Microsoft battles Vista perception issues with $15,000 prize

Guillaume:

Silverlight is crashing my IE 7 for an unknown reason (Windows XP SP2). Do you know if there is a way to do this with Firefox/XP or Safary/Leopard ?

Do I need to re-install Vista ? ... I'm one of the user that went back to XP, Vista was too slow on my 1 year old laptop.

[TROLL] Why they don't use some Ajax or Flash for this ;-) ?

Guillaume:

Ok found it ... sorry for stupid question

Martin Gifford:

New Mac Ad:

Hi,

1: I'm a Desperate Cherry-Picked Vista Fact.

2: And I'm an Irrelevant Vista Fiction.

3: And I'm an OSX Mac that doesn't need to convince anyone that I'm better than old versions!

Moshe:

Last I checked, the most recent version of Mac OSX DID have an uphill battle and in many ways was NOT better than the previous version.

Zatt:

You're comparing the jump of XP to Vista as worse than OS9 to OSX; a comparison of a comparison--not even chronologically relevant--under the comedic guise of the obvious Apple smear campaign that is the Mac/PC commercial.

I'll admit, the irony of using this smear campaign to somehow exemplify negativity in MS for victimlessly using the same tactics is kind of hilarious, but I can't tell if it's intentional.

It's undeniable how much fiction is circulating about Vista if you know the facts and hear the buzz, so I'd hardly call any examples of this which Microsoft tries to combat "irrelevant," even if they handed it to their marketting dep't to execute.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, however, that this is a simple attempt at humor, since you could be the same Martin Gifford I see giving honest and straight-forward reviews (if only negatively toned) of MS products (ie: MS Office 2007).

Martin Gifford:

It IS funny. Vista was touted as being a profound revolution in operating systems. But now MS is competing against MS! The option to chose XP over Vista is marketed as a key benefit to differentiate your computer brand/model over someone elses computer brand/model!

Personally, the main difference I find between the two systems is that Vista looks prettier and is more secure but it dumbed down to the point of being a pain in the ass. And MS will go further with the dumbing down because they have the Office 2007 people working on the next OS.

For me Vista provides less options and more hurdles e.g. you can't chose whether to defrag or not (when frag is <10%) and sorting through the programs in the start menu is a joke.

At first I thought the prettiness was worth it cos I got so bored with the XP look, but now I want to go back to XP.

I see no reason to defend MS because they have a fortune to play with and the promise the world and fall way short. Yet they have vendor support. Vendors often refuse to make drivers for Linux, but I've had Linux work on everything I've tried it on. And Linux is getting STEADILY better, where as MS is all over the shop.

Vico:

LOL...they want people to do it so badly that there giving prizes just to do it lol (ie...everyones a winner!!) (im talking about that free polo shirt)

Jayec:

It would appeat that Microsoft may also have their target demographic wrong... The polo shirts are only available in Small, Medium and Large.

tin:

Yeah. And with no sizing estimates or guides...

I didn't notice the OEM thing either. I wonder if that means I won't get anything. Wait and see I guess. Maybe I had signed up already (I do occasionally build and sell PCs in my business so I might have at some stage).

Wearyman:

I would be very surprised if they check on your "OEM System Builder" creds. I ent through it and just filled in a bunch of BS for the business end of it. I listed my pretend business as an "IT Services" company, and myself as the CIO. Which, given that I offer free IT service to my family, and I AM the only employee, that automatically makes me the CIO of an IT services company. Just not an officially recognized one.

boe:

Suggestion to MS -

1 Stop spending so much money constantly trying to promote Vista and put it towards a few talented programmers who can make Vista fast.

2 Stop wasting money on Vista - consider a bad investment and move on to Windows 7- take all the bad press about Vista - actually READ what people don't like (EG - slower than a turtle) and actually make sure Windows 7 doesn't have the same issues!

Wes:

Yes I agree, I think its better to work on a new version that will be so good that it will literally sell itself. Well - if they could do that.

Ron Paul Suppoeter:

IMO, Microsoft should build Windows 7 around Linux Kernel 2.6x, to ensure people actually adopt it without coercion or compulsion.

Ron Paul Supporter:

IMO, Microsoft should build Windows 7 around Linux Kernel 2.6x, to ensure people actually adopt it without coercion or compulsion.

boe:

I would love for Infoworld to put up a survey about why people HATE vista but like XP - they wouldn't even have to give away $15000 - I bet they'd have more responses than MS can get even when dangling $15,000!

Le Mal:

Hey huys, no trolling: is there any silverlight for my OSX Tiger?
Wanna have some win-fun tooo;)

DavidA:

Yes, there is. I just downloaded and installed it only to find that I need to live in Australia or NZ to enter and the prize is "worth" 15,000 not cash.

