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Michael Dell Says Windows 7 Will Make You Love PCs
ruphus13 writes "In a recent talk at the Churchill Club, Michael Dell addressed several topics, including the fact that Windows 7 is poised to take advantage of the upgrade cycle. Dell has always been a strong MS OEM ally and it is now hoping to cash in again from the impending upgrades. From the post: 'Dell made plain several times that he sees the installed base of technology as very old, and sees a coming "refresh cycle" for which he has high hopes. "The latest generation of chips from Intel is strong, particularly Nehalem," he said, adding, "and Windows 7 is on its way." (The operating system arrives Oct. 22nd, although Microsoft's large-volume licensees are already getting it.) He pointed out that many business are running Windows XP, which is eight years old. "I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now," he said, "and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement."'"
I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now, and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement.
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Full - Retail: $299.99
Cheapest Nehalem Processor: $279.99
(note, can't buy Office 2010 yet)
Latest Office 20xx: $399.95
Total: $979.93
So Michael Dell, the CEO of the company that is the largest dealer of PCs to businesses and individuals, suggests you opt for the extra grand in order to 'love your PC again.' You don't say. I would be shocked if anyone was willing to fork over more than $900 for an entire computer these days. How am I to differentiate this from any salesman saying, "Buy the most expensive one for the best experience."
My work here is dung.
Translation - Buy stuff from me. I won't sell you poison again, honest. You can trust me and my stuff is less bad than last time.
For a /. geek, what does Windows 7 have that's *really* useful/desired/cool vs. Windows XP? Not trolling, just haven't had the time to install it/play with it yet.
It's newer and less awful than vista. But it's still really NT with an updated interface and some new bits glued to the side.
As various searches reveal that in 2007 he was using Ubuntu, the "long time now" must mean gosh, what, using Windows 7 a couple of years? Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "early release".
Seem disingenuous.
Dell needs a good quarter, folks. Those nasty guys on Wall Street will be all over them if they don't squeeze out a good quarter to make Dell look good against Acer. Or not.
And computer companies wonder why their credibility is so dubious.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I have first hand experience. I've used Windows 7 RTM, and office 2010 technical preview I can honestly say that this advice is nothing more than a joke. In fact the 'type mismatch' errors that Autodesk Inventor throws up when syncing to Excel, make me lean more towards hateful feelings. Win7 / office 2010 are good and expensive, but i don't see how they are justifiably better than XP / office 2003/7. The love inducing factor comes from Michael Dell rubbing his grubby mitts together.
> Conflict of interest, anyone?
More like identity of interest. He isn't "conflicted" about it at all.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
As various searches reveal that in 2007 he was using Ubuntu, the "long time now" must mean gosh, what, using Windows 7 a couple of years? Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "early release".
Seem disingenuous.
Dell needs a good quarter, folks. Those nasty guys on Wall Street will be all over them if they don't squeeze out a good quarter to make Dell look good against Acer. Or not.
And computer companies wonder why their credibility is so dubious.
Either way what Michael Dell says as the CEO of Dell doesn't reflect his personal opinion, just like any other CEO, or anybody working within management, your professional opinion can be in complete contrast to your personal opinion. What he's proposing (that everybody upgrade to Win7, and hopefully with that also buy new shiny Dell PCs) is something that will benefit his business, and he would be the worlds shittiest CEO if he didn't. So basically this means nothing other than the fact that Dell also wishes to make profit on Windows 7.
Also something noteworthy is that the life situation of Michael Dell, as a multibillionare, is very different from the vast majority; thus whatever Michael Dell chooses will most likely not reflect what's best for you as an average income consumer.
Even though the ape in us wants to try to mimic the decisions of the successful, it can sometimes be difficult to understand why mimicing isolated decisions is more likely to do you harm than good.
I am the lawn!
...if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement.
Ok, I'm a graphic designer who often works with photoshop files that are 500 meg or larger (files in the 1 gig+ range are not uncommon at all). For me, having a fast processor, a lot of ram, and the other bells and whistles that go along with it will make a "dramatic improvement" because we're talking about a massive file and long processing times for each action I take. When you're using Office - you know, a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation program - you shouldn't need the latest and greatest. Sorry, but I just feel that needing the latest and greatest so that you can "love your PC again" when all you're using is an office suite just might be a sign that the office suite is bloated well beyond what is required.
