TrollGate - [Mini-Microsoft] New comment on Microsoft FY08Q1 Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft FY08Q1 Results":

Uh oh. Mini is back to his High-Bar-For-Entry mode. He must have figured out that us trolls are affecting stock value! Has anyone noticed the incredibly high level of positive comments here?

Now it is confirmed, Mini really is female (or changed gender, or was replaced with a female from HR or whatever)

Somehow, it just doesn't feel right up in the provinces of Seattle.

(I'm in ur commentz, modratin tr011z)

Robber Barron Ballmer - [Mini-Microsoft] New comment on Microsoft FY08Q1 Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft FY08Q1 Results":

>Welcome to the beginning of the >Ballmer era.

>1. Cost-cutting in various long-term research groups.

(does that include surface >computing?)

>2. Paring back of the first-party Microsoft content sites.

(does that include Xbox live?)

>3. More licensing tricks to increase "revenue per socket" Hey, if there's no cheaper alternative, why can't Microsoft raise prices?

(Maybe because there are cheaper alternatives. I hope he does as 40 million businesses jump to Linux and Mac for office desktops and workstations. If what you say is true, the Balmer era will be an era where 90% market share drops to somewhere around 60% to 50%)

>4. Creation of a viable enterprise subscription business (Microsoft Online).

(define viable. For once, you have some serious competition in that space, so viable is iffy--to make it work, you will have to truly innovate and create wanted services)

>6. Shorter time window for experiments to show good numbers.

(Praise the Ford and put your haaand on the radio--Does that include XBox? Will Softies begin speaking in tounges and start a new calender that is based on Before Bill and After Bill?)

>7. More and larger investments and acquisitions.

(He has already made it clear he intends to make more and smaller acquisitions. Don't you read the papers?)

You forgot one: drive the OS to be cheaper and more plentiful to compete with open source.

Remember, the competition always has a vote, and it is highly likely the shrill profiteering days are coming to a close, lest Microsoft be counted as the Robber Baron of the 21st Century and is summarily dispatched by governments and customers.

(just does not feel right)

Yeah, Apple - [Mini-Microsoft] New comment on Microsoft FY08Q1 Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft FY08Q1 Results":

After seeing Vista on my laptop, and playing with it for about 20 minutes, my wife said that she would like her next computer to be a Mac.

After seeing Vista, I bought a new iMac. Looks great next to my iPhone. Apple is going to own us one day.

(Again, thank goodness for alternatives. Sounds like you are happy.)

Crap, crap, crap - [Mini-Microsoft] New comment on Microsoft FY08Q1 Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft FY08Q1 Results":

This sort of thing will happen from time to time. We all knew that Windows and Office make a ton of money and this quarter they made more than usual/expected. So everybody should be happy about the extra money they can make from the stock but it doesn't mean our products this week are any better than they were last week. Vista is still a crappy operating system, Office is still a crappy office suite (just because it's the best doesn't make it good), Zune is still a crappy media player, etc. etc. etc. I hope the uptick in stock price doesn't distract people from product quality.

(Thank goodness for alternatives. I trust the market to decide At The End of the Day.)

Bit Bucket - New comment on Microsoft FY08Q1 Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft FY08Q1 Results":

>Cat got all those tongues?

We have been trying, but mini keeps bit-bucketing the negatives. It's ok mini, we understand its a therapy thing. . . for a while. One of those as Balmer gets sappy so must mini.

But outside, the drumbeat goes on!
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=877

(Anything that starts with The Register is automatically Bit Bucket material.)

Lame piece of crap - New comment on Win-Win-Win-Win!.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Win-Win-Win-Win!":

>"bungie loves a certain kind of audience, and that audience tends to love -- or at leat own -- the 360. they likely don't give a rat's ass about you as a customer at this point."

I was using myself as a reference to one of millions like me who would buy . . .

But I think anybody in gaming understands that the 360 ecosystem is a significant and important one, aka competitions, gaming houses, Xbox live and on and on. So thats a full time job keeping the ecosystem fed. That is easy to understand even by me and I won't be buying a 360 ever.

But Dude, here's the deal: The Xbox is one piece of hardware, and a really really crappy one at that--don't even try to refute its record as a lame piece of crap hardware.

It would be like trying to force all the Indy 500 drivers to use one car built by the same manufacturer, but the car is so poorly designed it breaks down every five laps and the manufacturer is so inept that it gives the cars away at a loss thinking they will make back their money selling popcorn to the crowd.
But the cars do go fast.

Pretty boring stuff, suffocating to those who love to mod and build their own systems using the latest processor or graphics card. But if dad is trying to get his kid in the race, I am sure just buying one off the shelf solves the problem.

As for the Bungie coders, I doubt very very seriously they have any real interest in pegging themselves forever to that kind of incompetence. However if the console makers were driven to make products that all games would work on, say by some kind of governing ruleset for gaming competitions, then it would be an exciting and positive thing for gamers. Right now, its just luser hype.

(Just plain rubbed me the wrong way. I guess I must be grumpy.)

Vista Rant from TechReport - New comment on Microsoft 2.0, Now With Less Bubba.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft 2.0, Now With Less Bubba":

A bit off topic, but this is too good a rant to not repost. Summarizes my feelings about Vista pretty nicely, too. Thank God ITG is not pushing it.

When I tried Vista it forced my Dell 8600 laptop to run it's fan in stage 2 of 3 instead of 1/3 that XP does, somewhere CPU use was too high, no matter what I turned off (Aero etc) - on battery or powered.