Here I was hoping that microsoft would give me something.

Me:

More advertising than perception improvement.
It's not targeted at MS Windows haters (you know who you are), rather it is saturation marketing technique to constantly remind people it is 'out there'. Surveys are a cheap way to do a poll too. That's why TV channels do surveys during the news. They don't care what you think. They just need to know that you are watching ! $15000 is cheap for a poll.

tin:

I would do it, but it appears to need Silverlight... And they kindly offered me a file to download, but Win32 binaries won't run on my PC.
Perhaps I should install Vista over my Debian install, hey MS?

SimonW:

>I would do it, but it appears to need Silverlight... And they
>kindly offered me a file to download, but Win32 binaries
>won't run on my PC.
>Perhaps I should install Vista over my Debian install, hey
>MS?

You realise that by trolling, you're just showing your ignorance. There's a version of Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight, based on the (open source) Mono project. You'll have to compile it from source, but I'm *sure* that anyone who spends their days trolling on online forums about how they use Debian rather than MS software has *lots* of experience with that...

HTML for me:

I guess I must be a troll too, for I have the same problem. Install some pointless plugin just to see a web page which could just as easily use HTML? No thanks.

Anonymouszxyqr4:

Yeah, but then again this is Microsoft we're talking about -- you do it their way or you don't get to do it at all. They would make the entire web require windows if they had the chance, and they sure are trying. My advice is not to install anything simply to accommodate Microsoft.

Anonymous42:

As an admin with all the viruses and crap I tell my users not to install plugins without consulting me. Requiring some lame plugin is not a way to make it easy. I distrust new plugins for a while also. If it allows more functionality it probably has more security holes as well.

CryAllowOrDeny:

Well the quizz has videos if you keep going a bit, so no, it couldn't just as easily use HTML.
However, it could just as easily use either of the following:
- Flash
- Quicktime
- RealPlayer
- Windows Media Player
- DivX plugin. Why not.

Of course, having the video seamlessly integrated within a smoothly animated vector drawn environment mostly restricts your option to Flash, but I suppose hardcore people could go with a dual VML/SVG layer coupled with one of the later options.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it might be more sensitive of some people's religious preference.

Rodger:

As I just went through this, HTML would not have made the video section of their tutorials quite as easy. Sure they could have went MPG's or what not, but a waste of bandwidth really.

The could have used Flash quite easily, but being that they are trying to market Silverlight a bit more, they chose that instead. At this point in the game, it's still early, many people have yet to install this plugin, but if nobody requires it, nobody installs it. I've been around long enough to have seen this happen before, same talk used to ensue in regards to the Flash player or should we call it FutureSplash.

Given their access to Windows Update both on end-consumers and corporate reach and some talk about redesigning some of their larger sites to use the technology, it will most likely gain popularity over time.

Silverlight 1.0 seems rather pointless to me as Flash does alot of what it does and in some cases much more smoothly. Infact I feel Silverlight is kind of slugish at the moment, or maybe it's just my sad excuse for a computer? heh

Silverlight 2 on the otherhand is turning out to be a bit more of a powerful beast and I don't think really is in the same realm as just the simple Flash player. Infact I don't really think Silverlight *IS* going to even really take up until we start seeing Sl2, up until then it's kind of a "what's the point if Flash can already do X now?" situation.

So is using Silverlight pointless here?

In a way, yes, I agree it is in the tech sense, in a marketing sense, no, it gets yet more people to install the plugin.

Anonymous42:

Hmm if silverlight has an opensource interpreter(as one guy mentioned) that works better than the open source interpreter for flash I might easily be persuaded to change my tune. however flash is much more popular on the net.

PPN:

Ditto.. not gonna install some rip-off app just to see a webpage.

PASS

Resuna:

Install or not install, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the bugs and exploits of outrageous Moonlight, or to take a stand against insecure design, and by opposing end them. To deny, to trust no more, and by our sandbox we end the exploits and thousand inherent holes that security zones are heir to.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

You bet! I'm going to run out and install a program that makes me virus-compatible with Windows, by allowing me to run random .NET binaries as native code using a JIT compiler that doesn't have a reliable verifier yet. I thought we'd learned that lesson from ActiveX after .NET controls failed to take over from Java and Flash.

Inconceivable.

I don't think that word means... well, anything any more.

Gideon:

As everyone who pays attention to such things knows, Mono and moonlight are shunned by the linux community because of their potential patent issues. Miguel De Icaza might be sure that Microsoft won't sue over it's use, but he's been wrong about that before.

I use both Windows and Linux, but if i'm going to use free/open source software, i'm going to make damn sure that it IS in fact open source and free from legal problems.

