03.15.10

Courier is Vapourware

Posted in Apple, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 7:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Lacking any progress for Windows or Microsoft in general, the company seems to be disclosing some more fake “leaks” of something that does not exist

THE PAST week has been a particularly weak one for Microsoft, at least based on the news. In the next few days we’ll produce proof of this.

First of all, versions of Windows are being retired and this is the only article that we found about “Vista” in the past week. That’s unusual. Secondly, we also found just four clusters of headlines about “Windows 7″ (Vista 7), which is very little. News for “Microsoft” has generally been low in volume over the past week, for no apparent reason. There is almost nothing of substance that we haven’t covered yet and we mentioned Courier last week for being Microsoft's catch-up and also vapourware. Someone wrote this article about it.

Microsoft is a well known brand, but why do they always seem to be adding products right after another, *cough* Apple *cough*, company has already released something new? As reported in PC World, the Microsoft Courier doesn’t really seem to be anything that is actually in the making, BUT Engadget reports on some key points that sure as heck seem like a real product.

Microsoft claims that details were “leaked”, but this lying company is the boy who cried “Wolf!” when it comes to leaks [1, 2]. Just like Apple, Microsoft routinely fakes “leaks” in order to create hype and the nature of the “leaked” images suggests that they are too professionals to be of that nature. It’s more like OLPC’s mockups. █

Permalink Leave Your Comment Mail Send this to a friend

03.14.10

Microsoft Should be “Sued for Breach of Contract” in Vista 7

Posted in Microsoft, Vista 7, Windows at 6:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft covers up invasion of privacy, claims one of our regular members

Ryan Farmer, a former Microsoft MVP, tells us about a new bug that says: “In certain scenarios, an Emergency Alert System (EAS) message does not automatically tune to the appropriate channel in Windows Media Center.” He adds that: “in the Windows 7 CEIP will be affected by this part of the update. This update limits the diagnostic information that can be collected by the CEIP.”

“They get caught spying,” he remarks, “say it was an accident, and “fix it”. Shouldn’t they be sued for breach of contract?”

“In other words, business as usual,” concludes MinceR.

As a side note, Vista 7 is facing real pressure because it’s not being deployed like Microsoft wants people to believe. From the news:

Not everyone is interested in upgrading to Windows 7 — at least not right away. Computerworld’s survey respondents who said they have no plans to upgrade reported that they just don’t see enough benefit, particularly in these tough economic times, to warrant the cost of migration.

For Carl Weddle, director of IT at Quality Trailer Products, Windows 7 isn’t even on the radar. “We were clawing our way out of a hole until a few months ago,” he says, referring to the recession. Even in better times, he adds, “I tend to stay on the back end of the technology curve because it’s cheaper there.”

An upgrade to GNU/Linux would be even cheaper and provide a very modern platform. █

Permalink A Single Comment Mail Send this to a friend

03.13.10

AstroTurfing for Vista 7 Still Alive

Posted in GNU/Linux, Mandriva, Mono, Novell, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 5:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Kid with laptop

Summary: Andre Da Costa is still trolling the competition of Vista 7 while promoting this incarnation of Vista in exchange for gifts from Microsoft

OUR dear reader Goblin is the man who exposed a Microsoft AstroTurfer, Andre Da Costa, who also goes by the pseudonym “Mr Dee” in CNET. We have noticed that he is still trolling articles about GNU/Linux. “After he confessed to nymshifting one has to wonder,” wrote Goblin. “Maybe the Da Costa name has become too toxic to use? I see now he’s pimping Window 7 competitions,” he added [1, 2]. The reality behind Vista 7 is still being warped. Also from last night’s conversation:

_goblin	Speaking with many non-tech folks who are using Windows 7….all is not well….	Mar 12 21:21
_goblin	the general consensus is “Its just as bad as Vista”	Mar 12 21:21
_goblin	looks and works great the first couple of times…..connect to the net, install a few apps and it reveals its true form.	Mar 12 21:22
Omar87	_goblin, let’s hope more sounds like these come to the surface.	Mar 12 21:22
_goblin	these comments are coming from “average users” who already had their fill of Vista.	Mar 12 21:23

We are not at all surprised to hear this. On the contrary, many people are pleased with Mandriva, which is one of my favourites (others in the family use it). Another reader commenting on the same superb article from Richard Hillesley points out that:

Anyone else see the irony?

[...]

This paragraph brought a wry smile to my face:

“Miguel de Icaza, at that time a rising star of the free software movement and co-creator, with Federica Mena, of the rival GNOME project, expressed the mixed feelings of many users and developers. “KDE was an inspirational project,” he told Linux Journal, “but at the time, the Qt toolkit on which KDE was built was a proprietary toolkit.”

