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Mom Blasts Ballmer Over Kid's Vista Experience
Lucas123 writes "While on stage at a Gartner's ITxpo conference today, Ballmer got an ear-full from the mother of a 13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer she decided only two days later to switch back to XP because Vista was so difficult. Ballmer defended Vista saying: 'Your daughter saw a lot of value'; to which the mother replied: 'She's 13.' Ballmer said that Vista is bigger than XP, and 'for some people that's an issue, and it's not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1. But machines are constantly getting bigger, and [it's] probably important to remember that as well.' Says the mother: 'Good, I'll let you come in and install it for me.'"
Can I mod the submission?
...in learning something difficult?
Ballmer's comment seems really prick-like to me. It probably wasn't meant as such, but still.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
once Uncle Steve starts trying to get the printer working, he'll throw a lot more chairs than he does in his office....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The mom's body was later found floating in a river. The cause of death: chair-related injuries.
Cue the transcription of the rest of the argument with Ballmer throwing chairs at the woman and her 13 year old in 3...2...1..
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
And then he threw a chair at her.
BIFFFFfff!
So the "value" that the woman's 13 year-old daughter saw were Vista's gadgets:
I'm glad the end-user is seeing so much value in Vista.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
If Microsoft were anything other than one of the most dominant monopolies the world has ever seen, this would be a hideous and grave error.
As it is, people just shrug their shoulders and say, "Who is John Galt?"
Translation: We spent a lot of money packing it with bloat.
Translation: No matter how many versions we have, it's still one size fits all. The tension is generated because our developers don't lead normal lives and see things the way ordinary people do, which makes the end product obfuscated and confusing
Translation: We're banking on bloat, the more there is the longer it takes the crackers to find the exploits, but sure as the Sun rises, they will find them because more code has more holes.
Translation: Stock value. If we didn't come out with a new version of Windows everyone had to buy every few years our stock value would drop. We have to keep addicts supplied.
Translation: We rushed it to market. If we had waited until it was really ready we would have seen our stock drop. The premature release was purely driven by profit motives rather than care for our customers.
Translation: Revenue generating cycle - Bleeding edge, counting the casualties.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
/* No Comment */
I don't know if that was a good idea...
What if he runs into install problems?
Oops! forgot, this is windows.......
It's You and I against the World... When do we attack?
> She's 13. Am I the only one missing the point here?
So, in short, the 13 yr old had no problem with it, but the mother couldn't understand it, so it's a bad OS? Yeah, that's GREAT logic.
Also, "she's 13" is not a valid retort for why it shouldn't matter that she found value in it. She obviously knew how to use it more than the mother did.
Ballmer was in an impossible situation here. He could make her look the complete fool and catch hell for picking on that woman, or let her 'win' and catch hell for letting a woman beat up his operating system. He chose the right route, for once.
For the record, Vista was the wrong route.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I can't say I'm looking forward to Mom's arrival in #gentoo...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Or, better yet, she can use an operating system that doesn't practically require new hardware for every new release, but operating system of which I speak can take advantage of new hardware when it's available, and that'll be sooner because she won't have to spend $400 on just the operating system.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
so, I guess mom should count herself lucky she didn't have to dodge chairs or endure Steve threatening to "f***ing kill" her..
...in my experience Vista is easier to transition to than most operating systems I've upgraded. Most hardware still works. Every program I've tried so far has worked. Can you say the same thing for 98 to XP? No. OS 9 to OS X? No. Linux to newer Linux? Well, yes. :)
Take a machine that runs 98 tolerably well and upgrade it to XP. Pain. Take a machine that runs XP tolerably well and upgrade it to Vista. Pain. Nothing is new here. You upgrade your OS and you'll probably need to upgrade your hardware too. And purchasers that doesn't realize this only have themselves to blame. Did I just agree with Steve Ballmer? Damn it, get me a razor blade...
Selling an OS is, in this respect, not a lot different from selling a car.
Some buy their cars for the greatest reliability. Some for performance or efficiency. Some people buy their car to have the newest and flashiest on the block. Some for safety. Some because they know the brand or it's what their friends have.
And some people just fall in love with the color or, wow, big cupholders or heated seats, and they're sold.
Just the other day I saw the one about Red Hat users owing him money, and it really pissed me off. Now it seems like he's advocating this piss-poor development idea that bloat is OK. "Systems are getting faster and faster, you don't need to write non-shitty code" is basically what he's saying. This type of mentality really pisses me off.
"If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind."
The same thing can be said to any OS w.r.t a 13 yr old. Even installing/using Ubuntu would be a hassle...The only reason why they find XP is fine is because the 13 yr old has been using it may be for few years. Someone installed it for her when she was 7 or 8 and hence didn't feel any pain.
I would mod the submission as a useless article.
Can't figure out operating system that's been slightly changed.
More news at eleven.
(If I was using DOS at age 10...)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Vista is NOT harder to use than XP. It's virtually the same, especially from the point of view of a non-power user. UAC might be a huge nuisance, but parents or whoever can just turn it off. I wouldn't give a 13-year-old admin privileges to a machine in the first place; you're just asking for trojans otherwise.
Ballmer was probably thinking "either you or your daugher or both are just stupid" but knew he couldn't say it so he was trying to be passive and just said some BS to try and get the lady off his case.
I like basketball!!1!
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm a home Mac user.
She pointed out what everyone's common sense has been telling them, but they've been ignoring for years.
Ironic how she points out how safe and secure the originally very buggy XP is now a comfort zone and Vista is not.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Poor Ballmer. People still don't know when to keep their mouths shut. I see Vista as a huge improvement over XP. XP must have been one of the most boring, most insecure OS's ever. Absolutely fugly. Doctored grass hills - most users don't even care to change the wallpaper - looking absolutely grossly unnatural. No way that those are real.
And how would I respond to someone who said something like that Mom from the story if it were about some linux distro? IRL, I'd say something like, "Well. TOUGH luck," on the internets I'd have said "STFU RTFM n00b."
These nutjobs don't have a case. As if Windows XP were the be-all-end-all of UIs. It's definitely not, and to someone who was used to the ways that were before, the rearrangements were mildly confusing as well. Took you all of two minutes to get used to them, or less.
And "learning a UI" IS BY NO MEANS DIFFICULT DAMMIT.
All you guys who think that Vista is POS and therefore stick to XP are seriously out of your minds. If you don't like Aero and the additional load it creates so that games run a little slower than they used to - have you tried turning Aero off?
OTOH, I really agree that they absolutely shouldn't have abandoned OpenGL, but have they really? It's not like the OS is running under a hypervisor that absolutely prevents OpenGL from being used, is it?
As for DRM, it was there in Windows XP as well. You can ignore it very easily. Nothing prevents me from writing a multimedia player that supports DRM for any other OS (except for laziness perhaps).
And yes, I have used Vista.
I think I'll just cut it off here. Bye.
</rant>
That's it. I've never seen the public react this way to a Windows release before. Not Linux geeks, but the average Windows users.
Yea, yea, every new release faces nostalgia of the previous release blah blah. It's way worse here.
Average people call Vista shit. Businesses run away from it.
The Vista brand is ruined. Now even if they fix Vista, the brand will never recover.
I hope Microsoft learns something from this. First impression lasts forever. Don't release software unfinished.
I'd Like to know what kind of "analyst" listens to a 13 year old girl on the quality features of Vista? Seems to me the Mother never did a great deal of research/testing of this OS, otherwise she might have known that its a royal pain in the kester.
I'm not defending Vista or Ballmer in anyway but she almost sounds like a plant to make him look like the puppet he is.
What a load of horse crap! The machines being sold are generally more powerful, but the machines are not getting bigger by themselves. But in no uncertain terms is Microsoft stating that people are expected to buy newer, bigger, more powerful machines... and why? Just to run their OS? Here I was thinking that computing was about the data and the programs that operates on it... Goes to show me how wrong I was... it's actually about the OS!
A bit later she was tossed out of a windows, she has a great vista before she had the experience of her life right before hitting the pavement...
*pat on the shoulder*
Don't you all see! Vista was a wise move by Microsoft. IT has been long been agreed upon that one major contributor to windows' insecurity is its popularity. If Microsoft comes out with an OS that nobody wants, they won't be popular anymore, and suddenly they'll have a secure OS!!!
