The Second Coming of Vista: Microsoft Strikes Back
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Vista, Microsoft, Windows | Themes: Business
Analyst Opinion - Unless you have been living under a rock, you already know that Microsoft’s latest operating system has not been a big success. Apple takes great pleasure in Microsoft’s struggles and has been rolling a competitive campaign that not only makes fun of the product, but appears to make fun of Microsoft’s founder as well, typically not in a very nice way. As you might imagine, Microsoft employees don’t find this situation pleasant and Steve Ballmer, who both runs Microsoft and considers Bill Gates one of his closest friends, is less than amused.
While Microsoft moves slowly, getting the company really upset is not a wise strategy. Apple has been aggressively sticking a knife into the company and effectively twisting that knife with apparent glee. Microsoft is about as angry as I have ever seen the company and they are channeling that anger into both fixing Vista and planning to rub Apple’s face in the result. To make this work, they need to fix Vista and promote the fix to change the initial bad impressions that surround this product.
I believe the first part is largely done and Microsoft announced the $300 million second part at its partner conference this week. Let’s talk about the Second Coming of Vista and why pulling on Superman’s cape is a bad idea.
Vista: It’s better than XP
Let’s forget the whole Vista vs. Leopard thing and put forth the reality that the two products are so different from each other that a head to head comparison isn’t realistic. But you can compare Vista to XP and now, post Service Pack 1 for Vista, Vista is clearly better than XP for most tasks, including gaming - as long as you are playing on current hardware.
This was made very clear to me last week when I taped a Cranky Geeks show (Episode 123) and several of us chimed in that our experiences with Vista had been really good for some time and that the Vista-is-a-dog-belief is out of date.
I now regularly game on the platform and go to events where people using XP have a difficult time connecting to the wireless network. While I do get application crashes from time to time, it rarely happens to Vista itself (less than once a month) and many of the recent updates and patches haven’t required rebooting.
Even my wife, who really did not like moving to Vista, seems to be having a good time with the software and I seem to be playing tech support far less often (in fact, I find if I ignore the initial request the problem seems to resolve itself these days).
My general sense is that Vista is finally at a point where it isn’t a negative. But to turn it into a positive, Microsoft needs marketing. Unfortunately, the only company doing marketing on Vista broadly has been Apple, and they have hardly been positive.
The Vista strikes back marketing plan
Microsoft recently hired one of the most creative advertising agencies on the planet and has freed up an estimated $300+ million to fuel the campaign. To put this in perspective, the Windows 95 launch, arguably one of the biggest campaigns in Microsoft’s history, cost under $200 million. With the right creative content behind it, $300 million can do some amazing things and one of them is clearly to take the fight back to Apple and assure both sides of the story are told.
Typically, Microsoft would not attack a competitive product directly. But historically, when the company got really upset, the gloves tend to come off and if the agency is allowed to use their full creativity, something amazing could be the result. I haven’t seen the campaign yet, which is why I can talk about it, but assuming someone sits on the bureaucrats that exist in any company of Microsoft’s scale, the opportunity to execute a legendary advertising campaign exists.
Granted, and this is typical with big companies like Microsoft, the bureaucrats get the final vote and no agency can overcome institutionalized stupidity. And I know of several great campaigns that never made it to market because of short sighted and overly risk-adverse executives who appeared to prefer sure failure over possible embarrassment.
It will be a few weeks before we know if that is the case here and I still shudder when I think of the Digital Joy campaign the firm shared with Intel a few years ago. However, I think Microsoft is upset enough for key employees to drive through something great this time. We’ll see.
Wrapping up: The mother of all marketing battles
Microsoft is going to war and Apple’s ability to pound on them without challenge should end shortly. Apple is clearly no slouch and represents the most powerful marketing power in almost any market, but they will have to split their resources between an iPhone launch and the Mac. The iPhone is already being challenged by Samsung, which is executing a very strong multi-million dollar campaign themselves with one of the most competitive phones. And Samsung will soon be followed by well funded campaigns by RIM and HTC.
Apple has the danger of having to fight on too many fronts at once, which should weaken them while Microsoft has to overcome their tendency to be overly risk-adverse and create well funded marketing junk. Or Microsoft will be improving their game while Apple will be distracted allowing for what should be a very even match. Jobs hang in the balance on both sides, Steve Jobs is famous for firing people on a whim and Steve Ballmer will likely transfer his anger to the marketing executive if he is disappointed. Real battles often result when there is a balance of skills, funding, and risk and this one appears to be a balanced match for once.
Let the games begin.
