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Microsoft Disses Windows to Sell More Windows
mjasay writes "I stumbled across this fascinating Microsoft tutorial entitled "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." It's an attempt to coach IT professionals on how to sell Windows desktop upgrades internally. Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent, requiring detailed instructions on how to connive and cajole into an upgrade from XP. The most intriguing thing about the tutorial is its implicit rejection of Microsoft's older technology. Just a few years ago Microsoft was pitching the world on how secure and cool XP was. Now it's telling us largely the opposite, implying that XP is a security threat, costs too much to run, and so on. With Microsoft marketing against itself, perhaps the Mac and Linux camps can simply wait for Microsoft to self-destruct?"
"Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent" Vista has a value that is all too readily apparent. That's why the uptake has been, ahem, less than enthusiastic. Vista DVD's have a much higher value - they make dandy drink coasters!!
Now, this is funny, but I want to caution you that this is something they need to change. If you criticize them for attacking their own vulnerabilities, you're not giving them a chance to change. Microsoft isn't going to self destruct so let's hope they stop giving botnets & trojans a home in this world. Better security is better for the community and the users. Don't attack someone when they recognize their wrong doings and attempt to correct them. If you don't allow that, then how can anyone improve? Personally I examine my mistakes, acknowledge them and fix them. I certainly hope that Microsoft does this because it's evident that they'll still sell well despite them.
My work here is dung.
It's kind of silly to blame Microsoft for making the claim that their latest OS is better/more secure/prettier/whatever than previous versions. After all, isn't that the whole point of versions? i.e. To easily identify the progression of features and functionality. If the latest version of Windows weren't the latest and greatest, I'd be very surprised to hear Microsoft say otherwise.
Linux may be a great OS, but I'd take a 2.6 kernel over a 2.2 kernel any day for my desktop computing needs. 2.2 is buggy, slow, insecure, and sucks compared to the latest kernel. If you were in charge of upselling users to 2.6, you'd say as much, I hope.
You know, when Microsoft (or any company) makes a mistake, I'm usually first on the bandwagon trying to point out the stupidity. But times change. What was awesome last year may be crap this year. Especially in the computer world where technology moves very fast.
Think about it, there was a time when Apple said that the PPC arch was far superior to x86....they may have even been right, there are tons of things that I personally would have designed differently. But here we are today, using x86 Macs. No biggie, it was a big flip flop or anything, they just decided that switching to PPC made more sense on enough levels. In fact, now Apple is advertising that they are great because they can run Windows too (more that Windows is faster on a mac...but still). This implies that the switch to x86 was an improvement!
Bottom line is that they weren't lying when they said XP was better. By the time SP2 came out, this was very much the truth. Now they believe that Vista is an improvement, and antiquates XP. And you know what, in many ways this is the truth. Vista is FAR more secure than XP is, the technologies applied make it simply harder to weaponize vulnerabilities than it was with XP.
Technologies evolve, times change, perspectives get updated. No biggie.
MS and Intel have been their own biggest competitor for years. With each new revision they have to go out and convince people that latest one is the best one ever and the old one should be replaced.
They have not been able to add compelling enough features, and customers get very angry at incompatibilities such as MS-Word has seen.
So they have to resort to targetted obsolescence, cajolery and legalistic tactics such as trying to tie the OS the the machine it was first licenced for. I'm not sure if those portions of the EULA violating ":first sale" have been upheld.
While the summary, in typical Slashdot style, is heavily slanted, the article offers some interesting advice. Microsoft apparently has some serious problems trying to convince people to upgrade to Vista. Not because Vista is particularily bad (it isn't), but because XP is good enough already. So what would you do? You either use "evil" techniques like stopping distributing the old OS, shutting down upgrade servers or making your new software exclusive to the new OS. Or you use "good" techniques like publishing articles about how bad your previous OS was. Pick your choice. Also realize that all arguments presented in the article for switching from XP to Vista could equally well be applied to switching from XP to Linux.
Football Odds
As opposed to hefty upfront costs upgrading hardware and troubleshooting software-related issues on a poorly supported and performing operating system? What about the extra costs involved in paying staff to wait for your brand new Vista computer to do the same thing an XP machine would do in half the time, like boot?
"The increase in security - the inability for users to just simply install stuff, means that you are decreasing the amount of reactive tasks that an administrator has to perform," said Johnson.
Isn't that what restricting Administrative privileges are for? Grandma's XP Home machine has that feature.
I guess there's no point me pasting any more of the article, it sort of speaks for itself.
Because, you know, it was just yesterday that Apple was telling us how 10.4 was the shiznit. Now we've got 10.5, and suddenly, they won't even sell 10.4 anymore!
Or consider the Linux kernel. Back in the 2.0 days, everyone was telling me about how great Linux was. Now that we've got kernel 2.6, everyone's just dropping support for 2.0 and telling me it sucks compared to the latest version.
It is not unfair for a company to say that the newest version of their software is BETTER than their old version. If it wasn't, why release it?
