Comments on: Memo to Steve Ballmer for the long flight home

On his return trip from Europe, Microsoft's boss either can get bummed out about Vista's performance or get creative about his Saturday deadline to Yahoo.

[GatesOfHell]

Two Recommendations for Ballmer:

- Take a deep breath. Breathe out all that bad Vista energy. (Did I hear a gong?)

- Relieve some stress through exercise. Why not go do a little dance?

[fcg1502]

Not everyone hates Vista. I, in fact, have now been using Vista at home for 2 months and love it. It's so much nicer and more intuitive than XP. People just have to realize that it's different than what they are used to, take a little time to familiarize themselves, then stop *******'. All these articles that start off by right away declaring that all people on Earth hate Vista are getting to be really irritating.

[The_Decider]

People who accept crap are irritating.

What do you get for the significant theft of processor resources with Vista?

Answer: DRM, Built in Spyware, and more malware. In other words nothing of value.

[Imalittleteapot]

It's not that people don't "realize" it is different. I configure/repair a Vista system at least once a month. I know how to use it. I've got the disk on my desk. I've tried it for a month or more. I just don't like it. It doesn't offer me what I'm looking for, but it does use more resources. Even though I have 4 gig ram I don't feel the need to waste that on Vista. I also don?t' support DRM if I can help it.

I've been using Microsoft since DOS 3 when I didn't have Windows at all, and other computers before that. OS upgrades aren't a new thing, and it isn't that I'm not technical enough either. That's not the cause of all the complaints.

It seems to me generally the more technical crowd with real work that needs done prefers sticking with XP, but that is maybe bias. However, I don?t think people are complaining because they're just too dumb for it or have never upgraded before.

[cross platform]

I'll tell you what I hate ( and it's not Vista ), I hate Cnet bashing something just for the sake of being provocative. Before it was the Mac OS now it's Vista. Whatever is fashionable. I run Vista. I upgraded from that old moldy OS XP. Vista runs fine and I like it better than XP.

[Super2online]

I agree with fcg1502. Even a rudimentary comparison with XP leaves it in the dust like it's engine flamed out when the light turned green. Vista is light years ahead of XP in usability, flexabilty, capability, and security. I'm not a fanboy, I just like sticking with what works. I look forward to Windows 7 refining things even further.

Memo to Charles: Try checking with your audience before claiming that people hate Vista, because if you don't, there will be lot's of people that will be more that happy to prove you dead wrong!

[The_Decider]

Have fun with the bloated mess!

[Maclover1]

Sorry to the posters above Vista is a failure. Since Vista came out, December of 2006 I worked at one large company (80k employees) and went to another large company (130K employees) and both of those companies piloted Vista and backed away and will probably not deploy until 2009 or skip because of application compatibility, high hardware requirements, and massive user training requirements. I was part of a pilot at both organizations.

Both of those companies have Enterprise agreements, so they got Vista for free (or part of the enterprise licenses) and were counted in the 100 million copies of Vista, but in reality its something like 200K copies of Vista NOT USED.

I also have a good friend that owns a small business consulting company and I do work for him on the side, on occasion. Vista is reeking havoc among SBS community. These are usually companies with 5-50 employees, that sometimes will buy a new PC without consulting their IT support and then have massive problems with printer drivers, application support, and tons of "how too" questions that is making my friends happy with all of the hours he is getting. His #1 request from the SBS base, please remove Vista and put XP on this PC. I seriously mean he gets TONS of these requests.

Vista has failed. Vista has helped Apple more than anyone. The 50+% of Mac sales over last year is due in part to Vista being so badly received. I think only Bush gets more bad press than Vista, but its close.

[sal-magnone]

Funny I see just the opposite. VISTA seems to moving along about as fast/slow as XP did. Small companies seem to be taking easy-as-she-goes, waiting for natural update cycles on their systems. Large companies seem to burning up cycles deploying VISTA and rewriting stuff to .NET from J2EE. This is especially true in FiSrv markets. But I will admit they have more money (even in this environment( than anyone else.

[gary85739]

Vista or most any OS will be used as long as possible by those that have it.

Changing OS, without changing computers is not likely.

When we change computers, we tend to go with what is offered at the time.