Rob Enderle is one of the last Inquiry Analysts. Inquiry Analysts are paid to stay up to date on current events and identify trends and either explain the trends or make suggestions, tactical and strategic, on how to best take advantage of them. Currently he provides his services to most of the major technology and media companies.
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One too many I think.
Why is this on Tom's Hardware? This is a user opinion. I think I'm going to find a better tech site to get my news from, one that has proper spelling and good articles.
This is not on Tom's Hardware, it's on Tom's Guide
This is not on Tom's Hardware, it's on Tom's Guide
I love the way this "article" is put together. It allows the author to make outrageous claims, while absolving him of the requirement to present actual evidence.
As to the claim that Leopard and Vista cannot be compared head to head. Bollocks. As most of Vista's new "improvements" are clearly the result of badly executed attempts to match features that actually work on the Mac, I think we can dismiss that argument right away.
As to the assertion that Vista is "clearly better" than XP at most tasks. I can only say that it is not quite so clear to me. And since I've worked in the I.T. business from lowly helpdesk intern to CIO over the past 26 years, I consider myself a bit of an expert as well.
It will take more than just the personal anecdotes of Rob Enderle and his wife to convince me to believe contrary of something that I observe every day of the week. If any of what he has to say in this article were true, there would no longer be such animosity towards Microsoft for forcing this on the users.
If you want to impress me, tell me that they've decided to spend the 300 million on fixing the problem. It's not news to us that they spend a lot of money marketing crap.
Note to Tom's Guide: If you want to put up an ad, please do it in the proper way, so as to not mislead.
Ogre
One important part of Marketing 101 is that you don't attack the smaller guy. Apple can attack MS, but MS shouldn't attack Apple. There's a reason why Pepsi attacks Coke, but you never see Pepsi in Coke ads. Attacking the little guy gives them credibility. If Apple thinks they've fixed Vista, then just focus on Vista. Don't even talk or hint about Apple products.
Being an IT guy myself I decided to make the plunge into vista and I have to say I have been very pleased with the results. Sure Im running a nice powerful rig with plenty of ram and vista 64 ultimate but this thing has not given me one problem since I have installed it 5 months ago. So much for the nay sayers. Sure when you put on sub par rigs your gonna run into problems.
You guys obviously missed that, so I thought I'd re-post it down here for you. If you don't want to listen to the opinions of another, you can move along.
I enjoyed the article, and look forward to seeing what MS brings to the table from here. Keep up the good work Enderle.
I enjoyed the article myself, I found it to be honest. I upgrade my hardware once or twice a year so for me Vista was a no brainer. I do not miss XP in any area now, I did at first but I missed win2k after XP first came out. I have found that most peoples complaints about Vista are because they have to upgrade thier tried and true soundblaster that they have had since 1996. I enjoy Leopard as well, it is a great OS! Some of its menu's are a little too akward for my taste but some say the same about Vista, soooo... Just funny how MS is mad.
the only people that use macs are arty farty wanks that dont have the brain power to operate windows, very sad , xp is a sh*t tin better than any apple os
Two years and SP1 and a tons of patches, finally fighting back... the damage is already done. Balmer should resign.
Just to be clear about my experiences with Vista. I do not run any substandard hardware. All of my machines are very high end 3d graphics workstations running quad core chips and SLI. We roll in replacement hardware twice a year. The problems we encounter on a daily basis with Vista are not hardware related and just don't happen on XP. If you're only playing games and surfing the net, then I'm happy you're not having problems with Vista. But if you actually need the OS to be stable under some real load, I think your experience will be quite a bit different.
Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft will get it right eventually, but it's not there yet.
As for the Mac OS, it's not my taste, but it definitely has it's place. Most creative talent (including those who will soon be paid the 300 million to make Vista more palatable in the media) have no need or desire to learn all of the technical information needed to operate a Windows machine safely and effectively. If you've ever had to support these types, you'd be glad that Apple makes an OS just for them.
I was just trying to point out the paid advertisement/analyst opinion for what it was. Please pardon me. I may lack the fanboy gene.
Ogre
I can empathize with those who see these analyst opinion articles listed on Tom's home page and are disappointed. I very much enjoy the high quality of Tom's hardware articles and value the detailed data they contain. Having these third party opinion articles share the same page is like finding a happy meal being served at a five star restaurant. I usually avoid them, but obviously I'm a sucker for catchy titles. This one was particularly sparse of any actual information regarding even OS issues, it seems to be just a marketing battle plan opinion article. Yawn.
I have been using Vista since it was released. When I first got it all I wanted to do was run back to XP. Now though, patches have fixed almost every issue I've had.