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
vista still == WinMe2.0
bah.... what is the compelling argument to upgrade all my hardware? the aps i need still run perfect on my old athlon 64 xp3200. i mean this box is 6 or 7 years old, and it still works fine. where is my motivation to replace it all? im old enough the next quake doesn't matter anymore.
bah humbug
-.no
My blog
I hope we get to see the day where they'll diss Vista. I'm sure it'll be a much easier job than dissing XP was.
I wish they were as sincere from the start, though.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
As individuals, yes I agree 100%. Especially as a sysadmin, no one bats 1000. It's all about setting things up so the failures are graceful rather than total flame-outs.
But we're talking about a company with proprietary operating system and total market control that spent man-years developing kernel-level DRM for practically all I/O instead of developing a sane security model. "Allow/Deny?" is not a security model. Neither is UAC. It allows privilege escalation. Mark Russinovich, MS's own man said so much to the chagrin of corporate I'm sure.
Some of the people modding your comment insightful have (probably) fallen into Microsoft's version of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
OP ED
Microsoft will *never* produce a secure system: the user is *not* the customer: the advertising industry is. just as in television, *we* are *not* the customer: *we* are what is for sale, advertising is the customer, tv industry is selling *us* as *audience* to the advertisers
and Windows is not any different in this respect but is rather a transitional product taking us from the television screen to the selectivision screen which is what the WWW+television will morph into
the initial work is already done: the www has injected so much graphics into computer presentaions that hi-speed broad band is now necessary for "surfing".
now that that's been done the next step is to combine the web with digital TV and you have the advertising marketing dream come true: television with instantaneous feed-back on what everyone is watching and how everyone is responding to it
the ability to adjust your windows programming all along a little here and there is critical to the development and maintenance of this scheme and that is why Microsoft can *never* produce a secure system. Their system provides access to customer computer for paying customers and that includes the ability to modify the client programming ( your computer ). all of this is hidden from everyone except the hackers of course
why do you think we patch and patch and patch and patch and for every patch a new vulnerability shows up? because the patch only moves the remote access capability from one hiding place to another it doesn't remove it. and never will.
"IMHO", -- FWIW
Obviously there are always costs to maintaining any system. However it is not at all unreasonable to say that there are hidden costs in maintaining older systems, and in fact it's very often - even usually - true. Updates are generally slower, new versions of applications that run on them will gradually become unavailable, security issues or system efficiency or human factors or other flaws may slowly drain productivity.
By contrast there are often costs with new OS versions as well - you often need to upgrade hardware, sometimes older versions of applications won't run on the new OS, and there are often bugs that didn't get caught in beta testing. Additionally when an OS version is very new, sometimes an application that's critical for your business isn't available for it yet.
I don't think it's unreasonable for them to point out the hidden costs of maintaining an old system, and many customers may overlook those costs if they're not pointed out. But by the same token, customers need to be aware that they need to look at the whole picture to figure out what makes the best business sense for their particular situation.
Whenever you purchase an automobile, the dealer makes sure to tell you how incredibly reliable and maintenance free the vehicle your buying happens to be in order to get you to put down the money to purchase it. Minutes later, the same dealer will be warning you that the very same car could break down at any time and cost you thousands in repair costs within the first year of ownership in an effort to get you to buy an after market warranty.
Schizophrenic marketing is certainly not unique to Microsoft or the software industry!
is used to be "military intelligence" was the favorite example of an "oxymoron" not no more "computer security" is the oxymoron
Us unix/linux fanboys have been saying for years that the biggest hole in the many versions of windows was the lack of password protection of the operating system files (install as root, run as user - otherwise a simple batch file can be used as a virus..)
This simple idea has been around for at least 25 years, so there is no technical reason that Microsoft are so late to this party.
Comparing this gaping security hole (from DOS to WinXP) to minor linux kernel enhancements from 2.2 to 2.6 is not terribly relevant..
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
While I'd likely be the first in line with gasoline if MS HQ was on fire, I really don't see how the situation described could in any reasonable way be expected to be a sign of Microsoft's impending doom. Even if they never made it into high 6-figure sales of Vista, they'd still have what, about 90% market share for their desktop OS? If Vista completely laid an egg, there still wouldn't be dramatic anti-MS push from the mainstream.
Even as myself a FreeBSD user, I'll say that I just don't see the failure of Vista as panning out in any real way to be a fantastic victory for the Unix-based systems out there. People are still going to want to stay with their familiar OS - which of course is windows.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This is an old, old tactic.
Microsoft has done the "when Windows version n+1 ships, immediately admit that Windows version n was crap" thing since Windows 95 appeared.
Maybe this time they're just being more aggressive about it, since XP is so firmly entrenched and all the compelling features that would have driven Vista upgrades were stripped out so they could actually ship it. They can market it all they like, but it's already got the reputation of being a trouble-plagued, warmed-over version of XP with a GUI that's a bad attempt at copying OS X's.
~Philly