The interface isn't for me, I couldn't possibly care less about a fluffy 3D interface, I've never used XP's Luna theme and I've been using XP since 6 months after release, I need a functional fast operating system with clever powerful features, I don't 'watch' my OS I _use_ it to get stuff done.

Another reason why I don't want Aero is I do a hell of a lot of RDP'ing and you can't get Aero over RDP.
I would find switching from Vista classic (or XP classic) to Aero, to classic to Aero when switching in and out of my RDP sessions to be very disorientating.

ALSO Aero seemed to offer no real actual benefits to usability, sadly I have to admit after using Mac OSX that the whole expose thing is surprisingly awesome and convienient, that operating system truely makes a mouse user damn near as powerful as a good keyboarder (wow!)
Aero's flip 3D however was ridiculously bad at actually saving you time and effort.

The widget thing / bar on the right was stupid, it should be like Mac OS - it's there, when you need it, hidden and very easily accessable, NOT a bar stuck on the side (auto hide or not, Mac OS wins that)

The search functionality wasn't as good as locate32, I think in file names, not in contents, if I want my CV I search for *resume*.doc on all drives and I'll find it because I memorise the file name (admitedly locate32 isn't native to XP)

Therefore overall Vista didn't offer me anything that honestly helped me.
I used a full retail version of Ultimate and manage to re-produce a bug where connecting to a VPN would instantly blue screen it too (fully patched)

I dislike the smaller 'stylish' min / max / close buttons at the top right, I like them square and easy to find.

Did I mention Windows Explorer sucked? I spend 80% of my time in it, managing files, doing 'stuff' and it's hard to explain but there was a lack of 'lines' and dividers and bars, showing me data clearly.
I found it difficult to quickly interpret what is on the screen because the interface looked,... weird, perhaps it is too complex but it just looked 'odd'
Also the + appearing only on a mouseover on folders is just plain dopey.

The damn silly task pane is forced on as well, which is on in XP but disable-able - I don't think you can in Vista (don't quote me)

I disliked the breadcrumb style address bar in folders at the top of explorer, admitedly just today someone found a home made patch to disable it but it's not a stock option in Vista and wasn't available when I tried it.
(Breadcrumbs done right on a web page? excellent - implimentation in Vista? feels wrong)

Further to this, I own a valid, genuine corp CD key of Vista Ultimate, I've re-installed several times with identical hardware and it picks up my key as 'in use' and I need to phone activate with them.

Even with 4gb of ram on my desktop the disk thrashes about like a fat woman in a pool, the performance is _NOT_ faster than Windows XP in general alt -tab and application usage, things are NOT more responsive, programs are NOT being pre-cached properly, it IS slower, definately with 4gb on my machine than XP is.

The menu's are so convoluted it's insane, I had to google to find out how to disable hiberfil.sys because the new power configuration menu is worse than a policy editor, it's a bloody abortion.

Did I mention explorer? I did, but I can't help but mention it again and again, the little arrows at the top (size / name / folder / date modified) frankly look stupid, consume space and confuse (Even on 1920x1200)

It stuffs up dual boot XP / Vista installs when trying to clone a disk with Acronis True Image / Disk Director, Vista install is simply not bootable.
The new boot menu takes about 4 seconds to open for no apparent reason.

Aero's live thumnails in the alt tab menu if I recall also suck.
Don't quote me on this but iirc a super fast alt tab simply doesn't register, same as the alt tab replacement powertoy for XP.
For high speed users swapping BAM one app to another this is very annoying to hold the key that .1 of a second longer.

I actually found several bugs and inconsistencies with the interface when I used it last, an example (may be incorrect - it's been 3 weeks sorry)
I like to use details view, with status bar on all folders - I set this but when I click my computer the look and feel on the right in explorer changes - it doesn't show the drive letters on the right
(or perhaps I'm thinking of when I click on desktop?)
Either way, it wouldn't stay consistent, showing folders, shortcuts and files on the right and in details view always - XP does this.

Ultimately I find Vista begins to clarify what all the linux, mac and general Microsoft haters have been saying over the years, while I never previously agreed with many slashdot nutcases, claiming MS is losing their mind, Vista is the first indication I've seen that there really is a genuine lack of communication and thought going on there.

I really genuinely find Vista's UI to be honestly a mess, as if not only 100's of people worked on it but they didn't discuss it or keep it consistent.

Windows XP (if you're a Windows user) is reliable and simple, it's fast and frankly, besides DX10 and some other small things, it 'does it all' for most of your users, home and office.

How is adoption going to pick up when most users need MS Word, IE or Firefox, Printing, Burning, Downloading and connecting their digital camera / playing mp3's - that's all most people need, XP does it very well
(it's probably been said before about 2K or 98, I won't deny)

When all is said and done, I would STILL use the thing if someone just made a shell replacement that made it look absoloutely 100% identical to XP classic mode but with a Vista 'engine'. I don't hate DX10 nor do I detest the search, I can always use my own, I don't have to use flip 3d but I do CONSTANTLY use Windows explorer and I need it looking nice, simple and clean to do shit fast, - I felt hamstrung :/

(Offtopic and just too long. A teaser and a link would be good.)

Zing! New comment on Microsoft 2.0, Now With Less Bubba.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft 2.0, Now With Less Bubba":

When are MSFT entering the car industry?

Why? Have cars gotten too reliable?