03.28.09
Windows Vista Leads to Another ‘Capable’ Lawsuit, Windows No Longer Gratis Either
Summary: Windows news ranging from a lawsuit to tightening of DRM, bad marketing, and betrayal of developers
Windows Vista has Microsoft face a couple of lawsuits right now, the former of which focuses on Microsoft’s collusion with Intel [1, 2, 3]. Add another one to this group of lawsuits now that Acer gets sued for Vista-incapable computers.
Two Middle Americans have sued Acer over its low-cost Aspire notebooks, claiming that the Taiwanese PC giant pre-installed Windows Vista on machines ill-equipped to run Microsoft’s latest OS.
With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world’s third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory.
It was Acer’s CEO who said that the entire industry is disappointed with Vista. That was almost 2 years ago when Microsoft was still spending a lot of money to deceive the public, so this remark from the head of a large OEM stood out, obviously.
There is some other Windows news that’s worth paying attention to. For example, despite the fact that Microsoft needs and sometimes takes pride in counterfeiting of Windows, the company is now tightening the screws for extra cash.
Microsoft updates WGA
SOFTWARE GIANT MICROSOFT is updating Windows XP anti-piracy technology to detect illegal copies installed with stolen or faked product keys, or with new activation cracks.
This is a bad strategy because it will push a lot more people to GNU/Linux, but on the financial side, it may give Microsoft short-term gains.
“They are planting some supportive information using a corruptible analyst (in this case about Vista 7) and then push links to it to the press, as revealed by Mary Jo Foley.”Microsoft is coming to realise that this business model of licensing an operating system through/to OEMs is reaching its end. The company has already experimented with subscription and it tries to prevent protocols and formats from being a commodity. It also tries hard to push companies into new lock-in such as OOXML. It uses the corrupted individuals at Gartner Group to do this right now (as shown early in the week) and as Roughly Drafted put it the other day, “PC market share numbers as reported by groups such as IDG and Gartner were invented in the 90s to flatter Microsoft and marginalize competitors, providing a quotable metric to prove that nobody could possibly compete against the monopoly, so why even try.”
It is the same with TCO. The genesis of this term is a Microsoft-Gartner deal that we uncovered before in a series of posts.
To be more specific, by “corrupted individuals” in this case we refer to Michael Silver, who is still acting in complete alignment with Microsoft's evangelism presentation. They are planting some supportive information using a corruptible analyst (in this case about Vista 7) and then push links to it to the press, as revealed by Mary Jo Foley. Microsoft did this with the Burton Group quite recently in order to advance OOXML.
Moving on and looking at news about Windows, the latest advertising campaign is being ridiculed and Microsoft has come under fire for its approach towards developers, whom it now charges to merely develop for Windows Mobile. Both reports are from IDG.
Microsoft’s New Message: Windows Is For Losers?
[...]
So, Microsoft, if this is the message you’re pushing–that your prospective customers “aren’t cool enough” to own a Mac, what does this make your users? Losers?
Microsoft may charge developers if they submit within a year more than five applications or application updates to the Windows Mobile Marketplace, a move that has some developers concerned that the store won’t be able to compete with the iPhone App Store or the Android Market.
How far would Microsoft go for revenue? Microsoft is not as profitable as people are led to believe. █
twitter said,
March 29, 2009 at 7:49 pm
The latest round of fake marketshare numbers come from netbooks. Several of the usual shills have been touting M$’s supposed 90% share of the netbook market. While it is true that M$ bludgeoned ASUS into putting Windows onto their EEE PCs, then shipping half of them with it, then 70%, it’s hard to believe people are dumb enough to buy netbooks with Windows on them. Everyone knows that a netbook is basically an underpowered PC with a tiny screen and no optical drive for repair. Give a netbook six months of net use and it will be a brick. Who would be dumb enough to buy such a thing except a vendor or retailer threatened by M$? Everyone has noticed that GNU/Linux versions of netbooks sell out quickly and the Windows versions sit on the shelf. Helios noted that Dell’s GNU/Linux netbook is the industry’s best seller. Yet here these shill come, quoting some kind of M$ talking point as if the battle was over and everyone can relax about the impending GNU/Linux revolution. I’ve seen a couple of Windows netbooks in public because they were dumped on a local school. Otherwise they are just like Zune and the latest round of shills stories remind me of the fake numbers M$ made up for that market failure. The numbers were true enough given the narrow definition of music player they used, which all but included the color brown. Just as it was then, the shills fail to describe what 90% really means and point to market data that’s only available for a fee.
Roy Schestowitz said,
March 29, 2009 at 7:51 pm
It’s a lie. I have a post coming about it tomorrow. The lie comes from known Microsoft shills like Preston Gralla and Shane O’neil.
In sub-notebooks, the market share of GNU/Linux is 30-40%. It’s not a US-only market.
G. Michaels said,
March 29, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Yet these shills come, quoting obscure blogs and claiming the numbers are bogus because they don’t like them, so therefore they are. They spend years claiming the end is near, yet it never comes.
If you think about it Will, there really isn’t much difference between you and the spin masters from Microsoft or any other corporation. That’s one of the many reasons people don’t like you on Slashdot, or your own LUG.