The fact that he’s working with Microsoft now in producing the wretchedly slow Mono to provide compatibility with .NET and potentially laying Linux open to all sorts of future problems is deliciously ironic.

In terms of Mandriva, hopefully they will survive and flourish again, it still hangs in there fairly high up in Distrowatch. They probably do KDE better than any other distro and have done a splendid job with the now excellent KDE4 desktop.

There is some new Mono software from Novell employees this week [1, 2]. It’s fine for Novell, but it’s a patent fine for the rest.

Mandriva is indeed an excellent distribution. It puts to shame other operating systems, but it just doesn’t advertise as much. Since it is still KDE-centric for the most part, it hasn’t much of a Mono problem, either. █

Permalink 4 Comments Mail Send this to a friend

03.11.10

Vista 7 Unacceptable for Large Businesses and Windows XP Still Not Secure

Posted in Security, Vista 7, Windows at 7:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sink or leak

Summary: Intel migrates only about 3% of its workforce to Vista 7; many of the rest use an operation system with a “built-in” vulnerability that compromises designs/trade secrets

TRUTH be told, neither Vista 7 nor Windows XP proved to be secure (references gathered at the bottom). Here is where Windows users are at, based on the latest news:

• Intel: Just 3,000 employees run Windows 7 (Intel’s problems with Vista 7 were covered here earlier this month)

Despite the firm’s rapid turnaround of PCs and its very public partnership with Microsoft, Bryant said that so far it had shifted just 3,000 of its 80,000 plus employees onto Windows 7.

• Windows XP’s built-in Wi-Fi Security Hole

I noticed that I kept seeing “Free Public Wifi” APs (access points) showing up. I assumed it was someone trolling for innocents wanting to be infected with malware. I was wrong. It’s actually a much more interesting Windows XP security flaw.

• Botnet takedowns ‘don’t hurt crooks enough’

The takedowns of the Mariposa and Waladec botnets last week were victories for the good guys, but security experts warn that although cybercrooks suffered a bloody nose they collectively retain the upper hand in their ongoing conflict with law enforcement and its security industry allies.

The author completes this article without mentioning Windows! Time for an awareness campaign? We’re working on it. █

03.10.10

Microsoft Wants to be the Standard

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Standard, Vista 7, Windows at 6:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“[W]e should take the lead in establishing a common approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call ‘to me’ to the industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone’s benefit. We are large enough that this can work.”

–Microsoft

Summary: Microsoft plants another flag in W3C, MonoDevelop pushes .NET at Novell or elsewhere, and Vista 7 continues to repel businesses

OUR LATEST post about the W3C has made the front page of Slashdot and almost immediately we found the familiar trolls attacking the messenger (a subject that we wrote about before [1, 2, 3, 4]). Jeremy Allison actually defended us by saying: “Jeff [Jaffe] was *definitely* one of the architects Novell/Microsoft deal, and had been part of the leadership for at least a year when it was finalized. I know. I was there.”

“Jeff [Jaffe] was *definitely* one of the architects Novell/Microsoft deal…”
–Jeremy AllisonAllison responded to the trolls and added: “don’t let facts get in the way of your post.” The funny thing is that some trolls are then attacking the messenger here too (the messenger who defends the messenger), which makes them — the trolls — hypocrites. The thread needs to be watched carefully in order for this claim to be understood. But anyway, based on this brand new page, Microsoft has already planted a flag in W3C and it rewrites history while it’s at it. Let’s not forget SVG, which Microsoft now pretends to have befriended [1, 2].

Over at Novell, it’s business as usual. Mono and Moonlight are key products and MonoDevelop is improved to encourage development with them. It’s all about empowering Microsoft Windows through its APIs.

It ought to be mentioned that Vista 7 continues to suffer difficulties because large businesses overwhelmingly reject it in RTM form, as expected all along [1, 2]. Pogson argues that “Things are not Rosy for “7″.”

They don’t want the public to hear any negatives about Vista-recycled. Now they have to worry that fewer will migrate from XP to “7″ or that migrations will be delayed. Poor babies. The longer XP hangs around, the more will migrate to GNU/Linux because it is an actual improvement and it’s faster. The patch rate of that other OS is the only thing fast about that other OS. Having to install a lot of patches on top of a retail licensed OS is not what they want a lot of consumers seeing, but it is happening.

There are many important releases of GNU/Linux just around the corner. We have seen and documented signs that many homes and businesses continue to migrate, at least into a dual-boot mode. █

Permalink Leave Your Comment Mail Send this to a friend

03.08.10

Microsoft Kills Windows Essential Business Server Due to Low Demand

Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Servers, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 5:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Long live GNU/Linux!

