Comments

1. hklm

   
   Posted on: August 17, 2006 at 12:25AM  

   "Leveraged?" You really need to get a good reference before you go off to college like this one. It will enhance your writing skills: The Quintissential Dictionary by Moyer Hunsberger http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446324434/102-3215667-3228953?v=glance&n=283155 In it you will find the word "synchophant" and then can write "I've been intimidated into becoming a MSFT Synchophant cheerleader." I hope you're able to read this comment from Ed Bott and I contexted who he is for you and what he has written on Vista. MSFT Press is publishing his book on Vista in the near future. It is also one of the major quality books out on every Windows Operating System. Ed writes a great blog and now you're linked to it. That this is the only think Mary Jo can find to write about the RC1 convoluted branches being shoved out is pathetic not for her but for MSFT and Vista: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/ "Microsoft is set to deliver a new Windows Vista build – possibly Build No. 5506 -- to testers some time in the next few days, according to Vista testers who asked not to be named. The forthcoming build will embed links to a number of Microsoft's Windows Live services." How hard is it to type http://www.live.com/ into a browser or http://live.com.spaces.live.com/ Also has MSFT ever heard of frames, web design, and hyperlinks on a background that is anything better than barelely legible? The Live content is useful at times (Windows Live Writer) but it's websites are horrendous for a Windows software company called MSFT. You can find "nightmarish" in the same dictionary as the hackneyed by MSFT personnel overused word "leveraged". They use it more than they delude themselves by drinking bottled water. You can also find the terms "lipstick" "on" "a" "very" "sick" "pig" and "Vista" in the same dicitionary. Rather than the absurd phrase from some Wegner Edstrom or McCann Ericson worldwide bunker "clear, confident, and connected" you're looking at "muddled,tenatitive" and a "systemic train wreck" on the current time table. "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." Why isn't the same access to Scenario Voting and Bugs (it's a ridiculous insult to your customers) available to CPP as it is to TBT? Have your intern supervisors at MSFT told you that the author of this book has urge Jim Allchin to hold Vista up to fix a badly broken Vista that is potentially going to be "horrendous" if it keeps to the current slap any piece of crap on a DVD and let Wegner Edstrom hype it's superficiality? Windows Vista Inside Out http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735622701/102-3215667-3228953?n=283155 Comments from customers on the lack of access to bug info and transparency: Typical comments on your public Vista newsgroup: 8/8/06: #1 “Have raised lots of bugs, and get closure and/or feedback reports most days regarding vista bug reports I have submitted, however, I am not on Connect Vista, so cannot view or the reqested followup comments, because I got my Vista via MSDN CTP. If someone can help from MS, I would much apprciate it.” #2 “I have the same problem and after receiving a reply to an error report and not being able to view the "fix" on Connect I send an error report to Connect and as a reply received a statement that says this will be fixed in the future........... Please stand by” From an MVP who automatically has Connect access to bugs--transparency would mean all the categories of bugs--what's fixed, what will be, what won't be because PMs are bullying developers from in depth looks at the many systemic flaws in Vista. Start using the words "systemic flaw" instead of leverage. It will help you accurately reflect the truth on Vista. “If you have the feedback ID numbers I can try to get you the information you need. [This is a rephrensible slap at customers to whom MSFT has made available "Beta 2" as a pure sales tool who know that Vista is in huge trouble with its current time table.] #3 From one of the MSFT MVPs who is by definition on the TBT and trying to help solve the Connect blind alley with bug reporting: “Several of us have tried that. Good luck, but I think you will get an error. One problem is that almost none of the bugs are posted public and there is no way to change it after it has been filed.” Several messages are that MSFT is contemplating the problem when people email the near worthless so-called "Connect Help." This is as thoroughly disingenuous as it is contemptuous of your customers. The bugs and their contexts are on many computers and there is no reason not to organize the categories and make them and their fix or lack of fix context public. The watered down public scenario compared to the TBT Scenario Voting is completely worthless--that's why your particiipation is disappointingly low. It's a superficial sales tool and as insincere as it is misleading. MSFT doesn't give a damn about what the public thinks. Look how they're slapping lipstick and mascara on this pig who is severely ill and putting an RC1 branch out around Labor Day and then shipping crap come October. One hint to an intern--don't fall pray to the Roget's thesarus depths of corporate speak. Drop leverage. Don't use it the rest of your life. You'll become a much better speaker and writer for doing so. You want to mimic them so you picked it up from everything they write and say. Next to their valley girl adoption of the meaningless word "like" every 3 or 4 words in their sentences, it's the most common banal word MSFT has run into the ground. MSFT uses the word leverage to a ridiculous degree in thousands of presentations. Let that be one bad vocabulary habit that a high school intern does not carry into college. It's banal; it's overuses, and it is disingenous. If you do a sequel analysis on MSFT sites or transcipt of their presentations, leverage is right up at the top. It's what English majors call stilted language. Leverage means to use to an advantage--remember levers and pullys in physics. It's also cited in a number of excellent books on meaningless corporate speak. The point would be whether Vista is leverging much of anything in the way it was anticipated to leverage. It's not. MSFT in a weak attempt to mimic the Steve Jobs build ups to attempt to surround Apple releases with secrecy puts more effort in building the hype and the "Mommy please give us a build ethos" than they do in fixing the basics in Vista that remain broken since fall of 2005 to the present. It's one more sales tool that reflects Microsoft's utter quintissential contempt for the public, it's movement towards no transparency, and most disappointing the huge effort to cover up Vista's progressive failure as an OS --way short of what was promised during two years of hype. The web is replete with MVPs like Ed Bott who have told Allchin that if they stay on their current trainwreck march to RTM it will be horrendous. There is no feedback mechanism for wasting your time whatsoever on public scenario voting. MSFT has the quintissential tin ear for major suggestions for major improvements. Superficial gimmics like the Sidebar (best way to handle it is prevent it from loading--everything on the Sidebar has been available since the 1980's). That Mary Jo White can only write about links to LIve Services shows how pathetic and desparate the Vista teams are becoming. Ask the Win RE team why Win RE only works a small percent of the time or why System File Checker is going to ship with Windows File Protection switches inoperable. If MSFT considered public feedback remotely significant rather than a sales tool and the CPP one more Wagner Edstrom sales promotion, they would open up Connect bug reporting and give the public the same context and access to bugs as TBTs. The reason for this is as Vista trainrwecks to a ridiculous RTM schedule, MSFT wants to hide the lack of progress, the lack of attention to significant features in Vista, the continual foreclosure of significant features in Vista, and the large number of broken components that MSFT plans to adorn with the Windows Logo and ship. People will be quick to list every broken feature of Vista --that is pushing beyond settling for an RTM timetable that is unrealistic into the arena of such a disspointing OS that it rivals ME. The closeup on Allchin's face when he waves those choppers off the Redmond campus this time is going to be pure anguish. And it will be with good reason. The author of the book "Windows Vista Inside Out" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735622701/102-3215667-3228953?n=283155 "I just noticed that Amazon is now offering Microsoft Windows Vista Inside Out for sale. It’s almost cracked the top million (a few more pre-orders would push it into the 900,000 range…). According to the publisher’s note, it’s due to be published on December 27" http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1398 Recent Quotes on Microsoft's completely arrogant and stubborn adherence to an unrealistic RTM schedule--a 65,000 megalith devouring its nose to spite its face with its flagship product: If I were Nick White and anyone on a Vista team or responsible for Vista, I'd start getting serious about the comments like these: There is an exponentially growing ground swell of MSFT