Jeff--
I've seen all the dissembling disingenuous contradictory statements from
Allison Watson and her homegirls and linked them. I've read a lot of
disingenuous Allison Watsonese over the past few months and Sunny Jensen
Charlebois charley horsin' around with the English language.
Allison Watson, Corporate VP Worldwide Partner Group and Mommy of Watsonese
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/watson/default.mspx
Microsoft denies plans to give 'reparations' for Vista, Office 2007 delays
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9002372
When Is a Reparation Not a Reparation?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2003474,00.asp
They are meeting right now today and tomorrow to come up with a strategy
that may make reparrations for delays they need--if they stick to the time
table they have and push one of the Windows with the most potential as a
gleam in some eyes and the worst outcome on the ground clinically now, it
will be tragic. Maybe they lack the cojones to fix a half baked OS--time
will soon tell.
All I can do is put the newest build on my boxes, enjoy the challenges and
there are many instances where they say such and such hardware cannot work
in Vista, that Vista can't work on such and such controller, and they are
DEAD WRONG--have fun proving them wrong, so that they do not intimidate
people into buying what they don't need.
If you can afford the latest and greatest and some terrific users on this
group can, then that is the best of all possible worlds, but not everyone we
help with their computers can.
We have had people here very presciently illustrate what are the specific
parameters where Vista can run, and Colin, Mark, Lang and others have done a
great job of catalouging what hardware it can run on at both ends of the
spectrum.
It's also very helpful to watch Colin roll out his new computer and get a
good review of what works and what doesn't from someone you trust.
Here is some of the back pedalling and reparitions going on with MSFT and
respect to all their many byzantine licensure layers with it's own moving
target venacular.
Never forget, every good Softie knows they must use the word "leverage" in
every other sentence that has to do with Office or Exchange 2007 or Groove
or Live Meeting. I imagine that every line Stevie Sinofsky ever delivered
in a bar had "Ah wanna leverage things for ya baby in it." Sinofsky is
famous for cutting much needed features out of Office for years because MSFT
again thinks the public is too stupid to find or use them.
Office consultants have been pointing this out for years and lobbying for
them. Woody Leonhard's great books are full of them.
I wonder I wonder if Redmond will ever fix the moving toolbar icons on the
main toolbar that they've been promising build after build. They sure ain't
fixed no way in ole 5472--I keep having to put the damn things back on with
a right click. Not an OS breaker but highly annoying and it makes you
wonder if whomever is on the Win Mail team is doing the developing with a
blind fold on.
The slide projecting 400 million Vista desktops in 24 months MSFT was
privately circulating has pretty much fallen on the wishful thinking scrap
heap.
Corporations Look Before They Leap to Vista [You can bet your round
little start button in megathousands of numbers they will when they realize
how sick it is]:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1941463,00.asp
"Large businesses will get the first crack at upgrading to Microsoft's
new Windows Vista operating system. But chances are that they'll still be
the last to widely adopt it."
Vista is Constantly Having to Say We're Sorry and Lame/MSFT Reparations
Schemes/MSFT gets into the semantics game:
Opinion: When is a reparation not a reparation? Apparently, when it's a
"customer incentive" program.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1990058,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2000814,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2003474,00.asp
"
Instead, Microsoft has chosen to trot out Sunny Jensen Charlebois, the
product manager for its worldwide licensing and pricing group, to anyone who
will listen, so she can deny that any such thing is planned, and to
reinforce the message they want heard, which is that Microsoft always offers
programs to drive adoption when it rolls out a new Windows operating system.
Here are more details on exactly what Microsoft told us-based on a
transcript of an interview with Allison Watson, the corporate vice president
of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group, which I recorded at the annual
Microsoft worldwide partner conference in Boston in July.
When asked how Microsoft planned to address the fact that the delay in
releasing products like Vista and Office would significantly impact partners
and their customers who have volume licensing agreements and Software
Assurance, Watson said: "We have already identified all of the customers who
fall into these buckets and associated partners.
"And, starting two months ago, the worldwide field was empowered with offers
and incentives and a commitment to partner and customer satisfaction around
these issues," she said.
Watson did, however, also try to downplay the effect of product delays on
enterprise customers with volume licensing agreements, and the partners who
work with them, saying that for them it is less about when a piece of
software ships and more about how the software is delivered and supported
and affects the entire product family and their platform."
Gartner Blog : MSFT in Stonewall Mode and the Shoes Will Drop on it Hard
http://vista.blog.gartner.com/blog/index.php?itemid=1107
August, 2006 04:38 PM EST
Microsoft Says "No" to Reparations for SA Customers Due to Vista, Office
Slips
Posted By: Michael Silver, Research VP
"Microsoft has sold its Software Assurance (SA) program largely based on a
"Trust Me" platform. The company doesn't guarantee that a new version of a
product will be delivered during the term of the customer's SA contract.
Although Microsoft has tried to add value to SA since it was first announced
in 2001 (when the only benefits were new product versions and spread
payments), for most organizations, unless they get new software releases, a
three-year SA agreement does not make financial sense. They have had to
trust that Microsoft would ship a new release during their contracts or
would add sufficient value to make it not matter. For many customers that
renewed Office SA in September, October, and probably November 2003,
Microsoft has done neither. These customers got Office 2003 as part of their
prior SA and will not get Office 2007 unless they renew. Most Windows client
SA holders have not gotten a new release during their last renewal, either,
due to Windows Vista's delays, but it's the Office 2007 slip that's bringing
this issue to a head.
I spoke with a client in this predicament recently. This client has tens of
thousands of users and paid Microsoft millions of dollars for Office SA
during the past three years. Understandably, this client is not happy. Thus
far, Microsoft is stonewalling the customer's request to "make good" before
discussing renewal. Press reports on 8 August indicated that Microsoft was
finally relenting, but Microsoft insists that this is not the case. As
previously, company says it is discussing the situation on a one-to-one
basis, but thus far, our reports indicate that Microsoft will not discuss
the issue unless it is in the context of a new renewal. Understandably,
companies want satisfaction before they even think about renewing. Does this
fall into the realm of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on
me"?"
They are in big sales trouble and they know it. They will be making
concessions out the wazoo, and they will increase exponentially when a
significant number of people who know how to drill Vista at the surface and
open the hood start analytically cataloging failed features.
Right now, this moment, in 5506 and the daily builds beyond, they cannot
get Win RE their major recovery tool to work reliable a signifcant percent
of the time, nor can they make another old standby as a repair tool since
Win 98 SFC (Windows File Protection) work in their daily Vista builds.
Help is very incomplete; and extremly signficant is the fact that every
build is having a slow explorer shell response and the explorer shell is
unstable and breaks causing not only multiple Windows Explorer Problems but
also internet connectivity problems necessitating frequent workarounds to
run IE as elevated at first and then used tabbed browsing to continue
opening windows.
Marketing is lamely turning to a very flawed deployment, UAC which is gong
to cause huge consternation and huge help desk time wastes and huge home and
small business confusion, and such pre-teen targets as Side Bar gadgets
which have been around since the 1980's free by 3rd party with exponentially
more sophisticated functionality and such superficial features that add
little to the OS's working like Aero Glass. They sure have gotten more than
their bang out of Aero Glass. They are also redduced to marketing something
as lame as putting Windows Live links into Vista, for those not able to
learn and type
www.live.com which is a very sophistcated and complex url to
commit to memory.
These superficial features, hardly needed, are a great diversion from the
train wreck Vista has evolved to.
CH