People also seem to forget that one of the biggest reasons Vista was panned was because of lack of drivers. Microsoft can hardly be blamed for this. They gave companies 18(?) months of open beta in which to write them! NVidia and other folk have finally come to the party and things are good.
Excluding the initial lack of support, the user experience in Vista is almost identical to XP, making the 'I don't want to learn Vista' argument void. All Microsoft really did was clean up the UI and add search bars everywhere, for which I am greatful.
They added some toys and improved the included software. Take them of leave them.
At the end of the day, Mircosoft have a new product and are phasing out the old one. EVERY company does that. Can I still buy Tiger? NO! Can I buy the same TV I bought 2 years ago? NO!
If you don't want to spend money on it, don't! Stick with your XP running your DX9 crippled 8800GT. Change to Leopard.... oh, you need to buy new hardware, learn a new UI (which in my opinion is NOT intuitive) and you actually want to use your Windows apps? Use BootCamp and run XP on your Mac! Kinda defeats the point, doesn't it? and on top of all that, you can't customise your hardware after market! .... Run Linux and Wine! oh? Not everything works? and you have to learn a new everything? Sounds a hell of a lot worse than Vista to me!
So, deal with Vista as you will. The fact is if you want the latest things, you need the latest Windows. This is not unreasonable! If you want your new IPod games you need a new IPod. If you want your PS3 Games you need a PS3. It's not rocket science and it's not anything new.
I have been using Vista since it was released. When I first got it all I wanted to do was run back to XP. Now though, patches have fixed almost every issue I've had.People also seem to forget that one of the biggest reasons Vista was panned was because of lack of drivers. Microsoft can hardly be blamed for this. They gave companies 18(?) months of open beta in which to write them! NVidia and other folk have finally come to the party and things are good.Excluding the initial lack of support, the user experience in Vista is almost identical to XP, making the 'I don't want to learn Vista' argument void. All Microsoft really did was clean up the UI and add search bars everywhere, for which I am greatful.They added some toys and improved the included software. Take them of leave them.At the end of the day, Mircosoft have a new product and are phasing out the old one. EVERY company does that. Can I still buy Tiger? NO! Can I buy the same TV I bought 2 years ago? NO!If you don't want to spend money on it, don't! Stick with your XP running your DX9 crippled 8800GT. Change to Leopard.... oh, you need to buy new hardware, learn a new UI (which in my opinion is NOT intuitive) and you actually want to use your Windows apps? Use BootCamp and run XP on your Mac! Kinda defeats the point, doesn't it? and on top of all that, you can't customise your hardware after market! .... Run Linux and Wine! oh? Not everything works? and you have to learn a new everything? Sounds a hell of a lot worse than Vista to me!So, deal with Vista as you will. The fact is if you want the latest things, you need the latest Windows. This is not unreasonable! If you want your new IPod games you need a new IPod. If you want your PS3 Games you need a PS3. It's not rocket science and it's not anything new.
My vista experience has been good so far too. Win98 to XP was far worse. as said, most issues where drivers. They had even longer then 18 months to get there act together. That was not Microsoft's fault.
As for Apple. There commercials should not even be legal, blatant lies, misinformation and over claims of what there products do.
I was random web surfing and i can across several forums with mac users with problems(multiple people with the same issues too), so much for it just works.
Someone stated a while back on toms.
My biggest Grief with Vista, is all the people complaining
about stuff that doesnt work, when it works.
As problems with Vista, I have one of the fewest erorr counts
out of anybody i know when I pull up the log. I have had errors,
but never microsoft errors always third party apps.
Age of Conan, has lots of wierd bugs, but they are releasing patches
only a daily basis, as most companies should be doing. But most
dont because of the sheer amount of the cost to give away free
updates after creating, and testing.
Another thing someone posted up above, the main problems is drivers.
And microsoft largely doesnt create them. The BIG PROBLEM WITH VISTA,
wasnt that stuff doesnt work, or even couldnt work. It was companies
not believing Microsoft was going to reach there Hard Launch Date.
Microsoft was like well we are ready, and everyone else was like
WHAT YOUR NOT GOING TO PUSH IT BACK????? Everyone thought they
had more time than they actually did.
My Major problem with Vista isnt even a Vista problem its Companies
not taking advantage of 64bit. Its kinda like XP X64 all over again
except lots of stuff works, only NOTHING takes advantage of it. lol.
Well not everything, but there are lots of programs that are toted
as being 64bit, when they really arent, they are just compatiable.
(Adobe CS3)
Well I've had enough of the anti-vista BS floating around. Now that hardware companies are starting to release decent drivers, things are more stable.
At college, I hung around many people that hated Vista. It consisted of 1.) Mac users 2.) People who haven't actually used Vista 3.) People running it with integrated graphics, 1gb of ram, and a Celeron processor.
I'm happy that Microsoft is fighting back. I'm getting annoyed at Apples Mac vs. PC ads.
That's right, don't mention the embedded DRM in Vista, such as the ability of NBC to shut off your OS.
Sssh, let's just keep that quiet and hope people won't notice.
Agree with most here.
Vista 64 runs all my old and new Windows apps. So it's FINALLY better than XP. So M$, please encourage more developers/companies to take advantage of Vista and 64bits! Less boated is always welcome.
About Samsung, notice the G810? Nothing less that kick ass. Looks like Apple will get knocked silly from all sides.
Agree with most here.
Vista 64 runs all my old and new Windows apps. So it's FINALLY better than XP. So M$, please encourage more developers/companies to take advantage of Vista and 64bits! Less boated is always welcome.
About Samsung, notice the G810? Nothing less that kick ass. Looks like Apple will get knocked silly from all sides.
We still can't get bit-perfect audio from Vista. nuff said.
I will echo the fact that Vista is DRM pigsh!t. They will get my copy of XP when the security updates stop, and maybe not even then. I wonder how MS is going to pig up Windows 7. Maybe we will have to rent it per year along with Office, that should be a good revenue stream for them.
Ogre, you know that your position in a company is inversely proportional to the knowledge you have. Saying that, if you have been a CIO for 5 years, you are 5 years behind. Your biggest concern is syncing your mail to your phone. The reason it's called an analyst opionion is exactly that, it's an analysis not a fact. He's entitled to his opinion. Like it or not. I'm so tired of this MS bashing. Microsoft brought computing to the world. Your 1st PC had MS-DOS, not HP/UX or AIX or Unix. Face it, OSS should be buried. No standards, complicated, user-unfriendly and defenately not more secure and it's bloat-ware. Who needs 35 text readers called II VI PI UI FI bla bla bla on a CD? And dont dare say OSS is more secure. Don't believe me, go check www.zone-h.org. Tell me now who's ahead of the game. I personally think that if you want to play with the big boys, you better handle yourself like one. Round 1 FIGHT!
Vista SUKS Major A** guys. Sr.Lan Admin at a company that is the LARGEST in what we do. We are not going to Vista because it just doesn't work worth a crap with any Enterprise apps or company developed apps. If we are able to get it to work (I use "work" loosely here) it's just to hard and expensive. Buggy to make changes and omfg how slow can an OS get?? I really wish Toms would stick with the articles that are pro I.T. and not M$. You go Zorg & bf2gameplaya lets not EVEN GET INTO M$ DRM, OS SUPPORTED SPYWARE CALLED "FEATURES". I can't tell you how much info/data we have to filter/block from M$ because of their "features". Believe me M$ isn't only wanting you $$ here folks, put a sniffer on the wire running M$ and watch the sparks fly. There's a reason why PCI standards are blocking soooo much of M$ crap.
Silent Majority.
Just had to add this... why are the major SAN/NAS players NOT using M$ crap??? They are using Linux/Unix variants. Not M$ because they need extreme stability and reliability in these environments. Processing Teraquads of Data all the while spewing extra packets back to M$ and anybody who can terror a wire. Granted Hasta-LaVista is a retail package and not intended for SAN's or the like but the point is M$ stuff is VERY bloaty and just not something people want. Given the choice people are going to MACs or Linux. Some are even on DIAL UP still!
Silent Majority
I thought about switching to Mac when I installed Vista shortly after it was released and discovered the nasty slow file copy problem. I switched back to XP and started investigating Macs - reading forums, going to the Apple store and playing with Macs. After few months of learning/observing, I realized that it's also not all that rosy in the Mac world. Users are also posting problems in forums, many times problems are excused as features, e.g. you can't do this or that, because Apple thinks it's not good for you. I'm also into photography and so I played a lot with Aperture on 8core Mac Pro and was surprised that the application hung on few occasions for no apparent reason. I also felt that everything required way to many mouse clicks. It certainly was a different experience and not one without problems, so I decided to not make a move and wait it out. Six months later Microsoft issued patches for the slow file copy bug, I installed Vista 64bit and never looked back. It never crashed on me, it's fast, it can address my 8gb of RAM, it has great new features. Yes it is missing certain features here and there, but it's hard to satisfy every user and it's certainly not a reason to call it junk. I still read Mac forums every now and then out of curiosity, but I do not see any ground breaking reason to switch - it's just not worth the effort to me. I'm sure there are people for who Macs are perfect and there's nothing wrong with that. We all have our preferences. I personally would like to see a stronger Apple so that we can have a meaningful competitor to Microsoft and therefore better products in both camps.
