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A Windows Phone 7 For Every Microsoftie
theodp writes "So, how can Microsoft guarantee its Windows Phone 7 devices will enjoy broader adoption than the ill-fated Kin? By giving every Microsoft employee a free one, that's how. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed the move, explaining that the idea is to thank employees for all their work, and make sure that they have experience with Windows Phone 7 devices. Microsoft has nearly 90,000 employees worldwide."
but, I think the interface is very sleek and my company develops business applications to Mobile devices and I am in the group to develop applications for Windows Phone 7. The application interface is pretty good and we recently got couple of those Samsung devices to test our applications and it does do a good job. No doubt this current version of OS do not provide support for SQL-CE DB or multi-tasking or even copy & paste. But .net provides pretty good infrastructure to concoct a rudimentary in-memory db for our case. Other things would have been really useful for what we do. Despite these deficiencies I think, this is a pretty good OS and good UI from MS.
One of the perks of working for an auto company is the ability to lease a car at a drastically reduced rate. And once you reach a certain salary level, the auto company "pays" the lease so the car is effectively free.
There are controls - Chrysler, for example, wouldn't give employees Vipers or Prowlers - but there was a pretty broad selection of cars to choose from.
Except for a period in the late 90s/early oughts where the only GM company car was the Pontiac Aztek.
I'd drive past their plants/offices in Detroit and the employee parking lot was solid Azteks.
<NELSON>Ha-ha!</NELSON>
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
It's actually worse than that. It's $99 per year, plus $99 per application.
I don't care how refined it is. In other words: I don't care how much MS does to step up their technology.
Not true. I own an XBox360. I have a partition with a legit copy of Windows XP at home on one of my desktops. But I will never ever use IE again. I even get a little sick when I have to use IE to update XP. Firefox, Chrome, Opera I'll take anything over IE. Having had to develop to support IE6 for the longest time, I am jaded. I am biased. But if you get burned by something, you usually don't reward the company by continuing to use that product. This is how I feel about IE. I don't want it on my phone.
I hate them and anything they do will not be good enough for me.
No, I'm critical of them and everything they do. Similar to when I tear apart Google or Apple. They are big players with big resources and bigger responsibilities. They do get things right once in a while, this phone and the Zune were not done right in my opinion.
I'm a raving fanboi with a chip on my shoulder and if you want an honest opinion of a product from a company that I hate you're not going to find it here.
Well, to use either-you're-with-us-or-against-us-black-and-white extremes, I can't criticize anything around here without being accused of being a raving fanboi. And who am I a fanboi of exactly?
I really wish they had an ignore button around here.
Yeah, it's called your foes list. Log in, change your relationship with me to 'foe' and then add a foe modifier of -6. As long as you're logged in, you'll never see my posts again. Please, do us both a favor.
My work here is dung.
Insightful, not informative. ;)
Care to point to which offices make up 'every office' or where you get your facts? I work on campus and have not seen such things, nor even heard rumors of it.
I call bullshit on your call of total bullshit. I don't know where you got your info but the soda cases are still there. The purchasing was standardized so that the drinks would be the same in all MSFT offices which resulted in some options going away in some offices but were replaced with new options. MSFT also introduced some new nice automatic Starbucks coffee machines which is a huge step up from the crappy coffee we used to have.
Yes IWFM.
Paul's take on that "review" http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2010/07/16/dont-bother-with-this-blog-post-disaster/
A more nuanced summary of the reviews: http://reddevnews.com/blogs/redmond-review/2010/07/wp7-and-the-court-of-pundit-opinion.aspx
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What Microsoft office are you in?
I'm sitting here as a Microsoft FTE in Redmond drinking my free soft drink.
This is Slashdot and we don't let facts get in the way of M$ bashing karmawhoring.
This space for rent.
If Coke were to give their employees free Coke just to increase their own market share and make their product look like it was doing better, then that would also be a cynical move. Basically forcing 90,000 to have the phone, whether they use it or not, just to make it not look like as big a failure as the Kin, is what's cynical -- not giving free schwag to employees. But then, its perhaps not the move itself which is cynically motivated, but the summary. Not that such a thing would ever happen...
So far I've only been able to find documents on the annual subscription fee of $99 with unlimited paid apps and 5 free apps. Any additional free app costs you about $20.
If Coke were to give their employees free Coke just to increase their own market share and make their product look like it was doing better, then that would also be a cynical move.
It's worse than that.
http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/13/news/funny/coke_pepsi/
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Free sodas (and a good selections too) at the various field offices I've visited this year. I don't get to HQ very often, but I've been to a number of local offices around the US, and was freely caffinated at all.
(No, I'm not SteveB)
This sort of thing actually backfired on them a while ago - when I interned at Microsoft, we all got a free old-generation Zune. A year later, an entire generation of Microsoft interns got a free present: all our Zunes crashed. Just think about how horrible that was for PR: that entire crop of interns, who in theory are the future of the technology industry, got a first-hand look at how shitty Microsoft's products can be.
That's funny, I was just in several of the buildings in Redmond last week and found that all drinks -- even those in the cafeteria, are gratis. Paying isn't even an option -- there's simply nowhere to put the change.
For any personal issues you may find with Microsoft as a company, I have seen and heard nothing but good things from their employees.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
BUT, my niece`is married to a man who works for MS on "campus". I asked him if he could get me a discount on a Zune and was told that he doesn't get any kind of a discount on any Microsoft products any more. The company has been cutting back on any benefits like that for the last 5 years
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.