Bonum Certa Men Certa

Demise of Microsoft's Core Business, as Captured by the Press

Summer storm



Summary: Stories of failure for Vista and Vista 7, Office substitutes, and XBox hostilities

YESTERDAY we wrote about Microsoft winning the “Great Fiasco Award” for its -- err -- "exceptional" achievements with Windows Vista. There is further discussion about it even in 'big' sites such as:



As a further sign that Vista 7 may replicate some of Vista's failures, behold the revelation that Vista 7 has over 2000 known bugs. In reality, there are far more (not detected yet) and Microsoft refuses to fix them because it puts this successor of Vista on the fast track. It's said to be slated for release no earlier than next year (there are contradictory reports).

Steven Sinofsky, the Senior Vice President for the Microsoft Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, in an attempt to quell a beta tester rebellion over a perceived lack of feedback concerning bug reporting has made an astonishing confession: Windows 7 has at least 2000 bugs.


No wonder early adopters are disappointed (some are being bribed to brag about it).

Vista 7 will be as vulnerable as Vista and some researchers argue that it will even be more vulnerable than Vista because of changes made for convenience's sake. Either way, anti-virus software will be needed and this interesting new post speaks of the impact on the environment (spare resources and CPU cycles).

Windows = Antivirus = Pollution?



[...]

I just read an article by the University of Calgary where the author claims (and I think he's correct) that IT is a huge pollutant. For example, we have hardware that becomes obsolete, we have to produce electricity to pump into our gadgets, etc.

Not long ago I read another article where it's calculated (or so they say) how much pollution is produced by each search on google.

[...]

So... coming back to the question: Windows = Antivirus = Pollution? Can anybody try to make a wild guess about how much pollution is produced by antiviruses?


There are several other posts or articles that are worth linking to. IDG shares "10 Reasons to Avoid Office 2007," but being IDC, it almost completely ignores the fact that there is another option (or many) other than different versions of Office. Another Microsoft-friendly site, namely ZDNet, writes about substitutes to Outlook, which is part of Microsoft Office.

If you're using a Microsoft Windows operating system there is also a good chance that you use Office and Outlook as your email client. But is this really a choice?

More than likely it was a default option; the software is there, so why not use it? Why? Because there might be something out there that suits your needs far better. Other email clients can be highly customised to suit particular industries and may include options not available in Outlook.


Trouble and unrest in XBox land too:

The Xbox Live banning of a lesbian gamer who self-identified her sexuality created a huge furor on Thursday, prompting Microsoft to characterize its own banning policies as "inelegant."


Things are not working so smoothly up there in Redmond. Marketing may fool the broader audience until they actually try the products. It was the same with Windows Vista, which was mostly hailed in 2006.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Problem is Not Technology, the Problem is Really Bad Things Sold or Imposed as "Tech" (Like a Religion Built Around Technology)
Don't hate technology, hate the corporations that abuse it to promote coercion, exploitation etc.
Resisting IBM and EPO Corruption
Rise up against EPO dictatorship next week
Where Slop Meets Ghostwriting: It's a False Analogy
It's a false analogy
Slop Technica: Ars Technica Seems Like Repeat Offender, a Part-Time Slopfarm
The culprits are repeat offenders, but the publisher will never admit this in public
Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
Looking at "I" countries
Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
 
EPO "Productivity" Will Fall Off a Cliff If Examiners Stick to the European Patent Convention (EPC) and Follow the Real Rules
The EPO's "Cocaine Communication Manager" would hate to see the next "productivity" metrics
Links 17/02/2026: Why OpenClaw is Very Sleazy and Ars Technica Exposed as Hub of LLM Slop (Credibility Destroyed Overnight)
Links for the day
Benj Edwards (Ars Technica) Used Fake Articles to Promote Ponzi Scheme for Conde Nast and Its Client (Marketing)
What Ars Technica and Conde Nast do here helps defraud the general public
Only One in 50 Saudis Would Use Microsoft for Search, Almost Same as Would Use Russia's Yandex
If statCounter is to be trusted
Microsoft's "AI" Concerns Are All Indian (or Low-Paid Workers Who Work Extra Hours Unpaid)
portraying charlatans and frauds like they're some kind of visionaries and luminaries
Microsoft Turned Bing Into Censorship Machine of China, But Bing Is Pegged at a Mere 2% in Asia, Yandex is Bigger
Expect many Bing layoffs some time soon (like in past years)
Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
“future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
Recent publication
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
Links for the day
The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026