Category: Microsoft

Saying No

This month’s Fortune Magazine has an interview with Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, who’s company Fortune named the most innovative in the same issue. Jobs is a master at answering the question he wish had been asked. But this time he kept on topic and gave direct answers most of the time. One idea he mentioned struck a chord when he discussed where where Apple places its focus:

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.

As the company I work for makes a play into new opportunities, I’m left to wonder if that’s such a good idea. It’s tempting to run after the new technology and convince yourself that gaining "first mover advantage" is worth the investment and risks. It had better be something where we can not just be a player, but be the best. Otherwise, we’ll be mediocre players in many markets. Boring.

Apple knows what it does well and it executes near flawless campaigns that ignite consumer passion and excitement. They don’t make dozens of computer models like Dell or HP. They don’t feel they have to be involved in every single software and service niche like Microsoft does. They aren’t trying to be all things to all people. They are focused on those products where they shine brightest. What they end up with are iconic products like the iPod which kick ass and take names.

Where does your company focus it’s people and investments? Does it know what it does better than anyone else?

–Link to Jobs interview

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The Year of Web Services

Could this finally be the year that Amazon see some competition in the web services market? I got thinking about this while reading this excellent post from Dave Winer this afternoon. Dave believes that it makes sense for Google to release their offering as a free service and makes a good argument for doing so.

So we’ll have Amazon and Google in this space. There’s no way that Microsoft can ignore Google or Amazon. Anything Google does, Microsoft has to follow. I’ve already written about what a nightmare this could be for Microsoft so I won’t rehash it here. Suffice it to say that Microsoft will be playing by Google’s rules if Google can beat them to the punch by offering a free or nearly free service. Amazon’s services have already lowed costs substantially but I expect many hold outs will jump on the Google bandwagon.

Few companies have the resources and cash to build out such massive data centers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft will do. We all benefit when three large, competitive companies fight for our business.

If I were handicapping the race I’d put Amazon ahead of the pack with Google a close second and Microsoft a distant third. If Ray Ozzie were leading Microsoft, I’d give them better odds but it’s hard to imagine Balmer fully embracing services that could erode Windows and/or Office margins. Microsoft hasn’t shown it possesses the guts to release online versions of Word, Excel or Powerpoint. I keep hearing rumors this will happen but it’s hard to fathom what took them so long. Someone is asleep at the wheel in Redmond.

I’m using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service in conjunction with Jungle Disk and I love it! But I don’t feel locked in to their service. If Google or Microsoft put out a better product, I’ll move over. But does it have to be free? As Winer mentions, Google could benefit from having potential acquisitions already running their products and services on the Google Web Services platform, thereby removing one of the major hurdles to any purchase. Giving the service would make sense in this case.

I wonder if one reason Microsoft is willing to overpay for Yahoo is they feel Yahoo could catapult them into a better position to compete in this space with Google and Amazon? There’s power in combining Microsoft’s cash and human resources with Yahoo’s open source platform. 

Read Om Malik’s interview with Ray Ozzie where they discuss web services.

Microsoft Execs Burned by Windows Vista

I’m glad I wasn’t the only person who felt burned by Vista when it first launched. I’ve written about my problems running Vista on three fairly new machines and the various problems I encountered. My problems ranged from printers and DVD drives not working to various performance and instability problems.

It’s great to see several Microsoft executives also ran into the same problems and emailed Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer, to complain.

One executive, Mike Nash, complained he was “burned” so badly by compatibility issues he was left with “a $2100 email machine”.

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista. In an email to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in February last year, Sinofsky outlined reasons why Vista struggled at launch.

He said hardware and software vendors never “really believed we would ever ship [Vista] so they didn’t start the work [on updated drivers] until very late in 2006”.

“People who rely on using all the features of their hardware (like Jon’s Nikon scanner) will not see availability for some time, if ever, depending on the [manufacturer],” Sinofsky wrote.

Ballmer responded with a terse “Righto”.

The “Jon” referred to is Microsoft board member and its former chief operating officer Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner.

You’ve got to love Balmer’s response! Do you think this is a guy who cares about those people who purchased Vista and ran into problems? If he doesn’t care about someone like Jon Shirley, who can certainly afford to upgrade his hardware, I doubt he cares much about the rest of us. The people I know who work for Microsoft DO CARE about their customers, and I’m sure is disheartening to hear such a flippant response from the CEO.

Here’s my take on Vista: The only reason to run Vista is if you purchase a brand new machine and Vista comes standard on your model. I’m running Vista on a new Lenovo X61 without any problems. But I’d strongly recommend sticking with XP on anything else. I run XP at home and Vista at work and I notice very little difference. Both are fairly stable with my XP machine feeling a little faster as desktops usually are. I like how Vista handles pictures, but there are enough annoyances to frustrate power users. I see no need to move to Vista if you’re happy with XP.

–Link to full article

The 15 Step Printing Process

My father recently purchased a new HP computer with Windows Vista. After a few week of wrangling with a bad sound chip, he’s back in business enjoying his new computer. This past weekend he asked me to help get his HP Deskjet 6127 printer working.

Here’s where things get interesting. Unlike Vista upgrades that are pretty good at telling you which of your installed programs or devices are not supported, plugging an unsupported printer into Vista is like flinging it into a black hole. Maybe it was too simplistic on my part, but I figured his Canon i960 would give him problems before his HP printer would, given his new computer came from HP. But the Canon showed up fine while his HP was missing in action.

I did a quick Google search for the Vista drivers and found the HP support page for his model. I learned that I’ll need to download, install and configure an “alternate” driver for his model which takes no less than 15 steps, including this step, “Change the port from LPT1 to USB or DOT4“. Easy us geeks who do this stuff for a living but not something many people should be expected to understand. Do your parents know what port their current printer is using?

