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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."
Don't buy WP7. It's made out of PEOPLE !!
The number of iPhones at MS is crazy; probably around 20% of the people have them. (There are phone stores on campus; they aren't allowed to sell Androids or iPhones).
I suspect if you whip an iPhone out in front of Ballmer after, say, November or so, that he'll be a little more than a little upset at you.
This is a good move to get people to dogfood and internally develop for the thing. (And I was going to ditch my iPhone anway).
I'll use a Windows Mobile phone, too... if it's free. Sure as hell never paying for another device running WinCE, the most pointless operating system ever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
calls to the south pole?
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/06/01/0145232/Mobile-Game-Trojan-Calls-the-South-Pole?from=rss
Would the undocumented feature payment from MS go to the phone company?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's absolutely mind-boggling that Windows Phone 7 is missing some very fundamental features, like copy/paste, third-party multitasking, and universal search.
Absolutely mind-boggling you say? How about absolutely doomed?
In the past, competitors like Apple were lambasted by the public for not having such features, so you'd think Microsoft would take precautions not to repeat such mistakes.
You don't understand, Microsoft is adept at watching Apple do something right or make progress and then totally just think that they're different and special and therefore won't suffer from those problems.
What's worse, the rest of the smartphone world isn't slowing down, and with Windows Phone 7 not scheduled to launch till the holidays, the divide could get deeper.
It's called releasing a phone that's already behind the curve. So, unless you have a product name that causes people to hemorrhage cash regardless of the features, you're doomed. Like the release of the Zune. Except it appears Windows Phone 7 doesn't even have an exclusive 'squirt' functionality.
Criticisms aside, there's a lot we like about Windows Phone 7. The Zune integration is killer, and the core apps are much improved.
Zune integration is 'killer' you say? That's going to do it, huh? Well, everybody who owns a Zune now has the option to integrate it. All five of them. And the core apps are much improved? After suffering from the ailments of IE6 you think I want any version of Internet Exploder on my goddamn mobile device? You're insane. I don't care how refined it is.
We also commend Microsoft for being able to acknowledge that its old OS wasn't working and taking a chance on rebuilding something from the ground up.
Really? You're telling me that Microsoft owned up to and acknowledge its old OS wasn't working? I've never known Microsoft to tell their customers that something is wrong.
Long story short this product is doomed with a 97% confidence of certain doomage.
My work here is dung.
But only to true employees, not to temps and interns.
Microsoft's strategy sounds good in theory, but if in practice their own employees ends up not liking or using their free phones, how would that look for them? Only time will tell.
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.
They will put it in a drawer and keep using their iPhones.
Windows Phone 7 isn't even real Windows CE. The user can't load and run apps designed for previous versions of Windows Mobile, only apps designed from Silverlight or XNA, and even then only from the official app store. Want to make your own apps? 99 bucks a year, just like iPhone. (To be fair, iPhone copied this app store model largely from Microsoft's XNA Creators Club and Xbox Live Indie Games.)
There will go straight to ebay and the money from the sale used to buy android terminals :-)
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
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
I'm sure employees aren't going to use the phone without service, and if MS is going to pay for all of their service plans, it's going to cost them quite a bit!
You can give your employees a phone, but you can't make them actually use it.
Call the employee on each day when the employee is scheduled to work. If the employee doesn't pick up, record it as an absence.
This is a good move, at least in that people at Microsoft will get to eat their own dog food (at least while they are at MS campus) and hopefully they can show some issues with the interface.
OTOH, I can imagine the majority of them will just leave their phone laying on their desk.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I bet they can't wait to receive this gift.
Old HTCs are Windows Mobile-only, they only started making Android phones last year. And Windows Mobile is the wost mobile phone OS out there.
I can't wait until someone jailbreaks them and comes up with a way of running Android
I'm sorry but this is a stupid statement and a stupid article. Apple gives a large number of it's employees an iPhone and Google gives a large number of its an Android phone. It's call "eating your own dog food".
In addition they get a friendly pool of testers who can give them instant feedback (and probably quite detailed given that they'll naturally try to use it with the products they are managing) on the devices in real world situations (such as bugs, issues, integration with web services, exchange support) and can also simulate some scenarios (such large scale remote activation, wipe and locate) far better than a couple of devices in a lab can.
