Robert and Robert: Duh!

Chris, you’re great, seriously. But you’re taking my words out of context. I never said the **** ain’t coming together. I just don’t think it’s coming together fast enough to make a late October RTM. I think Management is gonna try to force it to come together too fast, and quality will be sacrificed. Everybody keeps saying “it needs six months”, and that’s a load of ****. I’ve tested newer builds, and they’re getting tons better. But I don’t think it will get there in time, and as I said before, the first release candidate should be preceeded by a stable beta.

But Chris, I don’t think there is anything that could happen (short of a WPF shell) that could make you any happier about Vista. Hell, they’re slowly weaning out all the Windows 3.1 icons that you HATE, and you’re still hung up on dialog spacing and font issues. At the end of the day, I don’t give a rats *** if the “Add Wireless Network” dialog is off-center by 15 pixels if defrag brings my system to a crawl. I’m talking about performance, stability, drivers, and support for consumer devices coming down the pipe.

But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, man. The whole OS is not **** just because it is visually not up to your standards. What’s teh point in complaining about that stuff when you’ll just stay in Classic Mode anyways?

, Windows Vista, is caught between Scylla and Charybdis: if they delay, they’re facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, the continued rise of Linux, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and other FOSS.  If they ship on time, they’ll cement their reputation for shoddy software, find adoption slow and still face the continued rise of Linux, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and other FOSS :)

I love new software but this Vista thing is getting out of hand. I’m still happy running Win2k and Win XP at this time and I’ll probably plonk out my hard earn money for Vista end of 2008. By that time, the open source GODS will be so strong that MS will give Vista out for free in stages.

[...] I really don’t think the recent Gartner and Chris P’s comments on the whole Vista delay is out of hand. Think for a second. MS is becoming a dinosaur and getting too huge to be effective. When you get that big, office politics grows to a grand scale and decisions take a longer time to sorted out. Well, I’ve said it. Microsoft is a Web 1.0 dinosaur…. I’ll keep my Win2k and Win XP for now. McLaws says Vista Needs More Time and Scoble says McLaws is right on Windows Vista ship date. Pirillo has been saying this for several months now, and has been labeled a “nitpicking whinerâ€�? for his attacks on Windows Vista’s UI and UX. Welcome to the club, boys - I’m happy to no longer be standing out here alone. [...]

Chris - at a certain level, I’m inclined to agree with Robert that a lot of what you’re unhappy about is invisible to many users. I think your detailed critiques of the font, icon, and pixel-level details that remain unaddressed is great input for the UI designers but I’d wager 99% of the people who use Vista will be utterly unaffected by them. The real issues, to me, have everything to do with gross usability, performance, and stability, and I remain convinced that Vista is just not where it needs to be.

The latest build runs great on my primary laptop which is brand new, stuffed to the gills with RAM, VRAM, and other goodies, and completely over the top compared to what most people use. But on my Tablet PC, it just doesn’t deliver a satisfying experience which suggests to me that I will not be happy running the release version either. Unless, that is, they delay and attack performance and stability and tweak the hell out of this sucker.

Man, I hope you’re right about the ME comparison. That release was unforgivable. I agree that Vista is nowhere near as problematic as that nightmare but it has been delayed so long, compromised by the removal of many promised features, and in danger of becoming a “so what” release that at this late stage of the game, I think MS needs to put the best possible first version out they can.

I guess we’ll see soon enough which way they decide to go.