MVPs and widely read knowledgable bloggers, users and frequent news group helpers exhorting MSFT to give Vista another 6 months before RTM. They should heed this for the sake of quality in Vista. There has never been a service pack in Windows since they began in Win 2K that significantly fixed functionality or added many features. They have all been predominantly security driven. Your own former chief evangelist and MSDN 9 blogger Robert Scoble, who has also been a VB MVP and filmed scores of indepth interviews with Vista team members, (arguably by far your best known ever blogger on the planet and the only one written up by multiple major media outlets) has written at http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws-is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date/ and http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/page/2/ and Looking at Vista http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/looking-at-vista/ "I’ve been on the betas of every Windows OS since Windows 3.1 and Vista is starting to feel good, but it doesn’t feel good enough to release to the factory in October. It feels like it needs a good six more months than that, which would mean a mid-year release next year." Paul Thurott has written at http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp We might call Windows Vista a "train wreck" for simplicity's sake...Is Windows Vista ready? No. God, no. Today's Windows Vista builds are a study in frustration, and trust me, I use the darn thing day in and day out, and I've seen what happens when you subject yourself to it wholeheartedly." Ed Bott has sold well over 900,000 copies of MSFT Press' "Windows Vista Inside Out" already. His Inside Out books are read by thousands of MSFT employees to learn about parts of the operating system they are less familiar with. Ed Bott has agreed with Robert McLaws of Longhorn Blogs that you should hold Vista to fix its systemically broken components. Bott writes in his blog: July 31, 2006 - 4:44 pm Robert’s right: Windows Vista needs more time Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx “Time For a Sanity Check” by Robert McLaws Longhorn Blogs Microsoft has been pushing it's developers too hard to meet this deadline, and Vista is too complicated to allow it to be reached. Many people will twist my words and construe Vista's complexity as a bad thing; it's not, just the nature of software development. But that means that new realities have to be addressed in new ways. So I have a proposal for solving this problem and getting Vista out the door in the first quarter, without sacrificing product quality to the God of Everyone Else's Expectations: "Step 1: Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February. Yeah, you're going to get A LOT of flack for it. The stock price will probably drop a percent or two. The Slashdotters will go apeshit. But trust me, your long-term issues will be far worse than your short-term ones if the product is not up to par out of the gate." "Robert McLaws says Microsoft needs to delay Windows Vista. I agree with about 90% of what he says: McLaws wrote: "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." The author of the Windows Inside Out Books (mine on XP is 1435 pages and I think that MSFT press is connected to the same MSFT that pays you): "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. Jim, [Allchin] are you listening" From Mike Williams: "Media Player is half-baked, search/indexing is frightening, and setup can’t get locales/keyboards for English locales outside of the US right and we’re supposedly past Beta 2? I see these locale problems as blocking issues for any of the one or two customers working in UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc. If Vista can’t get that stuff right at account setup time, it means you can’t properly test anything that comes afterwards. 4-6 weeks doesn’t seem like half enough bake time, even if Microsoft’s next released build got those elements right." The Insider by Sidebar Geek : Windows Vista Needs a Beta 3 Says: August 1st, 2006 at 11:17 am […] Windows Vista Needs a Beta 3 Robert and I have had this great discussion going between ourselves even before I joined The Hive blogging here on The Insider on how Windows Vista’s Beta and RC Schedule doesn’t quite sync up with the progress being seen in the latest builds…this discussion was going on when Beta 2 hit. I chose not to blog about it much on wanting a delay and a Beta 3 simply due to hope of seeing some great progress with the interim builds up to RC1. The latest interim builds (5456 and 5472) show progress - but not enough progress. I’m glad Robert made this post and I’m glad I can agree with it. Read Robert’s thoughts on Vista’s current quality and thoughts on seeing a Beta 3 and pushing back RC1 and RTM by a few weeks. There seem to be a lot of folks in the community that agree with Robert’s thoughts here. Ed Bott agrees 90%. Even Robet Scoble thinks this is something Microsoft should consider. I think its time to stop complaining about Vista’s delays and start thinking about the potential Vista has to become a even better operating system - the best ever for Microsoft - if Microsoft was allowed to take more time to harden the code and flush out the bugs. […] Robert and Robert: Duh! ~ Chris Pirillo Says: August 1st, 2006 at 3:28 pm http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/01/robert-and-robert-duh/ Robert and Robert: Duh! August 1, 2006 at 2:28 pm · in Microsoft · Comments · Related Windows Vista just ain't gonna be ready Posted Aug 1st 2006 3:00PM by Jordan Running Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Commercial Bill Gates is on the record as saying there's an 80% chance Windows Vista will ship on time, but he seems to be the only one that certain it'll be ready. In order to meet its targeted release, Vista will have to be shipped to PC manufacturers in October or early November, which gives them somewhere between eight and fourteen weeks to get it done. More than a few people think that that's not possible, or at least very unwise. One of those people is .NET Developer and Vista enthusiast Robert McLaws, who is urging Microsoft to push the release back to February 2007. More interestingly, former Softie Robert Scoble has gone on the record agreeing with McLaws, writing, "If [Vista] ships in October, I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack. There's no way the quality will be high enough to trust it if it ships early. I hope Microsoft takes the time to do this right." Ouch. What's more, at Microsoft's recent meeting of financial analysts, Kevin Johnson, co-president of its Platforms & Services division, conspicuously avoided confirming Vista's ship date, saying it would ship "when it's ready." 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 whiner” 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. I’m singing the “I Told You So” song today, which sounds a lot like the Blackeyed Peas hit: “My Humps.” Microsoft Windows is bleeding influencers like never before. And now, further commentary from the memetic echo chamber: http://www.longhornblogs.com/ Windows Vista: A falling house of cards, or a miracle sitting on quicksand? Hi everyone, hope you are all well! Better get a drink because this post could take a while to read [:P] I've kept my mouth shut about this now for a while and this post is long over-due. Robert posted about why Windows Vista needs a Beta 3, Paul Thurrott and Brad Wardell have done the same, and now, I'm going to take a crack at it. Is Windows Vista a falling house of cards? In my opinion, no. While there are still a lot of annoyances in Windows Vista that have yet to be fixed (the inconsistancy with User Account Control prompts, etc) I feel that this release of Windows may very well turn out to be the best yet. Performance is slowly getting better with each interim build that we see, and more fit and finish is being done now that we are on the home stretch of delivering this product. Windows Vista includes many improvements over its predecessor, Windows XP. For instance: Windows Photo Gallery, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Calendar, Windows Meeting Space, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and that's just to name a few. There are alot of things in Windows Vista that add to the overall user experience, which is great... which brings me to my second point. Hardware Vendors need to get off their proverbial behinds and start writing decent drivers for Windows Vista. We're on the home stretch here, we're nearing the release candidate stages, and yet there aren't many decent drivers for Windows Vista. Hello, no wonder my user experience flippin' SUCKS in Windows Vista when half my hardware don't work! Hey, Creative Labs, I'm talking to you! Here's how my testing regime has been on my primary desktop machine now ever since oh, say, Build 5270: Install the latest build from Microsoft Connect. Install drivers & applications Notice that my Creative Sound Blaster X-FI fails to properly work (no microphone and some of the worst sound quality I've ever heard) Fall back to onboard audio only to have that suck even more so than the Creative SB X-Fi (SoundMAX, you suck.) Test the operating system, file bug reports, and fall back to Windows XP where my drivers actually WORK. Frustrating. Even more so when the first time Windows Vista is installed, the Creative Sound Blaster X-FI drivers (the driver package for either XP or Vista, doesn't matter) won't install. They either randomly fail, crash, or time out. Yet after a reinstall, they install perfectly... only to have the sound cut out and randomly die sometimes. Grr. Just my 2 cents... there... I'm done. August 05, 2006 by Kristan Kenney http://www.longhornblogs.com/ What I did say was I don't think it will be ready for a release candidate in the next few weeks. I've seen 7 interim builds since Beta 2, and while they all have charted great progress, they show there's still a lot more work to be done. There should be another VERY public build before Microsoft takes a shot at a build that *could* be the final build, which is what "Release Candidate" is supposed to mean (more on that issue shortly). Whether the blame lies in the core OS or in third-party device drivers that aren't up to snuff, it doesn't matter. The public needs to see two consistently awesome builds (which would include an "RC") before we can start talking general release. Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write 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. Beta 2 was a disappointment on many levels. It was nowhere near as stable as it should have been, and was a huge memory hog. Later builds have improved stability and performance, and have introduced visual tweaks and enhancements that make Vista feel more like a finished product. But several events are conspiring to make life a lot more difficult for beta testers, and I forsee problems if they are not addressed. Fact: Microsoft is rapidly approaching check-in cutoff date for the Vista teams. According to one Microsoft employee, this date is "only a few weeks away". That means that any changes that need to be made after that date are extremely difficult to get in. If Vista is going to RTM in late October/early November, that means RC1 will be due out late August/early September. If you're a beta tester, that's probably a scary thought. Observation: Several teams are scrambling to get code checked in on time. I hate to use the Media Center team as an example, because they're moving extremely fast and working very hard to get their product out the door. But I have to. Media Center has a ton of enhancements in Vista, and is being developed for technology that probably won't even be on the market by the time Vista ships. They are working like crazy to meet their deadlines, and I don't think that it can happen without sacrificing the quality of the product. Unless they plan on updating Windows Media Center frequently after RTM, it's just going to cause problems. But don't come down on that team... several events in the cable industry have hampered some of their work. And don't kid yourself into thinking that the WMC team is the only one scrambling. They're just the easiest example. Observation: One door closes, another door opens. No, I'm not talking about opportunity here, I'm talking about issue resolutions causing new issues. I've been thoroughly impressed. When Beta 2 came out, I defended Microsoft against the people that said "XP was more stable at this point, Vista should be too". Back them, I didn't think that was the case. Now, I have to agree. The last beta should have been a lot more stable. The RC1 builds have improved dramatically, but my experience is still vastly different with each build. As some systems tighten up, others seem to come apart. For example, I had issues resuming from Hibernate in Beta 2. Those issues were resolved in later builds, but new ones arose in the latest build I've been testing. That shouldn't be happening. Observation: Jim & Co have forgotten what "Release Candidate" means. A release candidate means "Hey, we think we're finished, and this is the build we'd like to put out there. Is it ready yet?" From there, testers sign off on it and say yes, or they say "no" and Microsoft does additional work. It should always follow a stable beta, which Beta 2 was not. It's not another CTP that goes out... this means that they're finished. Windows Vista is not ready yet, and I don't think Microsoft will have it ready by the end of the month. So Microsoft should not call it a "Release Candidate" if it is not seriously up for consideration as a candidate for release. Time For a Sanity Check Microsoft has been pushing it's developers too hard to meet this deadline, and Vista is too complicated to allow it to be reached. Many people will twist my words and construe Vista's complexity as a bad thing; it's not, just the nature of software development. But that means that new realities have to be addressed in new ways. So I have a proposal for solving this problem and getting Vista out the door in the first quarter, without sacrificing product quality to the God of Everyone Else's Expectations: Step 1: Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February. Yeah, you're going to get A LOT of flack for it. The stock price will probably drop a percent or two. The Slashdotters will go apeshit. But trust me, your long-term issues will be far worse than your short-term ones if the product is not up to par out of the gate. Step 2: Don't defend it, just announce it. There's no point in trying to put a PR spin on it, because nobody is going to listen anyways. Let your thousands of beta testers cheer you for making the right decision, and tell Wall Street to go to hell. At this point, you have the strongest product lineup in a decade and the stock price hasn't moved, so getting Vista out the door on time isn't going to magically make things better.Your customers will be happier in the long term, and your decisions should be based on that, and not what the media says. Step 3: Add another beta to the development cycle. That new window gives the team enough time to push back RC1 and add Beta 3 into the mix. This means that Beta 3 comes at the end of this month, RC1 comes at the middle of October, and RTM is Microsoft's last big accomplishment of 2006. That should give the world enough time to try out a much more stable version of the operating system, and see how it works in the real world. It will be shorter than most betas, but it's ok to be a little agile in that respect. Step 4: Give the entire Windows team a week off. After Beta 3 releases, anyone who is not responsible for responding to security issues in released products should be given a week to relax, unwind, etc. Let them spend time with family, cause they probably won't see much of them between RC1 and RTM. Clear heads make happy coders. Oh yeah, except for management. They should take that week and figure out how to thin out the management staff when Steven Sinofsky takes over. Step 5: Come back strong and release a great product. Enough said. What Would Beta 3 Accomplish? I think the first release candidate should be followed by a stable beta. Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 was an incredibly stable product, even though it underwent major changes between Beta 2 and RC1. Beta 2 of Windows Vista was not usable in any meaningful way on a regular basis, and I uninstalled it after 10 days. I'm running Vista full time now, but not without still dealing with BSODs and other random BS. So here's what changing the current RC1 to Beta 3 and putting additional time into RC1 should allow Microsoft to focus on: Fixing bug reports. Too many bugs are being closed as "by design" or "not reproducible", with barely any questions from Microsoft engineers on how to reproduce them. Developers should stop what they're doing and take three weeks on reproducing and resolving issues... not just the beta team, the WHOLE team. Display driver stabilization. The entire WDDM team needs to finalize their work, and then go over and kick Nvidia's butt into gear. Seriously, I mean the whole WDDM team needs to go over to Nvidia HQ and get the drivers fixed. Their display drivers have been nothing but a problem, and it's not getting better, despite new driver releases. Improve general system stability. Microsoft has been making good progress on making Vista fast and stable, and it needs a bit more time to do so. I'd rather have a few more weeks to make it faster than wait for Windows Server 2007 before I get fast Vista bits. Catch up time. Give the Media Center team and others time to let their industries catch up so the products they will support can be refined and finalized. (I'm talking about a specific product here, but can't mention it specifically due to NDAs). In Conclusion That's what needs to be done, IMO, to make the Windows Vista truly the best version of Windows ever. Windows Management (that means you, Jim): Give your people a little more time to get it right. You'll be lambasted for it. But it doesn't matter what 125 people in the media will say. 700 million Windows users will thank you. Robert McLaws Longhorn Blogs http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414 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. 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.” Make that “end of March” and I’ll sign up too. 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. Jim, are you listening? Posted in Windows Vista | By Ed Bott Apparently not. But Jim is leveraging his butt off isn't he? HKLM
2. hklm

