[Humor] Fwd: Windows Vista

[Decibel!]

Begin forwarded message:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html? 
em&ex=1205294400&en=16c93380cf8296d8&ei=5087%0A

By RANDALL STROSS  Published: March 9, 2008


ONE year after the birth of Windows Vista, why do so many Windows XP  
users
still decline to “upgrade”?


Microsoft says high prices have been the deterrent. Last month, the  
company
trimmed prices on retail packages of Vista, trying to entice  
consumers to
overcome their reluctance. In the United States, an XP user can now buy
Vista Home Premium for $129.95, instead of $159.95.


An alternative theory, however, is that Vista’s reputation precedes  
it. XP
users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and friends  
about
Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip that couldn’t  
handle
Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The
applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other
hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the  
necessary
software, the drivers, to work well with Vista.


Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an “upgrade”?


Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go  
well.
Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity  
later)
upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer,
regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick  
with
XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.


Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person,  
Steven,
hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category —
“this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”


Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows  
Vista
Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in  
all
of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie  
Maker. His
report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo —  
lacks
the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video- 
editing
software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a  
$2,100
e-mail machine,” he says.


It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a  
Microsoft
vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is
dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A.
Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief  
operating
officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but
exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the
company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.


Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at  
Microsoft in
February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished
product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the
nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when  
they
really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does  
Not
Play Well With Others.


We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most  
senior
executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit
filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in
Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents. The
plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006,
before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista
Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that  
turned out
to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the  
features
Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits.


Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the
suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last week
appealed the certification decision.)


Anyone who bought a PC that Microsoft labeled “Windows Vista Capable”
without also declaring “Premium Capable” is now a party in the suit. The
judge also unsealed a cache of 200 e-mail messages and internal reports,
covering Microsoft’s discussions of how best to market Vista,  
beginning in
2005 and extending beyond its introduction in January 2007. The  
documents
incidentally include those accounts of frustrated Vista users in
Microsoft’s executive suites.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 2563 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.decibel.org/pipermail/humor/attachments/20080321/abb94d36/attachment.bin