DUH!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I am a college student and needed to install MS Visual Studio for a project. Our CSE lab is partnered with MS through MSDN. We have access to most MS software. So I went online and noticed that Visual Studios 2003 Pro was on the website. (2005 is not available) Checked out the cd from the lab and went home to install it on Vista. After having trouble getting it to work I went searching for a fix.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa948854.aspx
So Visual Basic 6, created in 1998, is supported but software from 2003 isn't??
waaaaaa i'm too lazy to learn something new, all computers should be 800x600 touch screens with big giant buttons to press to make it easy for dumb ass 14 year olds and soccer moms to figure out waaaaaa sorry for the rant, people piss me off sometimes :)
I don't get it.
Actually, I don't get just about anything in the article. It doesn't say what the "value" was. It doesn't say what the problems were.
If the "she's 13" comment is intended to explain that she's not a computer-expert (and I think that's the intent, but I'm not sure) then there's all kinds of dumb things going on here. Windows' main problem is security (mainly due to the horrific UI "click here to install malware"), and it simply shouldn't be used by anyone who isn't an expert or doesn't have a deep entrenched legacy that they can't afford to replace.
"She's 13" implies lack of a legacy. "She's 13" also implies lack of expertise. This person shouldn't be using either XP or Vista. That said, Vista may mitigate some of the security problems (especially important, if she's using the computer on the network), but at the cost of legacy compatibility. But overall, it just doesn't make any sense.
Is the 13-year-old some kind of hacker prodigy, where developing on Windows might make her some money or something? The article doesn't really suggest anything along those lines. So how did XP's or Vista's quality (or lack thereof) become a serious issue? It sounds like, "My daughter bought your screwdriver, dammit, and she's been doing an absolutely aweful job of pounding nails." Huh?!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Only on Slashdot do we discuss what is the most appropriate OS for a 13 year old girl. :)
Doesn't this mean that the next version of Windows will be less secure than Vista?
not yer average mom, its your geeky daughter avenging techie mom, and, top level cios, ceos, whatnots to boot !
watch out, she's gonna get you. she's gonna get you good !
be you may in open source, be you may in microsoft, be you may a long hair or a fanboi !!
she's gonna get you, and she's gonna get you good !!
for here comes, THE MOM !!!!
Read radical news here
I wonder how much Microsoft spends on internet shills. Because it sure seems like some people are willing to defend anything Microsoft does.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
In other comments, Mr. Ballmer was heard to say he was going to "fucking kill" Mrs. Genovese, and all the chairs in Mr. Ballmer's dressing room were found smashed to pieces.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
It's like Slashdot in mom form. A Momdot or Slashmom.
There is plenty of value in vista. For only 199.99 for an upgrade, or just 400.00 for the full version imagagine what you get.
1. New Icons!
2. New Internet Explorer (which can be downloaded free)
3. New Sound Recorder (that actually records more than 30 seconds, or so I am told)
4. New Media Player
5. New Wordpad (still useless)
6. New Screen Savers
7. New DRM!
8. New BETA(TM) Drivers
9. New DirectX
Yep, absolutly worth the 200/400 dollar price, gotta have the gadgets.
Last time I checked / took Computer Engineering, the function of an OS was to simply provide a programmer friendly abstraction layer for the hardware.
Now I appreciate a nice shell as much as the next person, but I don't think that's worth 400 bucks on the price of say a 500 dollar or even 1200 dollar machine.
I just added more RAM to all 3 of my XP machines, due to updates running amuck with RAM usage. Now they are back to original performance.
My Vista laptop (that my daughter uses) is just too fluffy for me. Probably good for people that like fluffy and a whole lot of barriers for security.
I still can't get on NOAA's web site and see the animated RADAR with that laptop.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Actually, OS 9 to OS X had something called Classic in OS X, so that you could run all your OS 9 programs without a rewrite.
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And Ballmer says "If you switch to Linux, your 13 year old daughter will have to still pay us."
I'm sure he wasn't getting any jollies off on that lambasting. Ballmer needs to grow up. I think he's met his match with that quick witted mother. What the hell is wrong with Ballmer trying to say she got value from it. What a total idiot. The man is so out of touch. Typical of almost all of Microsoft. If that wasn't the case we wouldn't have Vista to begin with. We'd have a product the consumer could be proud of.
Back to XP. Back to XP. There you go. Back to XP. Screw Microsoft and their Vista even with SP1.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
...I've seen Ballmer being a complete prick in a lot of interviews and this is not one of them.
In my opinion, he didn't say anything out of the ordinary (from a guy who wants to sell his product, that is). He could have made the woman look like a complete fool if he wanted to: take the "XP is safe" statement, for instance. How's Vista less secure? Which bad experiences concerning security did she have? My guess? None. She probably has no idea of what the security differences between and XP and Vista are and probably just wanted something else to say.
The "your daughter saw a lot of value" it's not a good argument, I know, but it's also true that the woman was just describing HER experience, and not her daughter's, who was who she installed the system for in the first place. Maybe her daughter didn't like it as well, I don't know, but the interview shows more personal whining than actual arguments.
Replace "XP" with "Windows" in the text and replace "Vista" with "Linux". Now go to a Ubuntu support forum and see if something sounds familiar.
only two days later to switch back to XP because Vista was so difficult
I can relate. Four of us in our graduate computer science lab couldn't figure out how to set an IP address and hostname on vista for a new student. Such a relatively simple task was hidden deep down beneath a bunch of layers of fluff.
Take a machine that runs Mac OS X "Leopard" and upgrade it to OS X "Panther". Painless. Take a machine that runs "Panther" and upgrade it to Mac OS X "Tiger"-- also painless. It doesn't have to be this way. I am assuming that most major linux distros can say the same thing, probably even more so.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Yeah, Vista is bloat and irritating, and we all hate it on principle. But what's her point? Did it work, or not? She seems to have no specific complaint, just, 'we didn't like it". There's not a lot Ballmer can do about that.
Brett
"Unless you redefine "value" your point is meaningless."
Oops!
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
So you're saying the daughter used the same skillfully gathered empirical data to drive her decision to switch to Vista as a typical manager, while they mother was revolted by it in the same way headcount would to anything management blindly foist upon them?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Something interesting to take away from this. The 13 year old (the future of technology) wanted the gadgets - or rather - the useful yet entertaining and social aspects of Vista - rather than the technology underneath. Technology that serves a personal purpose, rather than technology that simply serves a purpose.
As we've all learned for ourselves now back when we started CS/IT/ENG/whatever, we constantly evolve using what we started with as a base. I can trace my usage of linux/unix now back to first using NextStations and IRIX boxes back in school.
What is Linux/Ubuntu/younameit doing to capitalize on the 13 year old market? What does Linux offer a teenager, or better yet, why would a teenage want to use Linux? Social interaction, gadgets/widgets, entertainment, etc may seem like a waste of purpose and time to us hardcore nerds, but these are very important to non-tech types. Once the 13 year old is interested, then the whole 'get em early' evolution begins.
A great example is the XO laptop. The XO has considered the social target audience of the product like few other hardware and software developers previously (except maybe Apple). As such, every review of the laptop so far by a schoolage child (the target) loves it. For Linux to succeed on the desktop for the masses, developers needs to consider what the desktop for the masses actually is - not what developers think the desktop to be where the masses adapt.
Vista has more eye-candy then XP, nobody's denying that. After the two hour honeymoon is over though, there's not much else in there. Certainly not enough to justify the expense and pain of an upgrade.
No sig today...
This would've been a lot more interesting if she'd challenged him about the actual problems she encountered...Perhaps she did, and it just wasn't captured? Ah well.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
We all know about the extra disk usage (11GB windows dir compared to 2GB for XP), ram usage (about 750MB used by vista even when doing nothing), vista's performance slow-ups etc.
The really wierd thing is, for all of the extra it takes,it doesn't seem to be offering the user any more features or functionality than XP already does (except translucent window borders).
In fact in quite a few cases Vista has less usability than XP. Even with UAC turned off, the extra confirmational dialog boxes whenever you copy files or folders around are massively annoying and unavoidable. Also since downgrading to Vista from XP I can't play my own DVD's on my PC any more because of DRM.
"You upgrade your OS and you'll probably need to upgrade your hardware too." Correction: "You upgrade your Microsoft OS and you'll probably need to upgrade your hardware too."