*Notes that any comments which are even vaguely pro-Vista get rated down. Feel free*
Been using Vista since release, and Vista 64 for the last 10 months. I'll repeat what has already been said: It's been no harder to learn/use/operate than any other OS I've played with/ V64 has been practically bullet proof since day 1, runs everything I've put on it, and believe it or not: I've had zero trouble finding drivers for my components.
I would opine a great part of the trouble with Vista can be found between the LCD and the seat.
LOL Scotteq, a lot of trouble with Vista or ANY issues in I.T. can be attributed to trouble between chair and keyboard. Learning an OS suks at times but like you said no harder than any other mainstream stuff. I find it hard that p6889k using an 8core mac opted for V64 because an app hung a few times. Had to be expensive to switch from an 8core Mac to a dual? V64. For most people not going to a Mac/Apple is because it is cost prohibitive. Apps are not as affluent as well as support and feature set as p6889k mentioned. But if you already have a workstation class machine a few hiccups is acceptable when offset with the performance. Anybody can work on M$ I'm living proof! LOL
Silent Majority
Just had to add this... why are the major SAN/NAS players NOT using M$ crap??? They are using Linux/Unix variants.
Well lets see now? linux is FREE? maybe that reason. Because its open source and easy to modify for those who are used to it?
My NAS runs Windows XP MCE, records tv and does many other things. i like versatility.
WTF is wrong with people. Since vista came out pretty much all i've seen is people saying things along the lines of
"ZOMG my 1.8ghz single/dual core cpu and 1 - 2gig of ram and 8800G** isn't enough to run vista. DX10 is slow and doesn't look as good as DX9 on my 8800G*** It was enough to run xp great so vista must suck. i will not even try 64bit version since it is going to be slower since 32bit stuff is faster on 64bit cpu's."
or
"I have 4gigs of ram and 32bit vista still runs really bad. I still run out of memory all the time. Vista sucks XP FTW!"
or
"i just installed 64bit vista ultimate because everyone who likes vista says it's better then 32bit. But it still runs slow with my $500 2 gig PC 1066/1200/1333"
or
"my $1600 core 2 duo quad extreme QVC6851.32 Insane overclocking overpriced edition kickz a$$ in XP, i get uber fps in all my dx9 games at 2048x1536 with my $700x2 8800G**+ OC edition SLI combination toaster set up. But all my games go 1/2 as fast in DX10 and it says my cpu is running a lot slower then xp. There for the only thing that could be wrong is Vista. Vista sucks. Nvidia and intel didn't done do nothing wrong"
Things of that nature, with that king of logic and basic level of communicating the english language.
Core 2's were optimized for Xp, or 32bit in general because intel doesn't not fare well in 64bit computing. Also true that the 8800 nvidia series is a DX9 card with TOKEN DX10 extensions thrown in as a marketing ploy. This is why the card was released near a year before any DX10 games. This is also why nvidia is getting it's head donkey punched by Ati's 4800 cards.
64 bit Vista is better in multicore performance, better in internet speed, better in multi-tasking, file system performance, all the overall maintinece and system protection that the user needed to be responsible for in XP. It is in fact better in just about every way so long as you have proper hardware config and are running the 64bit version for which it was intended to be soley released for.
Sucky hardware intended to excel in outdated application standards doesn't mean vista sucks. It means your hardware sucks on vista.
My AMD hardware has enjoyed a consistent 15%-20% performance increase in 64bit vista over 32bit xp.
Here's the problem. People are stupid. The changes in VISTA are too large for the general public to handle. On top of that their product scheme is bad. If you thought XP HOME (cant join a domain) was bad, get grip on the 6 different VISTA offerings.
Plain and simple, there isn't a single company on the planet that will update to Vista (new shops might choose to install vista from the start) unless the HAVE to (and there is no need to right now).
It's great that this user's opinion thinks that Microsoft Vista SP1 is cool for gaming but for those of you who don't know MS makes their money from Companies. Not the retail sector. IF people cant use their laptops @ work (we dont allow vista) they wont buy it.
So while it may be a better technology, that doesnt mean it was a smart move to change everything. HUMANS DONT LIKE CHANGE and even if you can grasp it, others cant. Accept it, move on and stay away from VISTA.
IT DIRECTOR and MANAGER for 14 locations nation wide. Not one machine has VISTA on it.