Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
WTF are you doing that you would get so many UAC prompts? In the past week, I've seen approximately 5 such prompts, and that's only because I spent some time yesterday setting up a virtual machine with Vista and had to go through some installs. Aside from that, I get a prompt when I open regedit (not a typical user action, and it's good to protect regedit anyway as it may make people think twice about mucking in there) and when I explicitly choose to run apps as admin. 9 times out of 10 I don't have to run as admin, so no UAC prompts.
People like to bash UAC, but Linux and OS X do similar things. If you try to do something requiring admin privileges, you're prompted to prove you're an admin. Linux/OS X have a more secure prompt (enter a password), and they have fewer such prompts (because Windows is still suffering from developers who learned how to code back in the single-user Win9x days), but the prompts are there. Aside from that, most other complaints come from not understanding how Windows works. Why did you get a UAC prompt for deleting something on your Desktop? Because that item was in the shared desktop folder, and therefore you're performing an admin task when you try to remove it. Delete something you put on your desktop yourself and UAC won't prompt.
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.
This is no different than a frustrated Dad on a late Xmas eve struggling to assemble a very simple toy or bicycle and not having the skill/patience/RTFM-skills to succeed, and, rather than accept his own shortcomings, turns around and exploits the kid's Xmas morning disappointment to unfairly berate the manufacturer.
ReTranslation: I'm a Linux user, so most application eye candy I see is done by a 15 year old using a paint program named after a character in a Quentin Tarantino film. I'm jealous.
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
ReTranslation: Learning new things is hard. Change scares me. This is why 1) I like the command line, and 2) I'm a secret Republican.
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.
ReTranslation: Just don't ask me about the release cycle of Fedora, or any other active Linux distro.
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.
ReTranslation: Linux doesn't have driver problems since very few people actually make drivers for us.
Translation: Revenue generating cycle - Bleeding edge, counting the casualties.
ReTranslation: Change is bad! Leave Brittany alone!