Finally, if you're a manufacturer of a product, it doesn't look very good if your employees all use your competitors does it? Whenever I've dealt with a Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Apple, HTC or LG rep I've never seen them use anything but their own phones and I'd be concerned about the statement they are making if they did.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Even to its own employees Microsoft has to give its new phone away ;)
You don't suppose this is a genius marketing strategy to get their devices into as many people's hands as possible, blow them away with the features, get them dependent, that way they'll want to buy a Kin2?
Oh right. This is one of those "real" failures. Never mind.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if 90,000 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
839*929
What is the best practice for writing a cross-platform smartphone application?
I understand that an app will need a different front-end playing to the strengths of each platform. But one of the advantages of the model-view-controller or multitier pattern is supposed to be that that platform-specific front-ends can share one generic back-end containing all the business logic. But it appears that the runtime environments don't share support for popular programming languages that could be used for the back-end. Apps for other major smartphone platforms are written in Java (BlackBerry, Android), standard C++ (Maemo/MeeGo), or Objective-C++ (iPhone). Standard C++ and Objective-C++ do not compile to verifiably memory-safe CIL, and J# is no longer updated. Silverlight apps are expected to be written in C#, Visual Basic, C++/CLI with the /clr:safe switch (whose syntax for handles is incompatible with standard C++'s syntax for pointers), or another .NET language.
Oh, I get it. Microsoft wants apps to be developed for and only for WP7.
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.
This is a great move by Microsoft. They are getting the phone exposure while giving employees incentive. Plus this is great PR for Microsoft on the employee side and on the public image side.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
I've been using this so-called OS for a while and I am quite positive that when Microsoft made the move from the unstable, bluescreening, freezing, and crashing Windows 95/98/ME 16-bit kernel to the stable Windows NT 3.51/4.0/XP/2000 32-bit kernel they had to do something with the 16-bit operating system developers so they made them all work on Windows Mobile! This is the only logical explanation as to why Windows Mobile sucks so bad, freezes so often, crashes every week, and manages to screw up my phone ever few months on its own corrupting all data... for the last three Windows Mobile phones that I owned. All builds of Windows Mobile 6.5.5 are so horrible from one to another with major changes to the GUI and lack of stability that I have had to downgrade my phone back to 6.5.0 to get some stability and usefulness out of the phone.
Windows Mobile 7 is now made incompatible with 6.5 and earlier versions just sounds like Microsoft is trying to push OS/2 on people by calling it better than Windows 3.11 without the compatibility shims.
I'm just looking for a new Google Android based phone to come out on a CDMA (US - Sprint, Verizon) network that has GSM capabilities with a SIM card and a full-size keyboard, such as the HTC Touch Pro 2 that I currently have to use and endure the Windows Mobile crap. Once that is out I'm ditching Windows Mobile forever!
If a MS employee leaves his MS phone prototype in a bar and no blogger considers it even worth stealing, does it make a ring?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Their stupid ad offered a free cappuccino if you bought their overpriced reader and organic roach killer - Hold six inches over roach, release, repeat as needed.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
Google has just announced it will be giving away a free DROID system to any person who uses google.
Take that MS!
Honestly, I think the phone has potential. They don't fix their problems and as stated, it's dead on arrival.
But it's got a 50/50 shot out of the gate, and depending on the hardware vendors and things... that's a huge part of the battle. Android did well because they have some really good hardware partners.
I'll have my Samsung Vibrant (T-Mobile) next week or so, so I'll be waiting it out as well. Not dying for a WinMo7 phone, but I am interested to see the launch products.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
But why is this news? I mean, go figure, a company gives it's own employees a device it makes in house. Does this warrant discussion at /.?
After reading this article i guess 90.000 people will cry out in pain once they get to know their phone. Its far beyond repair unless Microsofts postpone the launch by years.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/windows-phone-7-dont-bother-disaster-211?page=0,0
HTTP/1.1 400
Seriously call your union reps. No one should be treated in this way in a modern workplace.
Apple gave away the original IPhone and Google did so as well.
I'm sure the other phone makers have similar employee incentives.
How exactly is this news? Or some sought of new idea by MSFT?
But will it run Linux?
No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.
This is an awesome business strategy - with this many Microsoft workers seeing how flawed this device is will hopefully prevent future... ehh who am I kidding... they are there for the paychecks... not to create quality products.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
Or go mad with #define trickery to make your C++ code compile under CLI
I'm interested. Can you recommend a web page that describes how to set up a suitable header file to make a single C++ translation unit compile in /clr:safe and unmanaged modes?
