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Preston Gralla

Seeing Through Windows

Five things Ballmer should say at CES

5 comments

TAGS:Ballmer, CES, Microsoft, Vista, Windows 7
IT TOPICS:Desktop Applications, E-Business & Web 2.0, Enterprise Software & Services, Internet, Networking, Operating Systems, SaaS & Cloud Computing, Software, Windows & Microsoft

When Steve Ballmer gives his keynote address at CES, he's widely expected to tout the benefits of Windows 7, and give his usual pep rally speech --- minus the "monkey boy" dance, one hopes. If he were smart, though, here are five things he'd say instead of the usual marketing pablum.

"I apologize for Vista."

He should start off with the words everyone wants to hear --- that Microsoft made a giant stumble with Vista. Whatever you think of the capabilities of Vista (and I'm a fan), Microsoft botched the rollout and erred big-time with hardware incompatibilities. It's time to pull a mea culpa.

"We're settling the Vista Junk PC suit."

The revelations in this seamy marketing scheme just keep coming. The latest: Microsoft made more than $1.5 billion on the campaign...all the while angering users. Microsoft should settle the suit and focus on the future, not the past.

"Windows 7 will be out mid-year."

Microsoft has been losing market share at an unprecedented rate. There are several reasons for that, but one of them is certainly Vista, which in addition to getting bad press, won't run on hardware in the fastest-growing segment of the PC world --- netbooks. Microsoft needs to get Windows 7 out fast. Ballmer should announce that Microsoft will ship Windows 7 by the middle of 2009.

"Windows 7 will be the last 'big-bang' operating system."

Microsoft should finally publicly acknowledge that the days of the big operating system release are over. There's no reason that users should have to wait two, three years or longer to get an updated operating system. After Windows 7, new operating systems should have a very small core, with components being added and upgraded constantly.

"All Microsoft software will run as Web-based applications or in the cloud."

Microsoft should announce a new direction for its online efforts --- no longer will it chase Google. It should recognize Google has won the battle for search. Instead, Microsoft should focus on its core strengths, applications and operating systems. The company has already announced that Microsoft Office will run as a Web-based application, which is a major move in the right direction. It should announce that its other applications will run via the Web, or in a cloud, as well.

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All Microsoft applications in the cloud?

Submitted by Anonymous on January 11, 2010 - 5:42 P.M.

Your last thing that Microsoft should say was "All Microsoft software will run as Web-based applications or in the cloud." As Bill Gates is reputed to be fond of saying, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

You must really hate Microsoft. You want them to maxmize their investment in taking a path that, sooner rather than later, customers will realize is to their own disadvantage and drop like a rock. Nah, maybe that should be a "lead brick" instead of "rock".

Microsoft seems sufficiently arrogant to desire this on their own... not because it is good for customers, but because they can wring out whatever juice is left in the customer (they think we all just fell off the turnip truck yesterday) for their own, or their big corporate giant customers', benefit.

And, to hell with Maiden Aunt Tilda out in the hinterlands, who only has dialup, writes a little e-mail to her multitude of neices and nephews, uses Excel to total her household bills, and wonders why PowerPoint and those other 'things' are on her computer.

Turn your application execution and your data over to Microsoft, or whatever host, and you'll find yourself paying more, getting less, suffering poor performance, and having your data more exposed to theft and other disasters.

A computer revolution doesn't mean blood in the streets, but it surely can mean a painful death to a corporate giant with weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth among its befuddled stockholders!

An Old Timer

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Say "sorry"

Submitted by Eric Dynamic on February 12, 2009 - 7:01 P.M.

First five things he should say?
1. I resign.
2. I was never competent.
3. Bill was never competent.
4. We don't know how to write secure operating systems, so please go out and get Linux for free.
5. If we promised to pay for consequential damages for the use of our software, we'd be broke for a thousand years, so we're sorry, but we just can't take responsibility for what we did to you.

Did I hear "cloud"? As I recall, that will be what "NCs" were to be, a means to sell people a new layer of hardware that is far stupider than what you now own, in order that you can NOT save your work in YOUR pocket, but rather must store your data with a corporation you must also trust, and access your data using software whose use you now RENT rather than OWN, in order to access and manipulate YOUR data.

