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Mom Blasts Ballmer Over Kid's Vista Experience

Posted by Zonk on from the i-know-bill-gates-i-call-him-money-for-short dept.

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.'"

6 of 767 comments (clear)

  1. Oh really... by Tarlus · · Score: 3, Informative

    'Good, I'll let you come in and install it for me.' Uh, Vista is easier to install than XP.
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  2. Re:A lot of value... by RonnyJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ballmer's comment seems really prick-like to me. It probably wasn't meant as such, but still.

    From the article: Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system.

  3. Re:I hate to be the one defending Microsoft, but.. by varmittang · · Score: 3, Informative

    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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  4. Re:Am I reading that right? by Workaphobia · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh absolutely. When machines get more powerful and can perform the same function for a tenth of the cost, they won't sell you the same machine at the reduced price running the same software. They'll sell you a more powerful machine at the same price, and upgrade your software's bloat to make you require the horsepower.

    Funny how I can pretty much do everything I do with my new lenovo T61 windows (formally vista, now XP) laptop, on my six (?) year old 1.2 GHz Sempron running gentoo.

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  5. Re:A lot of value... by mikael · · Score: 4, Informative

    The "mother" was Yvonne Genovese, Research VP of Gartner Research. She was on stage with a discussion panel.

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  6. Re:A lot of value... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, I know for a fact that Bill Gates reads /. He's a geek, what do you expect :) I met him when I was working at MS (he received a bunch of employees at his home) and asked him. He acknowledged he read it and found the cyborg icon funny. That was 4 years ago. I'm posting as A.C. because I'm still involved indirectly with MS, sorry folks!