Bonum Certa Men Certa

Windows and Advertising

Pen on calendar



Summary: The latest look at marketing hype that surrounds Vista 7

LAST NIGHT we wrote about press coverage that Microsoft was essentially buying. It is no exaggeration to say that the news is driven by money rather than the importance of news. Both Apple and Microsoft have colossal marketing budgets, so in many ways they can be considered marketing companies for mediocre products that they adopt and sometimes build. It's about branding.



“Among the headlines, "Vista" is seen mentioned only 3 times this week, in conjunction/overlap with Vista 7, which has 44 matches in the headlines.”Windows Vista is hardly covered in the news anymore. We have just looked at 800 Microsoft headlines from the past week (in the same way that we do this every week). Among the headlines, "Vista" is seen mentioned only 3 times this week, in conjunction/overlap with Vista 7, which has 44 matches in the headlines. That is a 15:1 ratio in favour of vapourware, a product which is not even available. So it becomes very clear what Microsoft is marketing out there in the news and which products it prefers not to mention. Free upgrades from Vista to Vista 7 (Windows 6.1) indicate that Microsoft wants to bury Vista and restart afresh.

Speaking of advertising, here is an advertising-oriented Microsoft product which our reader ZiggyFish claims to be a dead product now.

A Microsoft Office spokesperson whom I contacted this week said Microsoft is not building an Office for Advertising SKU.


Does that counts as yet another Microsoft product which is axed before arrival?

One of our readers, who goes by the name of Goblin, has carried on experimenting in order to understand how Microsoft manages public perception in Twitter. He draws in people whose role -- whether voluntary or not -- is to defend Microsoft products and the latest findings are rather amusing. Here is his tease for Vista 7 AstroTurfers.

Too lazy to upgrade to 7?



[...]

Its another one of those general articles that implies there’s great features of 7 but never goes into any real detail. Maybe its posts like his that are encouraging some users to try alternatives? Or maybe those users are, as Mr Hussain says, just ignorant and lazy for daring to be happy with an OS that “just works”?

Mr Hussain would be welcome to come here and justify himself, but I wont ask if he wants a right of reply, I really don’t believe there is anything that can salvage the rubbish he’s posted. (IMO) An excellent reason in my opinion why if you are considering upgrading you should at least try Linux first. It wont cost you anything and it will certainly take you away from a platform that seems to always want to sell you things.

Ive posted on Imran Hussain’s blog, but as is usual in these cases, moderation is in place so the comment doesn’t appear. What are these posters so worried about?


There is a followup here.

MicroPirates, Censorship & Openbytes to be “ripped apart”?



[...]

Sunday has been rather interesting. I hope you enjoy this light relief, tongue in cheek look at the silliness some will engage in whilst promoting a Microsoft cause. Remember the girlfriend of a faithful MS poster coming here? I can’t promise you anything as funny or tragic as that (it will be difficult to beat) but heres a little entertainment. Today we met some new “characters” in the World of baseless Windows promotion.


As another sign that Vista 7 will disappoint many (and Microsoft knows this), XP availability is extended yet again, making it an operating system that survives for at least a decade due to strong competition from GNU/Linux.

Microsoft Extends XP Downgrade Option Until 2011



We've been here one or two times before (read: six times - see links below) but just like a champion who doesn't know when they are beaten, Windows XP has again had its lifespan extended...


Glyn Moody writes about more reasons why Vista 7 starts on the wrong foot.

Call me cynical, but I don't think that's going to wash with the punters. They will rightly see this as Microsoft throwing a pan-galactic strop, and doing all it can to be as nasty as possible to the European Union – forgetting in its rage that the ones it will most upset are those people formerly known as locked-in users.

Except that nowadays, they aren't so locked in. Improved cross-platform compatibility for apps means that alongside GNU/Linux (admittedly still something of an acquired taste), there's also Apple's hardware, which is becoming increasingly popular on the desktop. Or why not simply stick with XP and forget about Windows 7 *just* like everybody forgot about Windows Vista?


People may not recall this, but ahead of Vista's arrival, the atmosphere in the press was similar. Vista was hailed as the next great operating system and bribed bloggers led to it being praised on the Web. Microsoft spends hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring a warped consensus (it is called "perception management" [1, 2]). It manufactures people's feelings and thoughts about Vista 7. Many people won't try it, so they rely on hearsay, a lot of which is either bribed for or simply comes from Windows enthusiasts who install beta software for posing.

"I receive an e-mail from Julie McCormick at Waggener Edstrom in which she extends a "special save-the-date" invitation to attend a "unique, invitation-only" event being hosted by the Windows Client team. She labels the subject matter as "confidential"..."

--Randall C. Kennedy



Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete