11.30.09
Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 7:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Well the initial impression is how much it [Windows 7] looks like Vista. Which I think is…uh…the thing I’m not supposed to say.”
–Microsoft Jack Schofield
Summary: Vendors begin to speak out about the effect (or lack thereof) of Vista 7 being released
THIS is the latest lesson in the reality behind Vista 7. It is not getting any better.
In the past week there have been zero headlines about Vista, at least in Google News. We wrote about this trend last week too. By contrast, Google News had 22 clusters of items with Vista 7 (“Windows 7″) in the headline. It is obvious that Microsoft is trying to bury Vista because of its name. Microsoft would rather pretend that the two operating systems are totally different, just like in the Mojave Experiment (an experiment in marketing).
“Microsoft would rather pretend that the two operating systems are totally different, just like in the Mojave Experiment (an experiment in marketing).”Last week we wrote about a parents group complaining about Microsoft's Vista 7 ads in 'Family Guy'. It turns out the those ads have been aired despite being "axed". Did they pull a fast one? Or was it all just posted online? Either way, Gizmodo’s headline sums it up like this: “The Killed Windows 7 Family Guy Special Even More Horrible Than I Imagined”
It is really just like Vista. It becomes obvious when they get started with some superficial propaganda and superstars to make huge hype (worth hundreds of millions of dollars, allocated to marketing of one product alone). For Vista it was Seinfeld, Jackass, NASCAR, and Bollywood, to name a few examples. Microsoft recruited these to promote Windows Vista. For Vista 7, Microsoft is now tapping Sugababes. How corny.
Interpublic agency UM is behind a campaign to encourage listeners of ballad-heavy UK radio station Heart to visit a website dubbed “Sugababes love Windows 7″ to suggest locations for the girl band to perform in.
From the Telegraph: “Microsoft marketing thinks that women = Sugababes”
Aiming for that crucial eight-year-old girls market, Microsoft’s abysmal marketing department have signed up the Sugababes as the new face of Windows 7. Follow the three unrecognisable singer-dancer-actress-models in a series of painfully stilted videos as they use the new, fast, easy to use operating system to organise their busy lives. As though they don’t have a retinue of PAs and record company stooges, for God’s sake.
Microsoft does not resort to such a pathetic strategy until the products fail to sell. It was exactly the same with Vista, as Microsoft got slammed for using celebrities only after it had failed to make healthy business (as measured in terms of “sales”, where the definition varies).
As we stated before, increase in Acer sales was hardly noticeable after the initial launch hype (exactly the same as Vista because avid fans are the first/only ones to buy it off the shelves). Here is a new report which contains some numbers now that Acer speaks publicly about it.
Windows 7 is a small impulse to pc sales
Gianfranco Lanci, chief of Acer, said into an interview that Windows 7 had a noticeable but small influence in hardware sales. People bought pcs more because of the natural cycle to replace or upgrade old hardware, and not to have a prepared computer to run Windows 7 properly.
Also Dell noticed a lift to its own sales but hasn’t said whether it has planned for a more sustained boost. For now corporate buyers, the business sector are skeptical when we talk about windows 7 and they still wait to a mature product, they still want to see how Windows 7 behaves on different hardware, and more important if Windows 7 will involve also and upgrade at hardware level to be compatible with new OS. In this economic environment, with lower budget, other costs would not be a good thing. Business sector learned the lesson from Vista, the biggest failure of Microsoft, when was released, incompatible with available hardware, an OS with huge system requirements, unavailable for big part of existing hardware at that time.
What also ought to be mentioned is a new conflict of interests. What Acer does not say is that it developed some special relationship with Microsoft, under the banner “Genuine Partner Program”. From last week’s news:
Under its Genuine Partner Program, Microsoft and Acer are enabling partner resellers such as VillMan to showcase Acer PC systems powered by genuine software such as the Windows 7 operating system and Microsoft Office at reasonable prices.
The Microsoft-faithful reporters have attempted to spin Acer’s words to produce Windows promotion. This happens for obvious reasons, but not much is said about scale and correlation to time of the season (holiday), as Vista was released well after Christmas, not to mention last year being the midst of an economic drought. This has impact on year-to-year projections.
