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?"

Comments

a few years late

[gEvil (beta)]

Now it's telling us largely the opposite, implying that XP is a security threat, costs too much to run, and so on.

Hah! Now I have the evidence I need to convince my boss not to make that XP transition. Now where did I put that time machine?

Re:a few years late

[Slashidiot]

I think you left it on OS X Leopard...

Re:a few years late

[Anonymous Coward]

You have stumbled onto something interesting. The key to selling Linux as a replacement for Windows is to calculate the savings in terms of something the PHBs understand -- BMWs. A 2008 528i is about $50k, so if you can save $150k, that's 3 BMWs. Smaller companies can calculate using the 328i, larger companies can use the M5 or 745li.

Default Administrators

[eldavojohn]

Probably the biggest hassle from a security perspective [with past technologies] is that users tended to run as administrators. In Vista, that's not the default anymore. Ok, yeah, he's probably talking about XP. I mean, when he says [with past technologies] they can't be talking about older operating systems like Unix, Solaris or Linux because root is simply not the default. I don't know a lot about arcane operating systems but I think that in the beginning a careful security scheme was thought out that defined a protected 'kernel space' that the operating system needed to run that the daily user simply could not touch or needed credentials to do so.

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.

Re:Default Administrators

[ultranova]

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.

Oh, I don't know. I, for one, take great comfort in the thought of Microsoft delivering the DRM products of tomorrow. It's like being locked in the Alcatraz for life and realizing that the walls are made of wet cardboard.

Re:Default Administrators

[randomaxe]

Except that, if they're dictating the world's DRM schemes, they're also probably going to be responsible for most of the software used to encode and decode the DRMed data, and therefore also responsible for the OS that runs that software, and the hardware that runs that OS, etc., etc.

So to revise your simile:

It's like being locked in the Alcatraz for life and realizing that the walls are made of wet cardboard. But if you break out prison, it doesn't really matter, because every building, vehicle, and flat surface is also made out of that same wet cardboard.

Is an old version of Linux better than the latest?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Things change

[Pr0xY]

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.

Nothing New...

[EastCoastSurfer]

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.

Really?

[Erwos]

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?

op ed on Ms Windows "security" or rather the lack

[Grampaw Willie]

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

Re:Value?

[Solder Fumes]

Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent

Neither is the value of used cat litter.

You'll find even more similarities as you dig and sift through everything, too.

That's the point

[Eddy Luten]

With Microsoft marketing against itself

I guess you've never read the “Intel Retail Edge” program manual or virtually any software's change-log/release notes.

It's been a long time since I've seen such crap on the frontpage of /. Almost every product out there gets released under these values, including the Linux kernel and MacOS. “It's more secure, upgrade now!”

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

That's the point. XP came out years ago, and finally in 2007 a new version of Windows was released after much bitching by the market (us). Now that it's out, we're attacking its release because of the reasons we wanted a new version of Windows?

Excuse me if I don't see the point of this news...

Lead slashdot post is a lie

[computerchimp]

The heading "troll" on this slashdot article is correct and appears to be a fabrication that misrepresents the article
"How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." Why is garbage like this allowed to stay up?

1) The MS tutorial mentions older operating systems as a generic, it does not diss XP, it does not even mention XP!

2) "newer operating system, such as Windows Vista". Vista is the example, put "XP" or other OS in there if you want.

3) The article is a template to help frustrated IT admins/managers show reason and overcome objection to a proposal of migrating to a newer OS. Any admin in any environment could use this template.

I am not commenting on the PCWorld article here, just the misrepresentation in the first part of the article. Let me know if the poster is talking about a differnt version of "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade" because from what I see the posting is a lie, plain and simple.

CC

Re:Slackware what?

[trolltalk.com]

"*Installs Slackware Hey look guys root is default"

... those of us who cut our teeth on slackware can work all day as root without a problem uphill, both ways, in the winter ... and when there's a power failure, we just throw some more coal into our UPS ... and ram upgrades? We don't need no stinking ram upgrades. 8 meg is more than enough on our pentium^W486^W386 on our green-screen console.

Kids nowadays! Bah!!! Humbug!!!!!

(... and merry xmas/seasons greetings/whatever floats your boat)

Re:Wow... more rabid MS hate? On Slashdot?

[Sparks23]

Er, I am a software developer who has to work on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows (XP and Vista). And believe me, Linux and Mac OS X have both changed drastically under the hood since their initial releases. Look at Linux kernel version 0.9 versus the kernel 2.6 series; device access methods are vastly improved, memory management is a whole ton better, and outside of the kernel, the libraries in userland have moved forward quite frequently. As for OS X, Mac OS X 10.0 was damn near unusable for anything except legacy NeXTStep software, but 10.5 is actually the least-painful OS to develop for of any I deal with. (Not trying to show bias, just that Leopard's system APIs are very polished even compared to Tiger, and I personally find the developer documentation less painful to wade through than Vista's.)

Many changes in Vista are simply immediately apparent to even end-users, because there is a ton of new eye-candy (in addition to the extensive under-the-hood reworkings). Leopard, most of the important changes are under-the-hood modifications (better access to filesystem, such as the FSEvents API, the new 64-bit throughout setup, system self-signing of downloaded applications, etc.), with less new eye-candy, but speaking as a developer, there are some equally sweeping changes under the hood.

Every operating system progresses as time goes on, as long as it is still in active development. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X...