07.29.08
Lying Without Shame… About Vista
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”
–Andre Gide
Microsoft continues to show that those ‘iie genes’ run deep in its blood. It’s a marketing company, and one that’s unethical enough to lie for sales. Check out this new article.
“From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with an XP licence,” said Jane Bradburn, a marketing manager for HP Australia. “However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.”
Therefore the Vole’s claims for high Vista sales figures are merely so much steer manure. The major PC vendors are still preloading Windows XP, but Microsoft is counting those XP preloads as Vista sales.
Microsoft has bragged about Windows Vista sales since the very beginning. It lied over and over again for many months, hoping that the lies will serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy and then capitalise on the cattle effect.
“Channel-stuffing techniques were also used to boost figures and perceptions of the XBox360, Zune and Office 2007.”In essence, the numbers Microsoft speaks of (now it’s 180,000,000) are the number of PCs sold, not number of copies of Vists sold. A licence for Windows XP Microsoft just calls a “Vista licence”, yet most PCs are sold without Vista! And PCs that come with Windows are sometimes wiped for GNU/Linux to be installed, due to market distortion at OEM level (paying for something you do not require).
Microsoft used to also lie about the adoption of OOXML. It desperately needed to sell that format, so it knew no boundaries when it comes to truth and lie. On the brighter side, this has taught the world a great deal about Microsoft and dishonesty. The existing format saturation could end monoculture and promote unification (or Web-based interaction and exchanges). Either way, things are bound to change for the better; all but Microsoft’s spin and deception. Some things never change. Channel-stuffing techniques were also used to boost figures and perceptions of the XBox360, Zune and Office 2007. NPD’s methods are sensitive to such gaming and so are search engine trackers, which Microsoft broke using ‘junk’ automated queries. █
“Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don’t evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, ‘how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?’”
–Bill Gates, The Seattle Weekly, (April 30, 1998)
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.