My two cents. They're Canadian cents so take 'em for what they're worth, eh.
“Its amazing that it takes Micro$oft 6 years to what the Linux, community can get done in 6 weeks”
I always wonder how this happen so fast as well, its like I woke up one day everybody had gone 64Bit. But one day at my local lug, Alan Cox was there and we got taking about 64Bit drivers and he said that when he was working at Red Hat the code for the Alpha port helped a lot.
Plus Linux has been in the 64bit space for a while it just commodity hardware caught up.
Microsoft are not know for being ahead of thing, there just playing catch up.
I take you point that FOSS did the transition better it just wasn’t as magical as you put it.
and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement
The idiocy of the "Office 2010" remark aside, that's one scared man.
Same pig, new dress.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Nearly all of these "features" have been in both Linux and Mac OS X for years. Hell, intelligent processor scheduling was in BeOS way back in 1998. So you're going to start using Windows 7 because Microsoft is finally catching up on basic OS engineering? If they want to get $200 out of me they're going to need to try way harder. I can do at least as well as Windows for no money and way better for $129.
What's the point of saying anything as the CEO of a company when everyone who listens is thinking "yes, this is just him talking as the company, so well biased"?
Those who would slavishly follow what the COMPANY wants anyway will listen but there was no need to say something in that case. And everyone else will consider the source and ignore it.
So if what the CEO says is always and necessarily expected to be not his personal opinion but what the current incumbent of the CEO post of that company would say to make that company profits, there's no point talking at all.
You're making the fatal mistake of assuming that people are clever and source critical. You can easily manipulate people into doing whatever by saying the right thing at the right time. All you need to do is to play on their pride and ignorance.
I am the lawn!
Or some marketing droid wrote that statement for him. I remember similar crap mouthed by various computer company CEO's about Vista.
Windows 7 is, fundamentally, just Vista SP2. There's a little less in the way of "you need to confirm access to continue" screen nagware, and the hardware requirements are about the same as Vista. The only reason it's not getting panned as a resource hog is that Vista only ran well on almost "bleeding edge" hardware, and 2.5 years later that's "hey it runs well on a couple year old sytem."
OK, MS dumps millions -- tens, maybe over a hundred million, anyone? -- into antipiracy efforts for Windows 7. I'm talking direct work on Win7 to stop piracy (activation codes, backend infrastructure, employees, coding specific to Win7, etc).
We know it won't stop piracy, although we don't know if it will slow it. And then they turn around and price the product at outrageous prices, which only serves to punish and/or discourage the users who would purchase it and encourage fence sitters and experimenters to pirate it.
Why not price it much more generously and make it "one" product versus many, with installation options for multimedia, and make "home" a mode or something?
I'm thinking single copies at maybe $50 and five license packs for $150. I think they would probably sell more, and in the long run probably *make* more versus dumping a ton of money into antipiracy efforts and then pricing it sky high.
Actually just today I got a free copy of Windows 7 ultimate from Microsoft's marketing launch events, for which generosity I'm very grateful. It is a little out of character for me to be saying these things since I've been (and remain) a die hard UNIX & free software fan for decades. I've been running Win7 since the Beta was out several months back either in a VM or on a test PC, and generally I'm pleased at its overall stability, usefulness, and benefits. Functionally I've ALWAYS considered Windows as sort of a dumbed down toy compared to UNIX being a developer and not being able to 'live' without routine use of bash, emacs, diff, grep, od, ssh, g++/gcc, growisofs, sed, awk, find, sort, less, tracker, tcpdump, iptables, ... and hundreds of other things for which there is often no easy / built in equivalent on Windows. On the other hand like it or not there are lots of tools / programs from Visual Studio to video games, photoshop to office 2007 that don't run well or at all under UNIX, so pragmatically I need the ability to maintain a Windows environment too.