Neither my Linux nor my OS X needed hardware upgrades.
--
hint: try to look outside the cube...
is to install Mac OS instead of the bloated slow-running WinVista.
Unless she has a geek friend who can Ubuntu her.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I only read:
Ballmer: "I love your daughter."
"She's 13," Genovese shot back.
I also think there was something in there about a chair being thrown and how he was going to bury her or ____ her or something.
According to our web stats, about 8% of our viewers are using Vista.
That's not an insubstantial share, especially since most of our viewers are probably corporate users and it's a bigger PITA for them to upgrade than a home user.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Still, ease of use, the choice to fall back to a more easy OS to use was XP and not Linux.
I installed Ubuntu on my wife's machine this last week, removing XP. Wrong move. The only thing she really uses is the browser and Office. So, I bit the bullet, installed Ubuntu, Firefox, OpenOffice. She's used to FF. No problem there. Ubuntu, she didn't like the interface and found out that her movie making brother (a world class photog) would send her his latest shows in a format that I have yet to find a Linux solution for. And, OpenOffice? Forgetaboutit.
You want peace or piece in the bedroom, don't switch your wife's OS.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
A couple of bad examples. OS 9 to OSX isn't a fair example because it was a restructuring. There have been multiple releases of OSX now and they are all compatible. Also unless it had a DOS component most all old software ran fine on Win 2000 it was XP that started having the issues. 98 SE was a pretty decent OS over all and Win 2000 was better yet just a lot of games wouldn't run on it. The probably is other than some flash Vista was mostly a giant security patch that required major hardware upgrades for low end machines. OSX will at least run on most machines that are within a reasonable service life which I'd say these days is three to four years. If you've got a 5+ year old machine there are going to be limitations on what you can do with it. Those 9 gig hard drives just aren't that impressive anymore.
With just one irate customer out there with a ton of visibility, he could have told her he'd see to it personally and put a hand-picked tech on the job. "Don't worry ma'am. I'LL handle this!" He looks like a hero in front of thousands of people at the resource cost of ONE measly support call. If he wanted to be slick, he could have dressed up the solution as normal customer support (although he'd be fast-tracking her ticket behind the scenes).
Just bad politicking, man.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Did Vista adopt CUPS?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
They that their friend has X and suddenly they want X too.
Blar.
Indeed. You'll also note that some people value the choice to use the software that suits the purpose. What many of we OS agnostics without axes to grind have been saying for a while is that Vista is important in two ways: Firstly it shows that the dominant vendor of software is losing the plot, so we're watching for the likely successor (probably Google, IMHO. Whoa! A flying chair!) to the post of most evil IT corporation. Secondly, and most importantly, it's disappointing enough people to give ALL the alternatives, XP included, a few minutes under the microscope. That last point shows just how right Uncle Fester was: Vista has tremendous value. Just not the value he's looking for.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
"Actually it is the PERFECT retort, because it shows just how out-of-touch Microsoft is. Teenagers don't care about value, because they have no concept of what value is."
Well, that makes no sense then.
She purchased the OS on the suggestion of her 13 year old daughter, so apparently her opinion mattered at some point.
Either her 13 year old is worth listening to or she isn't, but using her age as an excuse or ignoring her opinion is pretty underhanded when mom didn't have a problem with that very same opinion previously.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Hes speaking of Windows Genuine Advantage?
Quite the opposite Mr. Ballmer, trends are pointing to even smaller computers.
But in your case, chairs can always be made bigger although you might want to watch out, you could herniate a disc.
13 is still legal in the State of Mississippi... Thank God (well ./) for Anonymous Coward.
XP was not finished when it came out and now it is the flagship operating system. This happens everytime, there are problems cause some old POS hardware doesn't have a driver for Vista yet (or at all) and there are bugs here and there in the OS. Time will change it, whether the anti-MS crowd likes it or not, and MS will stay rich another day.
>> Your daughter saw a lot of value. > She's 13. ... and I'm 40. Gimme a break on change.
I'm assuming you mean a machine that shipped with 10.3. Newer apple hardware requires newer OS X versions for drivers. My ibook can run 10.3.5 but my wife's can't.
I built my pc last september. I had to install 6-7 drivers including video, sound, chipset, etc for XP. I formatted and put vista on it in january (along with a new bsd install). I only needed to install a sound and video driver. It was less work for me to go to vista in that sense. I'm running x64 vista at that. On newer hardware, it's easier to deal with vista. It actually has support for some sata controllers built in. Imagine that.
Linux distros are probably the same as my windows experience in some cases. Many people still end up using binary video drivers and perhaps a wireless driver and/or firmware load. It depends on the distro and what deals they have with ATI and nvidia.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
And neither is Vista.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer"
Um... wtf... If I was Balmer I would have thrown birth control at her, and then a chair.
A mysterious, yet somehow incompatible, format you don't bother mentioning, mysterious. Very mysterious.
what I want to know is why is everything relabeled? What was the justification of simply changing the name of things, but leaving them in the same spot.. sort of. Why was add and remove programs changed so that people can't find it? I work in phone technical support, and relabelling everything was the stupidest thing they have ever done. Aside from change for the sake of change, why did they do that?
This reminds me of Stephenson's In The Beginning There Was The Command Line, which is a little dated now but still pretty funny. He describes the various OSes as different car dealerships, and Windows as an unreliable station wagon that for some reason 90% of the potential customers buy.
"With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free."
And:
"The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?""
won't somone PLEASE think of the children??
Um, Leopard is version 10.5, Tiger is 10.4, and Panther is 10.3.
Simple as that. I have XP Pro, a gig of memory and a real nice nVidia card and still the eye candy bogs the machine down and I really strip unneeded crap from my runtime. I don't need Vista. It's like KDE with all the candy. Buggy and sluggish, but I EXPECT THAT with KDE on Linux because I didn't pay for it and it is community supported on the same schedule people mow their lawns and clean their rooms on, when they get to it. When I pay a multibillion dollar company like MS for an OS that took them several years to come up with, I expect it to run a little better and a little more stable.
I really do feel bad for Balmer having to take the position he does. What a suck job that is. Oh wait, I work customer support and hardly agree with the morality of the positions I have to espouse as it is... Yeah, I really feel for Balmer now. Dude, big difference here. You are an exec and can take some other tack here. I strongly suggest you do it and quick Steve. I have yet to hear from or meet anyone who likes Vista. Stop being so damn 1995 all-bugs-are-features-or-customer-imagination and make your subordinated fix it.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
just in, someone had a fight with Ballmer and the turd-monkeys on slashdot think its news!!!
Steve Ballmer's Interview
Its easy to understand VB6 has huge market share in development.VB2003 is new.
They have to support it.
In other words, Microsoft is slowly catching up with the rest of the operating systems.
Hmmm, not the best comparison. I upgraded from XP to XP SP1 to XP SP2 without much of a hitch. SP2 had a couple hitches but all my programs still run just fine.
The XP->Vista is much closer to the 9-X transition.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
It may not justify the five year development after XP's release, but it works for me (maybe some games run slower due to DX). I actually like it (including the gadgets).
I'd not recommend everyone upgrading their existing machines, but for a new machine capable of Vista, I see no reason to install XP either.
I guess it would take a 13 year old to see value in desktop gadgets.
Got Code?
How much of the windows bloat is due to having to be backwards compatible and all the legacy issues that that entails? Wouldn't it be better to start afresh and code up something fast and secure? If a user wanted to be compatible to Windows Me and prior, they could just install some sort of service pack.....
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
I see Vista as a huge improvement over XP. XP must have been one of the most boring, most insecure OS's ever. Absolutely fugly. Doctored grass hills - most users don't even care to change the wallpaper - looking absolutely grossly unnatural. No way that those are real. Lol, I feel the same way. I absolutely hated XP and still have a grudge against it because of the default theme and the horrible names like "my network places". At least vista butched up and has a decent default theme (better with a black background) and "my computer" is just "computer", and "my network places" is just called "network". The hills with the bloated green start button was an embarassment. Since I still install it occassionally, I still get to be assaulted in the eyes by that terrible background every now and then. I bet I can get back to classic mode without using the mouse in under 10 seconds.
This clearly proves that Windows is rubbish. I think we can draw a line under the discussion there.
Seriously though I love the way news is reported these days (and I mean mainstream news rather than Slashdot and its look-a-likes). You can't just tell a story without having a first hand witness. "My gran died in a rubbish care home", or "My teachers at school couldn't control my class" and so on. As if individual's experiences can be representative of the whole.
the mother of a 13-year-old girl who said after installing Vista on her daughter's computer
13 years old and she already has a daughter...
...but balmer does have one good point.
:)
He explains how now that vista is doing some things right wrt security, that apps that are poorly written are now broken. But, of course, windoze should never have encouraged the behavior in the first place, and there wouldn't be this mess.
Ok, I take it back. His point isn't good, because it's M$'s fault to begin with
Never mind, I turned in my nerd license last winter.
Wait, you say that since I use Linux I can have it back?
But, since I'm using an older version I have to turn it back in again?
I'm so confused!
*head explodes*
-mcgrew
The Geek always quotes the list price for the retail box when he wants to slag Microsoft.
This isn't "insightful," it is ignorant and foolish:
The Vista Basic laptop at Walmart starts at $400 Everex StepNote w/VIA CPU
The Dual-Core Vista Basic desktop with 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD and a DVD burner at $350. Compaq Presario w/ Dual-Core Athlon CPU
The Vista Premium HP Pavilion desktop with 3 GB RAM, 2.6 GHz Athlon Dual-Core CPU, 500 GB HDD, and nForce motherboard graphics is $670.
The Vista Ultimate HP Elite Media Center PC with an Intel Quad Core CPU, 3 GB RAM. 1 TB of storage and ATSC tuner is $1900.
The whole point of buying the OEM system bundle is to get a fully configured system, all the new tech and the latest Microsoft OS at a very attractive ptice.
I look at these specs and prices. I look at the price I paid for a mid-line refurbished PC four years ago and I wonder why the geek wastes his breath screaming about the "Microsoft Tax."
No one is listening. No one gives a damn.
Comparing OS 9 to OS X is like comparing a Mini Van to a Motor Boat -- i.e., they are completely different vehicles. The only common denominator is that they are made by Apple.
Now XP to Vista is like comparing a 2001 Honda to a 2007 Honda -- which is more-or-less the same vehicle. Some of the components are the same, and others are different and possibly "improved".
If all you need is word processing and minimal spreadsheets, sure, as long as you don't mind the load times. But I've run into situations where I've installed OO on the machines of secretaries who I confidently expected to never be able to utilize the full potential of OO, only to have them blindside me two or three days later with a list of things they needed to be able to do, for which there was no equivalent in OO.
I don't even like OO for word processing myself...Abiword beats it easily.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
All I can say is GOOD LORD!! As much of a Microsoft hater as I am, I have to go with Ballmer on this one.
If you do not like the product, then do not freakin' use it! Why is this such a complicated concept? To complain to executives about the computing experience of some 13 year old is just way too much. News flash: Vista is neither designed for nor required by children!
I'll never understand the desire of people to "upgrade" to the latest version of whatever just because it is available - esp. when it comes to something as complex as an operating system - as opposed to upgrading for some specific purpose or well thought-out rationale.
I waited for something on the order of 2 years before making the jump from MacOS 9 to MacOS X - and I'm a die hard UNIX guy (first Mac was a Mac II running A/UX in 1989), specifically because the benefit to hassle ratio didn't quite cut it.
One can only guess how much time this child spent using Vista before deciding to make the switch. Either:
a). No time at all - so she can blame herself.
b). Enough time to make her own decision - so she can blame herself.
Why is this article on SlashDot anyway?
I think it's more that they are pushing people to use Visual Studio 2005 (which works great with Vista) for .NET developing, but if you want to do VB6, Visual Studio 6 would be best.
So they need to support it.
Since VS2005 is an upgrade over VS2003, and VS2003 is somewhat different from VS6, it makes complete sense. What the fuck do you want, Word 1.0 supported on Vista?
98->XP = entirely different kernel
OS9->OSX = entirely different kernel
XP->Vista = same kernel, just newer
WOAH stop the presses, an incremental OS update is smoother than a complete code base switch, whoda thunkit? Take your OSX 10.3 box and upgrade to OSX 10.4 no pain whatsoever, same hardware. Same goes for 2.6.15->2.6.17 (.20 if you don't use vnc) and 2000->XP.
Incremental OS upgrades should be incrementally slower than their predicessors on the same hardware, nothing dramatic.
It all started going to hell before that. When people stopped having to punch it manually on to tape and run it through a machine, they got soft.
It's sad really, because it does work to just push out a slow and bloated piece of code and wait for the machines to catch up. Get a bigger, better machine, put a new OS on it, and see the complete lack of difference. Takes the same percentage of memory, pushes the processor just as high. Remember when everyone was up in arms because XP SP1 slowed down machines? Everyone who noticed had a new machine 6 months later, and it was a non-issue.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I don't know why you'd want to downgrade from 10.5 (Leopard) to 10.3 (Panther) and then go back up to 10.4 (Tiger)
I personally think that Apple has gone a bit cookie with the naming scheme for the OS, but who am I to judge, my favorite release was, and still is 10.2, Jaguar .
Incidentally, all linux distros have a feature similar to what you're mentioning, it's called 'mount /dev/hda2 /home'. However, that only works if you have enough foresight to make a separate home partition.
n/t
The value in Vista lies in all of the extra service calls I now get to bill for.
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
From the article:
Moreover, because of the "instrumentation" built into Vista, Microsoft knows what problems people are facing, what drivers are missing and what application compatibility problems they are having, he said.Does that mean what I think it means?
This isn't a very good analogy because the Apple hardware is locked to only a few configurations whereas Windows is "expected" to run pretty much anything that gets past the bios. With all sorts of weird, poorly written drivers. With whatever keyboard, mouse, joystick, video card, network card ... hardware widget any Chinese manufacturer ever stamped out.
Linux tends not to break things when upgrading, but again the number of different gizmos that most people "expect" the various distros is fairly limited (look at the wireless card issues for an example). Now, Gates and Company have gone down this path on purpose, made it their life's ambition to run on everything, everywhere - but it's still an apples to Linux comparison.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yea, because only a monopoly can afford to ignore some random schmo's uninformed opinion.
Seriously. We all agree that Vista has issues; some of them are the problems you'd expect of a windows pre-SP1 release...Bad drivers, no drivers, bugs, etc. The rest of them are either here to stay, or able to be disabled. That's the same crap we always have to eat from a Windows release.
But the fact that some non-savvy mom and her gadget-loving 13 year old daughter don't like it is supposed to mean something? When was the last time you asked someone like that for OS advice? This same chick will be doing the same whining in 10 years because she doesn't want to switch off Vista for XPII, or whatever the next release is, because she can't handle the "new" windows.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I just upgraded an iBook from OS X 10.2 to 10.4 not only was it painless, but it runs faster. (It's snappier!)
But at some stage the upgrade stops - my Mac can't be upgraded to the version of the OS above the one it has, the hardware won't support it (or the OS won't support the hardware).
"Ever" has always meant "forever till now".
While your comment was funny, I had to reread it a few times to understand that the subject was unrelated to the body of your post. As has been explained before /. was around at a time where the discussions happened in the main on mailing lists, so the subject line is a holdover from then.
I would argue that the subject lines are useful in outlining the content of what you want to say - they are helpful in scanning and taking in the point you're trying to make. When you misuse the subject lines, people waste time trying to parse it and get confused. I'm a native English speaker too, so I'd imagine someone who understands the language less well would be even more confused.
Oh, and that goes for those that use the subject line as part of their first sentence too. Shall I demonstrate? Compare this:
to this:
This is nothing personal, I'd just like to see people making proper use of subjects. Others would like to see that too. It makes the discussion look nicer; and let's face it, we all come to /. for the discussion. Cheers.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
If its any help, I have VS 2003 (and 2005) running on Vista (32-bit) at work. The biggest problems with VS 2k3 are that it pops a warning about compatibility when it starts, and it took a bit of work to get ASP.NET 1.1 stuff working again (I have some old .NET 1 projects I maintain, without customer budget for an upgrade).
