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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.'"
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
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?"
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
It seems pretty simple to me. The mother, who cares about performance and utility, wasn't impressed. The tweenage daughter, who cares about gadgets and superficial appearances liked it.
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The article is a bit terse, but Ballmer meant that her daughter saw a lot of value when she looked at her friend's install of Vista...enough value that she immediately went home and told her mom "I've got to have that!"
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm a home Mac user.
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.
You obviously never been or had a 13 year old. They think all sorts of things have "a lot of value" based upon "peers opinion". In fact, Junior High is filled with various peer groups that base all sorts of things on the perceived value assigned to things by the peer group. As one grows up, many realize that 13 year olds don't really know jack about the world yet.
... "she's 13 years old, she doesn't know jack, what else would you expect." Her retort nullifies the previous comment as only a mother of a 13 year old could, and it is quite amusing, IMHO.
So, the retort from the mother is basically
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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!
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I feel it's somewhat hypocritical of the mother to use the fact that her daugher was 13 as a defence - if she really placed little value in her daughter's opinion, she shouldn't have bought it solely on that opinion in the first place.
Precisely. She's not willing to be held accountable for the fact that, in the end, she made the operating system purchase and was not pleased with it. So she's blaming Steve because her precious daughter 'doesn't know any better' ... even though she was apparently the sole motivation for the purchase. It's sad how little personal accountability people have these days.
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.
From her comments, I doubt she even installed XP. It probably came preinstalled, and her complaint is with the complexity of installing any OS. I didn't get that feeling from the article. This was at ITxpo, not Joe's Supermarket. I have to imagine that the majority of attendees are computer literate and work in the IT field. Ballmer's comment was spot-on - the daughter saw value in Vista's widgets - and the mother's response was fallacious and nonsensical ("She's 13" - so what, her opinion means nothing, while her ignorant, incapable mother's should be taken seriously? Children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.) A 13 year old sees the shiny and wants to have it for their own. While they have opinions, and they should be respected, that doesn't necessarily mean they are right.
From TFA, it sounds like mom installed the OS and then spent two days fighting with inadequate drivers and other problems. She specifically states that "It's safe, it works, all the hardware is fine, and everything is great" when she refers to XP. The fact that she indicates hardware in there makes me think there were hardware issues with Vista.
I'm sure the daughter's friend had a good install of Vista, though it was likely due to purchasing a new computer, not upgrading an old one. Seems Vista sucks on anything not brand new. Contrast that with my Linux box here, running on an old Pentium 4 with an outdated video card. Runs blazingly fast, even with Beryl installed and running. I guarantee I couldn't turn on the flashy effects in Vista if I could get it to install on this same machine.
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The intent seems admirable if it were altruistic, but Microsoft have shown their predatory stripes. They very nearly undid the major anti-virus industry by initially refusing to include that large business sector in to see their code. Microsoft would certainly like to hold all the cards, but that very attempt could have doomed them as businesses would want to know why Norton, McAfee, etc are not there to protect them because Microsoft believed (the very company which left so many security holes in Win95, Active X and Win XP) they could do a better job of protecting the buyer.
Microsoft bundles average quality products and gives their own line of products the inside track, which have hurt competitors for years. You might check your system performance monitor to see how much memory is being used when you first boot up and like to know why 380+ MB of memory are in use before you launch your first app. Microsoft have preloaded a tonne of library code in case you might run Explorer or Office apps. That you don't have Office doesn't seem to derail the boot process from including them to occupy your memory anyway. All this to make Microsoft's apps appear to load faster. Try loading a competitor's apps and see how many seconds you have to wait for them to open up.
The ulitimate in useability is to keep the damn system lean and let the user decide how much crap they want when they build/install and OS. You should always be able to go back to the distro and add more, but you don't really get a choice with Windows, do you?
Systems get bigger because they have to - to be able to run Windows.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Obviously you've never had kids. "Mom, my best friend has Vista, and it's so kewl. Can you install it!"
"Fine dear."
Three days later...
"Mom, I can't figure out how to use this. Where's my music? How do I get my pictures off my digital camera? How come the printer won't work? Why does it keep asking me these stupid questions?"
After three days of that, I'd be pretty hot under the collar too.
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Wrong move indeed. First off, you shouldn't have removed XP until you knew Ubuntu did what she needed. Second, you should have started her off on Kubuntu, which will at least have a familiar interface.
As for your mysterious file format and your "forgetaboutit" OOo install, we'll need more info to refute/help you on those ones. I find that anyone who has used Office XP or earlier tends to enjoy using the latest OOo, unless they have a bunch of VB macros that don't work quite right, or some badly-created templates that don't display correctly.
Really, the only problem I've found so far for normal users is that Word documents don't always convert indices and other complex objects correctly, and need to be re-formatted once imported into ODF.
In my experience, if you want your wife to stop bugging you about computer problems, buy her a Mac.
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