So Long, Microsoft, And Thanks For All The Fish

Word Version 1.1a

I have been using Microsoft software since 1985 when I purchased Microsoft Word and Microsoft Multiplan for my new Zenith Z160 “portable” PC. I’ve used Word continuously for thirty years at home, at work, as a university instructor, and as a published author.

I wrote my first three books in FrameMaker, a superior but far more expensive word processor ($500 per user in 1998) as required by my publishers at the time. But by the early 2000’s most had moved to Word since Microsoft had sufficiently closed the feature gap.

I’m coming to realize that this weekend might be the last time I use Microsoft software – at home anyway (I use a PC running Windows 7 and Office for work).

Zenith Z160 portable computer

I ordered a new MacBook Pro yesterday, and it will arrive on Monday. The MBP comes with Apple’s versions of office programs, called Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Next week I will try them out on my university teaching and on my current writing project. If it goes alright and I figure out all of the subtle differences, I will probably not purchase Office for the new Mac.

Part of this comes down to economics. Office for Mac costs $150 or more, and the same programs from Apple cost $20 apiece (if you don’t have a new Mac that came with them), or free with your Mac since some time in the past year or two.

I’ll post a review of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers in a month or so after I’ve been using them a while.

Still, I can’t help but feel somewhat nostalgic, as I’ve had Word with me nearly all of my adult life. But as the dolphins exclaim in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

the Zune failure and Microsoft

Many articles in the press have chronicled the failure of Microsoft’s first-generation 30GB Zune MP3 players.  They all simply froze on December 31, 2009. The remedy: they had to be powered on and allowed to completely discharge, and then wait until after 12:00 GMT on 1/1/09 before they could be used again. Total downtime – around 24 hours.

Microsoft is yearning to expand its market space into embedded systems in automobiles, military systems, and other areas. Am I being overly fearful of the consequences of a Microsoft whose products are even more deeply embedded into the machinery of our lives?  Today is one of those days when I am distrustful of technology as a path for an easier life.

Articles:

Leap year Zune glitch persists for some (CNN)

Original Zune confounded by leap year, shuts down (Seattle Times)

Zune support page explanation

Zune insider blog

Last day to buy XP

Today is the last day to buy Microsoft Windows XP.

It’s the end of an era.

I’m glad I don’t need a new OS right now, but next time I’m in the market for a computer, it’s going to be running Linux. I used Vista for six months (even wrote an e-book about its security), and it was so intolerable that I switched back to XP.

Microsoft has SO violated the public trust with Vista. I have no confidence that Windows 7 will be any better. In fact, it may be worse. I will be long gone.

Apparently the protests and petitions sent to Microsoft have fallen on deaf ears.  Microsoft is apparently so full of itself that it really believes that Vista is better. After all, look at the numbers: it’s selling like crazy (never mind that dealers have little choice but to gag what is forced down their throats).

One independent computer dealer I know is selling all of his new computers with Linux, and is doing well.  I’m sure that there are many more like him.

Articles:

Microsoft to stop selling XP on Monday

Microsoft smells the coffee

Maybe it’s because Microsoft is in Starbucks’ back yard – that or they are listening to the many complaints from corporate users who refuse to “upgrade” to Vista and stick with XP instead.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, is quoted as saying, “If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter,” referring to the onslaught of publicity that is beginning to make Vista look like a repeat of Windows Millenium Edition – the version of Windows that nobody wanted.

Ballmer insists that Vista is outselling XP. But of course – that’s because Microsoft all but prohibits computer manufacturers from bundling XP on computers, NOT because people want it. It would be like Ford Motor Company saying, “virtually all of our cars are selling with air bags.”

Microsoft is painfully aware that it has painted itself into a very tight corner with Vista. It knows that forcing users into Vista will instead force them to Apple and Linux in droves. Apple had a smashing good quarter – is it any wonder? Vista and other overpriced and underperforming software are making OSX and Linux look highly attractive these days. And Microsoft is too arrogant and proud to admit that it has made a mistake with Vista.

I ran Vista on systems, paid full price for Vista Ultimate last year, and I’ve reverted back to XP. I consider it money down the drain. I’m happy that I’m back on XP, which I consider vastly superior to Vista in nearly every category – at least those categories that count, like usability and performance. And for other categories like security, I consider it equal.

Will Vista be the OS that is passed over?

Will Vista go down in history as the OS that most corporate environments passed over?

Just a few months into Vista’s life cycle and Microsoft is already talking about Windows 7. I cannot help but wonder if Microsoft is talking about Windows 7 about a year earlier than planned, on account of the market’s lukewarm response over Vista.

I’m not an IT manager now, but I have been for many years, in the modern Windows / UNIX era. Were I to contemplate upgrading to Vista now, my thought process would go something like this:

I’m trading an OS (Windows XP) that is known, stable, compatible, predictable, runs on current hardware, and familiar to users…

…for an OS that is new, unknown, stability unproven, incompatible with many things, often requires hardware upgrades, and unfamiliar to users.

So why would I upgrade to Vista? Because I have too many staff and not enough to do? Because I don’t have enough to worry about? Because I have too much slack in my budget and I want to increase my support-per-headcount numbers? Because it’s been too long since the executives hunted me down with torches and pitchforks demanding that I make their systems work better?

And… Vista is memory-hungry, particularly if you use Aero. Forward-thinking companies that are on a three-year PC refresh cycle have one-third to two-thirds of their systems with insufficient memory to run Vista very well, so performance is also an issue. Few corporations are going to do field upgrades of user workstation memory; fewer still will upgrade them to newer systems. IT is too commoditized – especially end user workstations. Vista requires more oomph in user workstations than most companies are willing to provide. By the time companies get their workstations up to the point where they can all take Vista (compatibility and other issues aside), Windows 7 will be out. If I were CIO for a day in any major company, I’d keep my Windows XP and wait. No sense ripping out something that’s not broken, eh Pacha?

I was in a similar dilemma about ten years ago. I ran an IT shop that supported about 500 users. We were Windows desktop, Novell file and print servers. People from headquarters (the parent company with tens of thousands of employees) began to pressure me to change out the Novell environment for Windows NT. My counterargument was simple: Why should I spend thousands of dollars of resources to turn file and print into file and print, especially when users won’t even notice?

So I was able to delay that window dressing change for over two years. Only when Exchange came along was there a viable business case for making the change, and then I did.

Back to the main story. Will Vista join Windows ME on the scrap heap of OSs that companies rejected? Only history will tell. But Microsoft’s coming out early with Windows 7 appears to say, “Vista is yesterday’s news. Look what’s coming next!”

Disclaimer: I am invested in the success of Vista: I have written an e-book on Vista security and have written articles and podcasts on Vista. Here I’m just calling it as I see it.

More reading here:

http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid1_gci1266197,00.html
http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid1_gci1260015,00.html