Microsoft corporate culture is still strangling the company even today. The windows is going to get one hell of a makeover. A good team to be on is Office.

Vista is a joke. Zune is a joke.

I work for Microsoft and also a shareholder so I certinally have the right and knowledge to be critical.

PS: The visuals on Vista are god awful hideous morbid, its like something the Adams family would use for their funeral party invitations.

Apple is killing us in the UX department for good reason.

PS2: Another product that is also a joke is Windows Mobile, it is the most unstable bloated (pocket PC edition) platform for a "life critical" device (people do use them in emergencies you know). Reboot a phone a few times a day, no thanks, hangs and freezes? Yup, have you ever tried to use one without a stylus? Its impossible unless you have fingernails like a drag queen.

Well, I dont care as long as my stock is making ME money and I get paid at the end of the month. I care not if we ship shit anymore (and we certinally do ship shit and even get an award for it, the "Ship (sh)It" award for every product RTM/W).

Microsoft has went to hell.

Appart from checking the colour of the close icon [X] how can one tell what window is currently in focus? Its belody difficult to tell, especially if it is maximised not to mention if you come out of hibernate (I use Vista RTM legitimately) on a laptop it goes half classic and half Vista crappy theme.

Windows 2000 was our last great OS (and Windows Server 2003), XP and Vista are just Millenium built on top of the NT core.

As for bitlocker, dont bother and just get a Seagete FDE drive instead of our shitware solution, if you really need a software solution to sector crypto, use PGP 8 Whole Disk Encryption.

I do not recommend Vista at all (except for DirectX 10 which unfortunately you have to get for the latest games as OpenGL has got their heads up their arse and lost the race).

/Microsoft employee

Its reasons like this that Microsoft and our products (Vista and Zune most notably) are a joke.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1959713,00.html

We are a laughing stock and so is our products and internal processes.

One word I hear every day and HATE is the word "cool", its used instead of "thanks" or "bye" withing the company. Every damn bloody response at work every day is "cool" "cool" "cool". All patting themselves on the back for a company tshirt for any damn reason to celebrate shipping shit or a milestone etc blah blah. Yawn.

Man, you either are so posioned by something at microsoft... in which case these posts give ample evidence you should be fired immediately just for your attitute and the poison it obviously wants to spread...
or you don't work there at all and are just an anti MS troll

"Myself" please notice how this guy keeps on changing his "Name" !
I agree with you whole heartedly why work at microsoft if you don't like it there ? Specially perplexing is the statement by him that he actually owns some "Micorsoft" Shares.
Now if you don't like the company you work for and you are only too happy to get angry at it in a forum like this, why the hell would you have shares in it ! It makes no sense at all !
This particular person has told me off here before "because he know better than I do, because he works at microsoft".
Go work at Apple, I think that you would be a lot happier in life if you did !
Abd lastly ... I actually still have my doubts that you actually DO work at microsoft, and that your comments are only to "back up" Joe Wilcox (Who definitely should work at Apple ...with his views).

I find myself laughing out loud at this guy as he types his rant during work hours... and feeling sorry for him at the same time.

With his obvious seething hatred for his own work-world, how can anyone take him seriously?

Anyone that assumes their unilateral opinion is the final judgement on any product, service or situation without investigating both sides of the story is either a fresh out-of-college activist that thinks they completely understand how the world works, or is just downright intolerant.

1) Yes, to the uninformed, Windows Vista is just a shell change. The reality is that it's truly a revolution just as Win95 was, but instead of providing DirectX, a miniplug driver model & 32-bit processing/multitasking like Win95 did, it provides shared Visual, Workflow, Security, and Communications systems that every application in the future will take advantage of... just like shared Printing, TCP/IP networking, 32-bit Disk Access, DirectX, HTML rendering, Help System, & 64-bit processing were taken advantage of in the past. The proof is in the pudding: Windows Vista applications that have already uses these core Vista systems like the WSJ Reader have had critical acclaim.
(
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/press/2006/04-28timesreader.jpg)

2) I actively work with Enterprise customers and even they will tell you that Windows Mobile has been very solid since 2003 Second Edition: The quality of IMPLEMENTATIONS by OEMs/Carriers, however, of our embedded mobile OS have somewhat "varied". Samsung & HTC which form the majority of the windows Mobile devices out there have done very nice jobs with Verizon and should be commended. Motorola's had some issues in the past until the "Q" Smartphone released, which has been very good. Palm's Treo 700w was admittedly an abomination at launch but they've righted the ship with the 700wx and 700w firmware patches.