The translation of "cloud" is "the new technology that we invented to keep ourselves in business", presuming they can convince the public that having a full-fledged computer at hand is somehow a nuisance, knowing for a certainty that you and only you have access to the data you processed on your computer is a frivolity, spending ten to a hundred times more money on using software than you have to is a good thing, and so forth.

"Cloud" computing is a "gimme" - "Gimme money for nothing." They figured out that empowering the consumer with software that would work forever on PCs that can be forever upgraded with free software was going to lose them money in the long run, so they decided to try to take personal computing back and away from us with their new name for an old, stale and abandoned (remember "Network Computing" and NCs?) paradigm that serves the consumer poorly at best.

I suggest we laugh in their faces any time we hear the phrase "cloud computing". I trust the computer I run, not ones being run by goons for their profits.

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vista is not bad!

Submitted by Anonymous on January 7, 2009 - 12:03 A.M.

he should not apologize for vista!
vista is a good operating system, however he should apologize for hardware compatibility (or rather lack there of) at its launch

here my prediction
everyone will love windows 7 even though its just a tweaked version vista....without the word vista

i think people should actually use vista before they decide to hate it

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The apology should be for first causes

Submitted by Mark Walker on January 8, 2009 - 6:37 P.M.

I'm not interested in an apology for the fiascos associated with the Vista rollout. The court case can settle that nonsense.

What I want to hear is an apology for the causes of the fiascos.

Let us hear the apology for the greed and hubris from those at Microsoft who were the first causes of the on-going Vista circus.

Let us hear the apology to the Microsoft engineers who's good work is now widely panned due to the hubris of others.

Future advise to Microsoft: KISS -- simplify, simplify, simplify. Take a lesson from all the examples from this industry's past where vendors had to ultimately shed unnecessary complexities of ownership to get to a value proposition for all involved or else face decline into irrelevance.

How to do so in this case? Ship just one OS where all types of usage are roles selected by the customer/end-user. Stop doing us favors by deciding which fractional featurism will be withheld for the "server" version of the OS, or in the case of Vista, the creation of 4 OS usage levels and one collection of vaporware features.

It is on the customer or their support/consultant to select an adequate hardware configuration for the intended use of a computer system. Today's licensing rules, which attempt to wring the last dime out of the customer for the *potential* value of a software product on a given computer, are onerous.

Sure an SQL database can be of far more value on an 32-CPU system than it is on a laptop, but who says I'm doing any more work with the database on the big machine?

It seems the vendor assumption is that customers dedicate the target system to the use of their product and the license is priced accordingly. In many cases, what we're doing with the product is just incidental compared to the use of other applications on the system. Result? The vendor wants to charge a high price and I want a low price.

Both positions may be justifiable on various grounds, but clearly neither frame of reference is equally valuable to both parties. What we need is a pricing function that addresses the actual use of the product.

A model for having product pricing scale to address the value for the workload processed would be to have the products themselves regulate their throughput internally. Something like a transactions per second rating for a product could be licensed from the vendor. That way both parties would be getting a fair shake.

You'll note I'm not suggesting a pay as you go arrangement though. We already know such an accounting process implemented by either party is very likely to be biased towards that party -- if it works at all. (Arguments to the contrary to be buried with historical empirical evidence.)

Instead, I'm suggesting a simple, up front, ceiling for the workload available. This is a simple model which is straightforward to implement and that would work independently of the number of CPUs a system has. Correct operation can be verified, and the workload ceiling can be easily adjusted when more capacity is needed assuming the hardware has the resources available.

So how about it? Some progressiveness for a change? That barrier to entry mentality is just making more and more lossage...

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LOL, cloud computing wont

Submitted by Anonymous on January 5, 2009 - 2:24 P.M.

LOL, cloud computing wont happen until the Internet Speeds pick up ALL OVER THE WORLD. Its still faster to have a program on the local drive and allways will be. 3GBs+ with SSD V 8MBS on fibre optic in limited areas? Not gonna happen...

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