[solomonrex]

Some people liked OS/2, you know? But Vista isn't the commercial success that MS was promising to their shareholders and partners.

Yahoo isn't toast, they've been profitable online for more than a decade and MS never has.


The distraction of Google is killing MS' core business, which have been lapsing into caretaker role.

[driven01]

I ran Vista for 60 days. I finally had enough and went back to XP. So much faster and more stable. No more wireless connectivity problems. No more non-responsive apps. This was running on a Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB RAM so it wasn't underpowered. Vista can't go away fast enough.

[cb3431]

cross platform has got it right. I don't get any sense of objectivity from cnet and that is unfortunate.

[Maclover1]

"cross platform has got it right. I don't get any sense of objectivity from cnet and that is unfortunate."


Yeah because CNET is the only IT news source saying Vista has problems. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[fredtheviking]

Actually, Vista is not a bad OS. It more gets the job done. How is that people can say the XP is good OS? Vista actually has many good features and actually does a descent job of making it easy to just have a computer and do what you want with it (instead having to be a wiz just to do stuff I would rather not think about e.g. Linux, which is OS I personally hate). So calm down people Vista will replace XP and in the future people will forget what they hate about the OS in first place.

[Imalittleteapot]

Perhaps it would help if you actually posted what those features are. Could you give a few examples. Maybe people just don't know about them and that's why they dislike Vista.

[menotbug]

I'm sick and tired of people call Vista a failure. I upgraded to Vista on a year-old machine and I am completely satisfied since SP1. I type the first 3 letters of any program to boot up, it goes to sleep and wakes up faster, and programs can crash much better than in XP - I haven't actually rebooted in at least a month.

Morons who whine about Vista need to actually check it out before jumping on the bandwagon.

[Imalittleteapot]

You have to type to boot your programs? XP allowed me to use my mouse. Man you should really try Linux. It sounds right up your alley.

Seriously though I'm glad you like it. However, other people don't like it. There's a difference between someone that paid for it and loved it and someone that paid for it and hated it.

The only reason all this discussion is taking place is because Microsoft won't listen to a good chunk of their customers and deny all their concerns.

[mikestatic1]

My company (a rather large one) developed a plan to implement Vista across the organization in a phased roll-out, but the plan got scrapped because of incompatibility with key programs and the cost of upgrading machines. I am not a Vista hater - but the big businesses are where the money is, and if they are holding out, it means very bad news for Microsoft. Too bad.

[Maclover1]

"I am completely satisfied since SP1" What for the last few weeks? LOL! Hope you did not get in Jan/07!

[rhsc]

A word of advice to those arguing with maclover : it's hard to sway the brainwashed

[Maclover1]

Lol! it sure is good luck with Vista.

[The_happy_switcher]

Ballmer is incompetent, plain and simple. He's one of the greatest reasons for OS X's resurgence and Apple's accelerating gains in market share. May he have a long and
tortured tenure as CEO.

[svk1069]

Oh god no.

Microsoft needs to let Yahoo go. Instead make other smart acquisitions in this space and save themselves a couple billion in the process. The can revisit Yahoo at a later time if it still makes sense.

[svk1069]

P.S. What the heck is your stake in this Coop?

You've been pushing this deal like nobody's business since day one. Maybe you don't have a financial stake (which journalistic integrity would force you to expose), but it sounds like you have some personal grudges against Yahoo. Or maybe you really like Microsoft. Or perhaps Steve Ballmer.

Whatever it is, how about trying to remain an objective journalist? No wonder C|Net is experiencing such problems when the people can find thoughtful, non-biased commentary elsewhere.

[charlie cooper]

Actually svk1069, it's just the opposite. If you do a search, you'll see that I'm on record questioning the raison d'ete for the deal. But when facts change, opinions evolve. IMHO, latest announcements from MS & Yahoo make this a more compelling combo that previously.

[ralfthedog]

Why buy Yahoo? They should spend the money purchasing a company that knows how to write an operating system. Vista uses more memory. Vista eats more clock cycles. Vista is only more secure if you are a moron, "You are about to run an application, 'Registry Shredder' authored by the Chainsaw Hackers Association". Do you wish to continue?

An application that uses more resources to accomplish the same or less is the definition of bloat. Microsoft is rapidly becoming irrelevant . Time for news.com to stop talking about them.