3) Windows Vista is nothing like "Millenium" and it's completely different from Windows XP - not to mention a boon for any customer looking for better desktop managability, security, and deployment. Corporate customers that are deploying it say it's like a breath of fresh air not having to deal with .INI files & 4 different setup tools. We did a good job cleaning up the setup/deployment process for desktop Windows.

4) Your lack of decorum makes you sound like you work in a non-customer facing role, sir... like the U.K. Datacenter maybe? Your hatred of the word "cool" tells me that if you really do work for the company you couldn't have been around much longer than a few years. "Cool" usage at Microsoft doesn't imply anything by its actual definition but is a cultural word that goes back to the dawn of the company with Billg. Read your MSFT history books and you'll understand. The opposite of "cool" is "random", for example. Being that you don't understand this fundamental aspect of social interaction at MSFT tells me you must be a very lonely person.

5) Uh, and your PGP8 volume encryption solution has no remedy for centralized enterprise recovery, unlike Bitlocker.

6) Finally, there are a lot of people that like the Windows Vista interface, contrary to your opinion. It takes fewer clicks to accomplish task, and the product "evolves" through the help of web services like online help libraries.
(http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/264)

To anyone reading this, take this fellow's rant with a grain of salt. There's a lot of hard-working, well-meaning folks at Microsoft that believe in our products without drinking too much Koolaid and really do listen to customers in order to get their feedback into our products... and while we're no where near perfect, understand that if something seems wrong or odd in a product or service, there's likely a darned good reason probably relating to someone else's feedback.

And in defense of Joe Wilcox, his history with Microsoft Monitor should indicate that he is and can continue to be an unbiased & thoughtful researcher.

While I understand that readership, not Research Reports, now drives his blog posts, I just hope that he doesn't sell out to Mary Jo Foley's style of hack journalism.

Joe: Everyone respects your research & fact checking. Hypothesizing thoughtfully about corporate direction & strategy is something everyone expects you to do as you did so well at Jupiter. But linkbaiting with half-baked conspiracies with rumors & innuendo overheard at MS events... please leave that to Mary Jo.

I sincerely hope Joe brings his previous credibility & research expertise to the world of Ziff Davis.

(I do miss the formatting of the old Microsoft Monitor site though.)

"Bruin" all I can say is this "I sincerely hope that Joe brings his previous credibility & research expertise to the world of Ziff Davis". Your words not mine !
Well Joe has been at Micorsoft Watch for approx. one month ... When is going to bring his previous credibility because he hasn't brought it yet !
You only have to look for the articles with LOTS of comments, and I tell you what... there are a lot of them !

I find it hard to believe that anyone that works at Microsoft would find Vista and Zune to be a joke. Anyone that works at MS is already a shareholder, so I agree that he's just an Anti-MS troll.

Microsoft employees genuinely believe in the work they do, and they believe that they are producing great products for consumers that will improve productivity and user experience.

This statement by Allchin is definitely taken out of context. Now I know for a fact that there are alot of MACS on campus, I have one of them. I started using a Mac in 2004, much like Allchin and many other Microsoft employees. Microsoft employees are technofiles, and dont just consume Microsoft products, they consume the most innovative and newest technologies on the market, which at that time (with having Windows XP on the market for over 3 years) OSX was the product that was new and innovative.

