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,” Saul Hansell reports for The New York Times. “I imagine the statement would have to go something like this:”
Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say. Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next operating system will be better. Pinky swear.
Hansell writes, “Those aren’t exactly the words they use, but it is certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started running on its site… It shows a painting of a tall ship with the headline ‘At one point everyone thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows Vista.'”
Hansell writes, “[What] a dreadful place for Microsoft to be. It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the other… Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which you would rather read about first: a something new from Google, Apple or Microsoft?”
“After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to convince people that Windows Vista is not awful,” Hansell writes. “But just because you can show the earth is not flat, doesn’t mean you will rule the new world.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Davis Machead” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Windows. It is your father’s OS.
What’s so sad is that this $500M can go to:
> poor families
> beaten/trashed kids
> beaten wives
> homeless
> 9/11 families
> unfortunate, genius young people who don’t have the $750k to go to Harvard, Yale, etc.
Tell a lie often enough and people will believe it came out of Nazi Josef Goebbel’s playbook.
The hilarious thing is that Microsoft will pay that half-billion sum to creative agencies, who use Macs (often with Linux render farms). Those creative agencies will in turn pay the money to Mac software developers and to Apple.
I love Microsoft sometimes. Thanks, Ballmer! You da man!
$750K to go to Harvard??? What, are you buying a house on campus?
The list price of a Harvard education is $42K per year, but the average student only pays $25K after grants. That’s $100K for a four-year degree, not $750K.
Mmmmm Outback…
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Oughtta take you outback behind the wood shed and tan your hide for gettin’ a Windahs laptop..
The Harvard price was just a guess, Sum. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from a graduate at one time…
What? The Earth is NOT FLAT!!!!!
Microsoft’ll be telling us the Sun DOESN’T revolve around the Earth next!
“That’s $100K for a four-year degree, not $750K.”
The balance is for drugs, keggers, hookers, bribes and secret society fees.
It’s the recommended budgeting plan for undergrads with political aspirations.
“Windows. It is your father’s OS”
Like hell. Dad brought home an Apple IIc back in the day. I’m the dummy that spent years in the working world on PCs.
…I got better.
At one point everyone thought you have to use Microsoft for your computing needs. Until…
I have a Windoze machine for gaming (glorified game box, yeh) — my newest one came with Vista. Never would’ve bought a PC in the first place if the boneheads who made City of Heroes would have made a Mac version when it came out. So COH and WoW are the primary uses of the PC. It also gets used for a little web-surfing and recording an audio stream now and then. Minimal use outside of gaming. I use my old Mac laptop for everything else.
I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but at first I liked Vista better than XP for one reason: Vista is less difficult to pretty up (understatement, XP was so dog-**** ugly no matter what I did to it that just about anything was an improvement). However…
Notice I said “liked” up there — I’ve found out that City of Heroes runs like crap on Vista and figuring out what to do to fix whatever the eff is wrong with it is like deciphering an alien language with a 50 billion letter alphabet. Some days it’s so damn aggravating I just throw my hands up and turn it off.
If I had the cash to buy a new Mac, I’d get one and dump the PC for gaming. It can’t be worse than what I put up with now to play COH.
What I’m getting at is: okay, so you can kinda “polish” the turd (make Vista look prettier than XP), but it’s still a turd.
Every day I see so many posts about how bad Windows Vista is that I have to wonder if all those complaining about it actually used it. I guess most of them are just following the stories on the web without getting the actual facts. I run both Vista and OS X Leopard. Vista runs on an HP laptop and OS X on a Macbook Pro and they both run well, no actually, very well.
I am not more productive on the Mac than on Vista or the other way around. I can find great applications for both OSes. OS X has not crashed on me but neither did Vista. They are both fast with Vista feeling faster but the HP notebook has better specs.
Just use what you think is best for you but don’t base your opinion on what you read on the web. Work with both for a while and then make up your mind!
“Windows. It is your father’s OS”
Not true. My dad died before he ever even touched a computer. My mom on the other hand had an old Mac ci that she played solitare on.
She loved that machine……
Hey it’s funny but if the company with the most prolific market share needs to spend £500m to get people to buy it’s latest OS then Vista must be just a polished turd.
I am sure when Apple are finally a household name for Macs as well as the iPod and the iPhone they will not need to spend anything get their message out. Their users will do it for them like we always have done
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PMSL.
@ericdano
The WOW starts now.
Even Windows 95 isn’t bad. Imagine if you had nothing but DOS!
People are so friggin spoiled.
Suck it up and deal–Windows is awesome when you imagine what you might be stuck with if there was no Mac and no Windows at all.
Or be an Apple nutcase just because it’s “new” or something. Your call.
@nrrdgrrl – CoH runs great on Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro. If you get the chance, switch.
Guess the new XBox garage developers now know where MSFT is gonna spend the money they’ll make off of them.
Half a billion dollars? Half… a billion… dollars!?
I’m beginning to wonder if MS hold cash burning parties in their HQ. They truck the money in, dump it in a great pile and pour gasoline all over it.
And once the cash is burnin’, do MS employees dance and chant for MS’s ‘continued’ success, or Apple’s misfortune?
Eitherway, all the money in the world won’t buy Vista favor. It was doomed in the moment of conception.
I really hope that Apple comes out with the iTele before Microsoft. I’d hate to have a blue screen in the middle of a teleport.
Microsoft is so pathetic..
Half a billion dollars thrown away to prop up a turd with some advertsising. You almost have to feel sorry for them..note I said “almost”..
@Geert:
I suppose everyone’s milage may vary, and I respect your experience with both systems. However, you should know that a significant portion-not all by any means – but a significant portion – of people on this forum are dedicated Apple users who use, or are forced to use various forms of Doze at work and relish the prospect of returning home at night to use OS X.
We KNOW Doze backwards and forwards because we use it everyday for 8 hours. The day after day comparison of the two systems has taught us that OS X is a more robust, technologically superior OS. That’s why many of us have the negative comments listed daily here about M$ OSs.
I think it’s great that you like both, nothing wrong with that, but I will tell you flat out that there is a far higher percentage of people switching from Doze to OS X due to disgust with Doze than the other way around.
@DH
took longer than 5 years to bring out vista. Try 7
From an article on The Mac Observer published today…
“The second version of the Vista Adoption Trends survey clearly demonstrates Microsoft is still fighting an uphill battle with Vista and the release of Vista Service Pack 1 did little to change corporate opinion about the operating system,” said Diane Hagglund of King Research and the survey?s author. “These same IT departments are evaluating alternative methods to stave off Vista deployment with many moving to the Mac operating system instead. This brings up a whole new set of challenges related to managing heterogeneous environments and compounds the importance of systems management devices that deliver a single interface for diverse operating systems.”
A summary of the findings:
• 60 percent of the survey respondents indicated they have no plans to deploy Vista at this time, up from 53 percent in the 2007 survey.
• 92 percent indicated Vista Service Pack 1 has not changed their plans for Vista deployment
• 65 percent said it is challenging to obtain the expertise needed to manage multiple operating systems, up from 49 percent in November 2007
• 83 percent revealed they are concerned about the compatibility of required business software with Vista
• 41 percent of the respondents reported it is challenging to secure multiple operating systems, up from 25 percent in November 2007
People who complain about Vista are a bunch of whiners.