“The Microsoft-faithful reporters have attempted to spin Acer’s words to produce Windows promotion.”All along we were expecting to see some fake numbers about Vista 7 “sales”, and quite rightly so. Microsoft has tricks for cooking these books. It is rather pathetic yet deceiving when they are trying to make improper comparisons with one bad version of Windows (usually Vista) being replaced by a newer one (Vista 7, the “Service Pack” of Vista). There are also many headlines comparing it to Apple in the US, with bogus numbers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It’s the art of spin. They only make comparisons that make Vista 7 look like a success while avoiding all others.
According to new statements from Gartner, which is biased in favour of Microsoft, not all is good, to say the very least.
Gartner says Windows 7, Microsoft’s new operating system, will have a little impact on holiday PC sales, but noted that 2010 PC shipments could be affected.
And also:
Gartner also forecasts a limited impact on sales of the introduction of Windows 7, the new PC operating system from Microsoft.
That’s the same Gartner which lied about Vista, saying in 2007 that “Sooner or later, most organizations will deploy Windows Vista.”
Vista 7 is a failure. As this cartoon reminds us, it is just not as bad as Vista. Too many people still pay attention to marketing messages. They never learn. █
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
–Bill Gates, Microsoft
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Posted in FUD, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft at 6:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s “Slog” against ARM-powered devices began some months ago, but is the latest debacle in any way related to Microsoft?
SEVERAL months ago when the word “Netbook” was manipulated by Microsoft we finally complained about the name “Smartbook” [1, 2, 3, 4]. It was almost as though this name was made up by Microsoft in order to separate between a class of computers capable of running Windows and those that cannot.
According to this, a Microsoft partner suddenly says that the word “Smartbook” is no longer permitted. “I wonder,” writes Pamela Jones, “if it’s a coincidence that Qualcomm is being harassed over the name smartbook by a Microsoft partner, just as it gets ready to launch?”
As an important reminder from the news:
Helping to reduce cost will be Smartbook manufacturers’ relief from paying for a Microsoft licence because Microsoft has refused to port Windows XP/Vista/7 to ARM.
A reader has just sent us what he titled “Eye on Microsoft Slog,” referring to what Microsoft calls it when it attacks major rivals like a bulldozer. Sub-notebooks are among the victims (see links at the bottom of this post) and the illegal steps taken by Microsoft had been documented here before Microsoft started to whitewash and have people forget the truth, then believe that GNU/Linux lost, based on lies.
Windows ARMageddon Proceeds Smoothly
Microsoft has some fundamental market problems and is trying to substitute FUD for product. The market for smart phones and netbooks is hot. The market for desktops and Windows is not. Windows Mobile is a mess and the Vista family is never going to fit into your pocket. How do you spin that on its head? Easy, recycle previous lies and project doom onto the latest commercially successful threat, Chrome OS.
Current Microsoft talking points are that Google Android and Chrome OS will fail in the market just like GNU/Linux netbooks failed. Well disproved lies, such as higher rates of returns for GNU/Linux than Windows on netbooks and bogus market share numbers, are trotted out as supporting evidence. Damage control also extends to disparaging new wireless technologies that Google is pioneering. The Microsoft story is plastered all over Google Sci/Tech News through the usual suspects and analysts. The Microsoft party line is so backward that it would be funny if it did not mask prior criminal actions and were not a part of their current slog against Google.
Reality, of course, looks nothing like the Microsoft story and GNU/Linux netbook sales are surging. The illegal squeeze on GNU/Linux netbooks was short lived and much resented by retailers and OEMs that took a bath instead of making lots of money in a white hot market. New market data from ABI now shows that GNU/Linux is shipped on about a third of netbooks and they predict a majority share in 2013. Their numbers do not include “fast boot” GNU/Linux or home installs, just what shipped on 30 million netbooks. Predictions of dominance come from the rise of ARM systems. ABI’s predictions are too optimistic for Microsoft because they think Microsoft might do something with ARM and that Vista and Windows 7 might run on netbooks.
Boycott Novell should congratulate itself for conclusively documenting Microsoft’s attack on the Asus EEE PC and OLPC projects. Informed
predictions can only be made from correct history and correct technical knowledge.
References
• Linux owns 32 percent of netbook market, says study
• ABI’s Jeffrey Orr on rising Linux netbook sales
• Linux’s share of netbooks surging, not sagging, says analyst
The lies from Microsoft keep popping up in places. █
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Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 5:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Nicolas Sarkozy with Laura Bush
Siim Kallas with George Bush
Summary: Seats swapped and some familiar figures depart as a new generation of regulators is to be installed
A WEEK ago we warned that the European Commission keeps getting filled with Microsoft cronies.
