Business 2.0 Says 'Boycott Vista'

amyandjake writes "Business 2.0 has a story about Vista's delays, the amount of time wasted by Microsoft bringing Vista to market, and the fact that it doesn't seem to have any compelling features for upgrading. The last paragraph of the story says 'Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one. That's the only way we have to let Microsoft know Vista is an overhyped, late, and pointless update to XP — a perfectly fine operating system.'" Relatedly, torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott is at it again with his seemingly never-ending supply of information about Windows Vista. This time, he discusses the things he dislikes about the program, in the article The Dark Side of Windows Vista RC1."

Comments

Something analysts are forgetting...

[RobertM1968]

MS is making big deals with resellers to push Vista to non-Vista computer users. I work for a CompUSA in NY, and we are soon going to be required to do a Vista analysis on every machine that comes in for service to "advise" the customer of all the "reasons" they should be replacing XP/NT/etc with Vista: "multimedia advantages", "better performance", "better security", "the neat UI experience", and infinitum. Will we? Well, not at this store (we WILL have to run the stupid thing, but we won't be recommending it - which alone can get us into trouble). MS also has deals with resellers where we get credits (towards what, corporate hasnt been clear about - but they make it sound very important to our future business model) for each copy of Vista we activate for a customer and choose CompUSA as the place of purchase. These credits are accrued for each online purchase through MS and their partners of any additional software the consumer buys.

All in all, it might not be what the customer wants, but MS is ensuring that resellers are doing their best to convince customers that. With their new online software purchasing model, resellers are seeing a need to do this so they get some sort of revenue (credits) for lost software sales that are supposedly going to be done online through MS and their partners.

Remember, reality doesnt matter... marketing and pressure on resellers does - most people arent computer saavy enough to know whether they are being sold a boat or a boat anchor we've tied around their neck.

-Rob

Confessions of an Ex-M$ Junkie

[Zaphod2016]

From DOS 6.22 through Win XP; I was a M$ junkie. I even went so far as to become MCSE cert. and to attend various M$ propaganda shows here and there. I was one of those guys who justified my addiction by saying "everyone has it" or "I know how to use M$ stuff- I'm too set in my ways to change".

But it wasn't OSX, *Nix or even the delays of Vista that turned me off to Heir Gates- it was the Internet. As soon as I realized that 90% of my "mission critical" activities were all web-based (email, research, development) I realized that it really didn't matter which desktop I used- they all connected to the same Internet.

Once I got past that hurdle, I found the courage to play with various linux distros and ended up on a Mac running OSX. In retrospect, I can see perfectly well that all of these options are superior to windows (for my needs, perhaps not yours). However, I was unwilling to even explore my other options because I had trapped myself into a proprietary mindset- something even more dangerous than a proprietary format.

Having played with these various OSes, I can see that each of them has "borrowed" from each other; features that prove popular in one almost inevitably find themselves to the others. Just like a favorite make/model of car, there is no "wrong" answer, only preferences and favorites. I think the "masses" are begining to understand this, just as they understand a choice between pickup truck or sports car (good for different things).

And this is why Vista is "doomed"- the dreaded Microsoft Monopoly preys on the ignorance and confusion of the masses. And yes, most people over the age of 40 are mildly retarded in terms of computers. But these dinosaurs are quickly being replaced by a new generation, the first generation "raised on the Internet", the first generation of which 90% are proficient and experienced with a home PC. The confusion factor shrinks more every day, directly proportionate to the decline in M$ market share.