back to article Ballmer's breaking point: Is Windows 8 already too late?

Steve Ballmer is feeling the heat. Last month, he was so concerned with criticism of his leadership skills, he spilled some Redmond financial results he probably shouldn't have spilled. "You tell me if I lack energy, conviction or we're not driving change we need to drive," Ballmer roared at Seattle's Rotary Club, before …

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  1. NoneSuch Silver badge
    FAIL

    The one thing I respected about M$

    was their regular scheduling of product cycles which they did many moons ago to solidify their own internal development and allow corporations to budget for the future.

    Now they are ending Vista support early and are pushing out other products faster than usual this corporate comfort has vanished. M$ product was never good in the early releases, not getting half-decent until SP2 or SP3. Now their users will be subject to more bugs and issues due to the accelerated release cycle.

    Slow down M$. You are not Ubuntu...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    No, Steve,

    Nobody can say that you lack, err, energy or conviction...

    <-- Is this your coat?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Just me?

    ...or was the sound on this one REALLY bad?

  4. Sam Liddicott

    oh dear

    "he was so concerned with criticism of his leadership skills, he spilled some Redmond financial results he probably shouldn't have spilled"

    ...and that's an example of insecure leadership:

    1. I spill the beans

    2. I let you make me spill the beans

    3. I let you make me spill the beans so in order to prove my leadership skills

    He's perhaps proved the point

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    pre-announced software

    > Rumor has it that Windows 8 – the first version of Windows for ARM as well as x86 and billed as Microsoft's answer for the PC to iOS and the iPad – will actually ship early: next April ..

    Isn't there a name for people announcing non-existent product in order to dissuade consumers from buying the other fellas stuff - what was it called again, it's on the tip of my tongue ..

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: Other fellas?

        "http://www.windows9news.com/2009/10/25/welcome-to-windows-9-news-tips/"

        It filled me with delight to find that this website is marked by my AV software as "Dangerous, Verified fraud page or threat source" and blocked.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Facepalm

          re: Sorry that handle is already taken

          That link leads to a page that offers to run a free system scan that downloads an executable registrybooster.exe - DOH !

      2. Frank 2
        Stop

        "Access secret files, password hunter1"

        article (a) is a scam site and article (b) is an April fool. You are a muppet.

  6. Abremms

    early?

    i'm just a consumer, no IT professional or any of that, but April? really? that seems mighty quick. 7 hasn't been out that long has it? doesn't seem like its been around long enough for MS to put together enough new features to make a compelling argument to upgrade.

    maybe i'm wrong though. still, I'm in no hurry to upgrade again. 7 might be the next XP for this consumer.

    1. Sandy106

      I was thinking the same

      I've been really impressed by 7 so far, no idea why MS would want to shove out a new one already. Then again, I'm a home consumer, not aome IT nerd.

    2. James O'Shea

      not particularly early

      Mickeysoft said quite some time back (2006, 2007, something like that) that they were going to a 3-year cycle. Vista SP1 was heaved out the door 4 Feb 2008 to OEMs and other early adopters, 15 Feb 2008 to MSDN subs, and 18 Mar 2008 to John Public so long as you spoke certain languages, 14 April 2008 to everyone else. Allegedly support will be dumped in April 2012. That's four years of support, one more than promised.

      Vista SP2 was kicked out the door 26 May 2009, so if it also has four years of support then Vista's dead as of May/June 2013, or a year before XP SP3.

    3. T.a.f.T.
      Trollface

      8 just a recompile?

      Other than working on ARM what else is new in Windows 8? Will it basically be Windows 7 service Pack (insert relevant number) that they have also cross-compiled onto an ARM core?

      If 9 is all voice and touchy then I can see that is like a huge GUI update... so perhaps we should wait for WinX when they have split the Windows 10 GUI system out into some separate server like lump; all we need is a catchy marketing name for a GUI server/client system possibly related to the number 10...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Not really

    "the company's popular Notes killer Exchange server."

    The best Notes killer is Notes itself.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coffee/keyboard

      I lolled at that

      Does Notes still come with that program you have to run when it's crapped in its own database for the umpteenth time and the client refuses to start with some obscure and un-helpful error message in a big red box? I think it was called zapnotes.exe or something...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Gimp

        Yep

        There are now two options: nsd -kill, and killnotes.exe. I think killnotes is third party, but it's a must-have on the desktop of every Notes user^H^H^H^Hvictim.

        1. James Hughes 1

          We had Notes.

          Been replaced by Sharepoint.

          That's shit too.

      2. Tchou
        Mushroom

        No,

        It's called KillNotes. But yes, it's still the same pile of crap.

        IBM managed to fuck it up so bad everyone leave it for other solutions.

        Interestingly, Notes consultants are the perfect reflection of their favorite system:

        Worthless brainwashed incompetents who often adopts aggressive survival strategies by arguing tirelessly over Notes theorical goodness, for the sole sake of their vested interest.

        I know it first hand by working with these "Notes programmers".

        Yes im a bit pissed off.

        Cheers.

        1. Tchou
          Thumb Up

          Funnily enought

          the Lotus Notes mafia downvoted massively ALL of my post on other topics as an illustration of the truths wrote here. Hehe.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @ Abremms

    Actually MS stated around the time of Vista that they were aiming to release a new version every three years from that point to help corps plan etc. Windows 7 was RTM July 22, 2009 so it will be three years next July, that does make it three months early but that's really not a massive difference in my oppinion.

    1. multipharious

      @AC - Correct

      True...true...it will be a shorter beta and RC than usual, but from using the Win7 RCs on my production machines it was ready way before it shipped.

  9. Richard Plinston

    CLR based system ?

    It seemed to me that after XP the next Windows was intended to be .NET CLR based so that it could run on various CPUs, in particular on POWER based Cells.

    It was only when this failed to eventuate that they took the Server 2003 kernel, added whatever was laying around and put together Vista. This was necessary to get out the door so that they could renew all the 3 year corporate contracts. One cycle (ending 2003/4) has resulted in no upgrades, they couldn't afford to miss another.

    Windows 7 was Vista redone right.

    It may be that Windows 8 will bring back the code from that earlier project in order to work on ARM, and possibly others. Perhaps next April isn't 'fast', but is 10 years after they started writing it.

    Of course it may be that 'next April' and 'will run on ARM' are not related in any way and it will be x86 and x86-64 for some time.

    1. James Hughes 1

      made up word alert

      "eventuate"

      1. T.a.f.T.

        real word

        just an odd one.

        But I don't have the complete OOD on my desk to check it. Interweb believes in it and uses it in a legal setting: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eventuate

        It is however listed as an Americanism from the 1780-90s so I am not sure if it is a bit young to be in standard english (or more importantly true British English) just yet.

  10. The Cube
    Thumb Up

    What day in April will Windows 8 release?

    I would suggest that in the morning of the first day of April would be a most fitting time for that launch event...

  11. Boo Radley

    Call Me A Luddite

    But I'm still using Windows 2000. Even with brand new current hardware, I have yet to find a compelling reason to move to something newer. I use my three PCs for average home uses, P2P sharing, web browsing, email, some video editing, one PC is a video server, I burn CDs & DVDs, watch movies, play music and play a few games.

    I tried Windows 7 several times, but even on my newest hardware, it was just plain SLOW! However, unlike many people, I'm nearly immune to advertiser BS as well as being a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      @Call Me A Luddite

      Almost like me, but you are missing a big point - w2k has no more security updates!

      So, for example, that serious flaw in thumbnail image decoding that can shaft your PC won't ever get fixed:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/04/windows_0day/

      Something to consider very seriously if you use P2P, etc, to find media.

      So while I still use my old copy of w2k for various MS-only software packages (CAD software, etc) I now run it in a VM most of the time and rely on Linux for all internet-facing tasks.

      If I were in to PC games I probably would get Windows 7 & dual-boot with Linux, again keeping MS away from obvious security threats. But for now I see no compelling reason to do so, as there are not much in the way functional improvements in the OS other than bug-fixes for stuff they got wrong.

    2. Dan Beshear
      Megaphone

      Well, you asked for it

      Boo Radley, you're a Luddite.

    3. James Hughes 1

      @ Boo Radley

      Give Ubuntu or similar a go - think it can do all you ask (maybe not the games, depends what you play), and you will get decent security. Performance should be pretty good.

    4. Gerhard Mack
      Thumb Down

      er

      The downside to windows 2000 was the abysmal USB support. I had a customer on it and every time he changed his plugs around someone had to login as admin to let windows redetect everything.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        @Gerhard Mack

        As far as I know, the same issue applies to XP (maybe not the admin part) where if you shift a USB device to another port Windows thinks you need to (re)install the driver for it. Doh!

        No idea if its fixed in Win 7 as I don't use windows much outside of VMs now.

  12. multipharious

    Notes Killer? er...um...Domino is the mail server

    Exchange supports Notes as an email client, and Outlook can work with Domino as well with the Notes connector. Outlook is the competitor for Notes, and Domino and Exchange have been waging corporate strategic war over the last decade with Exchange slowly eroding the entrenched old school shops with massive migrations. The migrations have been part of Notes Switch (a misnomer) initiatives by Microsoft partnering with HP, EMC, and others who just wanted the storage swap.

  13. G R Goslin

    Early?

    It will be something new id MS brought out something on time. So April may in fact be correct. he's just got the year wrong.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    I wonder...

    ...how a dumbass like him got to be where he is. It is baffling.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      re: baffling

      He's a team leader, a good motivator but lacking the vision to be a strategic leader, who was promoted beyond his ability. It's the flip-side of the coin that sees chief executives b(r)ought into businesses about which they know nothing, with the expectation that they will perform as well as they did elsewhere.

  15. Mikel
    Angel

    After time another

    Again and again. When they need to move you along again, this wonderful new Windows 8 they're hoping to get you breathless about will be "that crusty old thing." So you may as well skip it.

  16. Arrrggghh-otron

    I can't wait!

    I can't wait to start planning my very own Windows 8 launch party like what them actors did in that TV studio kitchen...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Windows 8 launch party"

    Windows 8 lunch party - fixed it for you

    You know lunch as in "no such thing as a free lunch"

  18. Flossie
    FAIL

    No Office?

    "You still need Office on the PC to make it work properly."

    My computers work just fine without it and always have. I've never personally owned a copy of MS Office, legal or otherwise.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      At the risk of stating the obvious…

      The "it " being referred to was Office 365, not the computer.

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