I tried both on 64-bit Vista, and VS2k3 barely worked at all.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
I also am a new Vista user -- I've had to learn to deal with it, since I have my own business apart from my full-time engineering job and most of my clients that have bought new computers have bought them with Vista. The main problem with Vista is that most mature users (let's say, between the ages of 40 and 80 -- I'm 54) have gotten quite used to XP, which, in my experience is the 2nd most popular Microsoft OS ever ( Win 2000 being the most popular, Win ME being the least), and have a steeper learning curve than going from 2000 to XP. Users who first complained about being "forced" to upgrade to XP, stopped complaining once they actually starting using it, and found it actually was a terrific OS. The paradigm shift in Vista, is a bit too much, especially since many users don't understand why some things that were not a problem were changed. Did the GUI have to change so much?? It's seems like there was a major "geek-fest" at Microsoft, with a bunch of engineers saying "isn't this cool", not taking into consideration that the average user doesn't care about "cool", they care about getting their work or "play" done. One client of mine immediately went out and spent $90.00 on Nero software because he found the "rip and burn" of media player so unintuitive (is Microsoft trying to be more like Apple ?!?). The change in the user interface this time is as great or greater than the change when we jumped from Win 3.11 to Win 95, but it's arguably NOT an improvement, but seems an attempt to force a paradigm change that "somebody" thinks is important. It's also objectionable that Vista is being forced on us like no previous OS. The stores around here want an extra $400.00 (!!) if you want to buy a new computer with XP instead of Vista. Come to think of it, I wonder if I can get $200.00 knocked of the price of the PC if I get it with no OS all, and then load Ubuntu?
That's like saying a vegetarian changes their diet without....
Damnit! I blew the punchline! AGAIN!
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I'm willing to go with that whole analogy, but I'd add that Mac OS X is akin to a corporation most people generally admire taking in a large share of these free tanks, taking some of the parts off that are unnecessary (or potentially even harmful) to the typical end-user/consumer (say, pulling off a machine gun turret), giving the tank a smooth, comfortable ride, a great sound system inside, and an attractive, sleek exterior - and then selling these "value added tanks", backed with their full support (free training in their stores and so forth).
Meanwhile, the GNU crowd has mixed feelings on all of this. Some think it's great and bought one of these "OS X tanks" themselves, while others still can't grasp why people would want anything other than exactly what they offer for free.
software obesity.
...if all his nerve endings evaporated.
He has no idea what users want, he only knows what he thinks they should have (DRM, no thank you).
Translation: Users recognize the non-value MS put into Vista. Even marginally technical 13 year old girls.
This should convince the remaining fanboys that Vista is a big steaming pile of FAIL, but sadly, it probably won't.
... use the iPod I bought for her birthday.
n /t
you had me at #!
Got a high end machine: quad processor, 4G RAM, fast drives, and Vista's Media Player can't play MP3s from my hard drive without skipping. (No I didn't have other software running at the time.)
Indeed, I run a web server on a 100 MHz Red Hat box (with a version of RedHat dating back to the pre-Microsoftization of RH... e.g., free).
:) But Apache Web Server runs perfectly on this "ancient" machine.
This web server delivers thousands of pages a day, and each page runs three server-side includes and two perlscripts.
It has never been anything other than instantaneous at everything.
I don't know about something really sophisticated like an e-mail reader or a word processor.
--
Stop letting other people control all the important decisions in your life.
Especially if those people are power-hungry idiots.
http://www.metagovernment.org/
Mom: "My daughter was writing a paper on a PC with Vista and the it was like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And then, like, half of her paper was gone. And then she was like..."unh?" It devoured her paper. It was a really good paper. And then she had to write it again and she had to do it fast so it wasn't as good. It's kind of............ a bummer."
Ballmer: "Mrs. Feiss... please sit down and shut up!"
My experience with Vista is extremely negative. One of the developers wanted to upgrade a development machine to Windows Vista, so that he could see what all of the shouting was about. He ran the compatibility 'wizard' and it announced that all but his AV software and PC Anywhere were up to date. No problem, we removed those. At that point, he stuck in the Upgrade CD. I asked him if he had a backup of his machine and he said 'nope, it's compatible, why bother?' On here were numerous pieces of code (no, he wasn't storing them on the server, he was that kind of developer. It's a small company, no one would force him, after all HE was one of the principal partners) Ran the upgrade and everything looked fine until......
we noticed his D:\ Drive wasn't there. D:\ was where all of those pieces of code were at. D:\ was also a SATA raid using the onboard SATA controller on his homebuilt system. It was built on an A-Bit motherboard, using the ICH6R SATA controller. We tried everything suggested in forums and on Intel's website. We even called Tech support an Intel who actually told us that his particular VERSION of the ICH6R wasn't truly supported in Vista. As far as I know, he's still got that SATA brick because he thinks there will be a fix from Microsoft coming.
This is why I run Linux on my home PC. My hardware works fine under it--and I've got a mixed bag of new and older gear. The only issues I have to deal with is that when there is a Kernel update, I have to download and compile in support for my nVidia graphics card and my Intel gigabit ethernet. Big deal..it takes about 10 minutes to fix both of them. Just boot into the older kernel, get the upgrades (sudo apt-get install yadayada) and reboot into the latest kernel. Oh..and this box runs my Ruby on Rails dev environment, along with several dev versions of websites (under apache, naturally) that I maintain. I usually use less than a gigabyte of RAM under heavy load, and I have 2 GB installed.
I have Windows PC's in the house---mostly for compatibility and games for my kids. They will never be Vista machines, unless I buy a new one with Vista pre-installed.
This isn't a very good analogy because the Apple hardware is locked to only a few configurations whereas Windows is "expected" to run pretty much anything that gets past the bios. With all sorts of weird, poorly written drivers. With whatever keyboard, mouse, joystick, video card, network card ... hardware widget any Chinese manufacturer ever stamped out.
I read this and wonder why everyone magically expects OS X to work so much better in the same situation, if all the anti-Apple-hardware whiners got their wish and Apple sold it for generic x86 machines. No OS that has to support "lowest common denominator" with dodgy third party provided drivers is going to work like OS X does running on a limited pool of Apple-branded hardware.
~Philly
I have a G3 pre-USB Mac, too... what year was that thing built in?? It barely supports 10.2. But I can run 10.2 on it, and it's very usable.
I have a PentuimII machine as well, from about the same era... I'm not going to even try running XP on it, or even a PIII, though. It might install but it wouldn't be terribly usable. OS X 10.2 is quite usable on that G3 333Mhz machine, oddly enough... it'd be even better if I bothered to disable some of the graphics stuff ( drop shadows and such ), but I haven't found that I need to.
It's a pity that Apple didn't want to bother with continuing to support their pre-USB machines in OS X, but really, I have a hard time faulting them, even though I own one. Few people buying a commercial OS based computer today expect to be installing new versions of a different OS from the same manufacturer on that same machine over 10 years in the future. It's safe to say that if you've been running the same machine for that long, you're getting a long lifetime out of your hardware, much, much longer than average. A Mac Mini is cheap and 20 times faster than your old machine- go get one. If you're clinging to some "Classic" app, pick up a G4, they're not terribly expensive used... though they're holding value a lot better than my PII...
As an adult, please define value for the rest of us.
Saying a teenager doesn't understand value, just shows that you don't understand value. Value is absolutely relative to the individual, and it varies wildly based on fashion, personal experience, age, sex, race, everything.
When you say that someone of a different demographic from yourself "doesn't understand value", what you're really saying is that you don't understand them, and that, therefore, you think the things they value are meaningless.
There are a lot of people who will profit from those people and their "meaningless" values, while you sit smugly telling them they're stupid for valuing those things anyway. Microsoft has become a monopoly doing this crap. It's heart and soul why Office beats the crap out of Open Office. OSS people need to take the needs of non-geeks seriously.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Ballmer's defense in the article is that Vista has proven valuable to corporations and IT staffs. And this is exactly the point. Microsoft is interested in 1,000+ seat adoptions, where the companies have an IT group that can customize the install, create custom templates and VBA-based applications for the office apps, and where everyone uses exchange and sharepoint.
Microsoft products are broken for everyone else because they're not written for everyone else. Once the latest version of Windows and Office permeate the workplace, Microsoft users in the office drives sales of Microsoft products in the home.
It's all about the corporate customers.
Doesn't the XO run Linux?
There's probably less "wrong" with Linux for home use than most imply.
It probably comes down to ease of install, UI and media apps, which is maybe why Ubuntu is gaining traction.
