Bonum Certa Men Certa

Vista 7 Not Suitable for Family Guy; The Real Cost of Vista 7 Revealed

Summary: Setback for marketing of Vista 7 and more bad news regarding cost, technical issues, and the rapid advancement of GNU/Linux

EARLIER this month we wrote about the outrageous "Family Guy" arrangement, which had Microsoft further corrupt/erode trust in television. Well, they have just called the whole thing off.



One of our readers writes: "I wonder if the Family Guy people made the show as tasteless as they could." He quotes this from The Register: "Windows marketing messages were presumably seamlessly integrated into the schtick, so were jokes about deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest."

More in Business Insider:

Microsoft Shocked 'Family Guy' Humor Includes Incest, Holocaust Jokes (MSFT)



[...]

Turns out Seth MacFarlane isn't PC enough to be a PC. Microsoft was set to sponsor a prime time special by the "Family Guy" creator as part of its Windows 7 media blitz, but was somehow surprised when the typically MacFarlane-esque fare didn't exactly "fit with the Windows brand."


TechDirt claims that Microsoft still benefits from the publicity stunt, whereas Family Guy cannot be trusted anymore due to the fact that it sold out so easily. Like with Seinfeld, this show's reputation is already ruined, stained by the Vista* series.

The Microsoft crowd tried to make Microsoft look like a dominant party in this relationship. "Always blame someone else" is still the motto. There is also a parody about it, courtesy of our reader David Gerard.

Yesterday we showed that in many ways, Vista 7 turns out to be more and more like Vista. Even Family Guy and Seinfeld are a parallel because both were prematurely called off. They turned out to be tasteless marketing for tasteless products. As one blogger has correctly put it:

It is remarkable that a lot of the geek pundits proclaiming the qualities of Windows7 were the same people who once announced that Vista was the cat's meow.


From IDG we are now learning that the cost of Vista 7 (for a business) can almost exceed $2000 per seat.

After last week's saturation coverage of Windows 7, I will spare you the laundry list of changes and new features (check out our Windows 7 Deep Dive Report for that). But I ask you to imagine the hypothetical CFO of that hypothetical 2,500-user organization, staring at an upgrade cost of between $2,587,500 and $4,825,000. Glaring at that number, looking at it sideways, maybe turning it upside down. And this buys us ... what, exactly?


Cringely agrees that "Windows 7 costs so much," to quote his latest headline. Here is a new Vista 7 cartoon which promotes GNU/Linux and here is a new guest post from former Microsoft employee, Keith Curtis. His headline is: "Linux is the future, even after Windows 7 release"

Many of the benefits of Linux are subtle. It doesn't come with any nagware. The default media player supports both many formats including QuickTime and Windows media. Likewise, the instant messaging program supports 16 different protocols. The GUI is more customizable. But the best feature of Linux is something that neither Windows nor the Macintosh have: a rich set of free applications, installable with one click...


More problems with Vista 7 are beginning to surface. From IDG: "Windows 7 endless reboot answer evades Microsoft"

Users remained stymied today by endless reboots after trying to upgrade their PCs to Windows 7, according to messages posted on Microsoft's support forum.

An answer has yet to be found for all users, who began reporting the problem last Friday after watching the upgrade stall two-thirds of the way through the process. Most users said that their PCs had displayed an error that claimed the upgrade had been unsuccessful and that Vista would be restored. Instead, their PCs again booted to the Windows 7 setup process, failed, then restarted the vicious cycle.


Rex Ballard, an IBM employee, writes: "That ought to convince CEOs and CTOs that Windows 7 is the "right choice" for an immediate upgrade.

"I also noticed an official message from IBM telling employees to switch to Firefox as their "official" browser.

"No upgrades to IE 7 allowed."

And another new article compares Vista 7 to GNU/Linux. To quote just a portion:

Just be aware though that you can't upgrade from 32-bit version of Vista to a 64-bit edition of Windows 7. A lot of people found out the hard way that you can't get there from here.


From the comments: "What persuaded me to move permanently to Linux Mint (with XP running in VirtualBox for Adobe apps) is that Windows had become such a Fat Pig. Mint happily runs itself with several applications open (Thunderbird, OpenOffice Writer), and WinXP Pro running MS Word XP under VirtualBox, on my ThinkPad T43 with 2 GB of RAM. And by "happily," I mean "no perceptible slowdown in any of the Linux or Windows apps. That, to me, is nifty, remarkable, convenient, and cool."

As we stressed before, Vista 7's launch went terribly wrong and it's only the beginning. Recall the early warnings (video below), namely messages which got ignored and their messengers viciously attacked and ridiculed. Perception management in action [1, 2].

Ogg Theora





Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

"We Might Save Somebody's Life"
I follow the example of my father
Gemini Links 16/07/2025: Tmux and OCC25 Working TLS
Links for the day
Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
 
How Many Women Has Microsoft's Alex Balabhadra Graveley Already Strangled and Where Does That End?
If you too are a victim of this man and wish to share information, contact us
Gemini Links 16/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and Simple Web Browsing with TLS
Links for the day
Links 16/07/2025: Fascist Slop Takes "Intelligence" Clothing, New Criminal Case Against MElon
Links for the day
Why I am Suing the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, in the UK High Court This Week
Out of respect to the process and to the Court, I shall not share any pertinent details about the case
Links 16/07/2025: China’s Economy Grows Steadily, France Takes Action Regarding Harm to Children by GAFAM and Fentanylware (TikTok)
Links for the day
It is Not About Politics
Beware the people who try to make this about politics
Good Journalism Saves Lives
a shocking number of women die or get seriously hurt every day due to violence from a partner
Recognition of Women's Contributions to Free Software
Being passive is not an option when bad things are happening
Slopfarms Are Going to Perish Because Public Opinion is Changing
Many slopfarms will simply go offline
19 Years of Standing Up for Justice, Equality, and Truth
This week we shall take it up a notch
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
OSI has been fairly quiet lately
Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
It's so ridiculous
Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
unlawful communications like threats
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day