Also remember that in late 1998, Microsoft bought 200 million dollars of Apple stock (non voting shares) which helped bail the company out of a financial and innovative slump (with profits in the last 8 years, try to calculate how much Microsoft has now). Also consider that Microsoft is the largest designer/producer of MAC software outside of Apple itself. As a part of the initial 5 year agreement which has been expanded to 10, Microsoft has come out so far with 3 versions of Microsoft Office for MAC; which as anyone who visits an Apple Store can tell you is very much a selling point that the salespeople are more than happy to remind customers about. Also recall that Microsoft owns the patent to the iPod clickwheel, (as they beat apple to the patent by a month) but as a result of the agreement, allow Apple to benefit from the patent using the clickwheel architecture in the iPod.

I could go on and on, however I think that the above helps prove the point that anti-MS people feed off anything that doesnt appear to be in favor of Microsoft. The simple fact is, because Microsoft is so robust and far reaching, there is probably not one person reading this page that doesnt at least use half a dozen Microsoft products (directly or indirectly) each day, whether they realize they are or not.

"Neil" - Well, (heh) regarding the comments, there's two ways to look at this:

1) Joe's doing his job. The fact that you're still reading and still posting means he's doing something right. He's bringing in readers and creating discussion. Lots of comments you say? Great - Ziff Davis and its click-hungry editors will probably give him a raise thanks to people like you and me.

2) He's produced some solid content that SOME people find interesting. Unlike Mary Jo, who was a disciple of John C. Dvorak's click-baiting tactics, (Step 1: Write a few lines of opinionated, thoughtless, & inflammatory tripe, Step 2: Get hits, Step 3: Collect a check & repeat as necessary) Joe has a history of producing well-crafted analysis.

Take for instance his quarterly review of Microsoft's financials:
http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/2006/10/microsoft_fisca_6.html
Rule #1 in understanding any situation is "follow the money"; I used to look forward to these educated summaries and I hope he continues them here at Microsoft-Watch. Material like this was worth me subscribing to his RSS feed.

I can assure you sir, that I've been reading Joe Wilcox' material (both his blog & his purchased research material) longer than most, and that Joe is more than just an "rookie observer" of Microsoft but rather an reasonable & informed analyst.

I just hope Ziff Davis doesn't change him.

I'd buy a Mac too if they were affordable Mr Allchin.
Now, I'm not Anti-Microsoft at all, I've been a beta tester for Microsoft for nearly 10 years now but I also object to Vista. It's too dark in most UI aspects, the "Window Streaks" in the transparencies are giving me a headache (I like transparencies but without those god aweful streaks), and the contrast of some of the UI elements like progress bars is bizarre.
I'm hoping that Ultimate Extras that are meant to ship with Vista Ultimate include a far more polished Aero - what's there is really more like a bruised boxer and not a sleek interface.

I want a mac 4 christmas, theres a new area in Dick Smith Electronics PowerHouse Southland that has macs. i sent videos to them from my mobile phone through bluetooth and played them on the macs with reverse loop on. everyone had a look at the videos that i sent to it.

Ummm, people... you know it IS possible for someone to work for a company and think it sucks, right?

Most people DON'T love their jobs and many people's job is JUST a job.

So just because a guy who dislikes Microsoft says he works at Microsoft doesn't mean he's a liar.

I wish there WERE more of this guy at Microsoft at all levels. Maybe if companies weren't so into themselves they could see how how ridiculous they look to everyone else (Sony and its PS3, anyone?)

Maybe then they could avoid disasters and humiliation in the form of Zune, Vista and Live.

Clearly, it's possible for an MS shareholder to think the Zune is a joke, as well as a money loser. But anyone who IS an ms shareholder has been, and therefore probably feels good about the company. I think it's acceptable for an occasional whiff. And Zune 3.0 will probably rock.

"Bruin" Joe Wilcox is NOW opposite everything you have stated, therefore probably Ziff Davis have changed him, if what you say was true of his past.
Because it ain't true now !!
If you don't believe me have a look at his posts since since he started at Microsoft Watch and you will see what I am talking about.
One that cones to mind is "Microsoft's Miscalculation" and there are tons of others as well !

I agree 100% with everything Bruin said.

"Neil" --

You are an illiterate fool who can barely spell his own name, let alone punctuate or put together two sentences that are not non sequiturs.

