On the heels of Gizmondo's extremely stupid remedial pranks at CES 2008, comes news that some sites are proclaiming that the next release of Windows, currently dubbed Windows 7, will be released in H2 of 2009.
Microsoft
Idiocy reigns supreme in the EU
My Microsoft wishlist 2008 - #16-23
16. Set a credible baseline hardware requirement for functional UE scenarios. Remember that OEMs right now can create the most basic, and basically, useless configurations, and offload buyer angst at Microsoft. I seem to remember somewhere that the Windows Mobile people got the message, and are vowing to limit certifications of Windows Mobile devices to those that would deliver a realistic user experience to buyers henceforth. The Windows client team would do well to require that sort of baseline, or a very visible disclaimer as well.
17. Create a series of reference designs embodying the most forward-thinking innovations in the desktop, notebook, Origami, and server spaces., and use them as a cudgel to move stale and environmentally unfriendly design forward
18. Use data collected by crash reports or the CEIP to create a database of programs to be SoftGrid’d. The usefulness of application virtualization cannot be understated. I would like Microsoft to use the collected data to create a database of SoftGrid containers for the most problematic 10,000 programs as reported to the databases for inclusion in either the next service pack or the next version of Windows, eliminating a source of customer anger.
19. Use the same data to expose bad software OEMs, either directly or using a proxy. I volunteer.
20. Expand the role and visibility of the Microsoft Solutions Accelerators program. While I know the wonks on the SA team have enough on their plates, I feel the gongs have not pealed loudly enough yet. This program is a godsend. It is my opinion that were evangelists sent out with the MSDN, TS2, and TechNet teams to proselytize the usefulness of the components of the Solutions Accelerators, much of the annoyance directed at Microsoft by IT pros in this Windows Vista migration era would abate, since these solutions would greatly ease, and in some cases, completely automate migratory tasks.
21. Improve and increase the current SkyDrive offerings. Seamless integration with Hotmail should be task #1 for SkyDrive. To a lot of users, it would represent Web 2.0 nirvana: Windows Live ID, mail, Office Workspace, collaboration, instant messaging.
22. Improve the stickiness of the Windows Live properties by adding usable VOIP phone services, or even a GrandCentral-like service, and a working Internet fax gateway such as j2.com offers.
23. Re-do Windows Search completely. Search as it currently is in Windows Vista, frankly, sucks! The UI is flawed, non-customizable, slow, and worst of all, the results are inconsistent. I get better results opening up a command line and entering in the search parameters there. Do I need to add that indexing is the mother of resource hogs?
My Microsoft wishlist 2008 - #7-15
7. Innovate, truly innovate, with both the user interface (UI) and the user experience (UE) from a consumer standpoint, not the staid/stale enterprise viewpoint; steal a play from the iPhone playbook for goodness sakes. From stuff I have seen (under a permanent NDA), Microsoft can be truly innovative when it comes to virtually everything to do with user interfaces and bringing a luxurious and breathtaking user experience to everyone. However, something gets lost in the translation from the designs to the delivered product, with the innovations being shed for conformal acceptance with the enterprise. The loops at #1, Infinite Loop nice up the very same product, and wow, a new paradigm is born.
8. Integrate application virtualization (SoftGrid) into every version of Vista. File this under no-brainer! This would mitigate the applications compatibility hassles for both this version of Windows Vista and the next.
9. Improve the usability of the default applications. Windows Mail. WordPad. Need I say more? While it cannot be on the same level as retail programs, basic default programs need to be useful.
10. Sign OEM distribution deals for Windows Live applications. Apart from the current shipping version of Windows Live Mail, the Windows Live family of programs deserves to be the default programs for Windows. Due to antitrust concerns, I understand why Microsoft cannot make them the default programs; however, I do not see why Microsoft should not aggressively pursue distribution deals with systems OEMs for the Windows Live products.
11. Make a definite push towards native 64-bit applications for Microsoft products. There is nothing more disconcerting than seeing that version 2007/2008 Microsoft applications are 32-bit only.
12. Stand fast on signing requirements for 64-bit apps. Another plus for Microsoft.
13. Make Home Premium the most basic model of Vista, killing Home Basic most unmercifully. This should be carried out with immediate effect! Right now, and with #15 below, Microsoft is getting killed on delivered features. I don’t see the business case for Windows Vista Home Basic, not from a consumer or IT pro’s POV.
14. Truly create a family pack for Vista, not the short-lived pseudo two-fer BS crap. Multiple households are the norm in the US of A. why isn’t there a family pack a la OS X?
15. On-demand paper manuals. For long-lasting consumer goodwill and reducing tech support hassles, restart sending out paper user manuals gratis; in this case, a truly useful manual. To save trees, the offer could/should be limited to a one-time offer mail-in or online redemption
My Microsoft wishlist 2008 - #1-6
This is my wishlist from Microsoft for 2008. Apart from #1, they are in no particular order.