Of course, the test/survey is intended for OEM builders, so i guess MS assumes they're running windows..

JomJom:

Why is it wrong to admit using Debian on an online forum? I use NetBSD... Some guy over here is probably using a Mac. What's your point..?

None of use can take the survey.

andorko:

Whether you're running MS Windows or any other OS, I find it unreasonable to install a plugin for using a single website.
What about all of the corporate folks that are still running MS W2K?
Rather than requiring SilverLight, MS should make their site work without it and just tell you how much better your experience would be if you used SilverLight instead of Flash.
BTW, Not everyone using a form of Linux likes to compile stuff from source. ..especially just to view a single website.

greyparrot:

I looked at it on my Mac and they have a Silverlight download for OSX. They want you to look at the terms and conditions, which include automatic update (opt-out) and snooping of info about your machine.

Now there is no way I am going to let a M$ product run on my precious Mac, never mind my Linux box!

Anonymouslul:

Quicktime has both of those too, and i'm on windows and I have to download it to use the apple website.

And worse, it constantly spams me to install iTunes, and automatically trys to install iTunes with its auto-update. I don't want iTunes. Not at all.

Parallels not realized by a fanboy?

Vim:

Good point. However - FYI (not trolling), you should be able to turn off the Automatic "check for updates" in Quicktime's preferences.

If you leave the checkbox "check for updates to Quicktime software at launch" checked, then it WILL bug you about it. For any reasonable user, the default should be to have this turned off, but they have it turned on because the majority of users are, as they say, "lusers" who never try to change preferences (why do you think so many people use XP in it's awful default look rather than fine tuning the GUI to be more professional looking and usable?). Most of those "lusers" don't even realise they CAN change prefs! ;)

BTW: that's not a dig at Win users, it's the same on every platform!

David H Dennis:

Because we're fanboys, we trust Apple.

Because we've used Windows before, we don't trust Microsoft.

Since we trust Apple, we have no problem giving them our personal information. Apple has earned our trust over a long period of time.

Since we don't trust Microsoft, we have a big problem giving them our information. Microsoft has earned this distrust and loathing over an equally long period.

Hope that helps.

D

Douglas:

Bah! Screw QuickTime! I do not want bloated piece of rubbish like that on my computer. I just use the QT Alternative. Same goes for Real.

Personally, I had no qualms about installing the SilverLight plugin. Hopefully, it'll give Adobe a run for their money.

Anonymousdgdfgfgg:

What a shame the competition is only open to OEM system builders. I just wasted 15 minutes of my life getting brain washed for a T Shirt I am not eleigible for. Not happy APC would have been nice to include this annoying little fact

Dan Warne:

Ah, good pickup. Noted in the article; thanks for that. 

JC:

So what's the catch?      
The catch is if you read the Terms & Conditions, entry is only open to OEM Channel partners.

Steph:

LOL! Wow, this really is a desperate advertising campaign. I'm one of the rare people in the world who actually likes Vista, but I don't think even I could bring myself to take such a horrid quiz. Great, entertaining review!

Me:

+1 .... My gaming rig has never been more stable.
But this quiz is a white elephant ! .... Especialy if it is just for the OEM crowd.

Arrrrrgh:

There are more of us than you think Steph.
It's just we don't buy into the bigoted garbage between all the regular fanboys that post on this forum.

TitaniumTux:

I'll wait for Silverlight. .

I migrated to Ubuntu Linux before having the opportunity to try Vista. I was running XP SP2 Home OEM on a Dell laptop and then I was facing a cracked screen... I then dual-monitored for a while until I got far too frustrated with using a sluggish operating system and installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Installing ndiswrapper took me a few hours as a total n00b, but then I started liking Linux once I got everything working that I was determined to use it on a replacement laptop. I bought an Everex StepNote knowing there is a way to install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu or even Xubuntu) on it using a specially compiled disc with a tweaked kernel. I got it because it was the most affordable computer that fits my needs, and due to its limitation of 1 GB RAM, I would not consider running Vista Premium OEM that was included with the comp.

Silverlight is quite young (launched in April 07 according to Wikipedia) and the open source community has already managed to develop a usable alternative to Silverlight. Sure Gnash is not quite up to par with Flash, and I doubt Moonlight is on par with Silverlight, but for the meanwhile, I will gladly go without and wait for Moonlight to be added to the repos.

@xfceforever (comment #30): Gnome (also full-featured) will probably run faster than KDE on any given machine... Not only that, but with new distro version releases, Linux actually becomes faster (Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy runs faster on given hardware than Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty). Linux is the only modern operating system that will run reasonably on older machines. Vista may run on machines with less than a gig of ram, and stores would have sold you a computer with 512 MB ram and a Vista Premium OEM, however MS Office 12 spellcheck is disabled if the comp has less than a gig of ram and I doubt Aero would be smooth (so the stores would sell you a setup that would not even be recommended by Gates himself!). Assuming you use Xfce, you're probably into light-weight desktop environments, and Windows is anything but that. Regarding security, most end-users would probably find it inconvenient to put in a password every time they want to access the registry editor. Businesses would secure their XP or ME machines by requiring admin privileges to modify the registry, install apps, etc. or they would let you do whatever you want but never save the session. Whether I act as root in Linux or not doesn't make much of a difference, despite being the only one to know the root password; I am the only user of my comp.

I really hope Moonlight won't encounter any legal issues... that did halt the development of GAIM (which was particularly annoying because it was pretty much impossible to run GIMP and GAIM on a same Windows platform... requiring different versions of the GTK+)... Just like Vista and OOXML, it will creep in as generally accepted standards that everyone should familiarize themselves with and be able to use. By the time anyone other than Microsoft starts designing mainstream Internet content in Silverlight, Linux will have a powerful alternative (hopefully Moonlight will pull through), possibly even outdoing the preformance of Silverlight.

If Microsoft wants Silverlight to run on Linux boxes, they should develop an RPM or a DEB... I doubt they'd ever do that, forcing Linux users to try to emulate or virtualize the Windows version. However, MS is probably the last player to release anything for Linux... too bad they so hastily abandoned IE for Unix :P

sandra_madness:

It failed for me!!
I did the ridiculous exercise a couple of weeks ago. Answering the way MS wanted me to of course and not truthfully. Got to the end and the site crashed!! (some server error message) Oh how ironic. Mind you Windows is still the best. Tried Ubuntu on a P41.7 system today. It choked and writhed in pain before failing to install. XP Pro...not a problem. That said, after nearly 3 decades of Windows I do believe we deserve better. Ohh to install OS-X simply an PC platform.

Vim:

By '3 decades' I presume you mean '2 decades'.

I don't remember being able to run Windows on an Apple II in 1978 ;)

xfceforever:

People hate vista because they're clueless fanboys.

Vista is XP which uses 512MB (that's 20$, people, let's keep things in proportion) more RAM than XP (~700MB instead of ~200MB) and has sudo for the home user. XP used 4 times more ram than predecessor. So fucking what?

Vista runs slow when you run it an older generation box. XP and a full-featured KDE3 environment will run slow on a P2. We don't see it as a reason to call them slow, we see it as a reason to call whoever installs them on too old a machine an idiot.

Vista is designed for newer boxes. You can tweak it to run snappy on older ones too (and definitely on new ones), and if not, your geek license is hereby revoked.

Sudo (UAC in vistaspeak) is a welcome change. We UNIX syadmins have been bashing MS for decades because you operate as root. Now that they've finally fixed it, sysadmins say "FINALLY!" and fanboys say "But it's inconvenient!".
Yes, sudo is inconvenient on linux desktops too. Working as a privileged user is inconvenient. Welcome to secure operating systems. The secret is working inside your user environment.

Quit your silly emotional fanboy polarized good-guys-vs-bad-guys yammering.

Microsoft did some good and some bad with Vista, and I think their coffers suggest they know where to spend their money well enough.

halplus:

Listen you. I installed Vista in a 1Gb Presler Dual Core with a Raid-0 SATA II... Is that slow? I don't think so. Guess what. Back to XP. XP flies and Vista is an old tractor that gives me... nothing and interrupts my work. What is UAC? A waste of time. If you want to be safe don't use administrative accounts for everyday use. Period. What else? BitLocker (if you are ultimate which was not my case) Well truecrypt (even opesource so more transparent). What else? That thing with the flash. No thanks I use the flash. WHAT? New Icons? ASLR? Is not that random. Now tell why in this world I would pay extra money. To do what? get a New OS? Pointless. That is for braindeads that don't know a sh.. about computers. Ahh on top of that I even used legal copy. Now guess what. The OS commited suicide. I didn't even had to worry about pasing a knife on it :P. And no I'm not a Linux Fanboy. I don't like Unix in my desktop.

Fletch:

Ahhhhhh, the delicious irony... I took it running XP while Fedora 8 was installing in a VM in the background...

Savant avant:

It seems kinda dumb to require windows you to view facts and fiction about the operating system, if you're already using windows, then you are already convinced.

I guess that's probably for incentivating XP users to migrate to vista. Either way, who cares? I wouldn't expect that such things would make someone switch to vista, the intentions of microsoft is probably not to get people to switch because of it but to remind people about vista, or whatever.

Jezz:

Anyone else get the curious & slightly disturbing feeling they're being 'audited' by a Scientologist ?