Submitted by “As someone who wants Microsoft to be cooler, I’m all for them making an aggressive pitch to consumers. I say make Windows 7 a simplified, colorful, fun experience for everyday users. Emphasize how it can store and share music and photos. Keep those potential Mac users from switching. Heck, open up retail stores while you’re at it.
But of course Microsoft has to walk the line here. By kowtowing to consumers, it runs the risk of neglecting its core customer, the business user. In a recent interview on CIO.com sister site Network World, Windows blogger and editor of Supersite for Windows Paul Thurrott contends that Microsoft is biting the hand that feeds it by leaning heavily on consumer features with Windows 7. Enterprise needs have been reduced to an afterthought, he says.”
No, Microsoft is focused on Consumers’ pockets. Otherwise they wouldn’t shamelessly present Windows 7 as a new version. If they were focused on consumers they would release Windows 7 as a service pack to Vista.
A service pack for a failing product? nah, it’s a much better idea to distance windows 7 from vista as much as possible. Too many people think vista is shit.
I guess one could view the quip of a service pack as another way of saying, “give it to the customer as a free upgrade” – and I agree. They should give it out for a nominal fee for the media plus a licence. As for the support – charge them extra for it. In other words when you get the ‘free’ upgrade, all you are paying for is the software but you get no technical support out of the box.
I tend to agree with the sentiment – although the problem with Microsoft (and why Windows Vista happened) is that they promote people to management positions who should never have been promoted, they have myopic developers who are so immersed in the Microsoft culture that they’ve never ventured out beyond Microsoft land to see the alternative views on how to tackle a problem.
People talk about Steve Jobs and the reality distortion field – Microsoft has their own reality distortion field and as a result it limits its employee’s to the angle and scope in which problems can be tackled. They keep attacking the problems from the same angle and wonder why things aren’t working – maybe they need to realise that they need to approach it from an entirely new angle.
Edited 2009-01-31 03:30 UTC
..can Thom go a day without pushing Windows Seven in one form or another? Geeze just how large are those kickbacks?
–bornagainpenguin
It is like this on any site that even pretends to be a general tech site.
I actually find OSNews tends not to run with the most over the top things I have read about windows 7.
Just goes to show how little good journalism there is out there on the interwebs. I mean, Vista had alot of shortcomings coming out of the gate, but the tech media made it sound like it caused cancer and was made out of babies. Windows 7 is shaping up to be a pretty good windows release, but its being heralded as the Jesus of the operating system world.
Take this stuff with a grain of salt, and dont let it bother you. It was submitted by a reader, and put on page 2.
Edited 2009-01-30 03:13 UTC
Let enterprise OS’s be an “afterthought”. It should be the most profitable. Strip down the consumer-grade version of the software, test the bejeezus out of it for stability, and call it Corporate OS 1.0 Businesses aren’t, or shouldn’t be, on the same upgrade cycle as the home user is.
MS knows it’s locked in as a platform in the business world. And the licensing money keeps flowing in.
Businesses say Microsoft focuses on the customer too much. Customers say Microsoft focuses on the businesses too much. What of it? Some people will hate it anyway, some people will say it’s the best thing ever, and it’s not like Microsoft really needs to care what they think. They have money in the bank and a lock on what the average person thinks constitutes a ‘computer’
Amen 😉
Of course Microsoft have concentrated their efforts to please the consumer.
Business need a simple to use, easy on the eye, basic interface. Windows Classic was that interface.
Joe Bloggs needs bright, shiny things, hence the new “cool” KDE type interface.
How will this new gay interface help businesses get their work done ?
How will sharing music and photos and making videos help the average accountancy firm ?
Microsoft needs to have a quick rethink, and include Windows Classic in the final version
You mean Orb, right click Computer, Properties, Advanced System Settings, Advanced, Settings, Adjust for best performance?
That turns the interface into “windows classic” aka Win2000
It’s in win7 already.
Windows Classic has been removed….
http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/windows_7.asp
It can use a Vista compatible theme to look like classic, but it should still have been left in the default install
The problem with Windows 7 is the same one as Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. It’s Microsoft refusing to address the underlying problem of an aged OS design filled with inherently flawed ideas.
The registry is a horrendously flawed idea and they need to do away with it. I’m sure that it seemed like a great idea 17 years ago when Windows NT was first released, but it’s been turned into a means of hiding and obsfuscating DRM schemes that render it nigh on impossible to fathom.
It’s Microsoft burdening their latest OS with countless lines of code so that people who probably won’t upgrade anyway could upgrade and still run ancient apps on elderly hardware.
I’m typing this on a Mac Pro I got yesterday afternoon, having converted from Windows to Mac about five months ago (after having used every version of Windows from Windows 286 onwards). All of my apps, settings, e-mail, etc. transferred over smoothly from a “Time Machine” backup volume. It’s like the anti-Windows: Microsoft actually tries to stop you from moving apps from one computer to another. Being a Microsoft customer is like being a black customer in a Asian-owned Harlem convenience store: They are willing to sell to you, but the assumption is that you are probably trying to steal something. I finally got tired of it and decided to buy from a company that does not encumber their OS and applications with phone-home DRM activation schemes and continuously running processes whose sole function is to keep you from circumventing said activation and DRM.