This observation is also being made by Free software companies and it is based on evidence. Based on the latest changes from Barroso (see [1, 2]), Kores is to be sort of demoted which is good news to Microsoft.
The new Competition Commissioner will be Joaquin Almunia.
European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, a Spanish Socialist known for tackling countries’ deficits, will be antitrust chief in the next European Commission, succeeding Neelie Kroes.
As competition commissioner, Almunia, 61, will be responsible for ensuring that companies don’t abuse market positions or unlawfully collude to fix prices. He will also rule on mergers and acquisitions in the 27-nation bloc.
From IDG News Service:
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announced on Friday how he wants to allocate dossiers in his next five-year term in office. His team comprises one Commissioner from each of the 27 member states of the E.U., who were selected by national heads of government over the past month.
Other choices include Neelie Kroes in Reding’s old job. Kroes was competition commissioner for the past five years. During that time she fought Microsoft in the long-running antitrust battle which looks set to end as Microsoft appears willing to settle.
There is more information in the Wall Street Journal and while Siim Kallas stays, he is not the only one worth watching.
Other servants of Microsoft’s interests (like Charlie McCreevy and Nicolas Sarkozy [1, 2]) are mentioned in the news.
Sarkozy Wins Bid to Install Ally as EU Financial-Services Chief
French President Nicolas Sarkozy won his bid to install an ally as the European Commission’s next financial-services regulator, fueling British concern that traders and hedge funds will face stricter rules.
[...]
French officials have pushed for tighter regulations on hedge funds than has outgoing internal-markets chief Charlie McCreevy of Ireland and criticized him for not responding forcefully enough to the financial crisis. The U.K., seeking to protect its financial-services industry, has tried to weaken proposed rules for hedge funds and private-equity managers.
He has actually done far worse things. █
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Posted in Google, Law, Microsoft, SCO, Search at 5:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft tries to stir up infighting to cause havoc in Google while also punishing Murdoch’s publications
“Murdoch Looking Towards Microsoft for Search Deal,” says another report, which more or less confirms that this is not just a rumour.
At Groklaw, Pamela Jones is joking about the fact that the Wall Street Journal (Murdoch’s) does not seem to know this for sure and it even cites the Financial Times as its source. Jones also writes: “Could someone please explain to Microsoft that destroying others isn’t the most productive way to compete? They could try, well, merit, instead. What? Too simple? Too clean? Anyway, this is included in News Picks for all the dreamers out there who thought there was a new Microsoft.”
Yes, the illusion that Microsoft has changed was last addressed in this post about Murdoch, which follows many others, e.g.:
Some folks are already making up figures, based on some biased poll from a single Web site.
Eighty nine per cent declared the move to be ‘a winner’ with a lowly 11% declaring it to be ‘a loser’.
A pretty good result for a guy that has been called an “old fool,” an “aging idiot,” and as exhibiting, “early signs of dementia” in the press this week.
As one post puts it, “Murdoch thinks Google is doing evil — kleptomania — because he doesn’t understand the new realities of media. Microsoft knows better. Its alleged attempt to woo old-man Murdoch is an act of deepest cynicism. It’s evil.”
Other newer coverage puts it bluntly: “Report: Microsoft May Pay News Corp to Block Google”
That’s not competing, that’s destroying. Microsoft also funded SCO when it was suing Linux, so there is a resemblance in tactics. It attempted something similar with patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] a few months ago.
Microsoft has also destroyed Yahoo! in its attempts to destroy Google. See for example:
After destroying Yahoo! from within, some nations won’t stand in its way and as a reminder of the danger of Microsoft in search, the company is rigging its search results against competitors. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Last week we wrote about calls to boycott Bing. It turns out that Microsoft is knowingly shilling for the repressive Chinese government because Microsoft was warned about this before. It did not correct this.
Microsoft Bing Is No Funny Thing
[...]
Kristof broached this subject with Microsoft back in June, and the company claimed it was a bug. Six months later, he wrote, the censorship continues, with Microsoft claiming “that a search in any given language emphasizes results from within the country that uses that language. Thus if you search in the simplified characters used within China, then you get disproportionately Chinese propaganda.”
There is more information about this here. It is not the first time that Microsoft goes political [1, 2], including international sanctions. Bing is one among those just sued over trademarks. █
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