Have any of you Zune haters actually used them??
Here's the problem. Unlike the iPod, where I can go to any electronics store and try one out, Zunes are always in a box, behind a glass case, or there's a fake one used for display. And since I don't know anybody who actually owns one, I've never been able to try one out.
Microsoft reports over 90,000 preorders already for its new forthcoming Windows Phone 7.
--
Frankly Microsoft's Zune Pass is really cool. The Zune HD is also a really nice device.
With the Zune Pass for $15 a month you get all the music you want.
You can then download $10 DRM free songs each month.
Not a bad deal at all. If I just wanted a music player I would really be tempted to get a Zune.
I wish that they offered it for my Android phone.
Yes I do not have a lot of hope for WinMo7 or WinPho7 or what ever they are calling it but in a way that is really too bad.
They have some good ideas and can produce good stuff.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's the beer glasses set on top of it that make the ring.
Didn't Microsoft do this with their Zune's a year or two ago? I seem to recall a blog from a MS employee of how everyone went back to their iPods. I'm sure this will be the same result.
If you don't answer this phone when I call, I get to void all 8 hours you worked today!
If you think that's illegal, how about "If you don't answer this phone when I call or check your voice mail, I get to bill you at minimum wage today!" or "If you don't answer this phone when I call or check your voice mail, I get to lock you out of the office today!"
I've used a lot of Windows Mobile phones with Windows Mobile 2003 to 6.5.3 (HTC Wallaby, Himalaya, Blue Angel, Magician, Universal, Athena, Diamond, Blackstone and now Leo, also TT7000 and four or five different Windows CE devices)
Only Windows Mobile 5 prior to AKU3.5 sucked (it was very slow and A2DP was broken), the rest worked as intended, although I've also downgraded from 6.5.3 back to 6.5 because I don't really like the new UI.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
They have 90,000 employees - so this phone will have ca. 91,000 users? ;-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
For starters, I am a little biased since I program primarily in C# and Silverlight so take it as you may.
I have always told people about my dislike for Apple products because they were so closed and tight and when the iPhone came out, I was like absoluetly not. I will never get one of those. (and to this day that has held true). However, about 6 months ago, I won a 32gig iTouch and I started to use it. To my surprise it was simple, elegent and worked. it was incredible. I have to admit that was impressed. I still wouldn't buy an Apple computer, but I have always been a PC guy and thats what I understand.
I have never used the Android phone so I can't say for sure one way or another if it is cool as well, however my friends say that they love it so that has to count for something.
Regarding the WP7, I am very excited about it, and not just as a fan boy. I have written apps for my windows mobile 6 phone but there did not seem to be a market for any of them, now with the new Marketpalce they are going to have on the phone, I am extatic to be able to put my games and apps up on the store to sell. What I ultimately would like to do, is make a multiplayer turn based game that is cross platform between the 3 systems so that my family (Who currently mostly have the iPhone) and my friends (Who currently mostly have the Android) can all play together. The big one that they love playing is 'Words with friends' and I must admit, I enjoy it as well with my iTouch.
I believe that Microsoft will get most of it right with this new phone OS because they are mimiking to an extent, Apple's App Store and Apples closed loop of what can be on the phone, i.e. XNA and Silverlight. While I would still like to be able to just write something and put it on my phone without going through the hastle of going through the app store, it might actually work out to be fine, because who knows, maybe one of the 3 games I am writing at this moment, will make me some money instead of it being just a hobby.
Things never change at Slashdot. The summary is needlessly incendiary and posters just jump the shark on the strawman without regards to reality. Or maybe it's karma whoring for mod points, but it usually works on here.
Apple supplies iPhones to employees and Google did the same with Nexus one:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/android-dogfood-diet-for-holidays.html
http://gps.about.com/b/2009/12/12/prototype-google-phone-released-to-employees-gps-features.htm
And who the hell talked about "success" in giving phones to employees and where did you get the news about job reviews and employees being forced to give up iPhones?
This space for rent.
Apple gave their employees free iPhones.
Google gave their employees Dream phones as a holiday bonus:
So according to you I suppose all these phones suck so much that they had to give them away.
The whole "eating your own dog food" thing is a bogus excuse for making desperate noises about WP7 after the 2 billion dollar KIN failure (right now, it's "more than a billion, less than 2 - but there are still some serious bills to be negotiated).