Quit harassing Joe. You might think you are doing the world a service by regularly calling him a liar, and by "pointing out" all of his supposed hypocritical tendencies and biases -- but in reality, you are just a nitpicking busybody with way too much time on his hands. A very quick count suggests that you've posted negative comments 15 times so far this month alone. If you want to be the guardian of Truth, Justice and the Microsoft Way, then get your own column on eWeek and take Joe on publicly, and under your own name.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions. Unfortunately, yours are not even wrong. Speech is free and a protected right, but anonymous personal attacks are chickenshit.

It's time for dinner, and your parents are calling. Turn off the black light, shut down the computer and leave the basement for a few hours.

Andrew do YOU put everyone down that doesn't agree with you ?
You must have had some time on your hands as well to do some checking up.
If Joe Wilcox deserves it (which he does) then he will get it, and if you have taken some notice there are a lot of other people who do agree with me mate !
I do not care how high up you are working for "Yankee Group" I only care that Joe gets it right !
For example he has got it mainly right in his article "Priming Vista Security for the Enterprise", so you see I am not (as you say) always harrasing him.
I just want him to do the articles in an unbiased nature that is all, and if you have gone through the articles yourself, you would have seen that the objections that I raised were valid ones.
And as for nitpicking well... Joe is VERY good at that (see Microsoft's Miscalulation) now that's nitpicking and even Joe said he was !

What I know is that personal computer technology is headed in the wrong direction. The OS has become so bloated that it is too difficult to understand what's going on. The system performance is terrible despite having newer computers. The computer experience should make me feel good and should be responsive. Right now its getting to the point where I am afraid to touch anything for fear that the system will be screwed up. Instead, the new philosophy is "you better call the help desk!". The philosophy of suggesting doing system restores is a joke. Instead, make the system easy to work with and there won't be any need for system restores.

And people's philosophies are way off the wall now. The extreme power point presentation features are not necessary. The people that demand these features have their heads in the ground and have no ability to accomplish anything beyond that fancy power point dynamics. Whatever points they try to make are lost in a sea of complexity.

I am a software developer and have been using Vista for past one year at my work place. I truly honestly think that Vista really is a huge big pile of CRAP. Every single day in the past one year I have found many many irritations in very simple and common tasks while using Vista some examples from today:

1. The file explorer never ever ever wants to show me the files in a view that I would like to see (details). No matter what I have done it randomnly chooses thumnails, small icons or whatever other shit it fancies.

2. Just the other day I was required to edit the cfg file in the windows folder. Vista (being utterly secure it is) gave me a load of crap messages about editing a file in the windows folder. So I copied it somewhere else, edited it and then copied it back to windows folder... thats the Vista security for you !!

The above are just examples out of dozens upon dozens of irritations that I have faced and even tried to make myself like them. All in all SHAME ON THE MICROSOFT MANAGERS/DEVELOPERS/TESTERS who have unleashed this pile of crap OS !!!

And not to mention that it uses about 1 GB of ram just for the OS and even then everything runs so extremely slow. I am talking about the general user experience one gets of using Vista. It is almost similar to pushing a steam locomotive that has run out of steam.

And for all of the people of have worked on developing Vista and are proud of it... I can only say that it brings the following scenario to my mind:

Imagine a beautiful high street, on a bright, sunny and cheerful day. Lots of people with colourful dresses, in happy mood, enjoying the beautiful day. And then you come along and SHIT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET !!! And then you stand by the side of your load of shit, with a beaming smile on your face, nodding your head and pointing to your pile of shit and saying “See that ?? Thats me!! I did that!! And I am so proud of my shit!! And I love my shit!!.”. Thats exactly equivalent to being proud of Vista and if you were to do that in real life, you’ve got very bright chances of getting shot.

Before I start getting bashed I would like to clarify that I am not a Microsoft hater. I have loved the previous OS's, Windows 2000 the most and also like Windows XP a lot. I have used Microsoft software and OS's on all of my work and home computers for the past 12 years. I have never owned a MAC or a Linux machine. Its just Windows Vista that has absolutely horrified the shit out of me....