Lies about crimes
This kind of thing didn't get published. I'm sure Microsoft talking heads have gotten an ear full from others over the years and they ignored it then. They should totally ignore this incident too. Write it off as a PR event that didn't go well or a "nut case slipped through the cracks" and further isolate Microsoft execs from people who aren't part of their current social circle.
I want all of Microsoft doing many more of the same kind of decisions that went into Vista. In fact, give the Vista managers total oversight over even more Microsoft products. Put a shiny star on each of their reviews.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Win98 to XP? Lets assume you mean Win98c, and between it you had NT4, W2k, and WindowsME and a multitude of Hardware changes. You could argue some pain to be expected considering the number Hardware changes and OS's between them.
Between XP and Vista? Much fewer hardware changes and no new OS's(at least from MS).
Its been interesting to watch Steve go from wild=and-crazy VP of Sales to CEO. The very talents (and he has talents) that made him a really good VP of Sales are not the talents that the CEO needs. Ballmer is the epitome of the classic sales guy. Nothing strategic,all tactical. Being tactical and able to execute NOW is what makes a sales guy good. M$ culture is built around having a CEO with both a vision of the playing field and a vision of how technology can be exploited to keep the Corp. competitive. These are very strategic, core capabilities. A company like M$ can't thrive when the CEO has to call his geeks and ask them what will be hot in a few years. They need the CEO to be the person who spots the hot stuff before most (not all) people know it is hot.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
In my experience, if you want your wife to stop bugging you about computer problems, buy her a Mac.
NO, NO, NO!
I did exactly that. My wife had 4 wishes: be able to read e-mail, use word-processor, print things out, read her favourite website and I thought macbook would be perfect for her. It was one of the biggest mistakes I've done with computer ever. Guess what, nothing works:
a) E-mail. gmail poorly supported under safari. firefox experience constant lock-up : google for "firefox freeze mac" if you don't believe that
b) word-processor: neooffice useless, word is incredibily slow on a dual core machine and constantly brings machine with 1/2 gb to swapping. I know it is rosetta emulated, but this is not my problem.
c) Printer - had to install compiler suite to compile driver for linux to get my konica minolta working. It felt like early days of linux, haven't done that in ages.
d) Websites: movies didn't work and flip4mac didn't help either. My wife was furious. Luckily the converted to flash movies.
So, she's used to it now and doesn't give me much trouble. Every time it comes to a grinding halt with spinning wheel she just patiently waits, she's given up swearing at it ages ago, but I still feel shit.
Never, ever again.
I think you forgot to multiple by DRM in your equation.
I've heard the Deny option taps a few 12V rails to send a nice arcing surge through the keyboard/mouse to silence the user..
How about a machine that runs XP tolerably well, try downgrading it to run windows 98 and OMG!!! it runs so completely frickin lightning fast it is amazing, like that time I loaded DOS 5.0 on my pentium 3, it ran at blazing speed and ran windows 3.1 like no tomorrow!!!!!
So you take a machine that run Vista Tolerably well and install XP on it and "OMG Ponies iz so faster on dee computer" is what the 13 year old girl will say to her mom.
Buy a vista machine and downgrade, this is how you get more speed!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Never send a marketing monkey to do PR.
... emotionless management-speak gave way to a mother's frustration...
He could've summed up his whole response by saying "Pffft. Your daughter disagrees. Next question!"
Yeah, I'm sure you'd need to jettison some parts of your brain to get into management.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Anybody want my mod points?
Ok, here's what broke for me (some are still broken):
1) Logitech Harmony 880 remote. Software would not run or install on Vista.
2) mAudio: Music software would not run or install on Vista.
3) Symantec AV version 9. Needed an upgrade to a special version 10, was not free.
4) ps tools: pslist, pskill, etc.
5) BIOS motherboard applications. Could not monitor fan speed, system health, etc.
6) Cisco VPN client. Needed to run a beta client that does not support Cisco firewall.
I actually had better luck going from Win98 to XP.
Someone here is actually still waiting for you to come back and explain what format it was!?
funny isnt it? as much as i don't like vista, it comes with a guide which will help a noob, and you can find anything on google.... but sum people just havent got to that yet lol
What a ridiculous argument. Vista is mind-boggling simplistic enough as it is. In fact, they went to great lengths to make it more user-friendly: made dropdown menus invisible by default and added the common task bar, so as to not overwhelm users with options, added a nifty search bar right into the start menu for easy access to programs and documents, autodefragging, etc. The only thing I think could stump a 13yo would be UAC.
:wq
A long time ago, I heard of the "13-year old effect"... which basically says that whatever a 13 year old wants today will be expected when they enter the workforce. Never discount the opinion of a 13-year old! If gadgets and 3-D interfaces are what gets them excited you better bet your a$$ that those features need to be in the operating system... especially one that goes 5+ years between versions.
Ballmer also gets that corporations want a more secure and reliable desktop platform for Microsoft Office and e-mail... and to his best effort he attempted to point out these "values" were more important than a few gadgets. He couldn't care less if someone has trouble upgrading because he gets his OS revenue from OEM and corporate licenses, not a few excited users willing to shell out for an upgrade that doesn't work on old, incompatible hardware.
I might also add that the future of "operating systems" are DEAD... and not just Windows... Linux and OSX are on their way out too. Eventually (if not already), devices will interact with each other without complicated, hardwired interfaces and device drivers. The next version of the Xbox or Playstation will eliminate the PC at home. So all you fan-boys can bash each others' favorite OS all you want, I look forward to the day when I never have to sit down at my in-law's computer for hours eliminating spyware because I'm the only "geek" they know.
programming myself into obsolescence
Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system.
Of course he was. All the chairs were occupied so he had to be on his best behavior.
So my cousin, who has 4 kids (all elementary school aged), went to Fry's and bought a low end Compaq for the brood. It came with Vista pre-installed. He would have preferred XP, but what are you going to do. So he gets the thing home, and after a couple hours of setting things up and uninstalling the cr*pware he lets the kids loose on it. At first everything seemed fine, but as time went on the overzealous security prompts and slowness became annoying (WAY underpowered hardware for Vista). My cousin had also installed Ubuntu on an old laptop he had as wells a Firefox and Open office. The kids took to Ubuntu like fish to water. One day when I'm over there, he mentions that his kids were fighting over who got to use the laptop and had started to largely ignore the Compaq with Vista. When he told me this, I asked him why he didn't just install Ubuntu on the Compaq. "Hmmmm, I hadn't thought about that, but now that you mention it...", he replied. The next day he installed Ubuntu over Vista and never looked back. Sure the warranty may be void, but hey for $300 who gives a flying burrito--not to mention that it looked like if they kept Vista, the computer would have gone unused--which would have been a waste of $300 anyways. Ubuntu, like Trix, is for kids....
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
I *literally* just got done installing Vista on a laptop. It took at least half as much time as an XP install, and had far fewer points where I needed to input any information.
Post-install, I also needed to install far fewer drivers.
It's kind of tragicomical that a so-called "nerd" website has to constantly spew this kind of misinformation. But I guess that's why Digg is eating Slashdot's lunch now: Slashdot would rather be the FOX News Channel of the "MS-hating at any cost" Lunix community.
The hills with the bloated green start button was an embarassment.
That's the best argument I've heard so far for handing over the bucks for vista and the new hardware it takes to run it. You can pay a lot more to hire an expert to download and install tasteful and attractive wallpaper. As for living with the shame of an ugly desktop, well, vista is to some minds a marginal improvement over suicide.
"The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." -- George Bernard Shaw
Well, for one thing there are definitely a lot of completely un-necessary changes that do nothing but confuse those already familiar with windows. For example, try to find the "Add / Remove programs" menu, which has been standard for about a decade. Oh, but wait, it's now called "Programs and Features." Is there such a distinction that there was *really* a need to change it?
As for the hardware use... I recently had the displeasure of servicing a computer that had 512MB of RAM, Vista Basic, and Norton Internet Security. It was fresh-out-of-the-box agonizingly slow to use. Killing norton off sped things up a bit, but that just bumped it from "agonizing" to merely "painful." Yes, this is partly the Vendor's fault, but one does have to wonder what exactly is adding value to Vista (especially Basic, which is non-aero) over XP that causes such a huge increase in resource consumption?
The major improvements to Vista don't seem to account for the time to get it developed, nor the faults with its release, nor the added resource consumption. In short, it's a pig.