The problem isn't the giveaway - the problem is that the WP7 is a piece of crap software compared to what's out there right now - even Microsoft's own employees admit it - and will be even more of a piece of crap by the holiday season.
Doesn't matter - Ballmer is on his way out. The replacement will make Neutron Jack look like the fairy godmother. 50%.
Coincidentally, this will give a marvelous boost to their initial sales figures.
Microsoft can no more tie your job review to you giving up an iPhone than GM can fire you for driving a Ford.
Microsoft (and Ford for that matter) both can do those things.
What is illegal is telling you why they fired you, not the act of firing you for a illegitimate reason.
Yes the law is worded different to imply that isn't the case, but you can't look at the written law alone, you must look at the outcomes of the court cases.
Literally not a single company has ever gotten in legal trouble for firing someone and NOT stating the reason why.
It is only the ones that give a reason for being fired to the ex-employee, and a court decides that reason is a bad one.
From the outcome of all such cases, I can only conclude that firing someone for a crappy reason is not illegal, only telling them why you fired them is, as that is all that has ever been punished.
Watch out for every Windows PC coming preloaded with a Windows 7 mobile phone. I would put a smiley, but based on Microsoft's history ...
They padded the numbers by making all searches on their pages as a 'bing search' so as to pad the acceptance numbers.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Hmm... an employer "gives" employees a gps-enabled device with audio and video recording equipment inside. Sure. Why don't you just staple a plastic tag through their ears too?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/28/jobs-pulls-an-oprah-12m-in-iphones-for-all-apple-employees/
This space for rent.
So, what you're saying is that I'm wrong when I say that the accountants at Microsoft have more of an idea of what's financially good for the company than what I can, at best, assume is a random disgruntled employee of Microsoft? Just checking.
Several times per second. I'll leave you to figure that one out.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
They are called Microserfs not Microsofties. Microsofties are little tiny ShamWows.
Microsoft reports that 90,000 Windows Phone 7 devices have have been used during the first week they were sold.
The courts say otherwise. Plenty of people have gone to court over, for example, constructive dismissal, where the company not only doesn't give a reason, but doesn't even fire the person.
Ballmer doesn't know what he's talking about ... but that's nothing new.
Fact: 20% of Microsoft employees have an iPhone. They could have bought a Win-based phone, but chose not to. Why would they switch? Because it's free? Here - I've got an old Stinkpad that I'll give you for free if you switch from whatever you're using now.
Then again, like always, Ballmer doesn't know what he's talking about
Guess who is quickly rushing to the bottom to be the new 2-percenter. Hint - it's not Apple or Android or RIM or Palm. Of those, Microsoft is only ahead of Palm in new sales, and that will change once HP does their thing. HP has great corporate presence, as well as heavy lines into consumer sales (that comes from selling a lot of laptops and printers through retailers). Microsoft will be out of the mobile market in 2012, when their new market sales, already under 8% , drop below 1%.
And we called them lemmings - it's not the same as being not so subtly forced to use a crappy, already-outdated-before-its-even-released POS like WP7 when you have something better.
Oh sorry, oh you called? Oh Sorry it didn't ring. I guess it hanged again. Oh yeah I get my emails on that too but it hanged so I couldn't get in touch with you. lol. I can't wait.
Constructive dismissal is the illegal practice of changing the working conditions of the employee such that they have no real alternative but to quit. When the job conditions are changed too much, it's no longer the job you were hired for, so in effect the employer has terminated your original job, and instead silently substituted another one on a "take it or leave it" basis.
It's the employment equivalent of "bait-and-switch."
It can be anything from social ostracism (in one case, the employee was moved to a desk away from everyone else, and everyone else was instructed not to talk to them), to changing job tasks, pay cuts above a certain amount, sexual or other harassment, or simply not giving the employee the tools to do the job they were hired for.
the idea is to thank employees for all their work
You mean the idea is to have less employees use a certain competitor's phone.
I am not devoid of humor.
Oh come on.
When Apple gave out a free iPhone to almost all their employees, most of them tried it out and enjoyed it. You're always going to end up with one or two people like my coworker who sold hers and bought a $400 ladder. (pretty fancy ladder)
When Google gave out a G1 to all their employees, I know of several people who still have those. And I had a friend give hers away cuz she just didn't want to use it.
Whether or not the company gives them away isn't an issue. The real question is how many of the employees hang onto theirs before the next rev gets released.