Now my dad is pretty good with computers. He’s worked on them for well over 10 years and is quite comfortable doing basic installs and maintenance. But this driver install is confusing and would be intimidating to those who have never done this before. Someone at HP decided it was easier to create a 15 step work around than it would be to create a Vista driver.

If my brother or I were not around, I’m sure my dad would have bought a new printer that Vista supported. And that’s the rub here. I’m sure HP knows that and has little incentive to create drivers for printers that are a few years old when they can sell new printers to people who don’t know or care about what ports their printer is using. I’ll bet many new computer owners, faced with a similar situation, would blame Microsoft when their printer doesn’t work.

Vista might be a great operating system but it’s only as good as the hardware it supports. If you have one printer and HP hasn’t written a Vista supported driver, you’re hosed. When that happens, the true cost of Vista just increased substantially.

So who should shoulder the blame when this happens? It doesn’t seem fair to bust Microsoft’s chops when a device, made by another company, isn’t supported. Yet isn’t it in Microsoft’s best interest to encourage companies like HP to support printers that are only a couple years old? Maybe they did in this case and HP didn’t listen. Either way, the new computer owner is the loser in such situations.

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Michael Arrington on Charlie Rose

Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch expounds on Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook to Charlie Rose. Something I’ve been telling people for a while now he puts into words better than I could. To paraphrase: “The markets where Google makes it money are growing whereas the markets where Microsoft makes it’s money are shrinking”. He also states that the online advertising business will be “another 80/20” business and that Microsoft will be lucky to get 20%.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8119949202706402691:1369000:1804000&hl=en

Strange Windows Error Message

Before I could install updated drivers for my Creative X-Fi soundcard this evening, I had to reboot my Windows XP machine. When I tried doing so, Windows popped up this error message and wouldn’t let me reboot my machine!

winwrror

I have no idea what “long operation” Windows is referring to and firing up the Task Manager wasn’t any help in uncovering it.  And if I don’t know what it’s called I certainly can’t CANCEL IT.

Maybe XP is still upset I left her for Vista for a few months before regaining my sanity and returning home to XP.

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Thoughts on crazy Microsoft offer for Yahoo

Back when I worked as a contractor at Microsoft this small web-based email company sprouted out of nowhere. Nearly everyone I knew setup an account. It was called Hotmail and back in 1996 it was pretty cool to be able to access your email from any computer connected to the net using a web browser. Microsoft’s fledgling MSN Services group came along and bought Hotmail for $400 million which was a staggering price at the time. The joke among many of my coworkers was that Microsoft paid a mint for a domain name believing that $400 million should be able to build a pretty sophisticated web mail platform. But Microsoft was really paying for Hotmail’s nearly 9 million users.

What does this have to do with Microsoft nutty offer to purchase to Yahoo for over $44 billion? Well, I believe Microsoft is in a similar position with their online advertising platform that they were over 10 years ago with online properties such as web mail. Purchasing Hotmail was publicly admitting they missed the web mail trend and that it was better to overpay for an existing business than build one from scratch. Microsoft’s hostel bid for Yahoo is publicly admitting they would rather buy their way into the online advertising game with Google than build their own. If I worked for any of Microsoft online advertising efforts I’d take the Yahoo offer as a slap in the face and assume Balmer doesn’t trust his own troops to build a Google competitor. Both Microsoft and Yahoo’s efforts in the online ad space pale in comparison to what Google has been doing for years now. Does Balmer believe that two negatives will make a positive?

Part of me would like to see the purchase go through if only to inject some excitement into Microsoft. Microsoft has basically given up on the consumer space (Xbox and Zune are exceptions) while the profits continue to roll in from sales of Offices, SQL and Windows server products. Yahoo’s services and products are mostly geared to consumers and maybe some of that will rub off on Microsoft employees who look about as excited as you’d imagine selling another copy of SQL Server two thousand and whateverthehell version they are on now.

I really doubt it matters much either way. And I agree with something my coworker said today, “Someday someone will buy Microsoft”. 

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TWIT crew still bashing Vista

I listened to This Week in Tech on the way into work today and Leo and the gang were still trashing Windows Vista. Leo called it “this generation’s ME” in reference to the ill-fated Windows ME release just over eight years ago. When Vista first came out, I believe liked it quite a bit. Patrick Norton and taken shots at Vista for months though. But now it seems like the entire TWIT crew hates Vista.

Tonight I came across Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog which displays the sales pitch one computer shop is using to pull in business.

Several friends have mentioned that installing Vista SP1 has fixed a few problems, but I’m happy with my XP Pro install. I can’t think of a single reason to move to Vista while I can think of many reasons not to including speed and stability. Since when is a slower machine an “upgrade”?

When was the last time a major software release was met with so much disdain? Are you running Vista or have you decided to stick with XP? Or did you bail on Windows and move to the Mac or Linux?

Nintendo Wii continues to kick Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 around

According to NPD Group here are the top selling gaming system of 2007:

  1. Nintendo DS – 8.5 million
  2. Nintendo Wii – 6.3 million
  3. Xbox 360 – 4.6 million
  4. Sony PS3 – 2.6 million

Imagine what the numbers would have been had the Nintendo Wii been widely super-mario-64-ds-allavailable. They are still very difficult to find even a year after launch. I wonder how many people went looking for a Wii, couldn’t find one, and decided to buy a 360 or PS3 instead? 

Nintendo has proven once again that quality game play is king. Xbox 360 had the top selling game in Halo 3, but what must-have game was available on the PS3 that wasn’t available on other platforms?

Nice job, Nintendo. Now when can we expect the next Zelda game?

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