As noted above, Microsoft had "fixed" Vista a long long time before the ads appeared. And as I noted at the time, too, maybe Apple itself should have fixed its own incredibly buggy recent products--MobileMe, iPhone/iPhone 3G, and Leopard among them--instead of hypocritically and falsely calling out a competitor.

Did Apple launch MobileMe poorly? Beyond a doubt. But it seems they got the bugs out of it after a few months. Leopard? Fine on this end and I was an early adopter there. iPhone? I had the original and now a 3G (the applications available brought me back and justify the cost).

Vista? I'm still telling those who buy computers to avoid it if possible and stick with XP.

And advertising budgets? Well, Apple has a hefty markup on the products they sell (unlike, for example, the xbox) so they need to spend that money someplace.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that Circuit City will be the first to offer a new Office subscription service, first known by its Albany code name and now dubbed Equipt.

The idea behind the subscription service is to convert more new PC buyers into Office buyers. It plays on the fact that although most people don't buy Office at the same time as a computer, many do purchase a security software subscription.

Microsoft is trying to tap into the fact that while many people would rather find a copy of Office that they don't have to pay for (either an older version or a pirated copy) they are willing to pay for security software. "Security is basically the No. 1 thing that gets attached with a PC," said Microsoft group product manager Bryson Gordon.

What Microsoft should do is realize that Windows is far from perfect (or good for that matter) and offer a secure version of their operating system without cost to their customers, instead of bundling it on.

Instead they're basically saying "Oh, you want Windows, OK, well that will cost you $100." ($200 if you're not upgrading.) And then you say to them "but Billy G, I've got all these viruses and popups in my internet explorer" only to be told "Oh, well, if you don't want that, pay us an extra $70 per year."

It's as if it is in their best interest to not only write crappy software so you constantly have to buy new (not for new features, no, you should buy new to fix older problems) but also so they can see you the software subscription that fixes the software that you bought last year.

You might be surprised to learn that Microsoft licenses are nearly twice as expensive in Brazil in absolute terms. I imagine Microsoft charges about the same and Brazil's brutal tax burden makes up the rest (the taxes are built into the price). But the interesting result is the relative price of licenses in each society, captured as % of GNI per capita. As a proportion of national incomes, business licenses are nineteen times more expensive to Brazilian society and home licenses are fifteen times more expensive. While GNI per capita is not a perfect figure, it reflects the incomes people make, how much they spend to live, and how much they pay in taxes. It is a crucial number when it comes to public policy; it's not hard to understand why rational policies must dodge licensing costs when possible. If there's any hope of widespread computer access, then surely we can't expect people to spend 7.8% of their annual income on Microsoft software licenses alone. The burden on small businesses is also prohibitive. This order-of-magnitude difference is a fundamental problem that can't be solved by piecemeal license giveaways. Suppose Microsoft gave out Windows and Office wholesale to all schools. Then what happens if those kids need a computer at home or in their parents' business? License costs are simply out of whack with respect to most of society. Using Linux in public schools, rarely attended by richer kids, seems inescapable.

Microsoft has lost its appeal to remove class-action status for the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit that has already resulted in some embarrassing internal e-mails being released publicly. As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."' Given what's been released so far (158-page PDF), not to mention Microsoft's history of rather frank internal e-mails, that's probably putting it mildly. There could be some interesting reading ahead.

Local mirror of Vista Exhibits

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer called Windows Vista "a work in progress" on Thursday, but he stopped short of committing to extend the life of its predecessor, Windows XP.

Windows has been a work in progress since the start. There are some steps forward (Windows 2000) and some steps backward (ME, Vista).

http://tinyurl.com/5ryr4w is the new Rick Roll. This one is actually bad (beyond words). Prepared to be... Vistacized!

They parodied everyone in the E Street Band perfectly except for Max Weinberg.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.

In response to a question about Windows Vista, Gates, speaking before the Inter-American Development Bank here, said: "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version." Referring to Windows 7, the code name for the next full release of Windows client software, Gates said: "I'm super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways."

Considering Vista sucks, this sounds like a good idea.

In a blow to Microsoft Corp., a federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit late Friday alleging that Microsoft unjustly enriched itself by promoting PCs as "Windows Vista Capable" even when they could only run a bare-bones version of the operating system, called "Vista Home Basic."

The slogan was emblazoned on PCs during the 2006 holiday shopping season as part of a campaign by Microsoft to maintain sales of Windows XP computers after the launch of Windows Vista was delayed.

Those "Vista Capable" stickers certainly caused consumers a lot of confusion, and it looks like they even tripped up some senior Microsoft execs. According to internal MS emails introduced as evidence in the ongoing lawsuit over the program, several MS managers expressed concern that they were misleading people, with the VP of Windows product management saying "I PERSONALLY got burnt... I now have a $2,100 email machine" and Jim Allchin saying MS had "really botched" the program, and that it "had to do a better job with our customers." Of course, the main reason for all the confusion is the multiple editions of Vista that run with different capabilities depending on your hardware, but that's a subtle point to make with a sticker -- or, as one Microsoft employee admitted in an email, "Even a piece of junk will qualify" as Vista Capable.

I think I personally drove our previous IT guru to retirement with my constant nagging about 'open source' that and 'free' that. (See this post from 2005 as an example.) His responses started off generous-but-condescending -- "that's an interesting idea, but as you know, we don't have the staff to support it" -- and eventually became downright testy. But it struck me as a good idea then, and it strikes me as even more so now. In a time when we're shrinking the cadre of full-time faculty to save money, why the hell are we buying servers and paying staff for our own internal email system? Why not use gmail (or something similar) and use the savings to, I don't know, hire faculty?

Going farther, why the hell are we sending boatloads of cash to Microsoft for a gazillion Office licenses when AbiWord and OpenOffice are out there for free? (Google Docs shows promise, too.) For that matter, why not try Linux instead of Windows? Let Bill Gates absorb the hit, rather than my English department. He's better able to take it. And the time we save with fewer system crashes wouldn't be trivial.

And have you tried Blackboard/WebCT recently? Sheesh. I mean, Sakai and Moodle are just sitting there...

The only semi-persuasive argument I've heard for continuing to feed the Windows pig is that it's the "industry standard." That's true, but circular. It's true until it abruptly isn't.

Also, if the Windows ecosystem used open document formats, then switching to another system (Mac, Linux, whatever) would be trivial.