1. Tell your own story! For the past several years, probably since the advent of the spate of antitrust lawsuits against it, Microsoft has let others tell spin The Microsoft Story.
As a result, the public gets information filtered through the biases of the storytellers, usually wrong, and almost always pushing some agenda.
The perception of failure those erroneous tales dump on successful products, and the dreadful stigma of that stench of failure rankles. For goodness sakes, every 0.01% market share gain by Firefox is greeted by shouts of joy, while the news a few days ago that Internet Explorer 7, or IE7, had become the dominant browser was hidden several levels deep!
What I want to see in 2008 is Microsoft being proactive with telling its story, become more aggressive in debunking stupid myths and downright untrue stories, and attempting to get back to loving the consumer side of its businesses.
I would also like to see the company re-engage Microsoft and Windows evangelism with renewed vigor and fervor, empowering committed evangelists and enthusiasts with the tools needed to battle the lies.
2. Participate in the 700 MHz auction. Either overtly, or through surrogates. In order to create new, subscription-based innovations. One can only imagine what would have happened if Microsoft had owned a national swathe of spectrum when it introduced the SPOT watches? Furthermore, securing this also flanks Google.
3. Simplify the EULA. The EULA continues to be a source of pain and confusion for end users. As a document written by well-heeled lawyers for other presumably well-heeled lawyers, it leaved end users out in the cold with legalistic verbiage. Simplify, and win back Joe 12-pack.
4. Reduce CALs fees. A personal peeve, one that always crops up during competitive bargaining sessions with L-heads.
5. Sunset Windows XP and lower with the next release of Windows. While painful, the down level floor set with Windows Vista (Windows XP) was the right thing to do. Microsoft should do the same and more for the next version of Windows.
6. Definitely make a HUGE consumer marketing push. While marketing to enterprises seems to be going about as good as can be, I will say that Microsoft has failed definitely when it comes to consumers, who seem to have been forgotten.
EDITED “Why don’t you expand on this”, asks Ash Nallawalla, (Net Magellan, ZuneUserGroup) FC member. Prior to the release of Windows Vista™, Microsoft inundated the airwaves with all things Vista. You had to be on the far side of the moon not to have heard about Windows Vista. Coupled with that was the incredible VanishingPoint game (I’m still looking for Loki’s phone number), which galvanized enthusiasts two ways: the promise of orbital travel, and the mental titillation provided by the clues to the game.
After that, nothing! Nothing at all from a consumer standpoint. It was as if it was left to the Team Blog, enthusiasts, and word-of-mouth marketing to carry the load.
Contrast that with the pervasiveness of ads and resources for IT professionals. Or, taking it to the extreme, the myriad number of ads for Apple’s music player.
Don’t get me wrong, from a business standpoint, the marketing to IT pros made my job easier. However, I want all the world blanketed with this OS, which I think is the best out there for consumers.
At this point, I see Microsoft running the risk of becoming IBM in their abandonment of the consumer.
CES 2008: Microsoft Partner Pavilion
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Microsoft Partner Pavilion, Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada
In what is fast becoming a Pre-CES Sunday tradition, members of the Microsoft Windows Featured Communities were given an advance (totally NDA’d) tour of the Microsoft Partner Pavilion.
Pretty cool.
Zune 8
I am the recipient, through friends at Microsoft, of a new Zune 8, in a beautiful red color.
Read on >>>DeskScapes for All
Stardock is releasing DeskScapes for free! (Standard Edition only)
This is a big bone thrown to the users of less-than-Ultimate Windows Vista™.
Technorati Tags: Stardock, DreamScapes, DeskScapes, DreamMaker, WinCustomize, Windows Vista, Microsoft, Island Dog, Draginol, AbsoluteVista.com, SmallBizVista.com, John Obeto
Zune 2.0
The (new) Zunes have landed!
Technorati Tags: Zune, ZuneThoughts.com, Microsoft, John Obeto, AbsoluteVista.com, SmallBizVista.com
Windows Consumer Experience Space I: Hardware
Last week I was at the Microsoft Windows Consumer Experience space in New York City.
At this event, primarily targeted at the consumer, as the name proclaims, I saw the directions being embarked upon by manufacturers in the notebook space and also in the gaming and all-in-one systems space.
My takeaway: watch out!
These systems represent the vanguard of a new thought process in delivering products in the PC space, with great design being in lockstep with engineering.
I demo-ed the following systems:
- HP dv2500
- HP dv9500
- Gateway One
- Dell Inspiron 1520/1521
- Dell XPS 720
- Dell XPS M1330
- Sony Vaio CR
- Sony Vaio SZ
- Sony Vaio VGS-LS
- Toshiba Satellite x205
Technorati Tags: Windows Consumer Experience Space , Microsoft , Windows Vista , Dell , Sony , HP , Gateway , Toshiba , John Obeto , AbsoluteVista.com , SmallBizVista.com , Logikworx , HP dv2500 , HP dv9500 , Gateway One , Dell Inspiron 1520/1521 , Dell XPS 720 Sony Vaio CR , Sony Vaio SZ Sony Vaio VGS-LS , Dell XPS M1330 , Toshiba Satellite x205 , HP Blackbird 002
Upgrade to OS X Leopard, receive BSOD as reward
Windows Experience Space
I have been at the Windows Experience Space event in New York City for the past few days, hence the dearth of posts on this blog.
Over this weekend, I shall be posting about the event and the epiphany I had about a much-maligned Microsoft property. Stay...(read more)
Technorati Tags: John Obeto , Windows Vista , Microsoft , Windows Experience Space , Windows Live , AbsoluteVista.com
Microsoft FAM roundup
in Microsoft
While I was OTG most of the past week and this week as well (hiding from Wifey to blog), Microsoft held its latest Financial Analysts Meeting or FAM in Microsoft-speak.
Tiernan Ray, in Barrons, has a roundup of observations from a number of analysts here.
Tiernan Ray, in Barrons, has a roundup of observations from a number of analysts here.
Salesforce.com not worried?
By Microsoft’s hosted applications moves?
They should be!
If there is a software CEO not directly touched (before today) by Microsoft, it was Benioff.
What a loudmouth buffoon the tosser is!
If you look at the easily-surmountable head start he has in his spaces, hosted CRM and salesforce automation, you sorta realize why he constantly flapped his gums derisively towards Microsoft.
He was afraid!
Truly petrified!
Read on at the Microsoft Subnet on NetworkWorld.com
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft hosted applications
Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.0 released
WVHA v2.0 was released earlier today.
Baldwin Ng, a Supremo (PM) on the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment team has details about this version here.
In my post here, I touched on the availability of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment, a free tool from Microsoft that allows IT managers an incredibly detailed inventory of corporate (Windows) client computing assets, both hardware, and installed software.
Prior to the release of Windows Vista™, we at Logikworx had come up with a hardware baseline for delivering the Windows Vista Aero ‘Glass’ experience to client desktops. After validating that baseline, we then proceeded to inventory all (yes, all!) our clients’ companies’ computers, no small task, as it was spread over several hundred clients.
Well, you don’t have to do the same.
WVHA eliminates the manual labor associated with having to physically visit each computer, since hardware configuration might have changed from the date of delivery and/or initial install.
I have been testing the release (GOLD) version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment for the past few days.
Lies, damn lies and utter speculation!
A very insidious rumor making the rounds the past few days has been the speculation the reason Microsoft didn’t go through with a planned change easing the EULA restrictions on the Windows Vista™ Home editions on June 19 was as a result of some double-secret agreement with Apple.
Let us see: Microsoft would take extremely great pains to alienate a gazillion current and future users of Windows Vista™ Home edition just for a few Macs?
Are you kidding?
The essence of the rumor was that Microsoft, as a result of a deal with Apple to ship Macbooks (or whatever their lappers are called) with Windows on a Boot Camp’ed partition, removed it since Apple wanted the additional revenue from selling Windows Vista. The availability of Safari, iTunes, and a host of other Apple software products made such a supposition logical.
Logical, yes. But only if you live permanently in Steve Job's RDF*.
Again, are you kidding?
A billion monkeys, thumping away at a billion Selectric® keyboards, in a billion years could not come up with a rumor like this! They could come up with the screenplay for Battlefield Earth – which, incidentally, I think they did – but not this rumor.
Current folklore puts the OEM cost of Windows Vista at anywhere from $39.99 to $49.99 USD for Vista Home and Home Premium editions.
One of the strictures imposed on Microsoft in its antitrust settlement with the DOJ was a level pricing structure for all OEMs, eliminating the MFN* status of some companies.
Now, I know that Intel is sort of biting the hand that feeds it, in giving Apple certain chips that do not seem to be available to Dell, at least to this unconnected blogger. Nevertheless, I do not think, indeed, I know that Microsoft is not cut of that cloth.
So, to please Apple, which, BTW, sells a maximum of about 5 million systems per year total, Microsoft would stay the course, and deny benefits to current and prospective users of Windows Vista, not including the untold numbers, estimated at around 800 million systems running a form of Windows?
Are you still kidding me?
As a One-Man Microsoft Myth & Debunk Squad, I decided to rifle through Ye Olde Email Rolodex and try to get an answer from Redmondians.
I immediately ran into a skepticism buzz saw!
“Are you making this up?” I was asked?
I pointed out a few sites with rumors.
“Dude, that will never come to pass!” I was informed, “Not even if St. Jobs danced the Macarena in an MSN Butterfly suit at Pike Place Market!”