[...] Scenario Voting: Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds Via Customer blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/archive/2006/08/16/447237.aspxSeems it’s intern day here on the blog.&nbsp; Here’s another piece of news, this time a note from my colleague Aseem Badshah, an intern from a local high school (!) who’s spending his summer working with Windows Client on incorporating customer feedbacken-USCommunityServer 2.0 (Build: 60209.2598)re: Scenario Voting: Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds Via Customer blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/archive/2006/08/16/447237.aspx#447318Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:04:28 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:447318hklmPublic feedback and the public interface for scenario voting &quot;leverage&quot; nothing. They are an utter and complete waste of time. Only a MSFT Synchophant would promote it. <br> <br>MSFT has no regard for any feedback from the public; &nbsp;but they will get a powerful representation. &nbsp;The public will withold their money in droves because they will read and realizize that scores of major components of Vista are broken and MSFT does not plan to fix them. <br> <br> <br>MSFT is apparently arrogantly –their best product by far is arrogance–sticking to a time table that every analysis including those by several MVPs and major Vista book authors have told them is flying Vista into the ground. <br> <br>HKLMre: Scenario Voting: Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds Via Customer blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/archive/2006/08/16/447237.aspx#447342Thu, 17 Aug 2006 08:34:26 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:447342hklmYou have a panoply of high quality feedback from some outstanding book authors. &nbsp;Don’t make the mistake of thinking any amount of money you throw at the public with Wegner Edstrom or McCannerison ad campaigns is going tp prevent people who know Vista and know Windows from doing byopsies of features that are not fixed, because the Sinofsky scheme for running trains on time even when the wheels can’t stay on track is shipping a diseased pig with a lot of lipstick on it. <br> <br>If MSFT were listening to the public, who include major authors of books on Vista and those who run major blogs, they would have announced an RTM Spring 2007 time table instead of &nbsp;rushing an unfinished non working product out the door, trying to play games manipulating Software Assurance Reparations schemes <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2000814,00.asp”>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2000814,00.asp</a> <br> <br> <br>Posturing that the public has any influence at all &nbsp;using your restricted feedback mechanisms, is really saying you think the public is quintissentially stupid much like the Congress of the US in posturing for midterm elections with the shallow promise of security when it couldn’t be more compromised. <br> <br>Why aren’t bug reports full disclosure on Vista for people in the CPP instead of the convoluted mickey mouse way you keep them from seeing the bugs and lying to them that full disclosure is &quot;under consideration&quot; for over a year? <br> <br>That’s tantamount to saying we know your stupid and we’ll continue to exploit you with what has been called a potentially horrendous &nbsp;product by the author of Vista Inside Out: <br> <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414″>http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414</a> <br> <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws-is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date/”>http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws-is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date/</a> <br> <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/page/2/”>http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/page/2/</a> <br> <br>Looking at Vista <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/looking-at-vista/”>http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/looking-at-vista/</a> <br> <br> <br>Paul Thurott has written at <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp”>http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp</a> <br> <br> <br>Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn’t Want To Write <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”<a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.longhornblogs.com/”>http://www.longhornblogs.com/</a>robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx”><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.longhornblogs.com/”>http://www.longhornblogs.com/</a>robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx</a> <br> <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/01/robert-and-robert-duh/”>http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/01/robert-and-robert-duh/</a> <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.longhornblogs.com/”>http://www.longhornblogs.com/</a> <br> <br>HKLM <br> <br> <br>re: Scenario Voting: Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds Via Customer blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/archive/2006/08/16/447237.aspx#447346Thu, 17 Aug 2006 08:54:12 GMTd5e57398-b9ef-4490-9955-07cbb4e4a80d:447346hklmSorry for the mistypes: <br> <br>That would be <br> <br>McCann Ericson <br> <br>biopsies <br> <br>The links are comments by MVPs, MVPs who blog, Microsoft’s most famous blogger and one of the most highly regarded bloggers on the web Rob Scoble, Ed Bott who has presold over 900,000 Windows Vista Inside Outs (although much of it has to be frutratingly incomplete at this time because so many features are broken or incomplete) <br> <br>Microsoft seems to be surrealistically calculating that the unwashed public is so stupid that they don’t know how to drill Windows under the hood. <br> <br>You persist in hiding the bugs &nbsp;reported &nbsp;from them–why is an interesting question. <br> <br>They can still get at the bugs through Windows if not through Connect. <br> <br>You also posture that you encourage public feedback, yet insult them with a childlike Scenario Voting instead of the more robust one you give the TBTs and you block them from searching bugs on Connect. <br> <br>You feign concern that you want to educate the public on Vista and you block them from frequent Live Meetings on Vista features and all the chats on their features. <br> <br>I’d start using the words disingenuous and facade and stop the insipid overuse of the word leverage all over the world. &nbsp;It’s butchering English and an insult to the English language to equate your current stubborn posture in shipping a very flawed broken Vista slapping it together after releasing the byazntine build cascade of so called RC1 branches in September and homing toward some October RTM branches. <br> <br>You don’t have the basic mechanisms of repair SFC or Windows File Protection’s repair switches working, and you don’t have Win RE working very reliably either and have dropped features from it. <br> <br>A repair install of Windows XP is exponentially more reliable than Startup Repair in Vista. <br> <br>From Longhorn Blogs Robert McLaws <br> <br><a rel=”nofollow” target=”_new” href=”http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414″>http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414</a> <br> <br> <br>From Ed Bott author of Windows Vista Inside Out <br> <br> <br>I’ve been defending Microsoft’s ship schedule for Windows Vista for quite some time. Up to this point, I’ve been confident that Vista would be at the quality level it needs to be by RC1 to make the launch fantastic. Having tested several builds between Beta 2 and today, I hate to say that I no longer feel that way. <br> <br>Robert says Microsoft should “Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February [and] add another beta to the development cycle.â€�? Make that “end of Marchâ€�? and I’ll sign up too. <br> <br>There’s some truly great stuff in Windows Vista, but current builds are not at the quality level they need to be at for a release candidate to appear in the next few weeks. If management insists on hitting an arbitrary January ship date, the results will be disappointing at best, and potentially nightmarish. <br> <br>Jim, are you listening? <br> <br>Posted in Windows Vista | By Ed Bott <br> <br>Apparently not. But Jim is leveraging isn’t he? <br> <br>HKLM <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> [...]

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Microsoft Windows Vista Who Needs Windows Vista? Windows Vista Launch Windows Vista: Lipstick on a Pig File Sharing from Windows Vista to OS X Upgrade XP by Installing Windows Vista Microsoft Windows Vista: Senile Edition Robert and Robert: Duh! Windows Vista RC1: a Piece of Sith Switching from XP to Vista to XP to…?

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