Dear Bill Gates<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n First, the apology. Having complained here<\/a> on 6 February that your new Vista operating system was driving me bonkers, it would have been polite to give you an update before now.<\/p>\n 15 billion dollars for a broken, pointless product that doesn’t meet any user expectations. There’s one born every minute, and Bill Gates has persuaded them all to buy Windoze.<\/p>\n But in delaying my progress report, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I assumed that Vista would soon become compatible with the assorted tools of my trade, so I could write you a belated note of congratulation.<\/p>\n In fact my Vista experience has gone from bad to worse. One of your engineers has informed me that my HP iPAQ PocketPC will never be compatible with Vista, even though the software it runs is Microsoft software. Hey ho. That\u2019s an expensive and serviceable bit of kit written off prematurely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hey Ho?!! Bleet bleet.<\/p>\n Your engineer has however held out the tantalising prospect that Olympus may produce new drivers such that I would eventually be able to transfer sound files from my digital voice recorder to my new Vista laptop. But so far, those drivers are proving a bit elusive and my digital recorder may also become redundant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me repeatedly over decades, expose me as a lobotomised sheep with blinkers and an addiction to being fooled.<\/p>\n But as economists say, there\u2019s no point in obsessing over spilt milk. However, here\u2019s what almost sent me over the edge this weekend.<\/p>\n I installed Office XP on my new laptop, and have been puzzled and irked that Outlook will not save sign-on passwords. It means I have to type in my passwords every time I check my e-mail accounts for new mail.<\/p>\n For weeks I\u2019ve been investigating possible fixes to this annoying glitch. But yesterday I came across an explanation from someone called the Microsoft AppCompat Guy, on Microsoft\u2019s discussion forum for \u201cGeneral Windows Vista Development Issues\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is what AppCompat Guy says: \u201cThis was a difficult deliberate choice. During the development of Vista, it was discovered that the password storage algorithm used by Outlook was too weak to protect your data from future, potential attacks. Both the security and application compatibility teams decided that protecting your data outweighed the inconvenience of having to retype your passwords. As the appcompat representative, I can assure you this was not a decision we took lightly\u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n “quite a powerful incentive for me to spend up to \u00a399.99 on upgrading to Microsoft Outlook 2007”<\/em><\/p>\n WHAT!??!?! After paying for a broken product (for no good reason) which mothballs your perfectly good hardware, you are willing to pay MORE money in the vain hope that it will be OK in the end. Baa!<\/p>\n Ladies and gentlemen, this is “Robert Peston<\/a>, the BBC’s business editor. This blog<\/a> is my regular take on the business stories and issues that matter.” Would you trust this man to make a single good busines edition, when he repeatedly proves himself to be an imbecile, incapable of rational business thought in his personal spending habits, cannot evaluate product cost vs benefit, and does not appear to have looked at alternatives. And then wants to apologise for having slightly bad thoughts about the product.<\/p>\n Here he goes again:<\/p>\n In a way you\u2019re to be congratulated. Vista should provide a significant boost to Microsoft\u2019s cash flow, from sales of the basic operating system and sales of new versions of other Microsoft software, like Outlook, that are presumably designed to work brilliantly with it. Also there\u2019ll be incremental revenue for the whole computer industry, as customers like me are forced to replace accessories like my HP PDA, which has been Vista\u2019d into obsolescence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n NOBODY has ‘forced’ him to replace his version of XP with Vista. Nobody has forced him to use windows at all. It is only the fault of him (and millions like him) who are M$addicts, too stupified to see the alternatives.<\/p>\n To put it in personal terms, the \u00a3650 I spent to replace a dead laptop may lead me to spend a further \u00a3400 or so, just so that I can continue to do with my laptop what I expect to be able to do with it.<\/p>\n All of which sounds like good news for you and the IT industry in general.<\/p>\n Except that I\u2019m left with the uneasy feeling that I\u2019ve been ever-so-elegantly mugged. Presumably there\u2019s no connection between your recent sales downgrade and what you might call the negative goodwill generated for customers like me.<\/p>\n Hasta la vista, as they say<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That ‘negative goodwill’ has got him spending over 1000 quid on stuff he doesn’t need, and probably won’t work as he requires.<\/p>\n What a business! Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public. Or of BBQ editors, by the look of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you have 2 decades experience that a product is rubbish, should anyone care that you get frustrated after buying a new version and it turns out to be rubbish? Yet Again. Dear Bill Gates First, the apology. Having complained here on 6 February that your new Vista operating system was driving me bonkers, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37,31,8,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"gates203_afp.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/thereporters\/robertpeston\/gates203_afp.jpg\")
And had I been a little less self-obsessed, I would have commiserated with you for the wobble in your share price a few weeks ago when your chief executive warned<\/a> that Wall Street\u2019s estimates of revenues from Vista in the coming year were over the top (though analysts still expect Vista to generate comfortably over $15bn of sales in the year from June 2007).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"vista203_pa.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/thereporters\/robertpeston\/vista203_pa.jpg\")
So just to be clear, Microsoft has created a new operating system that isn\u2019t properly compatible with a best-selling, still perfectly useable version of its own software. Which of course provides quite a powerful incentive for me to spend up to \u00a399.99 on upgrading to Microsoft Outlook 2007 \u2013 except that in my current mood, I\u2019d rather stick pins in my eyes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n