I hate to say it, but you really need to yell at your college for sticking with VS2003. VS2005 is available from MSDNAA, which is what I assume you meant by "partnered with MS through MSDN."
However, schools choose on an individual basis which software packages are available.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Kids who actually use Linux actually end up liking it quite a bit (I should know, I work in schools). While I personally have not much use for it, Beryl and others present plenty of eye-candy. The available Linux games are actually quite fun, and increasingly more these days. The desktop is spiffy, and general tasks such as web-browsing etc are much the same as in windows.
Major lacks are - as always - hardware support, and moreover ease of configuration (of hardware and software). These are improving, and I'd say that configuring the desktop has improved noticeably over the past few years. Whether or not it's ready for the masses, I see no reason why Linux will not increase in popularity as we move into the future.
Vista continues to act in the annoying way I loathe XP for. Launching programs keep jumping to the "front" even when I switch back to another item to wait for the new item to load. It's a 'trick' that must have worked in some OS but not anymore. The code needs to say 'I'm on top' to believe it's open and a requested application. I haven't liked the new menus in IE (new interface which was a XP preview of Vista-ness), haven't liked Adobe Pro 8's new interface. Maybe all the icons made translation into other languages easier but it just made my coworkers ask how to print a web page in IE for the first two weeks it rolled out into our work computers. It's a good thing FireFox is around to bring some sanity back to web browsing. If it's the gadgets that wow'd the young woman from the article, her tech mom must have locked down all the free-er ware sidebars and things that do the same thing in the XP OS. No reason to move to Vista to have a weather bug and a clock on your desktop. There's a Kubuntu app that IMHO is a little flaky but brings (brought before vista even beta released?) a desktop gadget environment. Clock, weather, TV schedules. I guess the 13-year-old is the new-age techie child: able to work the computer/smartphone but not especially interested in experimenting with them in a software way. It is all about how much social content you can text to your BBFE in a day. Pre-made MS stuff is 'good enough' and the more like a simulation of the existing world, the better?
"I got it all together but I forgot where I put it."
Before I forget, though, VS2005 to my knowledge, doesn't support .NET 1.1, only 2.0.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You left out the part where the station wagons drop anti-tank mines all over the roadways.
Funny but i have a dell xps from 2000 that ran Xp very well, ran Server 2003 very well, and now runs Vista very well.
I have absolutely no driver issues, no issues on any of the "upgrades" (really fresh installs), and no performance problems.
Personally, in every instance where I have looked at a computer that has had an "upgrade" to Vista installed (and this is in the neighborhood of several hundred now), where someone has been complaining about "poor performance", the original computer fell into one of the following categories almost exclusively:
1. An at least 3 year old sub $400 system that was upgraded from XP Home to Vista Premium
2. A system that had been upgraded to XP from Win98 or WinMe making it at least 9 years old and also usually with low end components.
Most every instance of someone not having a "supported driver" I've run into is also either due to old hardware (even a 7 year old ATI 9800 AGP vid card works fine), or due to the hardware manufacturer just deciding "we don't want to rewrite the driver to work in a proper way"
The same can basically be said of many applications.
I find it funny that Linux people bash on an OS that is trying to work in a secure way of not allowing applications to run in Kernal space, but instead forcing them to run in user space instead.
Isn't this a desired effect of an OS?
Just because the previous version didn't force it, doesn't mean that the new version is wrong.
Previous versions of automobiles didn't have seatbelts and airbags, newer ones do. This doesn't mean newer cars are "Bloaty and full of extra crap".
as a linux and windows user, i find it funny the lengths the average /.er will go to to criticize an OS that is attempting to be more secure.
Laughable really.
Thanks for the laugh :)
"All of Debian" probably includes support for more architectures than any version of Windows has ever even run on and apps allowing you to do so many different things that most humans are not even able to go through a list of their descriptions and understand what the apps are for. Are you seriously comparing that to what's shipped with Vista and the size of it?
Incidentally, if you read the rest of the essay (link to it's in my post above), he has some interesting things to say about Apple as well. Some of it's no longer topical (Mac OS isn't quite what it was when he wrote it), but some of it's pretty insightful.
Well, I'll agree that they're definitely on different wavelengths. Ballmer, market droid that he is, isn't even necessarily speaking a human language when he uses the word "value." His kind use that word in a sense disconnnected from human ideas of worth and demand. But again, my sense of value is my sense of value, and I'm not a good person to speculate on what Ballmer values.
;)
Still, I think that there are a lot of shiny widgets on Vista that may conform to the 13-year-old-girl definition of value, even if they don't really conform to mine, or her mom's, or hell, even Ballmer's. And peer-conformance probably has some value to the kid, and it may have status overtones, e.g. "I have the new Windows and you're using the old Windows."
And buy your kid a video iPod! He's probably the only kid at school who doesn't have one! Everyone makes fun of him, even the guy who got his mom's pink breast cancer iPod!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system. "Users appreciate the value that we put into Vista," he said. But, as with earlier operating system releases, "there is always a tension between the value that end users see -- and frankly, that software developers see -- and the value that we can deliver to IT."
In other words, yes, once Vista rolls over^h^h^h^h out the IT people will long for a job where the worst part is licking toilets clean, but it's loaded with shiny objects for the PHB!
There's a whole lot less of fixing her PC to do, now.
There's a big difference between reading reviews of the Vista failure and experiencing it for yourself. This woman gave M$ a fair chance and was sorely disappointed. That's not surprising to me, but it would be to someone always willing to give M$ the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, repeated deception makes people angry and she let Stevie Wonderboy have it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
That's from me, Joe Enduser. I'm a photographer and use Nikon Capture NX everyday. On Mac Tiger it's stable, as in absolutely stable. On WinXP it crashes after editing a half dozen pix, and generally requires a cold reboot the system is so horked. I continually get "Unhandled Exception Error in Microsoft NET" errors. What kind of stupid management runs MS?
That's right, XP can last just 5 minutes editing photos, and this is a nice Acer desktop. NET sucks bigtime. Keep in mind my Mac is a G4 12" Powerbook.
NET is my exit from of Microsoft. And besides, Vista was in development 7! seven! 7! years.
Besides, back in the days of the IBCS module, you could transition ANY ix86-based Unix to Linux without any rewrites. That was one reason commercial Linux software started appearing - companies were losing support call income.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Microsoft Vista - It's what all the 13 year olds want!
I just can't be bothered.
...the second guy ducks
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
"It's safe, it works, all the hardware is fine, and everything is great," -Mother of a 13 year old and Microsoft user.
Yes, she actually was quoted as saying those words, though not in reference to Vista....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Wow, if splashy looks is all it takes to get people to use an OS, then all we need is some Compiz-Fusion & gDesklets/Superkaramba. Oh, did I mention that Linux doesn't cost $400 like Vista?
:-)
Good stuff.
From what I've seen the number of XP->Vista upgrades which work 100% perfectly is quite small. There's always some program which doesn't work, something that needs a driver, etc.
Given that Vista offers no increase in productivity, only eye candy, a few broken programs or a non-working printer is enough for anybody with any sense to go back to XP and curse Microsoft for the wasted time.
Yes, she could probably have fixed it given time, but there's no increase in productivity with Vista. Your web browsing, your messaging, your Office suite, your media player...? It's all exactly the same!
No sig today...
What makes me sad is...where the h*ll was my mum when I bought Windows ME?
Booze, Butts, & Bullets
Just upgrade to a brand new 3000$ 'big box' and you will be happy.
Your consulting bill is in the mail, thanks for choosing microsoft.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...to think that this is funny because Microsoft is the corporate giant, but these people are apparently computer-illiterates, because vista is incredibly easy to use, and probably any of the problems she was having could have been solved on Google and were caused by difference in XP and Vista.
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
The whole thing sounds like a set up to ask softball questions/comments (companies do this kind of "play").
Just tell the whiny adolescent to "STFU RTFM n00b!"
As much as I don't like alot of the things that MS has done, and I dislike their corporate tactics but (for the most part) their OS is an honest attempt to solve the hard problem of remaining backward compatible while delievering a good GUI/OS. I might not buy Vista but it's no (extra) reason to hate on MS that they weren't able to deliver an elegant solution to this hard problem.
