin, a software engineer at Intuit.

Randal Kennedy has some of the harshest criticism. He's been punished by M$ for Vista criticism so reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Many reviewers gave Vista a free ride from good faith that they had to apologize for. This time they will give it a free ride to avoid being punished.

M$ Fired 40 Razorfish employees yesterday. It's hard to tell if this is part of M$'s recent hiring freezes and cost cutting. The article points out that M$ would have done this anyway because they were interested in other things when they bought aQuantive last year. Mergers like that are all about reducing costs by eliminating competition and firing people

The purchase of aQuantive sheds some light on their dealings with Yahoo. First, their accusations of anti-trust for Google's non exclusive deal are hypocritical as well as bogus. Second, we can understand better why Yahoo would rather fight to the death than be acquired by M$, the end result will be the same either way.

"The Analyzer" has been arrested for $1.7 million of card fraud.

The alleged scheme involved the purchase of low-value cards, typically with balances of about $15. Tenenbaum would then exploit SQL injection vulnerabilities in Direct Cash's server to increase the value of the cards. The amount of a single card was inflated to more than $1m, Calgary officials told Wired.com.

What's that site running? IIS, of course. This is petty theft next to the current collapse but it's still no way to run a bank.

As promised and for obvious reasons, HP is bringing a GNU/Linux Netbook to market in defiance of the failing M$ Monopoly and it's using Ubuntu. From the Forbes article:

the signal the product sends that HP doesnt need Microsoft quite so much anymore. ... The HP mini laptops customized look and feel is the labor of the Experience team in HPs Personal Systems Group, which is working to make its products feel simpler and more intuitive than the industry-standard Windows-based PCs.

Crunchgear coos over that interface:

The specs are only half the story as the OS is where it gets interesting. ... This Mobile Internet Experience streamlines most common uses into a custom built homescreen that screams of HPs Touchsmart interface - thats a good thing. ... take note at HPs netbooks, but dont copy em. Instead, hire a design firm and actually produce something that is innovative instead of another EEE clone.

Things will really get interesting when $100 MIPS and ARM netbooks hit the market. Of course, everything works better without Vista.

firehose submission

Infoworld pans Windows 7 as Vista 2.0:

I can now say -- with some confidence -- that Microsoft has once again dropped the ball. ... Just as slow as Vista. Just as consumer-focused as Vista. ... Just as confusing as Vista. ... Overall, I'm extremely disappointed with Windows 7. Far from atoning for Vista's sins, Windows 7 simply carries them forward, visiting them upon yet another generation.

Anyone who says things that are not glowing about M$ has to be ready for an onslaught of criticism. The author continues:

don't start with the whole "it's still in beta" crap. This is NO beta at least not at a kernel-mode level. As I predicted months ago, Windows 7 is very much Windows Vista "R2" under the covers. Microsoft established its platform baseline with the SP1/2008 kernel and nothing significant has changed since, nor is anything likely to change before RTM. This is the reality we face. Get used to it.

Looks like Windows 7 is part of the Vista failure. Except it's worse. This version dumps media applications that were the core of Vista's "consumer" focus.

In related news, people are calling Azure "Hailstone 2.0", remember that? All I remember is some vague buzz and all sorts of privacy/lockin warnings.

firehose submission

Update This sends M$ into their third Christmas with nothing to sell. Vista missed it's first launch date, did not have a service pack for it's second and is universally hated on it's third.

The Infoworld author tried out Windows 7 for a little more and learned it was, "a lot worse than I thought.... Microsoft is still finding ways to break applications. So much for the whole "seamless transition" promise to Vista users." Previous criticism of Vista, got him blacklisted from M$ functions.

someone high up on the Client Team (Steve?) really doesn't like me. I mean, really, truly loathes me. And it's not just your run-of-the-mill frustration with a journalist who picks on them. This thing is personal, and the executive in question is allowing his or her personal feelings to spill over into the company's handling of formal press relations with InfoWorld.

The comments are full of W.E. trolls talking about how much he deserved what he got and that he deserves to be fired.

