The Mother-in-law versus Vista battle cold war never ends. Every week, it’s something different that goes wrong that brings us to the brink of annihilation, and I have to swoop in on the weekends to fix the inevitable new problem that comes up. Fortunately, I have the system more or less stabilized, and I finally figured what was going wrong with her Multiple Listing System printing out all sorts of HTML garbage issue. You care about how I figured it out, right? No? Well, too bad.
Today you will see the best campaign Microsoft did since its beginings! Now do you love Windows Vista or not? This is how bad things have gotten for Microsoft Corp.: The software behemoth has a virtual monopoly in computer operating systems, and yet it still can’t get people to buy the latest version of its flagship product, Windows. In fact, things are so bleak for Windows Vista that customers have actually launched campaigns aimed at saving Vista’s stiffest competition — the previous version of Windows, XP, which is now so old in technology years that it should qualify for Social Security.
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Such is the case with 64-bit computing. Advanced Micro Devices launched 64-bit chips for the desktop back in 2003, hoping the fact that it was there and didn’t cost extra would convince consumers. “Our industry, right now, is hungry for another round of innovation,” AMD chief Hector Ruiz told the crowd at the San Francisco launch in September 2003. Not that hungry, apparently.
While Microsoft recently reported it has collectively shipped some 180 million units licensed with Windows Vista, the numbers might not exactly ring true thanks to reports from HP, Dell, and others that say they’ve been opting to ship PCs downgraded to XP instead. Microsoft’s 180 million units-sold figure is therefore misleading since it includes these units that don’t truly include Vista.
Microsoft always paints a picture of the competitive landscape in when it files its annual 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a sign of the times, there are a few new clouds when this year’s report was filed Thursday, including a Web browser’s first appearance as a threat to Windows, Microsoft’s biggest cash cow.
Microsoft is extending its Windows Vista marketing efforts even further by releasing a series of tuning tips to download. The company has published some well known tips to speed up Windows Vista in one way or another, in PDF and XPS formats.
Mojave - codenamed after the desert in the US - is the new operating system that Microsoft “tested” on some ordinary people who only had bad things to say about Vista. Almost all of them liked it a lot - wow, awesome, really cool, the speed is incredible - and were interested in using it.
As the release of Windows Vista approached, the reports about how neat it was quickly turned to reports about how messed up it was, or still is: dropped features, poor performance, compatibility problems, crashes, you name it. Most of that was overblown. Certainly the computers that ran the five-year-old Windows XP couldn’t all be expected to run Vista well (even the much-heralded Mac OS bumps-up system requirements significantly over that span of time).
Microsoft is mad as hell over the industry’s negative view of Vista, and the software giant isn’t going to take it anymore. In the latest sign of Microsoft’s growing frustration with Vista critics, Chris Flores, a director with the Windows Client communications team, hotly disputed a recent Forrester report that claims Vista just isn’t making much headway with business users, characterizing Forrester’s findings as “schizophrenic.”
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Ok, so the ‘wow’ didn’t exactly happen in quite the way Microsoft hoped but are we all being a little too harsh on Windows Vista? Microsoft certainly thinks so. It’s set out to prove that, if we just gave Vista a chance, we’d all be ditching XP and Windows 2000 quicker than you can say ‘blue screen of death’.
Rarely does a week go by that there isn’t at least one story in the media about the supposed shortcomings of Windows Vista or how companies are scorning it because of incompatibilities or a perceived lack of business value. Reading this coverage, you might get the impression that Windows Vista’s predicament is unique among the various versions of Windows. A decade spent helping customers assess the savings and business value of a Windows upgrade tells me otherwise.
Javvin Technologies, Inc. has just published the Windows Vista Security Quick Guide. Windows Vista security quick guide covers all daily used Windows Vista security features and options, provides quick solutions when crisis happens, and gives tips for users to better manage his/her system to achieve security goals.
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It has been a year-and-a-half since Microsoft launched Vista. And yet, in some IT circles, mentioning Vista in a crowd of IT professionals evokes a snarling reaction that’s normally associated with throwing a raw steak to a pack of Rottweilers. With that in mind, it’s worth pondering the question: What’s the real source of the continued negativity around Vista, and why do some IT professionals still love to tear it apart whenever it’s mentioned?
After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista’s skeptics. Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.
Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time. ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go something like this:
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