Microsoft's Ballmer ambushed by mommy (and popmech-topten)

That there is Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which Steve Ballmer gets a surprise drubbing from an enraged Gartner analyst. Not to mention the "brilliant gadget" that Microsoft brought to the table...

Patrick Thibodeau reports from the land of the mouse ears:

ORLANDO -- For a few minutes during Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer's appearance at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference here, emotionless management-speak gave way to a mother's frustration with the Vista operating system ... [who] explained that she installed Vista for her daughter -- and two days later went right back to using the XP operating system ... Yvonne Genovese, an analyst who was interviewing Ballmer ... also argued that her experience with Vista is broadly shared.
...
Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system. "Users appreciate the value that we put into Vista," he said. But, as with earlier operating system releases, "there is always a tension between the value that end users see -- and frankly, that software developers see -- and the value that we can deliver to IT."
...
How did the back-and-forth between Ballmer and Genovese play for the audience? One person at the conference, Alvin Naterpaul, a process management engineer at Baptist Health Care in Miami, said he liked the fact Genovese was "challenging him, so we are getting both sides of it." [more]

Doug Aamoth aads:

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Unless, of course, that woman is also a mother. Then the fury the likes of which hell hath no (?) is actually a bit worse. Such was the case today at a conference in Orlando when supermom/analyst Yvonne Genovese let Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer know what she thinks about Vista.

Her reasons for disliking Vista are pretty much the same as every other complaint we’ve been hearing about the operating system so far and Ballmer did a fine job of pulling things like end user, value, early adoption, customer feedback, and security out of his buzzword arsenal to defend Vista.

So not a lot of new complaints here but an interesting read nonetheless. It’s also kind of amusing to see people get bent out of shape at various company bigwigs who perhaps aren’t used to being yelled at all that often. [more]

It's Brian Reilly, really:

It sounds like Steve Ballmer had his hands full with Yvonne Genovese at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference in Orlando today. Ms. Genovese is one of many who have installed Vista only to revert to Windows XP. In her case, that experiment lasted only two days. Although Ballmer touts the enhanced security features of Vista, I think those are more important to corporate IT drones than to the average person who wants to browse the web or organize their photos. When you upgrade and don’t get any visible advantages and have to start dealing with warnings and error messages that you never dealt with before, I think most people don’t get too excited about that. [more]

Zoli Erdos connectz the dotz:

The key word is IT.  As in “expert only”.   Perhaps it’s time Microsoft recognize that they failed to serve two “masters”, and in catering strictly for IT, delivering a super-secure (?) system they created a monster quite unusable by individual consumers.
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Vista is for the corporate world with IT departments, period.  I can hardly think of better promotion for Apple then releasing Vista to the consumer market. [more]

Roger Ehrenberg buys low; sells high:

Both corporate IT departments and individuals are having a hard time reconciling the "benefits" of Vista versus XP, leading many to delay or outright reject deploying Vista in its current form. Well, the individual perspective was certainly driven home to Steve Ballmer at a Gartner symposium yesterday.
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Strategically, Microsoft's moves seem consistent with those of Sony concerning its decision to cut backward compatibility out of PS3. Except instead of dumbing-down Vista (it is already dumb enough), they are enhancing XP [with Service Pack 3]. Bottom line, both strategies are geared towards protecting legacy franchises for products that work (either because of features, price or both), and buying time for new products to get the kinks hammered out before severing the umbilical cord. Like Sony, Microsoft's move is economically rational IMHO, even if it is in response to a flawed strategy around Vista. What remains to be seen is if Vista ultimately has legs, and if corporations and individuals alike will move on from XP fast enough to keep Vista alive. Should be an interesting year for the folks from Redmond. [more]

Scott Wilson wonders, "Why isn't this on YouTube?":

They overplay the "mom in tennis shoes" factor, but the picture introduced ... is priceless.
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I remember the same stories when XP came out and people sampled it and went back to 2000; they weren't wrong to do so then or now and XP's eventual triumph in the market isn't somehow a vindication of the operating system itself, but more an inevitable expression of Microsoft's manipulation of the market. If they still sold 2000, I bet it would still be selling like crazy.

This doesn't mean XP isn't a "better" OS or that Vista isn't "better" in the same sense than XP, but more that most people have their needs met by a fairly conservative system and most of the advances are invisible to them in all senses except that their PC is suddenly much slower than it used to be. From a practical perspective, as Steve found, that's hard to argue with. [more]

Ex-Gartner analyst Vinnie Mirchandani tries not to offend Hindus:

During my orientation session at Gartner in 1995, we had a senior analyst, Mike Braude tell our rookie class "Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger".  Gartner should fire up that grill again.
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What's striking about this is not just the humor in the exchange, but how unusual it is to see a Gartner analyst publicly go after a large vendor executive. Good for Yvonne for taking a big risk. The Gartner sales person for Microsoft likely cringed and subtly told her she needs to be nicer to Ballmer in future. Microsoft is one of Gartner's single biggest accounts. Who knows, Ballmer may have already expressed his displeasure to Gartner management. I hope not, he is a tough cookie who bravely shows up at just about every ITxpo. Yvonne did not even begin to harp on Microsoft's economics and impact of IT budgets, as I would have.
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I want my alma mater to go back to its roots where it represented buyers and channeled their questions and concerns. Today, Gartner is like Patty Hearst during her kidnapping. Defensive of vendors, especially larger ones. The more Gartner frees up Yvonne and other analysts to represent buyers the better. [more]

Buffer overflow:

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Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Hard drive boffins, we salute you! (and Bobsaidwhat?)
• IBM and Google float in parallel clouds (and makeamin)
• Tarjay: ixnay on the lindbay (and thamnophissirtalis)
• Microsoft: trust us with your health records (and DDR in the 1790's)
• Microsoft Open.NET: dot-not open source (and periodic table table)
• Older posts

And finally... Popular Mechanics praises Microsoft Surface (and nine other "Brilliant Gadgets")

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You too can pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.