   
   Posted on: August 17, 2006 at 1:13AM  

   "Leveraged?" You really need to get a good reference before you go off to college like this one. It will enhance your writing skills: The Quintessential Dictionary by Moyer Hunsberger http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446324434/102-3215667-3228953?v=glance&n=283155 In it you will find the word "synchophant" and then can write "I've been intimidated into becoming a MSFT Synchophant cheerleader." I hope you're able to read this comment from Ed Bott and I contexted who he is for you and what he has written on Vista. MSFT Press is publishing his book on Vista in the near future. It is also one of the major quality books out on every Windows Operating System. Ed writes a great blog and now you're linked to it. That this is the only think Mary Jo can find to write about the RC1 convoluted branches being shoved out is pathetic not for her but for MSFT and Vista: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/ "Microsoft is set to deliver a new Windows Vista build – possibly Build No. 5506 -- to testers some time in the next few days, according to Vista testers who asked not to be named. The forthcoming build will embed links to a number of Microsoft's Windows Live services." How hard is it to type http://www.live.com/ into a browser or http://live.com.spaces.live.com/ Also has MSFT ever heard of frames, web design, and hyperlinks on a background that is anything better than barelely legible? The Live content is useful at times (Windows Live Writer) but it's websites are horrendous for a Windows software company called MSFT. You can find "nightmarish" in the same dictionary as the hackneyed by MSFT personnel overused word "leveraged". They use it more than they delude themselves by drinking bottled water. You can also find the terms "lipstick" "on" "a" "very" "sick" "pig" and "Vista" in the same dicitionary. Rather than the absurd phrase from some Wegner Edstrom or McCann Ericson worldwide bunker "clear, confident, and connected" you're looking at "muddled,tenatitive" and a "systemic train wreck" on the current time table. "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." Why isn't the same access to Scenario Voting and Bugs (it's a ridiculous insult to your customers) available to CPP as it is to TBT? Have your intern supervisors at MSFT told you that the author of this book has urge Jim Allchin to hold Vista up to fix a badly broken Vista that is potentially going to be "horrendous" if it keeps to the current slap any piece of crap on a DVD and let Wegner Edstrom hype it's superficiality? Windows Vista Inside Out http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735622701/102-3215667-3228953?n=283155 Comments from customers on the lack of access to bug info and transparency: Typical comments on your public Vista newsgroup: 8/8/06: #1 “Have raised lots of bugs, and get closure and/or feedback reports most days regarding vista bug reports I have submitted, however, I am not on Connect Vista, so cannot view or the reqested followup comments, because I got my Vista via MSDN CTP. If someone can help from MS, I would much apprciate it.” #2 “I have the same problem and after receiving a reply to an error report and not being able to view the "fix" on Connect I send an error report to Connect and as a reply received a statement that says this will be fixed in the future........... Please stand by” From an MVP who automatically has Connect access to bugs--transparency would mean all the categories of bugs--what's fixed, what will be, what won't be because PMs are bullying developers from in depth looks at the many systemic flaws in Vista. Start using the words "systemic flaw" instead of leverage. It will help you accurately reflect the truth on Vista. “If you have the feedback ID numbers I can try to get you the information you need. “ This would be a real pathetic arm’s length posture for any customer interested on real transparency in Vista if they contemplate buying it or migrating to it. #3 From one of the MSFT MVPs who is by definition on the TBT and trying to help solve the Connect blind alley with bug reporting: “Several of us have tried that. Good luck, but I think you will get an error. One problem is that almost none of the bugs are posted public and there is no way to change it after it has been filed.” Several messages are that MSFT is contemplating the problem when people email the near worthless so-called "Connect Help." This is as thoroughly disingenuous as it is contemptuous of your customers. The bugs and their contexts are on many computers and there is no reason not to organize the categories and make them and their fix or lack of fix context public. The watered down public scenario compared to the TBT Scenario Voting is completely worthless--that's why your particiipation is disappointingly low. It's a superficial sales tool and as insincere as it is misleading. MSFT doesn't give a damn about what the public thinks. Look how they're slapping lipstick and mascara on this pig who is severely ill and putting an RC1 branch out around Labor Day and then shipping crap come October. One hint to an intern--don't fall pray to the Roget's thesarus depths of corporate speak. Drop leverage. Don't use it the rest of your life. You'll become a much better speaker and writer for doing so. You want to mimic them so you picked it up from everything they write and say. Next to their valley girl adoption of the meaningless word "like" every 3 or 4 words in their sentences, it's the most common banal word MSFT has run into the ground. MSFT uses the word leverage to a ridiculous degree in thousands of presentations. Let that be one bad vocabulary habit that a high school intern does not carry into college. It's banal; it's overuses, and it is disingenous. If you do a sequel analysis on MSFT sites or transcipt of their presentations, leverage is right up at the top. It's what English majors call stilted language. Leverage means to use to an advantage--remember levers and pullys in physics. It's also cited in a number of excellent books on meaningless corporate speak. The point would be whether Vista is leverging much of anything in the way it was anticipated to leverage. It's not. MSFT in a weak attempt to mimic the Steve Jobs build ups to attempt to surround Apple releases with secrecy puts more effort in building the hype and the "Mommy please give us a build ethos" than they do in fixing the basics in Vista that remain broken since fall of 2005 to the present. It's one more sales tool that reflects Microsoft's utter quintissential contempt for the public, it's movement towards no transparency, and most disappointing the huge effort to cover up Vista's progressive failure as an OS --way short of what was promised during two years of hype. The web is replete with MVPs like Ed Bott who have told Allchin that if they stay on their current trainwreck march to RTM it will be horrendous. There is no feedback mechanism for wasting your time whatsoever on public scenario voting. MSFT has the quintissential tin ear for major suggestions for major improvements. Superficial gimmics like the Sidebar (best way to handle it is prevent it from loading--everything on the Sidebar has been available since the 1980's). That Mary Jo White can only write about links to LIve Services shows how pathetic and desparate the Vista teams are becoming. Ask the Win RE team why Win RE only works a small percent of the time or why System File Checker is going to ship with Windows File Protection switches inoperable. If MSFT considered public feedback remotely significant rather than a sales tool and the CPP one more Wagner Edstrom sales promotion, they would open up Connect bug reporting and give the public the same context and access to bugs as TBTs. The reason for this is as Vista trainrwecks to a ridiculous RTM schedule, MSFT wants to hide the lack of progress, the lack of attention to significant features in Vista, the continual foreclosure of significant features in Vista, and the large number of broken components that MSFT plans to adorn with the Windows Logo and ship. People will be quick to list every broken feature of Vista --that is pushing beyond settling for an RTM timetable that is unrealistic into the arena of such a disspointing OS that it rivals ME. The closeup on Allchin's face when he waves those choppers off the Redmond campus this time is going to be pure anguish. And it will be with good reason. The author of the book "Windows Vista Inside Out" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735622701/102-3215667-3228953?n=283155 "I just noticed that Amazon is now offering Microsoft Windows Vista Inside Out for sale. It’s almost cracked the top million (a few more pre-orders would push it into the 900,000 range…). According to the publisher’s note, it’s due to be published on December 27" http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1398 Recent Quotes on Microsoft's completely arrogant and stubborn adherence to an unrealistic RTM schedule--a 65,000 megalith devouring its nose to spite its face with its flagship product: If I were Nick White and anyone on a Vista team or responsible for Vista, I'd start getting serious about the comments like these: There is an exponentially growing ground swell of MSFT MVPs and widely read knowledgable bloggers, users and frequent news group helpers exhorting MSFT to give Vista another 6 months before RTM. They should heed this for the sake of quality in Vista. There has never been a service pack in Windows since they began in Win 2K that significantly fixed functionality or added many features. They have all been predominantly security driven. Your own former chief evangelist and MSDN 9 blogger Robert Scoble, who has also been a VB MVP and filmed scores of indepth interviews with Vista team members, (arguably by far your best known ever blogger on the planet and the only one written up by multiple major media outlets) has written at http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws-is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date/ and http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/page/2/ and Looking at Vista http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/looking-at-vista/ "I’ve been on the betas of every Windows OS since Windows 3.1 and Vista is starting to feel good, but it doesn’t feel good enough to release to the factory in October. It feels like it needs a good six more months than that, which would mean a mid-year release next year." Paul Thurott has written at http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp We might call Windows Vista a "train wreck" for simplicity's sake...Is Windows Vista ready? No. God, no. Today's Windows Vista builds are a study in frustration, and trust me, I use the darn thing day in and day out, and I've seen what happens when you subject yourself to it wholeheartedly." Ed Bott has sold well over 900,000 copies of MSFT Press' "Windows Vista Inside Out" already. His Inside Out books are read by thousands of MSFT employees to learn about parts of the operating system they are less familiar with. Ed Bott has agreed with Robert McLaws of Longhorn Blogs that you should hold Vista to fix its systemically broken components. Bott writes in his blog: July 31, 2006 - 4:44 pm Robert’s right: Windows Vista needs more time Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx “Time For a Sanity Check” by Robert McLaws Longhorn Blogs Microsoft has been pushing it's developers too hard to meet this deadline, and Vista is too complicated to allow it to be reached. Many people will twist my words and construe Vista's complexity as a bad thing; it's not, just the nature of software development. But that means that new realities have to be addressed in new ways. So I have a proposal for solving this problem and getting Vista out the door in the first quarter, without sacrificing product quality to the God of Everyone Else's Expectations: "Step 1: Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February. Yeah, you're going to get A LOT of flack for it. The stock price will probably drop a percent or two. The Slashdotters will go apeshit. But trust me, your long-term issues will be far worse than your short-term ones if the product is not up to par out of the gate." "Robert McLaws says Microsoft needs to delay Windows Vista. I agree with about 90% of what he says: McLaws wrote: "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." The author of the Windows Inside Out Books (mine on XP is 1435 pages and I think that MSFT press is connected to the same MSFT that pays you): "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. Jim, [Allchin] are you listening" From Mike Williams: "Media Player is half-baked, search/indexing is frightening, and setup can’t get locales/keyboards for English locales outside of the US right and we’re supposedly past Beta 2? I see these locale problems as blocking issues for any of the one or two customers working in UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc. If Vista can’t get that stuff right at account setup time, it means you can’t properly test anything that comes afterwards. 4-6 weeks doesn’t seem like half enough bake time, even if Microsoft’s next released build got those elements right." The Insider by Sidebar Geek : Windows Vista Needs a Beta 3 Says: August 1st, 2006 at 11:17 am […] Windows Vista Needs a Beta 3 Robert and I have had this great discussion going between ourselves even before I joined The Hive blogging here on The Insider on how Windows Vista’s Beta and RC Schedule doesn’t quite sync up with the progress being seen in the latest builds…this discussion was going on when Beta 2 hit. I chose not to blog about it much on wanting a delay and a Beta 3 simply due to hope of seeing some great progress with the interim builds up to RC1. The latest interim builds (5456 and 5472) show progress - but not enough progress. I’m glad Robert made this post and I’m glad I can agree with it. Read Robert’s thoughts on Vista’s current quality and thoughts on seeing a Beta 3 and pushing back RC1 and RTM by a few weeks. There seem to be a lot of folks in the community that agree with Robert’s thoughts here. Ed Bott agrees 90%. Even Robet Scoble thinks this is something Microsoft should consider. I think its time to stop complaining about Vista’s delays and start thinking about the potential Vista has to become a even better operating system - the best ever for Microsoft - if Microsoft was allowed to take more time to harden the code and flush out the bugs. […] Robert and Robert: Duh! ~ Chris Pirillo Says: August 1st, 2006 at 3:28 pm http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/01/robert-and-robert-duh/ Robert and Robert: Duh! August 1, 2006 at 2:28 pm • in Microsoft • Comments • Related Windows Vista just ain't gonna be ready Posted Aug 1st 2006 3:00PM by Jordan Running Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Commercial Bill Gates is on the record as saying there's an 80% chance Windows Vista will ship on time, but he seems to be the only one that certain it'll be ready. In order to meet its targeted release, Vista will have to be shipped to PC manufacturers in October or early November, which gives them somewhere between eight and fourteen weeks to get it done. More than a few people think that that's not possible, or at least very unwise. One of those people is .NET Developer and Vista enthusiast Robert McLaws, who is urging Microsoft to push the release back to February 2007. More interestingly, former Softie Robert Scoble has gone on the record agreeing with McLaws, writing, "If [Vista] ships in October, I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack. There's no way the quality will be high enough to trust it if it ships early. I hope Microsoft takes the time to do this right." Ouch. What's more, at Microsoft's recent meeting of financial analysts, Kevin Johnson, co-president of its Platforms & Services division, conspicuously avoided confirming Vista's ship date, saying it would ship "when it's ready." 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 whiner” 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. I’m singing the “I Told You So” song today, which sounds a lot like the Blackeyed Peas hit: “My Humps.” Microsoft Windows is bleeding influencers like never before. And now, further commentary from the memetic echo chamber: http://www.longhornblogs.com/ Windows Vista: A falling house of cards, or a miracle sitting on quicksand? Hi everyone, hope you are all well! Better get a drink because this post could take a while to read [:P] I've kept my mouth shut about this now for a while and this post is long over-due. Robert posted about why Windows Vista needs a Beta 3, Paul Thurrott and Brad Wardell have done the same, and now, I'm going to take a crack at it. Is Windows Vista a falling house of cards? In my opinion, no. While there are still a lot of annoyances in Windows Vista that have yet to be fixed (the inconsistancy with User Account Control prompts, etc) I feel that this release of Windows may very well turn out to be the best yet. Performance is slowly getting better with each interim build that we see, and more fit and finish is being done now that we are on the home stretch of delivering this product. Windows Vista includes many improvements over its predecessor, Windows XP. For instance: Windows Photo Gallery, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Calendar, Windows Meeting Space, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and that's just to name a few. There are alot of things in Windows Vista that add to the overall user experience, which is great... which brings me to my second point. Hardware Vendors need to get off their proverbial behinds and start writing decent drivers for Windows Vista. We're on the home stretch here, we're nearing the release candidate stages, and yet there aren't many decent drivers for Windows Vista. Hello, no wonder my user experience flippin' SUCKS in Windows Vista when half my hardware don't work! Hey, Creative Labs, I'm talking to you! Here's how my testing regime has been on my primary desktop machine now ever since oh, say, Build 5270: Install the latest build from Microsoft Connect. Install drivers & applications Notice that my Creative Sound Blaster X-FI fails to properly work (no microphone and some of the worst sound quality I've ever heard) Fall back to onboard audio only to have that suck even more so than the Creative SB X-Fi (SoundMAX, you suck.) Test the operating system, file bug reports, and fall back to Windows XP where my drivers actually WORK. Frustrating. Even more so when the first time Windows Vista is installed, the Creative Sound Blaster X-FI drivers (the driver package for either XP or Vista, doesn't matter) won't install. They either randomly fail, crash, or time out. Yet after a reinstall, they install perfectly... only to have the sound cut out and randomly die sometimes. Grr. Just my 2 cents... there... I'm done. August 05, 2006 by Kristan Kenney http://www.longhornblogs.com/ What I did say was I don't think it will be ready for a release candidate in the next few weeks. I've seen 7 interim builds since Beta 2, and while they all have charted great progress, they show there's still a lot more work to be done. There should be another VERY public build before Microsoft takes a shot at a build that *could* be the final build, which is what "Release Candidate" is supposed to mean (more on that issue shortly). Whether the blame lies in the core OS or in third-party device drivers that aren't up to snuff, it doesn't matter. The public needs to see two consistently awesome builds (which would include an "RC") before we can start talking general release. Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write 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. Beta 2 was a disappointment on many levels. It was nowhere near as stable as it should have been, and was a huge memory hog. Later builds have improved stability and performance, and have introduced visual tweaks and enhancements that make Vista feel more like a finished product. But several events are conspiring to make life a lot more difficult for beta testers, and I forsee problems if they are not addressed. Fact: Microsoft is rapidly approaching check-in cutoff date for the Vista teams. According to one Microsoft employee, this date is "only a few weeks away". That means that any changes that need to be made after that date are extremely difficult to get in. If Vista is going to RTM in late October/early November, that means RC1 will be due out late August/early September. If you're a beta tester, that's probably a scary thought. Observation: Several teams are scrambling to get code checked in on time. I hate to use the Media Center team as an example, because they're moving extremely fast and working very hard to get their product out the door. But I have to. Media Center has a ton of enhancements in Vista, and is being developed for technology that probably won't even be on the market by the time Vista ships. They are working like crazy to meet their deadlines, and I don't think that it can happen without sacrificing the quality of the product. Unless they plan on updating Windows Media Center frequently after RTM, it's just going to cause problems. But don't come down on that team... several events in the cable industry have hampered some of their work. And don't kid yourself into thinking that the WMC team is the only one scrambling. They're just the easiest example. Observation: One door closes, another door opens. No, I'm not talking about opportunity here, I'm talking about issue resolutions causing new issues. I've been thoroughly impressed. When Beta 2 came out, I defended Microsoft against the people that said "XP was more stable at this point, Vista should be too". Back them, I didn't think that was the case. Now, I have to agree. The last beta should have been a lot more stable. The RC1 builds have improved dramatically, but my experience is still vastly different with each build. As some systems tighten up, others seem to come apart. For example, I had issues resuming from Hibernate in Beta 2. Those issues were resolved in later builds, but new ones arose in the latest build I've been testing. That shouldn't be happening. Observation: Jim & Co have forgotten what "Release Candidate" means. A release candidate means "Hey, we think we're finished, and this is the build we'd like to put out there. Is it ready yet?" From there, testers sign off on it and say yes, or they say "no" and Microsoft does additional work. It should always follow a stable beta, which Beta 2 was not. It's not another CTP that goes out... this means that they're finished. Windows Vista is not ready yet, and I don't think Microsoft will have it ready by the end of the month. So Microsoft should not call it a "Release Candidate" if it is not seriously up for consideration as a candidate for release. Time For a Sanity Check Microsoft has been pushing it's developers too hard to meet this deadline, and Vista is too complicated to allow it to be reached. Many people will twist my words and construe Vista's complexity as a bad thing; it's not, just the nature of software development. But that means that new realities have to be addressed in new ways. So I have a proposal for solving this problem and getting Vista out the door in the first quarter, without sacrificing product quality to the God of Everyone Else's Expectations: Step 1: Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February. Yeah, you're going to get A LOT of flack for it. The stock price will probably drop a percent or two. The Slashdotters will go apeshit. But trust me, your long-term issues will be far worse than your short-term ones if the product is not up to par out of the gate. Step 2: Don't defend it, just announce it. There's no point in trying to put a PR spin on it, because nobody is going to listen anyways. Let your thousands of beta testers cheer you for making the right decision, and tell Wall Street to go to hell. At this point, you have the strongest product lineup in a decade and the stock price hasn't moved, so getting Vista out the door on time isn't going to magically make things better.Your customers will be happier in the long term, and your decisions should be based on that, and not what the media says. Step 3: Add another beta to the development cycle. That new window gives the team enough time to push back RC1 and add Beta 3 into the mix. This means that Beta 3 comes at the end of this month, RC1 comes at the middle of October, and RTM is Microsoft's last big accomplishment of 2006. That should give the world enough time to try out a much more stable version of the operating system, and see how it works in the real world. It will be shorter than most betas, but it's ok to be a little agile in that respect. Step 4: Give the entire Windows team a week off. After Beta 3 releases, anyone who is not responsible for responding to security issues in released products should be given a week to relax, unwind, etc. Let them spend time with family, cause they probably won't see much of them between RC1 and RTM. Clear heads make happy coders. Oh yeah, except for management. They should take that week and figure out how to thin out the management staff when Steven Sinofsky takes over. Step 5: Come back strong and release a great product. Enough said. What Would Beta 3 Accomplish? I think the first release candidate should be followed by a stable beta. Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 was an incredibly stable product, even though it underwent major changes between Beta 2 and RC1. Beta 2 of Windows Vista was not usable in any meaningful way on a regular basis, and I uninstalled it after 10 days. I'm running Vista full time now, but not without still dealing with BSODs and other random BS. So here's what changing the current RC1 to Beta 3 and putting additional time into RC1 should allow Microsoft to focus on: Fixing bug reports. Too many bugs are being closed as "by design" or "not reproducible", with barely any questions from Microsoft engineers on how to reproduce them. Developers should stop what they're doing and take three weeks on reproducing and resolving issues... not just the beta team, the WHOLE team. Display driver stabilization. The entire WDDM team needs to finalize their work, and then go over and kick Nvidia's butt into gear. Seriously, I mean the whole WDDM team needs to go over to Nvidia HQ and get the drivers fixed. Their display drivers have been nothing but a problem, and it's not getting better, despite new driver releases. Improve general system stability. Microsoft has been making good progress on making Vista fast and stable, and it needs a bit more time to do so. I'd rather have a few more weeks to make it faster than wait for Windows Server 2007 before I get fast Vista bits. Catch up time. Give the Media Center team and others time to let their industries catch up so the products they will support can be refined and finalized. (I'm talking about a specific product here, but can't mention it specifically due to NDAs). In Conclusion That's what needs to be done, IMO, to make the Windows Vista truly the best version of Windows ever. Windows Management (that means you, Jim): Give your people a little more time to get it right. You'll be lambasted for it. But it doesn't matter what 125 people in the media will say. 700 million Windows users will thank you. Robert McLaws Longhorn Blogs http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414 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. 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.” Make that “end of March” and I’ll sign up too. 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. Jim, are you listening? Posted in Windows Vista | By Ed Bott Apparently not. But Jim is leveraging his butt off isn't he? HKLM
3. hklm

   
   Posted on: August 17, 2006 at 2:04AM  

   Public feedback and the public interface for scenario voting "leverage" nothing. They are an utter and complete waste of time. Only a MSFT Synchophant would promote it.
   
   MSFT has no regard for any feedback from the public;  but they will get a powerful representation.  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.
   
   
   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.
   
   HKLM
4. hklm

   
   Posted on: August 17, 2006 at 2:31AM  

   "Leveraged?" You really need to get a good reference before you go off to college like this one. It will enhance your writing skills: The Quintessential Dictionary by Moyer Hunsberger http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446324434/102-3215667-3228953?v=glance&n=283155 In it you will find the word "synchophant" and then can write "I've been intimidated/Stockholm syndromed into becoming a MSFT Synchophant cheerleader." I hope you're able to read this comment from Ed Bott and I contexted who he is for you and what he has written on Vista. MSFT Press is publishing his book on Vista in the near future. It is also one of the major quality books out on every Windows Operating System. Ed writes a great blog and now you're linked to it. That this is the only think Mary Jo can find to write about the RC1 convoluted branches being shoved out is pathetic not for her but for MSFT and Vista: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/ "Microsoft is set to deliver a new Windows Vista build – possibly Build No. 5506 -- to testers some time in the next few days, according to Vista testers who asked not to be named. The forthcoming build will embed links to a number of Microsoft's Windows Live services." How hard is it to type http://www.live.com/ into a browser or http://live.com.spaces.live.com/ Also has MSFT ever heard of frames, web design, and hyperlinks on a background that is anything better than barely legible? You can find "nightmarish" in the same dictionary as the hackneyed by MSFT personnel overused word "leveraged". They use it more than they delude themselves by drinking bottled water. You can also find the terms "lipstick" "on" "a" "very" "sick" "pig" and "Vista" in the same dicitionary. Rather than the absurd phrase from some Wegner Edstrom or McCann Ericson worldwide bunker "clear, confident, and connected" you're looking at "muddled,tenatitive" and a "systemic train wreck" on the current time table. The author of the book "Windows Vista Inside Out" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735622701/102-3215667-3228953?n=283155 "I just noticed that Amazon is now offering Microsoft Windows Vista Inside Out for sale. It’s almost cracked the top million (a few more pre-orders would push it into the 900,000 range…). According to the publisher’s note, it’s due to be published on December 27" http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1398 Recent Quotes on Microsoft's completely arrogant and stubborn adherence to an unrealistic RTM schedule--a 65,000 megalith devouring its nose to spite its face with its flagship product: If I were Nick White and anyone on a Vista team or responsible for Vista, I'd start getting serious about the comments like these: There is an exponentially growing ground swell of MSFT MVPs and widely read knowledgable bloggers, users and frequent news group helpers exhorting MSFT to give Vista another 6 months before RTM. They should heed this for the sake of quality in Vista. There has never been a service pack in Windows since they began in Win 2K that significantly fixed functionality or added many features. They have all been predominantly security driven. Your own former chief evangelist and MSDN 9 blogger Robert Scoble, who has also been a VB MVP and filmed scores of indepth interviews with Vista team members, (arguably by far your best known ever blogger on the planet and the only one written up by multiple major media outlets) has written at http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws-is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date/ and http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/page/2/ and Looking at Vista http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/looking-at-vista/ "I’ve been on the betas of every Windows OS since Windows 3.1 and Vista is starting to feel good, but it doesn’t feel good enough to release to the factory in October. It feels like it needs a good six more months than that, which would mean a mid-year release next year." Paul Thurott has written at http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp We might call Windows Vista a "train wreck" for simplicity's sake...Is Windows Vista ready? No. God, no. Today's Windows Vista builds are a study in frustration, and trust me, I use the darn thing day in and day out, and I've seen what happens when you subject yourself to it wholeheartedly." Ed Bott has sold well over 900,000 copies of MSFT Press' "Windows Vista Inside Out" already. His Inside Out books are read by thousands of MSFT employees to learn about parts of the operating system they are less familiar with. Ed Bott has agreed with Robert McLaws of Longhorn Blogs that you should hold Vista to fix its systemically broken components. Bott writes in his blog: July 31, 2006 - 4:44 pm Robert’s right: Windows Vista needs more time Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx “Time For a Sanity Check” by Robert McLaws Longhorn Blogs Microsoft has been pushing it's developers too hard to meet this deadline, and Vista is too complicated to allow it to be reached. Many people will twist my words and construe Vista's complexity as a bad thing; it's not, just the nature of software development. But that means that new realities have to be addressed in new ways. So I have a proposal for solving this problem and getting Vista out the door in the first quarter, without sacrificing product quality to the God of Everyone Else's Expectations: "Step 1: Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February. Yeah, you're going to get A LOT of flack for it. The stock price will probably drop a percent or two. The Slashdotters will go apeshit. But trust me, your long-term issues will be far worse than your short-term ones if the product is not up to par out of the gate." From Mike Williams: "Media Player is half-baked, search/indexing is frightening, and setup can’t get locales/keyboards for English locales outside of the US right and we’re supposedly past Beta 2? I see these locale problems as blocking issues for any of the one or two customers working in UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc. If Vista can’t get that stuff right at account setup time, it means you can’t properly test anything that comes afterwards. 4-6 weeks doesn’t seem like half enough bake time, even if Microsoft’s next released build got those elements right." The Insider by Sidebar Geek : Windows Vista Needs a Beta 3 Says: August 1st, 2006 at 11:17 am […] Windows Vista Needs a Beta 3 Robert and I have had this great discussion going between ourselves even before I joined The Hive blogging here on The Insider on how Windows Vista’s Beta and RC Schedule doesn’t quite sync up with the progress being seen in the latest builds…this discussion was going on when Beta 2 hit. I chose not to blog about it much on wanting a delay and a Beta 3 simply due to hope of seeing some great progress with the interim builds up to RC1. The latest interim builds (5456 and 5472) show progress - but not enough progress. I’m glad Robert made this post and I’m glad I can agree with it. Read Robert’s thoughts on Vista’s current quality and thoughts on seeing a Beta 3 and pushing back RC1 and RTM by a few weeks. There seem to be a lot of folks in the community that agree with Robert’s thoughts here. Ed Bott agrees 90%. Even Robet Scoble thinks this is something Microsoft should consider. I think its time to stop complaining about Vista’s delays and start thinking about the potential Vista has to become a even better operating system - the best ever for Microsoft - if Microsoft was allowed to take more time to harden the code and flush out the bugs. […] Windows Vista just ain't gonna be ready Posted Aug 1st 2006 3:00PM by Jordan Running Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Commercial Bill Gates is on the record as saying there's an 80% chance Windows Vista will ship on time, but he seems to be the only one that certain it'll be ready. In order to meet its targeted release, Vista will have to be shipped to PC manufacturers in October or early November, which gives them somewhere between eight and fourteen weeks to get it done. More than a few people think that that's not possible, or at least very unwise. One of those people is .NET Developer and Vista enthusiast Robert McLaws, who is urging Microsoft to push the release back to February 2007. More interestingly, former Softie Robert Scoble has gone on the record agreeing with McLaws, writing, "If [Vista] ships in October, I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack. There's no way the quality will be high enough to trust it if it ships early. I hope Microsoft takes the time to do this right." Ouch. What's more, at Microsoft's recent meeting of financial analysts, Kevin Johnson, co-president of its Platforms & Services division, conspicuously avoided confirming Vista's ship date, saying it would ship "when it's ready." 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 whiner” 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. I’m singing the “I Told You So” song today, which sounds a lot like the Blackeyed Peas hit: “My Humps.” Microsoft Windows is bleeding influencers like never before. And now, further commentary from the memetic echo chamber: http://www.longhornblogs.com/ from Kristan Kenney: August 05, 2006 by Kristan Kenney Windows Vista: A falling house of cards, or a miracle sitting on quicksand? Hi everyone, hope you are all well! Better get a drink because this post could take a while to read [:P] I've kept my mouth shut about this now for a while and this post is long over-due. Robert posted about why Windows Vista needs a Beta 3, Paul Thurrott and Brad Wardell have done the same, and now, I'm going to take a crack at it. Is Windows Vista a falling house of cards? In my opinion, no. While there are still a lot of annoyances in Windows Vista that have yet to be fixed (the inconsistancy with User Account Control prompts, etc) I feel that this release of Windows may very well turn out to be the best yet. Performance is slowly getting better with each interim build that we see, and more fit and finish is being done now that we are on the home stretch of delivering this product. Windows Vista includes many improvements over its predecessor, Windows XP. For instance: Windows Photo Gallery, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Calendar, Windows Meeting Space, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and that's just to name a few. There are alot of things in Windows Vista that add to the overall user experience, which is great... which brings me to my second point. Hardware Vendors need to get off their proverbial behinds and start writing decent drivers for Windows Vista. We're on the home stretch here, we're nearing the release candidate stages, and yet there aren't many decent drivers for Windows Vista. Hello, no wonder my user experience flippin' SUCKS in Windows Vista when half my hardware don't work! Hey, Creative Labs, I'm talking to you! Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write 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. Beta 2 was a disappointment on many levels. It was nowhere near as stable as it should have been, and was a huge memory hog. Later builds have improved stability and performance, and have introduced visual tweaks and enhancements that make Vista feel more like a finished product. But several events are conspiring to make life a lot more difficult for beta testers, and I forsee problems if they are not addressed. Fact: Microsoft is rapidly approaching check-in cutoff date for the Vista teams. According to one Microsoft employee, this date is "only a few weeks away". That means that any changes that need to be made after that date are extremely difficult to get in. If Vista is going to RTM in late October/early November, that means RC1 will be due out late August/early September. If you're a beta tester, that's probably a scary thought. Observation: Several teams are scrambling to get code checked in on time. I hate to use the Media Center team as an example, because they're moving extremely fast and working very hard to get their product out the door. But I have to. Media Center has a ton of enhancements in Vista, and is being developed for technology that probably won't even be on the market by the time Vista ships. They are working like crazy to meet their deadlines, and I don't think that it can happen without sacrificing the quality of the product. Unless they plan on updating Windows Media Center frequently after RTM, it's just going to cause problems. But don't come down on that team... several events in the cable industry have hampered some of their work. And don't kid yourself into thinking that the WMC team is the only one scrambling. They're just the easiest example. Observation: One door closes, another door opens. No, I'm not talking about opportunity here, I'm talking about issue resolutions causing new issues. I've been thoroughly impressed. When Beta 2 came out, I defended Microsoft against the people that said "XP was more stable at this point, Vista should be too". Back them, I didn't think that was the case. Now, I have to agree. The last beta should have been a lot more stable. The RC1 builds have improved dramatically, but my experience is still vastly different with each build. As some systems tighten up, others seem to come apart. For example, I had issues resuming from Hibernate in Beta 2. Those issues were resolved in later builds, but new ones arose in the latest build I've been testing. That shouldn't be happening. Observation: Jim & Co have forgotten what "Release Candidate" means. A release candidate means "Hey, we think we're finished, and this is the build we'd like to put out there. Is it ready yet?" From there, testers sign off on it and say yes, or they say "no" and Microsoft does additional work. It should always follow a stable beta, which Beta 2 was not. It's not another CTP that goes out... this means that they're finished. Windows Vista is not ready yet, and I don't think Microsoft will have it ready by the end of the month. So Microsoft should not call it a "Release Candidate" if it is not seriously up for consideration as a candidate for release. Time For a Sanity Check Microsoft has been pushing it's developers too hard to meet this deadline, and Vista is too complicated to allow it to be reached. Many people will twist my words and construe Vista's complexity as a bad thing; it's not, just the nature of software development. But that means that new realities have to be addressed in new ways. So I have a proposal for solving this problem and getting Vista out the door in the first quarter, without sacrificing product quality to the God of Everyone Else's Expectations: Step 1: Push the launch back 4-6 weeks and launch at the end of February. Yeah, you're going to get A LOT of flack for it. The stock price will probably drop a percent or two. The Slashdotters will go apeshit. But trust me, your long-term issues will be far worse than your short-term ones if the product is not up to par out of the gate. Step 2: Don't defend it, just announce it. There's no point in trying to put a PR spin on it, because nobody is going to listen anyways. Let your thousands of beta testers cheer you for making the right decision, and tell Wall Street to go to hell. At this point, you have the strongest product lineup in a decade and the stock price hasn't moved, so getting Vista out the door on time isn't going to magically make things better.Your customers will be happier in the long term, and your decisions should be based on that, and not what the media says. Step 3: Add another beta to the development cycle. That new window gives the team enough time to push back RC1 and add Beta 3 into the mix. This means that Beta 3 comes at the end of this month, RC1 comes at the middle of October, and RTM is Microsoft's last big accomplishment of 2006. That should give the world enough time to try out a much more stable version of the operating system, and see how it works in the real world. It will be shorter than most betas, but it's ok to be a little agile in that respect. Step 4: Give the entire Windows team a week off. After Beta 3 releases, anyone who is not responsible for responding to security issues in released products should be given a week to relax, unwind, etc. Let them spend time with family, cause they probably won't see much of them between RC1 and RTM. Clear heads make happy coders. Oh yeah, except for management. They should take that week and figure out how to thin out the management staff when Steven Sinofsky takes over. Step 5: Come back strong and release a great product. Enough said. What Would Beta 3 Accomplish? I think the first release candidate should be followed by a stable beta. Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 was an incredibly stable product, even though it underwent major changes between Beta 2 and RC1. Beta 2 of Windows Vista was not usable in any meaningful way on a regular basis, and I uninstalled it after 10 days. I'm running Vista full time now, but not without still dealing with BSODs and other random BS. So here's what changing the current RC1 to Beta 3 and putting additional time into RC1 should allow Microsoft to focus on: Fixing bug reports. Too many bugs are being closed as "by design" or "not reproducible", with barely any questions from Microsoft engineers on how to reproduce them. Developers should stop what they're doing and take three weeks on reproducing and resolving issues... not just the beta team, the WHOLE team. Display driver stabilization. The entire WDDM team needs to finalize their work, and then go over and kick Nvidia's butt into gear. Seriously, I mean the whole WDDM team needs to go over to Nvidia HQ and get the drivers fixed. Their display drivers have been nothing but a problem, and it's not getting better, despite new driver releases. Improve general system stability. Microsoft has been making good progress on making Vista fast and stable, and it needs a bit more time to do so. I'd rather have a few more weeks to make it faster than wait for Windows Server 2007 before I get fast Vista bits. Catch up time. Give the Media Center team and others time to let their industries catch up so the products they will support can be refined and finalized. (I'm talking about a specific product here, but can't mention it specifically due to NDAs). In Conclusion That's what needs to be done, IMO, to make the Windows Vista truly the best version of Windows ever. Windows Management (that means you, Jim): Give your people a little more time to get it right. You'll be lambasted for it. But it doesn't matter what 125 people in the media will say. 700 million Windows users will thank you. Robert McLaws Longhorn Blogs From Ed Bott author of Windows Vista Insidse Out (over 900,000 copies sold): "Robert McLaws says Microsoft needs to delay Windows Vista. I agree with about 90% of what he says: McLaws wrote: "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." The author of the Windows Inside Out Books (mine on XP is 1435 pages and I think that MSFT press is connected to the same MSFT that pays you): "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. Jim, [Allchin] are you listening" Posted in Windows Vista | By Ed Bott Apparently not. But Jim is leveraging his butt off isn't he? HKLM
5. hklm

   
   Posted on: August 17, 2006 at 4:34AM  

   You have a panoply of high quality feedback from some outstanding book authors.  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.
   
   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  rushing an unfinished non working product out the door, trying to play games manipulating Software Assurance Reparations schemes
   
   http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2000814,00.asp
   
   
   Posturing that the public has any influence at all  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.
   
   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 "under consideration" for over a year?
   
   That's tantamount to saying we know your stupid and we'll continue to exploit you with what has been called a potentially horrendous  product by the author of Vista Inside Out:
   
   
   http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414
   
   
   http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws-is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date/
   
   
   http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/page/2/
   
   Looking at Vista
   http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/looking-at-vista/
   
   
   Paul Thurott has written at
   http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp
   
   
   Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write
   http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx">http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/07/31/Windows_Vista_Needs_a_Beta_3.aspx
   
   
   http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/01/robert-and-robert-duh/
   
   http://www.longhornblogs.com/
   
   HKLM
   
   
   
6. hklm

   
   Posted on: August 17, 2006 at 4:54AM  

   Sorry for the mistypes:
   
   That would be
   
   McCann Ericson
   
   biopsies
   
   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)
   
   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.
   
   You persist in hiding the bugs  reported  from them--why is an interesting question.
   
   They can still get at the bugs through Windows if not through Connect.
   
   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.
   
   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.
   
   I'd start using the words disingenuous and facade and stop the insipid overuse of the word leverage all over the world.  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.
   
   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.
   
   A repair install of Windows XP is exponentially more reliable than Startup Repair in Vista.
   
   From Longhorn Blogs Robert McLaws
   
   http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1414
   
   
   From Ed Bott author of Windows Vista Inside Out
   
   
   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.
   
   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.” Make that “end of March” and I’ll sign up too.
   
   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.
   
   Jim, are you listening?
   
   Posted in Windows Vista | By Ed Bott
   
   Apparently not. But Jim is leveraging isn't he?
   
   HKLM
   
   
   
   
   
7. Michael_Moor

   
   Posted on: January 31, 2007 at 11:24AM  

   thx "Nick White" for share

   ---------

   http://www.dl4all.com
8. ravindra106

   
   Posted on: March 15, 2009 at 7:52AM  

   was very great info thanx for sharing this one also

   http://www.funmahol.com