11.08.12
Vista 8 AstroTurfing Not Enough, Other Tactics Used
Summary: A look at how Microsoft deals with having an unwanted operating system
THE Vista 8 astroturf has been carrying on with limited success. We did not cover it closely, but many examples were mentioned by yours truly in sites like Identi.ca. Many reviewers, probably most, dislike Vista 8, so it is like Vista in a sense. Ed Bott, somewhat of a peripheral PR outpost for Microsoft, calls people who dislike this Vista successor not “normal” (link omitted). He likes to insult people who don't agree with Microsoft.
So people who do not like Vista 8 are not “normal”, insists Microsoft, but what’s not “normal” is bloggers whom Microsoft bribes to write positive articles about Vista 8.
The strategy is doomed. Microsoft tries to change people rather than the OS and it introduces artificial barriers like UEFI, which complicate everything and can in fact discourage Vista 8 installs. See this new post:
The computer I used is the same one I’ve used in the past, a system I assembled using an ASRock motherboard. The board has a UEFI firmware. The process was the same. Install Windows 8 Pro first, then attempt to install Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop alongside it.
Back In 2009 we concentrated on Vista 7 failures, but three years later the landscape is different (Android is dominant), so we need only focus on few bad reviews which stand out. Here is what a Microsoft partner called Dominic Connor says:
Are you an IT pro? It’s no longer safe to bet your career on Microsoft
As an IT worker, you have to gamble on which technology will keep you fed and housed over the coming years. For a really long time that has been Microsoft, but you don’t get paid on the past. Instead you need to peer into an uncertain future.
The Windows 8 launch was remarkably stealthy compared to the good old days when it was an event on an Apple scale. In fact, if you weren’t an IT pro you’d easily assume that Apple was a majority of the world’s IT. In the UK there was so little in the way of launch events that I cornered an Microsoft’s PR to find out if they’d “forgotten” to invite me.
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Dominic Connor is a headhunter who has been a professional developer on every major and most minor MS platforms and is a director of a firm that is a Microsoft Partner.
Borrowing a lesson from OLPC days, Microsoft is targeting children now, trying as characteristically as always to collect revenue from government, i.e. in the public sector, all at the expense of Free software.
Free software advocates should keep their heads up and not carry the baggage of being an underdog; now we have a much more compelling product and philosophy to promote. We need no longer worry about Microsoft; in fact, Apple has become equally burdensome, albeit far less corrupt. Vista 8 will fail on its own, even without much criticism from the likes of FSF (not that this criticism is not welcomed). █
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