Summary: Another Microsoft product bites the dust (leaving room for GNU/Linux) and Microsoft resorts to hype offensives

Add Windows Essential Business Server to the list of dead products from Microsoft. There is no sufficient demand for it, so Microsoft is killing it.

Microsoft launched EBS in November 2008 in part to give VARs a product to sell to customers whose needs exceeded the 75-user limit of Small Business Server, and potentially attract new midmarket customers. With support for up to 300 users, EBS filled a gap that had existed in Microsoft’s SMB product portfolio, but EBS apparently wasn’t seeing a satisfactory level of uptake.

Scott Fulton explains why people predicted this correctly.

It was a solid idea. But today it was left to EBS’ own product managers to announce on their team blog this morning that Microsoft has made a decision to cancel the product. The excuse they gave was especially disheartening, as it essentially caved in to the arguments naysayers used against EBS’ viability from the beginning.

The truth is simple:

Microsoft will discontinue future development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS), effective June 30th, 2010.

Microsoft has a way of spinning it:

Microsoft will halt development of its mid-market oriented Windows Essential Business Server software bundle, as the company bets on “cloud computing” rather than lump licensing to woo penny-pinching IT markets.

When asked some further questions (outside the ’spin zone’), Microsoft’s response was this:

Microsoft officials declined to comment further.

They would not speak to the press, not even IDG News Service. Since the early days of Microsoft, they have had this silence policy imposed at the behest of the PR people (source: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul). In any event, here is some more coverage of it [1, 2] and more spin from Ina the booster, Mary Jo Foley, the 'Microsoft press' which covered it too gently, and Microsoft Nick with his weak, one-sided ‘reporting’ at eWEEK (it should be called “eWEAK”). They mostly play along with Microsoft’s PR message, which spins this failure as an evolving strategy. They should challenge Microsoft’s spin, not simply parrot it, which would make them participants in the PR machinery.

There was another article a few days ago about more products that Microsoft discontinues.

Microsoft announced two dates recently that Windows users should heed.

On April 13, Microsoft will no longer support Windows Vista that has no service packs installed.

Second and more importantly, on July 13, support will end for all versions of Windows 2000 and all version of Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2.

End of support means that Microsoft will no longer give phone and e-mail technical support and will no longer fix bugs and issue security patches.

Microsoft has some real problems these days, also financially [1, 2, 3, 4] (real numbers carry on declining). This past week, not a single headline about Vista appeared in the news, just some marketing lies for Vista 7 (fake figures of “sales”, just like Microsoft did for Vista, courtesy of Microsoft’s PR efforts). It’s a simple case of fake numbers and misclassification for hype (unused licences and XP counting as “sales” of Vista 7), but Microsoft is trying to create the false impression that many people already accept the newer version of the same old operating system. There is also the “R&D” lie from Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4], where the company basically categorises too many activities as “R&D” and then sells this illusion that it advances science. In any event, Microsoft (MSFT) suffered a decline last week because it admitted that its financial results wouldn’t quite meet expectations, not even in the next quarter.

U.S. stocks pared gains and the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated as Microsoft Corp. slid after predicting higher operating expenses, triggering a decline in technology companies. Intel Corp. lost 1.3 percent.

In order to reduce those expenses, Microsoft has been killing many products and even divisions that were losing money. Microsoft is still shrinking and it only ever expands in countries where labour is inexpensive and working conditions utterly poor. █

“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”

–Bill Gates, Microsoft

Permalink A Single Comment Mail Send this to a friend

03.01.10

Intel Unhappy With Failed Migration to Vista 7, Radical Microsoft Spin Begins

Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Vista 8, Windows at 11:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“[W]e’re not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been.”

–Steve Ballmer

Summary: More bad news for Vista 7, so Microsoft is starting to embrace miserable measures to flood the news with positive ‘fluff’

THE reality behind Vista 7 at Intel is so far similar to the reality of Windows Vista at Intel. There was never such a reality because the migration was called off.

Check out this news report:

Intel faces challenges in migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, including application incompatibility and system readiness, the company said.

Intel worked with Microsoft to develop Windows 7 into a stable operating system, but there is still a lot of heavy lifting involved before migrating PCs to the new OS inside Intel’s environment, wrote Intel staff engineer Roy Ubry in a blog entry. Challenges include issues related to backward application compatibility, web browser support, 64-bit computing and privacy controls.

For those who do not remember, Intel said that it would move to Vista, never to truly fulfill this promise, so it was just an advertisement/endorsement for Microsoft (in the form of lip service). At one stage, Intel said it would wait for Service Pack 1 of Vista and there was also an Internet storm when memos from Intel came out saying that Vista became a forbidden item inside the company.