However, I DO hate people like this woman. There is a large segment of the population that feels inadequate and stupid when they can't use a computer and lashes out blaming whoever wrote the software. I fucking hate those people.
If you aren't good with computers that's fine. If you don't like a piece of software because it frustrates you then don't buy it (or return it) but it's pretty inexcusable to take it out on other people because you feel inadequate.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I read much of this thread, and somehow got an impression of Déjà Vu.
... Sorry guys! Go back to Mom's basement and punch the wall. Or your pillow, softie..
I read the same shit when MS started flogging XP. "Nyah nya.. it's crap!"
AND when MS was starting to push W2003, And W2K. "It sucks. Gimme a macintosh"
Geez.. what a bunch of losers.
I have been running Vista now for 5 months. It never - repeat NEVER - crashes. And it looks just like W2k-
Yes, that's right - of course, I reverted to Classic-coke mode.
It is basically W2K with support. And much, MUCH more stability.
Why can't you weenies give it a break? You are OH, so SO tiresome...
PS- I also have Ubuntu FesteringFox on my laptop, but hardly ever boot it.
Vista is just THAT stable!
.
- aqk
F U
Kid: Mom, Vista sucks, I can't play any music or burn DVD's Mom: What seems to be the problem? Kid: Oh these big bad men from Redmond Added DRM. Mom: What's that? Kid: It breaks you music and DVD's Mom: This is an outrage. Vista Ultimate? HA. More like Vista Lame. Somebody's gonna hear about this How much did we pay for this? Kid: 319.99 Mom: That much and I can't watch Desperate Housewives? You're grounded.
So you upgrade to a company that does not support their hardware two revisions later. Not only is the PowerPC being phased out but last I check so was the first generation x86 lineup. Do I even have to comment about the closed platform iphone and ipod. Apple clearly does not care about giving their customers value, but in getting money (like all corporations). They just put a better spin on it and you by into their lies because you think it is different. Sad...very, very sad.
Happy upgrading to OSX 10.5 (and all of those less than free upgrades for your software apps).It will be a mandated update within six months, something that even Vista is not.
Because hardly anyone has switched to it during these first six months?
The most secure release they can humanly make? What a claim, we'll see about that if it ever becomes something worth targeting.
and don't forget the little machine that automatically destroys the tank's engine if you try to, say, upgrade the sound system to a different one not made by that specific corporation.
some refuse to buy these "OSX tanks" for that reason and stick with the free ones, while others still can't grasp why people would want anything other than a sound system made by that corporation anyways, since they're so admirable.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Dude, I just about fell out of my chair; I salute you!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I've always wondered why Ballmer and the other Microsoft guys don't get more lip from the audience at conferences. I mean, those conferences apparently are jam packed with Microsoft fanboys, or why else don't you ever hear of things like this? How in the hell is it possible that the first thing you hear about it is a mother pissed off about her child's Vista "experience"?
Or are all the anti-Microsoft people precautionally tasered before the conference?
Users appreciate the value that we put into Vista.
The most secure release of Windows you can humanly make.
Vista is bigger than XP, and it's not going to get smaller in any significant way in SP1.
Great! All I ever wanted from my operating system: It's got value, is most secure Windows that is bigger than XP, and will get even bigger. - I'm sold! I'll start installing Vista right now...
But seriously. Either the writer of TFA is a complete idiot, or the whole crowd gathered to hear Ballmer the Great talk. I mean, the arguments he gives are all just the worst kind of marketing jargon I've seen in a long time. You'd expect arguments like these from a 13 year old kid playing a salesman in a school play. C'mon Microsoft! You're not getting value from your marketing department...
Or could it be that Vista actually didn't bring anything new?
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
I still have programs that date back to System 6 on the Mac Plus. These run just fine and dandy on Mac OS X Tiger.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Much like Ballmer himself.
reboot ... ... ...
Step 5 find drivers
Step 6 reboot
Step 7 find more drivers
Step 8 Reboot
Step N Find more drivers
Step N+1 Reboot
Step M Find new hardware because there's no driver
Step M+1 Install driver
Step M+2 reboot
Step O set up network
Step o+1 Reboot (at least with XP it still requires the CD for the NDIS wrapper that never changed when I change the DNS machine address)
Step aleph enjoy
You are confusing the 10 year old grand papa named slashdot with the new kid on the block "digg"
It should do, because value is what is OVER the cost. It cannot be profit, since there's no net gain in money, but it can be a valuable exchange, which requires the benefit of any use of the product to be worth more than the expense.
But the teen didn't have to pay for Vista, Mum did. So what does that do to the "value" equation? A single housebrick has value if it's free. You could be saving up for a house...
The child never thought about value, since she was not going to have to exchange anything of hers for it. Why make a value judgement then? The mother values her daughters' well being, and the cost of vista was more than the sticker price but not alluded to.
In the same vein, Ballmer saw value in turning up. However, once there, he got lambasted. Do you think, if he'd known he was going to be made a fool of, he'd have turned up? Maybe, but maybe not. It would have been a VALUE JUDGEMENT.
How do you know what percentage of visitors actively bought Vista? My point was that most new PCs come pre-loaded with Vista. It could be that 50% of visitors were using a PC that had come with Vista, but so far only 39% had gotten around to installing an OS that works in its place.
My son just bought a new HP Notebook which, of course, came with Vista installed. It looks "pretty" and yes there is a lot you can potentially do with it. However, the main reason he bought the HP high end notebook was so he could install Call Of Duty and some other FPS games. COD worked for a couple of hours and then he installed the WinTV that came with the system - BOOM! COD stopped working. Uninstalling WinTV didn't work (we had to call HP Support to even figure out how to uninstall WinTV) because by then the damage had been done. Re-installing COD didn't work either.
We tried installing XP, but none of the drivers HP told us to download worked with the new hardware. So, we are back to restoring Vista. It really sucks.
If you want an GUI that looks "pretty", then by all means get Vista. If you want a gaming computer that will actually work for you, stick with XP or Windows Server 2K3.
Costs me nothing to not be a prick. Anyway it was kinda interesting to really think about the value thing...Been reading economics, so it was on my mind.
Yea...When Ballmer says the word "Value" I hear "(shareholder) Value"...I've never seen any other sort of value out of him. There are people in the Microsoft machine who understand what the consumer values, but he's not one of them. That's what the whole "Developers" thing is about...Get the creative producers to drink your coolaid, and ride their coat-tails to success...I've never bought a MS OS because I liked the OS, but only because I wanted to use some software that was only available for that OS.
Ahhh, the negotiation process. My attention span for schoolwork was way too low for me to effectively pull off the "All A" gambit. I'd lose interest long before the end of the year, no matter what the prize. The peril of the iPhone is the phonebook-sized monthly bill, not the phone itself. Brrr, scary.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So the daughter wanted a copy of Vista for the "Gadgets" and Ballmer feels this is proof that the 13 year old daughter saw value in it? Perhaps the mother should have just put Yahoo Widgets on it and kept it at XP?
For some sneaky suspicion, I think my son's zeal to earn a video iPod will wane, once he realizes he has to work at it EVERYDAY and can't just cram the last week. Although I'd love to have to spend the money for his accomplishments, I think my $250 will be save for another term.
What little engine-destroying machine?
Seriously, is this meant to be a dig at Apple bricking iPhones that people hacked to use other carriers? Because if we're talking strictly computers here, I don't follow.
My Macbook Pro notebook and my Mac Pro tower both dual boot into Windows, and I used to run Yellow Dog Linux on an older PowerMac with no problems at all. I've certainly used all sorts of different printers, a couple different scanners, and any display I wanted with my current Macs - with no ill effects.
(And as far as the iPhone thing is concerned, I think Apple was pretty up-front with the whole thing. They never forced your phone to take the newer firmware, and even issued a warning giving you the option to cancel out - stating that "unlocked" phones were subject to damage if you continued.)
Nah, I know nothing about it but what I've read. Only thing I need from my phone is phone-ness, and maybe a camera.
I was that way as well, sort of. I studied what I wanted to study, in the order I wanted to study it. I usually ended up doing fine, but I remember one year where I failed 3 quarters of a class (Chemistry) before ending up with a B- after pulling a 98 for the last quarter and a curved 96 on the final. 'Course I was one of only 7 (out of 35) people to take the final, so I guess I still did better than most.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The full name is Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Yee haw!
..no mod points today :(