$100 Million Marketing Push For Vista

GecKo213 writes "Microsoft is touting a $100 million marketing campaign promoting Windows Vista and encouraging software developers to build new programs. With the longest gap ever between major releases of Windows operating systems -- the current version, Windows XP, was launched in late 2001 -- Microsoft is facing pressure from its partners and developers to deliver technology that will convince users to upgrade. If $100 Million dollars won't make you want to switch to Vista, what will?"

Comments

"...what will?"

[The MAZZTer]

If MS will buy me 2gb of RAM and a 256mb video card I might consider.

Re:"...what will?"

[aktzin]

And don't forget a Microsoft-approved DRM-compatible monitor, whenever they finally become available.

Re:"...what will?"

[SpaceLifeForm]

If you accept that you have a price at which you would go to the darkside, then you are nearly there.

Keep the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lower the price.

Upgrading isn't that important

[3770]

How long do you normally keep a computer before you get a new one?

What OS do you think will be on a computer that you buy two years from now?

What Will It Take?

[ewhac]

If $100 Million dollars won't make you want to switch to Vista, what will?

Let's see:

• No copy protection ("DRM") facilities or support anywhere,
• ext2 filesystem compatibility, so I can read all my Linux files,
• Publish NTFS specifications, so I can read/write NTFS under Linux during the transition,
• Dump CRLF newlines, convert entirely to LF,
• The file's type becomes true metadata, and is not embedded in the filename,
• Make OpenGL the low-level rendering model for the entire system,
• Deprecate DirectX,
• Fix Kerberos implementation,
• Make IE severable from the system,
• Make Windows Media severable from the system,
• Do not put Windows Messenger in the system tray by default,
• Add a "force uninstall" tool to purge botched device driver installations from my machine,
• Drop about $50 million on the EFF.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Schwab

Here's one developer leaving

[Psionicist]

First of all I am neither a Microsoft Troll or a Linux Zealot. I like both OS:es. That said, I am a windows developer, that is I create end user applications for Windows. I used to be very proud of this because lots of people enjoy my programs including non-technical users. Combined with windows being a pretty thoroughly documented OS (in the "how do I do"-sense, not in the "how does it work"-sense) and Visual Studio being a very good IDE and compiler, creating user mode apps for Windows was pretty fun and motivating.

That said, I have abandoned M$ forever and installed Ubuntu. I hate Vista as much as the other guy, but the DRM and all that was not the reason I changed platform (I used Windows 2000, and when Vista was released I would probably have changed to XP). The reason... is because Microsoft obviously don't care a thing about individual developers not working for huge corporations. This only becomes obvious when you have developed Windows applications for a while, unfortunately.

Windows is a very defined OS. Microsoft have thought about pretty much every possible way a developer can screw up the OS or use it in ways "not intended", and tucked away anything remotely advanced in kernel mode. This is partially good because all the sucky shareware you can download on FREE (as in punch-the-monkey) websites can not destroy your system completely. This is a typical large corporation, no hackers, everyone is equally bad-mentality (both Paul Graham and Joel on Software have essays about this).

A "safe" userland is a good idea you may think. The trick is... If you want to develop windows drivers / applications in kernel mode... You have to _pay_ Microsoft for the documentation. The Driver Development Kit costs about $100. It's true.

Microsoft want me to pay them to write applications to their OS.

Yet another unacceptable thing from M$. If anything, they should pay me (yeah, this is stupid, but not as stupid). I will now concentrate on userland applications for Linux instead. No one can screw me over now! :-)

Re:Is $100 Million Enough?

[plover]

It's going to take more than money, regardless of how much. It's going to take time and attrition.

Timing is going to be a huge problem for Microsoft, and it's why they're frantically cutting features in order to make their 2006 date. The big computer makers (Dell, HP, etc.) are today selling dirt cheap PCs (~$299) that are perfectly adequate for the home users. They may completely saturate the home market with these cheap XP machines before Vista hits the shelves. Anyone willing to settle for one of these today is not the type of customer who upgrades every two years. And they are indeed "good enough" -- they surf the web, write their school reports, and send email pictures of Junior to Grandma. And they'll have no reason to upgrade for a long time. They're not power gamers; fact is nobody's developed a killer app for the home that requires major CPU.

Once the market is full of these home machines that are "good enough", there will be another PC slump. And if Microsoft can't beat the home users' slump, they're going to have to rely on corporate sales.

The problem here is that Microsoft is their own biggest competitor. Businesses who have XP are "mostly satisfied." Their corporate drones can type up Word documents, create PowerPoint presentations, and read their email right now, and I don't know if Microsoft can convince them to spend major $$$ to migrate to Vista. I believe the business world already sees XP as "good enough," and most of them would question the wisdom of pumping millions of dollars into an "upgrade" that buys them no tangible advantage.

Another problem for Microsoft is that corporations will demand that XP remain under ongoing maintenance for several years after the arrival of Vista. Hell, they just cut support for NT only in the last year or two, and XP is far more popular than NT ever was.

I'm sure their current strategy is to convince the corporate "infrastructure architects" that Vista is way better than XP. Not sure how they're going to do it, but try they will. They'll probably start by offering better management tools than SMS and/or MOM. Then they'll throw out some stability numbers, tell a few worm-proof and virus-proof lies, and start replacing a few corporate servers (first one's always free ;-). But with the DRM in place, very few of the corporate Windows fanbois I know are going to leap to Vista personally, and these are the absolute most critical people for Microsoft to sell to. There simply is no incentive. I'm imagining Vista may end up being a free upgrade to a few corporate giants, just to get visibility out there.