But never mind reality. Never mind the fact that Vista 7 is failing to gain adoption in businesses. Microsoft and its army of boosters are already rewriting the history of Vista and promoting Vista 7 using lies. Check out this anonymous nonsense at ZDNet. Fellow writers of the author from ZDNet UK could not help weighing in and complaining. Jamie Watson wrote:

Microsoft is reigning over the world of computer and none can defy this fact

Rubbish. Complete, total, pure rubbish.

Or, it would be better to say, Windows 7 is an improved version of Windows Vista.

Then why are customers who purchased Vista required to pay again to get Win 7? The customer has to pay for Microsoft’s mistakes?

Windows Vista too earned loads of acclamation from users

On what planet?

At this point I had read enough of this. Drinking the Kool-Aid and being a Microsoft Fan-Boi is one thing, but this is evidence of a severe overdose.

jw

Another occasional writer for ZDNet UK (community) replies to Jamie:

You hit it on the head, Jamie. Win 7 is not all it was cracked up to be. I have heard many complaints about it slowing down after a few months use, it has had security problems, driver problems,and it really is only vista with lipstick. But, since the purchaser has no choice but to buy a new computer with win 7 installed, then the numbers have no way to go but up.What if there was a choice? Would windows installed base start to slide?
The day is coming when you will have a better choice than win7, or win8.

These were the only two comments posted in reply to the lies. Speaking of the UK, the “UK government will upgrade to Microsoft Vista, snub Windows 7,” says this news site. The government apparently agrees with our reader who is a former Microsoft MVP. He says that Vista 7 is so buggy that he prefers a Service Pack of Vista. Microsoft’s UK booster Jack Schofield said that his “initial impression [of Vista 7] is how much it looks like Vista. Which I think is…uh…the thing I’m not supposed to say.”

“PCs running Windows 7 trial set to turn cranky,” heralds The India Times.

ON MARCH 1, Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate users will lose control over their computers. Their PCs will start shutting down every two hours, even if they haven’t saved their work. And, On June 1, the screens will go black. World’s largest software maker Microsoft’s business strategy for pushing hard to sell its new Windows 7 by exerting control over users’ PCs has opened a pandora’s box.

That happens today. Unpaid testers of Vista 7 will pay up or boot their computer every 2 hours, starting today. Jolly good fun this proprietary software thing, eh?

So anyway, what’s left to hype up Vista 7 with? How about ‘certifying’ generic hardware for Vista 7, just for promotion as we explained last year (brand recognition on hardware too)? Microsoft is doing this right now [1, 2, 3] with the company that sold Linux down the river, LG.

Let’s face it. Windows is all about marketing. Last week we showed that Archos was unable to do with Windows what it had done with Linux for several years. This is now being confirmed yet again by a publication which says that “Archos 9 tablet doesn’t make Windows look good”

Windows just doesn’t seem at home when squeezed into this 1.8-pound slab, with a touch-sensitive screen that is 8.9 inches on the diagonal. It’s sluggish, and the controls aren’t adapted to the size of the screen or the fact that there’s no real keyboard or mouse.

Windows is heavy and clumsy. It’s improperly engineered and it is not modular, either. A lot of people understand this and they move to other platforms (both users and developer do that). Microsoft — being Microsoft — is still talking about
Vista 8 vapourware. Here are just a couple of examples from the past week alone. One comes from a Windows boosting Web site:

With Windows 7 barely out the door, Microsoft has started making us aware that they are already busily working at Windows 8.

“Microsoft has started making us aware” is not the same as Microsoft actually showing something like a demo. Have they no shame? Or have they no product more capable than Vista? We suspect the latter is true. █

Permalink 2 Comments Mail Send this to a friend

02.26.10

7 New Problems

Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 12:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Products that are labeled “7″ continue to falter (holes, delays, lack of acceptance, etc.)

THE reality behind Vista 7 suggests that it moves more or less along the same trajectory as Windows Vista (at equivalent times post release). More holes are being patched outside of Windows Update cycles and “Seven’s not always Microsoft’s lucky number,” says a Microsoft booster because there is another major delay (amid deaths of products) affecting Dynamics:

The number 7 isn’t lucky for every Microsoft team.

Microsoft has pushed back its delivery target for its Dynamics NAV “7″ by anywhere from a few months to a year, with final delivery now expected some time during calendar 2011 to 2012.

2012, eh? “7″ was hardly a lucky number for Windows Mobile based on press coverage [1, 2, 3, 4]. As regards Vista 7, Microsoft is faking sales numbers [1, 2], just as it did with Vista. “7″ is a success only in the eyes (or mouths) of overzealous PR agencies that Microsoft hires to indoctrinate the press. █