“Thank you”, I said, and punched out.
Another call to a well-connected source at 1, Microsoft Way, exploded with the same skeptical guffaw!
Conclusion:
Apple might be the next big thing, but only in the minds of the horde worshipping at the feet of Reverend Paulie.
Microsoft will never change, or not change its EULA to please Apple.
There you have it.
*RDF: Reality-Distortion Field. An invisible, yet tightly-controlled force field emanating from Steve Jobs, and capable of not only enveloping conference halls, arenas, and stadia, but is capable of being projected trans-continentally by Steve in order to put victims in a state of adoration and euphoria, distorting all reality.
*MFN: Most-Favored Nation or OEM. The institution of an extremely generous, albeit secret, pricing scheme for OEMs who decide to carry Microsoft products and technologies exclusively. This practice is not limited to Microsoft alone. It has been rumored that Intel, for years, paid MFN dues to Dell to the tune of $1 billion USD.
Hurray for Ecma TC46
Ecma international is probably the only progressive standards body out there.
Thanks to them we have Ecma 376, currently submitted to the ISO for certification as a standard, and now, TC46.
TC46, full name TC46- XPS Technical Committee, is a technical committee just formed to develop a standard based on Microsoft's XML Paper Specification.
About time, Microsoft!
I am pleased that Microsoft is pursuing a standards-based certification for this excellent product; excellent even in this first iteration.
As usual, those that cannot, whine! They are miffed that their input was either not solicited, nor required for Ecma 376 (Open Office XML), and might not be for TC46.
I understand.
Dudes, you have been outed as being irrelevant to these processes.
Just go away already.
Sutor, Updegrove, you know who I'm talking about!
Previous posts
- Microsoft Office and the Small Business
- ODF format loses traction
- XPS Essentials Pack
- The Office-less office?
- The XPS document format
- Open XML is on ISO fast track
- Microsoft calls out Blue
- Open XML, your new document standard
- Breaking news: Apple not worried about Zune!
- Microsoft XML schemas proposed as standards
- Mass Govt moves to OpenDocument – III
- Mass Govt moves to OpenDocument – II
- Mass Govt moves to OpenDocument
Microsoft Stirling
Microsoft gets security!
Continuing its security onslaught, Microsoft earlier this week announced ‘Stirling’, a new, holistic (my words) security platform for businesses.
Come into my parlor....
in 235 Patents, Linux, Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft, Xandros, patents
....said the spider to the fly.
And you know how that ended.
Yesterday, longtime Microsoft observer Mary Jo Foley, divulged that Xandros may have already inked a coopetition deal such as Novell's with Microsoft.
Smart of Xandros, isn't it?
Listen, they are in the business of providing services, not selling software.
This allows them (Xandros) to keep fleecing their customers on (supposedly) value added services while all the time chanting that the software is after all, free.
(Like a coke dealer would give away samples to get victims hooked. But I digress...)
Mary Jo also thinks that the timing of this announcement was off.
While I generally agree with her, I must disagree with her contention that this timing was off.
I was, IMO, the very best time to do it.
Now the big mouths in the distro business know there is a target painted on their backs. Hopefully, they would do the right thing by their respective constituencies, and sign on the dotted line.
If Microsoft was wrong, do you think any other Linux distro vendor would have paid any tribute to them, even if it is peanuts?
No matter what the neo-communistic rantings of Stallman, and the pseudo-legalistic nonsense being declared by Moglen, coupled with the moronic incantations of the cattle known as the open source crowd is, the suits (the actual adults) in the distro businesses, know that they are infringing on Microsoft's IP.
Otherwise, why would they sign these non-aggression pacts?
That slow, hissing sound is the sound of air being let out of the sails of the yum-yums who thought MSFT was kidding when they said 235 patents were violated.
I cannot wait for RHAT to sign; I have a bottle of Cristal champoo chillin' just for that day!
Cue that fine, and apropos song by the late, great Freddie Mercury & Queen, "Another One Bites The Dust"!
Copyright © 2006, John Obeto II for SmallBizVista.com®
Technorati tags: Microsoft, 235 patents, All About Microsoft, Mary Jo Foley, Xandros, patents, Linux
Open source envy over 235 violated Microsoft patents
In my NetworkWorld.com post here, I repeated Microsoft’s position that free and open source and Linux (hereinafter referred to as foux) infringes on no less than 235 Microsoft patents.
The open source crowd's invidiousness over Microsoft's patents, and indeed, it's (Microsoft's) entire IP portfolio and good fortune reached a defeaning crescendo this past week, with everyone and their shadows weighing in.
A little backgrounder:
In the May 14, 2007 issue of Fortune magazine, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, and licensing chief, Horacio Gutierrez informs users about the exact number of patents that are being infringed upon by the foux crowd.