Boycott Novell has noticed that there's a strong connection between poison pen Jeff Gould and AlexGr. If that's true, I'll list the proof here later. One thing for sure is that Slashdot user AlexGr hates software freedom.

• Hates GPL3
• Bashes Slashdot
• Boosts the M$/Novell deal

The only thing missing is the usual insults for Slashdot readers, but he's only got five posts. His four accepted submissions all point back to FUD and confusion filled articles from Jeff Gould. I thought that was a strange acceptance ratio, until I could see how much he submitts. At least 11 of his last 20 submissions are dreadful Jeff Gould stories. There were about 80 submissions so the acceptance rate is about 5%. Slashdot editors are 95% on the ball.

What could be worse for your computer than Vista? How about Vista without a mail client rebranded Windows 7?

[to fight Google] Microsoft is stripping Windows 7 of some of Windows' best built-in applications [Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker], and it's making them available only as downloads on its Windows Live site. ... the software can be downloaded for free .... It's a variation on the classic "loss leader" in retail, where you lure folks in with freebies and then pounce with a hard sell.

The author thinks this is a silly idea and that people will stick with Google until M$ makes online services worth using. If that's so, there no reason to buy Windows 7 which will still be bloated with unpopular applications and digital restrictions. Ballmer will be hard pressed to convert websites besides their own to Windows only and, with Vista's market share still in the single less than 10%, Vista only is suicide. M$'s would be circular dependencies are best solved by sticking with real standards and moving to GNU/Linux or Mac.

Firehose submission

Microsoft has hit the skids. Software sales tumbled and they ended last quarter with less cash on hand than Apple and has announced a $500 million dollar savings plan.

Microsoft closed the quarter with less cash than Apple. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments for Microsoft add up to $20.7 billion. Apple, meanwhile, closed the quarter with $24.5 billion. ... Steve Jobs ... [said], "The economic downturn may present extraordinary opportunities to companies that have cash. Cash is king. We are very comfortable with cash in bank and it is not burning a hole in our pocket."

Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Microsoft ... would cull as much as $500 million from its budget, by cutting marketing and travel expenditures, as well as reducing growth in the ranks of its employees. The company will also save in part by cutting spending on facilities and data centers.

"I don't see any scenario where we'll grow by that much this year," Liddell said. "What we've done is essentially gone right across the company -- every division -- and looked for areas where we would like to spend less."

What, they don't want to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software? No, the hiring freeze rumors were true.

Update: Apple Insider highlights just how embarrassing the quarter was for M$ :

While Microsoft executives like to talk about Apple as an insignificant company with less than 5% of the worldwide market share of all PCs and servers sold, the Mac maker now has more cash than Microsoft and earns more than half of its profits and over three fourths its revenues.

Boycott Novell has lots of details on M$'s current crisis, including serious allegations of fraud from an insider. referenced and summarized here.

M$'s traditional software sales tumbled in the first quarter of 2009 and things are going to get worse for them.

The company Thursday fell back to highlighting its un-sexy multi-year licensing agreements with big customers as proof its business is sound and can endure a recession and netbooks onslaught, as it saw software sales tumble.

The company's Windows client business grew by half its anticipated target - two percent instead of four compared to last year. Microsoft said fewer traditional PCs and more netbooks had shipped than expected. Also, revenue from OEMs was down as they shifted to sell cheaper netbooks.

Revenue fell nearly five percent and net-income was flat compared to the July quarter.

This result comes despite it being nearly impossible to buy anything but netbooks without Vista and good general hardware sales. PC shipments were up 10 to 12% in the same period.

Vista is dead. One year after their best quarter in eight years, it can safely be said that the Vista sales spurt is over. It was probably over a year ago. Because fewer than 10% of PC owners use Vista and big retail chains like CompUSA and Circuit City have seen significant pain we might also conclude that Vista's sales burst was just channel stuffing. No one wanted it and no one bought it.

Microsoft revised their projections downward for economic conditions and they don't have anything new.

firehose submission