In this century and in this economy what a shockingly bad business idea.

It would appear Microsoft is planning to sell computers (what an original concept) at their own retail outlets.

Apple who Microsoft are trying to emulate here  have retail stores because they develop their own hardware and software and have exclusivity on both.

I find it really odd that Microsoft are laying off 5000 staff and yet expanding into retail for what can only be prestige or pseudo marketing reasoning.

What are they going to do? Convince the public on Windows Vista, individually one at a time.

If we managed the last 20 years without a Microsoft Store why do we need one now? If this is such a good idea why didn’t anyone at Microsoft implement this before.

Apple has the Genius bar in their stores where you can go talk to an Apple expert. I wonder what Microsoft’s equivalent will be called.

My money is on the Microsoft Magicians.

I think BillG needs to stop unleashing mosquitoes on unsuspecting TED delegates and start asking what on earth Redmond is playing at.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7889099.stm

The worlds most wacky marketing campaign continues.

Better Quality Here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.aspx?icid=winvan

Microsoft have published a 22 Page PDF document that is a great read for those struggling with all the tech jargon you encounter when trying to buy a laptop today.

I’m not really sure why Microsoft are publishing this kind of content but never the less its actually quite good.

It covers:-

Price, Weight, Speed, Storage, Screen Size, Ports, Video, CD/DVD, Operating System (can you guess which one?) and a handy 10 questions you should ask.

Link: Help Guide (Link is a PDF)

Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.

This campaign is only going to make sense when run in a series.

It’s not with a touch of irony that Jerry’s character on Seinfeld was a Apple Mac user.

Microsoft couldn’t market themselves out of a paper bag but can Jerry save them?

This is basically a rental/subscription model with an annual price of $69.99 a year and appears to be US only.

The package consists of Microsoft Office Home and Student and Windows Live OneCare.

OneCare is Microsoft’s security suite.

The $69.99 fee allows for installation on 3 PC’s.

Clearly this them tipping their toe into the rental/subscription market.

Office 2007 Home and Student consists of:

Word 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Excel 2007
OneNote 2007

But Not Outlook 2007, the thinking is you can just use a free online e-mail service like Live mail or Google’s Gmail.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jul08/07-02EquiptPR.mspx

Bill Veghte a Senior Vice President of Microsoft has written and released a document explaining the Windows roadmap.

It doesn’t reveal anything that new but would be a good read for a small business owner trying to make sense of what is happening with Windows.

The documents covers:-

•The Future of Windows XP
•Important Progress with Windows Vista
•Compatibility
•Quality and performance improvements to Windows Vista with Service Pack 1
•Beyond Windows Vista

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/letter.mspx

Sometimes I get paranoid that my own experiences with Windows Vista may be jaundiced.

I have installed it about 25-30 times and cant get passed a week without a severe crash even on SP1 on brand new hardware.

But it would appear Intel is giving Windows Vista a wide berth.

From the article

Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

This is significant for the following reasons

1) Intel make the CPU’s that run Vista.

2) Intel make the motherboards and chipset’s that run Vista.

3) Intel make the network cards both wired and wireless that keep vista connected.

Even with so many hooks into how a system will operate even they wont use it.

They quote

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said.

Pretty damming really.

Link: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/et-tu-intel/index.html?ref=technology

This update released yesterday addresses a number of areas.

From the support documentation:

This update improves the performance, responsiveness, and reliability of Windows Vista in various scenarios. This update includes the following improvements on a Windows Vista SP1-based computer:

•This update improves the stability of Windows Vista SP1-based computers by addressing some crashes that may occur when you try to check e-mail by using a POP3 e-mail client such as Windows Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird. The crashes may occur on a Windows Vista SP1-based computer in the following scenario:

•Incoming POP3 and outgoing SMTP traffic monitoring is enabled.

•Both a third-party antivirus application and an antispyware application are installed, such as the following applications:

•ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite by Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

•SpySweeper by Webroot Software, Inc.

•This update improves the reliability of the Windows Vista SP1 based-computers by addressing some problems that occur when you delete user accounts by using the User Accounts item in Control Panel. When this problem occurs, the system may stop responding (hang).

•This update improves the reliability of Windows Vista SP1-based computers that experience issues in which large applications cannot run after the computer is turned on for extended periods of time. For example, when you try to start Excel 2007 after the computer is turned on for extended periods of time, a user may receive an error message that resembles the following:

EXCEL.EXE is not a valid Win32 application

•This update improves the reliability of Windows Vista SP1-based computers by reducing the number of crashes that may be caused by the Apple QuickTime thumbnail preview in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

•This update improves the performance of Windows Vista SP1-based computers by reducing audio and video (AV) stuttering. Such AV stuttering may occur when the audio or video component is streaming high definition content from a Windows Vista SP1-based computer that has a NVIDIA network adapter nForce driver version 67.5.4.0 that is installed to a Windows Media Center Extender device.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=952709

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00c6sdc.shtml?src=ip_mp

The above link will only work for a few more days and only for people in the UK.

This recent interview aired only a few days ago and covers his career at Microsoft.

Well we are just 10 days away before Microsoft pull the plug on the OEM and Retail availability of Windows XP.

It would appear some OEM’s like Dell will still be able to ship “XP Downgrades” for a little while longer.

This of course is only on selected machines in their range. Typically the business ones.

However even this can’t go on forever, or can it?

All that is needed is the hardware vendors keep making drivers for XP.

Corporate’s are in no rush to go Windows Vista.

So once again the Windows OS forks off in two directions.

Consumers = Vista

Business = XP

Pretty much like Windows98 and NT 4.0 of 10 years ago.

Buying?

Tip: For business users if you are buying new hardware with Windows Vista make sure you get either Windows Vista Business or Ultimate as both can legally be downgraded to Windows XP Pro and in addition check that XP drivers are available. This way if you have to downgrade you can.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx