Microsoft on January 9 hit a few bumps meeting online demand for the Windows 7 public beta. But as January 10, the beta site seemed to be functioning fine and the software giant even removed some initial limits on the number of people who can test the Windows 7 public beta. Here’s the scoop.
Microsoft took some heat from bloggers on January 9, some of whom alleged the company had “delayed” the Windows 7 public beta. But The VAR Guy is actually defending Microsoft this time around. The company spent most of January 9 scaling up its efforts to meet user demand for the beta operating system. By January 10, Microsoft offered this blog entry note to readers:
I know many of you have had issues with the Windows 7 Beta site over the last 24 hours. As you may have noticed the download site has been up and running smoothly since this morning. That said, we apologize for the inconvenience that it caused some of you.
The note also said:
We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks (thru January 24th). During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds the 2.5 million unit limit.
Microsoft Is Dead, Long Live Microsoft
Time for open source fanboys to give Microsoft a little credit. For a “dead” company with a “dead” software architecture, Microsoft still knows how to attracted a big crowd.
Some folks continue to speculate that Windows 7′s official release will debut before Christmas 2009, but The VAR Guy is betting on a 2010 product launch for the successor to Windows Vista.
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Sure, 2.5 mega-downloads is a lot but there are likely more than 900 mega-installations of that other OS, so it is not a high percentage. There is no certainty that 2.5 million will be reached in two weeks either, but it is good PR. Firefox got close to 1% in a day.
What is interesting is that there are enough willing to bend their volume limit with their ISP… How big is the download?
I think FLOSS is much wiser. Using Torrents and many mirrors is a sturdier infrastructure. This is a case of M$ making itself a bottleneck. They should have fired up one of their bot-nets to test the system first.
If 7 really is an improved Vista, why didn’t M$ do it right in the first place? Why do customers have to pay for a beta that was tested two years (Vista I) and then replaced with another (Vista II = 7) licensing fee required? It seems far easier to migrate to GNU/Linux, get out a few bugs and be solid in a very short period of time. I have been using GNU/Linux for many years and rarely encountered more than a few small bugs with a new release, but then I use Debian, not the product of the sales department of a monopoly.
Robert: The VAR Guy isn’t making the leap to the Windows 7 public beta yet. But he does plan to give the beta a try perhaps this spring. Our resident blogger continues to be happy with Mac OS and Linux, particularly because they don’t require all the added security software…
> For a “dead” company with a “dead” software
> architecture, Microsoft still…
I suppose you don’t know that Windows revenue fell and the company is entering debt.
10 years ago, a Microsoft insider blew the whistle on his employer, showing financial fraud. Microsoft paid him (Charlie) $4 million to keep quiet and bury the evidence.
M$’s client revenue (that other OS stuff) grew very slowly compared to the growth of PCs. That is deadly for a “monopoly”. I think it is fair to say the monopoly died in 2008. Of course, they still have people locked into XP and needing the latest/greatest bloated version of Office etc. to keep up with the Jones family who keep sending them incompatible files…
M$ has been diversifying, desperately. Unfortunately for them, the gravy train depends on monopoly. Now that that is dead/dying it will be harder to be an outlier in bottom-line growth. Businesses that depend on obscure features of any of M$s products for their continued health are addicts and will be less competitive than businesses that persue open standards like ODF.
It will all sort itself out in declining extreme profits for M$ over the next few years. They must eventually become a normal business competing on merits rather than monopoly. Monopoly is obsolete on the desktop and soon to be obsolete on applications at the core of infrastructure. Applications that are very widespread are easily replaced by commodity floss applications because it is in the interest of everybody but M$ that that happens.
Roy: What do you mean by “entering debt”? MSFT doesn’t grow the way it used to. But net income remains huge, our resident blogger notes. Are you suggesting that isn’t the case?
Robert: Sure, MSFT’s desktop business isn’t what it once was. The VAR Guy is a prime example of the user shift toward Web 2.0 applications, open source and SaaS (Firefox, FaceBook, WordPress.com and more), which means he rarely “lives” in Microsoft’s user interface nor does he spend much money (if any…) on Microsoft software upgrades these days.
However, large enterprises will take longer to shift away from MSFT’s licensing practices.
One word: Satyam.
“Many believe that the stock market crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression yet history clearly shows that it was instead simply bad government policy that was manipulated by leaders such as Insull. Today many now fear a similar stock market crash but in reality the economy is very strong and, if we can reform this pyramid at Microsoft, the overall market should not need to correct more than 20 percent.
[…]
“Microsoft’s perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely replied, “Bill, everyone is doing it.” My response was that Microsoft is a leader and that others are now seeking to emulate these fraudulent practices they have legitimized. Naturally Bob was not pleased by this perspective and that was our final conversation. A second informal response came when Microsoft asked PR Newswire to stop issuing my press releases.
“Microsoft is PR Newswire’s largest client.”
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html
Roy: Comparing MSFT to Satyam seems hardly fair. Ballmer is an aggressive sales guy, but he hasn’t tried to sell MSFT to the rest of his family in order to hide years of company fraud (i.e, the alleged situation at Satyam).
The VAR Guy promises to eat crow and buy you lunch if/when such a conspiracy ever is proven at MSFT. In the meantime, our resident blogger believes MSFT’s revenues/profits must be real based on the simple fact that MSFT’s software really IS everywhere, and so many folks write checks to MSFT. Whether those customers want to keep writing checks to Microsoft is another story.
Large enterprises are big sources of income for M$ but not of seats for their OS. SMB are still locked-in, particularly on the medium end but lots of small operations can slap in GNU/Linux very quickly because they run fewer applications specialized to that other OS.
The slowness of the migration of the City of Munich to GNU/Linux was, along with politics and publicity, the huge numbers of applications, some of them custom/in-house, that had to be migrated (was it 300?). Smaller operations may have a single database that needs migration. It is a much easier task to gain mind-share/resources/execution.
The shift to FLOSS/GNU/Linux is happening in all sectors of IT. It is fastest for individuals buying netbooks and slowest for large organizations which have standardized on that other OS.
I am in education and see that M$ has priced itself ut of that market. M$ has to pay schools to install Vista, practically. Schools that have used XP for four or five years are not interested in replacing everything at great cost for Vista I or II. They will use old stuff as thin clients under GNU/Linux and new thin clients for expansion. M$ has no product which meets this need and governments do consider IT as a cost to be minimized in education. The only way to get good IT in education is with GNU/Linux and this generation of school children will be consumers sooner or later. I meet more students who have used GNU/Linux before I met them.
There is no way M$ can stop movement of individuals and small business to GNU/Linux. Larger business are greatly concerned with economy now and they cannot ignore GNU/Linux much longer once competitors adopt it. Enough large businesses have adopted GNU/Linux to make this inevitable. The Vista/7/whatever-comes-later treadmill is all too visible. If it costs a lot to migrate to M$ from M$, more will choose GNU/Linux so they can manage costs. The study by KACE shows that is happening. It just takes time to undo the damage caused by monopoly.
Robert: It’s very difficult to argue with your logic. The VAR Guy believes Microsoft will get back on track with Windows 7 — in terms of product quality and accurate market positioning. However, the cat is out of the bag: More and more folks are realizing they have real choices/options in the market now. So more and more purchase decisions will involve careful evaluation of MSFT alternatives…