Ballmer: We Wasted Too Many Years on Vista
Sounds like Ballmer regrets stuffing that Vista turkey with time and money.
Wednesday Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer addressed an audience of CEOs at the company's 14th annual CEO Summit. His speech covered business basics such as getting the product right, helping the customer, and remaining patient. The topics were apparently a surprise to the audience--Ballmer usually covers return on investment, equity and all that "bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh."
During the speech, Ballmer took an honest-yet-surprising turn and admitted that Microsoft fell short with Windows Vista. "We tried too big a task and in the process wound up losing thousands of man hours of innovation," Ballmer said. He added that Microsoft spent too many years building the Windows Vista operating system, but then paused to question about the appropriate time frame for research and development.
"What is the right window for innovation?" he asked the audience. "Six months? Ten years? Three years?" He said that the company has previously bet on things that are too far in the future, however he didn't specify any particular product (although Vista and the PC tablet are prime candidates).
Ballmer gave himself a pat on the back, however: the Xbox consoles hit the nail on the head in regards to racking in gaming-based revenue. He's also currently set his sights on cloud computing, forecasting that it will be a place where everyone will eventually work, tying together a conglomerate of phones, TVs, corporate-data centers, PCs, and anything else that can access and use Internet-stored software.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Queen of Jordan Rania Al Abdullah and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett were just three out of a hundred CEOs in attendance of the CEO Summit.
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ta152h I still haven't seen any reason for an operating system after Windows 2000. All they do is move things to different locations, make the operating system slower and take more memory, and make things buggier.Reply
It would be nice if they just settled down and got rid of bugs, and made the OS very stable and fast, instead of adding features no one asks for, or wants. They come with a price - slower speed and bugs, that seems a little high for lack of benefit.
But, then, they don't get extra money for just releasing faster, less-buggy versions of the same operating system. -
dameon51 Yeah Vista wasn't too hot, but windows 7 came from vista, and 7 is pretty darn-tooting-good.Reply -
omnimodis78 I disagree! Windows7 is what it is thanks to the time and money invested into Vista. I bypassed Vista by going from XP straight to 7 but I used Vista at work and I despised it (not due to the hate hype, but because it really is a bad OS), but now I totally dig 7 and that's thanks to the Vista growing pains.Reply -
omnimodis78 TA152HI still haven't seen any reason for an operating system after Windows 2000. All they do is move things to different locations, make the operating system slower and take more memory, and make things buggier. It would be nice if they just settled down and got rid of bugs, and made the OS very stable and fast, instead of adding features no one asks for, or wants. They come with a price - slower speed and bugs, that seems a little high for lack of benefit. But, then, they don't get extra money for just releasing faster, less-buggy versions of the same operating system.Good luck running SSD with Windows2000 - oh and I'm sure you're having a blast with drivers for SLI, etc. How's your quad-core CPU working out for you? I'm sure it's blazing fast running Photoshop CS5 with the...err...Windows2000 and 512mb ram you are using? Give me a break!Reply -
opmopadop I have two laptops of same spec, I formatted one with Win7, the other with a Vista SP2 DVD... Suprisingly there isn't a noticable speed difference between the two. I have a desktop (much more powerful/more mem) with Vista installed using a DVD with no SP's, and installed the SP after install... Now thats running slooooooooooooooow!Reply
Perhaps installing Service Packs after Windows is installed is what contributed to this slow behavior. Guess we wait till Win7 SP1 to test my theory. -
rantsky He is totally right. I have no idea what they were doing for this long.Reply
I personally went straight from XP to 7. Win 7 is better at many things (also, is worse at some things), but it is definitely NOT 10 years of work better than XP. I cannot imagine any other company working for 10 years and getting only this far. Look what Apple did in 10 years, what Google did in 10 years, think where Intel was 10 years ago. This is NOT 10 years of work for a company the size of MS. Sorry. -
IFLATLINEI "I bypassed Vista by going from XP straight to 7 but I used Vista at work and I despised it (not due to the hate hype, but because it really is a bad OS), but now I totally dig 7 and that's thanks to the Vista growing pains."Reply
Your an idiot and its most certainly because of the hype. After service pack two Vista was a fine OS and still is. 7 is also much better but ill take SP2 Vista over any XP any day. -
lashabane IFLATLINEI"I bypassed Vista by going from XP straight to 7 but I used Vista at work and I despised it (not due to the hate hype, but because it really is a bad OS), but now I totally dig 7 and that's thanks to the Vista growing pains."Your an idiot and its most certainly because of the hype. After service pack two Vista was a fine OS and still is. 7 is also much better but ill take SP2 Vista over any XP any day.Reply
Calling someone an idiot and you can't even get "you're" and "your" right.
/facepalm -
dasper I agree with IFLATLINEI. Vista may have not been the best product when it was released but got more polished with time. Of course, when OSX first came out it was sluggish even on new hardware, incompatible with OS 9 and had a horrible adoption rate at first but now is the only (logical) thing that separates a Mac from a generic PC. Windows 7 is of the same cloth as Vista especially after sp2.Reply
On the other hand I think Linus Torvalds once said that an OS should be nothing more than a transparent gateway to you applications and if that is the case then every OS is becoming way to bloated. Although I may agree with Linus about that statement in a perfect world I still want my eye candy.
Edit: I agree with his opinion about Vista and Win7, not calling someone a mentally deficient person because their opinion differs or are ignorant to specific facts.