The thing that has me changing from being hopelessly disgruntled about the incompatibilities, non-portabilities, lack of lots of powerful UNIXish tools / utilities on Windows, et. al. is that the new generations of OS capabilities, applications, PCs, et. al. are starting to directly or indirectly evolve to ameliorate what's lacking in one environment versus the other. More quality programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice are cross platform. Many useful utilities are web applications or are increasingly becoming portable via the use of things like QT, CLR/.NET/Mono, JAVA. Though it isn't bash, I think MS has a good thing with PowerShell 2.0, and it is powerful and compelling for its own virtues; FINALLY it is part of the OS!
Dell was right, modern mid-range PC hardware does give new reasons to love one's PC for someone like me (who is harder to please than the average user). Now a commodity PC with 4GB or more or RAM and a dual core CPU is mainstream, and most support 64 bit computing and virtualization. It is nothing difficult to just run a responsive and almost fully transparently functional copy of LINUX in a VM underneath Windows Vista/Windows 7. Conversely it is no problem to run a copy of Windows in a VM under LINUX, though given difficulties with GPU virtualization, et. al. that's not a good gaming solution, but works well for most other desktop application uses. Though they may be INCOMPATIBLE, at least they can start to COEXIST NICELY, which is wonderfully better than the days of dual booting or having multiple PCs just for that purpose.
I'm impressed by what's going on with CLR/.NET in 3.5, 4.0, and the better added support of Python, Ruby, F#, C#, et. al. under the CLR, as well as the fact that there's at least some useful amount of cross platform portability of such programs to UNIX via MONO, albeit 1-2 years behind the cutting edge functionality on the Windows platform in some cases.
Adding multiple CPU support, multi-core support, well supported 64 bit support to Windows in Vista/7 lets people run Windows effectively on fairly powerful systems and not be so limited by OS limits that were plaguing XP 32, Win2k, et. al. in times when LINUX 64 was readily available and vastly more powerful for high end workstation / server support.
Somewhat cross platform GPGPU / HPC solutions like CUDA, OpenCL, BLAS / LAPACK et. al. give promising capabilities for improving computing, DSP, media processing, et. al. dramatically in the era of Win7 but also benefit LINUX. Windows centric solutions like DirectCompute / DX11 offer similar though less portable benefits. In any case things like multi core CPUs, multi-GBy of cheap RAM, virtualization, big screens, better multi-monitor support, powerful and inexpensive GPUs, 64 bit OSs do give lots of reasons why Dell is right and that a new era of software / platform evolution is upon us and will provide lots of new "killer applications" and user benefits
Psst, did you notice that this was in his/her gaming machine?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
The more they promote W7, the more wary I become. Maybe MS thinks the problems with its products are not bugs, and shoddy design, but customer perception. Maybe they are trying to build a Steve Jobs reality distortion field sans Steve Jobs. Two problems: Balmer is not Steve Jobs, and Apple, in many cases, lives up to the hype.
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Seriously. What do you expect Michale Dell to say? That Windows 7 is crap? Why is this marketing drivel being reported on Slashdot any way?
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Really?
When you consider that way back in the 1980's, people were shelling out upwards of $2000 for a new computer, what makes you think it's so "shocking" that people would still pay over $1000 for a new system in today's dollars?
Although the market has been flooded with "entry level" systems starting as low as $300 or so, that doesn't mean everyone has decided there's no reason to spend more. And although I realize the cheap PCs have been great from a standpoint in getting more people on-board with using a computer at home, they've also resulted in lower standards across the board. I, for one, am tired of the garbage that passes for a power supply out there. You've got the same problem as cheap, imported car and home stereo equipment, where the wattage ratings mean nothing. I can remember when you could pull a power supply out of one of the original IBM AT machines and it might say something really low, by today's standards, like an 85 watt rating. Yet you could add a bunch of power splitters to the thing and hook it up to a FAR more modern system that needed at least a 250 watt power supply to run, and it would still power it! These days, you get power supplies with a 450 or 500 watt rating that conk out if they're asked to output more than about HALF of that rating!
I'm equally tired of the way manufacturers cut corners on things like cooling fans (cheap sleeve bearings, so the fan quits spinning after a year or two, risking destroying far more expensive components), or sourcing the cheapest motherboards they can find that have the ports and connectors they require. (Again, where's the real savings when your new machine gets flaky and starts refusing to power up half the time, risking all your important data?)
All of this (and shoddy software!) are reasons I've been "loving my PC" for years now by switching to higher-end Macs. Yep, they cost more.... a lot more in the case of the Mac Pro. But I've had practically NO headaches or hardware issues. (My first Macbook Pro portable did arrive DOA, but it was swapped immediately and its replacement worked great. Even there though, the things were shipping direct from a factory in China. Back when people were conditioned to pay more for computers, all the way around, these things would have still been assembled and QA tested here in the USA.)
The main difference between Vista and Windows 7 is that Windows 7 runs great on older systems, even better than XP.
I have a friend who is handicapped and partially paralyzed and to her usability is the key when using computers. Also she doesn't have that much money as she cannot work. Windows 7 gave her 6 year old PC running a Northwood Pentium IV a new lease on life, all the hardware properly detected.
Actually, the file browser is probably the worst usability aspect of Vista.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In case you're reading, your .sig is missing a 't' in the second function.
[John]
Further proof that even if computers attain perfection, people will always find a way to screw things up. And then blame it on the computer.
Sorry - he should have added 'And it runs all your software' at the bottom. Problem solved!
Why exactly do you think "XP is relative garbage"? Because it isn't overloaded with Bling like Vista? Most of my customers are quite happy with WinXP, in fact I just moved another XP quad two days ago. And since you are running Windows 7 maybe you could answer a couple of questions: Does Windows 7 have those "senior moments" like Vista where it will just get non responsive for like 5-15 seconds, just long enough to piss you off? How about networking, does it still slow to a crawl if you watch videos or listen to music while transferring files?
Windows XP is stable, low resource, has tons of software for it, and folks actually like that "Fisher Price" blue layout, which of course must scare the hell out of Michael Dell as Dell can't sell XP no more if Windows 7 turns out to be another Vista turkey. Myself I switched to XP X64 nearly a year ago and see no reason to switch. I bought a copy of Win7 HP when it was $50 to play with, but the feedback I'm getting from customers is most have no desire to leave WinXP, probably won't look at Windows 7 seriously for another year or so. And I'm betting that more than anything is why Michael Dell is blowing the Win7 horn, because "Vista equals giant can o' suck" is still fresh in most folks minds and they are now gunshy about any "new" OS from MSFT.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Does Windows 7 have those "senior moments" like Vista where it will just get non responsive for like 5-15 seconds, just long enough to piss you off?
No. That's why it's better than Vista.
How about networking, does it still slow to a crawl if you watch videos or listen to music while transferring files?
No. That's why it's better than Vista.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Do you shills actually think checkbox marketing is going to fly with this crowd?
I doubt they do, but they have to try anyway. After all thats what they are paid to do.
Slashdot needs some kind of filter to get rid of Microsoft marketing drones.
A lie. Just like the cake was.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"Does Windows 7 have those "senior moments" like Vista where it will just get non responsive for like 5-15 seconds, just long enough to piss you off? How about networking, does it still slow to a crawl if you watch videos or listen to music while transferring files?"
I've been using 7 since the RC was made public and the answer to both those questions is no.
Either way what Michael Dell says as the CEO of Dell doesn't reflect his personal opinion, just like any other CEO, or anybody working within management, your professional opinion can be in complete contrast to your personal opinion.
But when someone's "professional" opinion doesn't match their personal opinion, neither opinion is worth shit.
If he's trying to tell us how good Windows 7 is, when he won't even run it himself, that takes *all* of the legitimacy out of his statement.
Also something noteworthy is that the life situation of Michael Dell, as a multibillionare, is very different from the vast majority; thus whatever Michael Dell chooses will most likely not reflect what's best for you as an average income consumer.
There are "rich people" cars and "rich people" vacation packages and "rich people" clothes, etc., but there isn't a "rich people" OS.
There aren't even "rich people" computers. There are high end PCs and Mac Pros, but these are just expensive variants of their cheaper brethren, and run the same OS's. It's not like he's using some sort of exotic computer that can't run Windows.
Considering the post he's responding to was "which of these features has OS X had for years" you're a bit off target - "Well...yeah, Apple does it too" is entirely the correct response in this case.
But yes, he failed on the games front!
"...So I hung back and lurked. For 18 months. Can't beat a good old-fashioned lurking."