AMD/Microsoft Tech Tour Notes

L

Lothar the Lotharian

Gawd
Joined
Aug 31, 2004
Messages
674
Hey guys, after a long and exhausting drive last night, I've got a set of brief notes of some of the points made at the Tech Tour, which I'll be posting later this afternoon.

But first, I wanted to give you the juicy nugget, because I just couldn't hold it in any longer.

###

During the Q & A, I asked the Microsoft rep, "Why, with all the emphasis on backup for home users (both he and the Seagate rep made a huge deal about it, as they should), did you not include the full system backup option across the line?"

(random applause, shouts)

Then the rep goes into what I feared, the whole 'you can't have everything' argument, in a very sing-song manner. When he starts to lose traction with the audience, he quickly shifted into 'we did lots of studies into this' validation of my question.

"Well, it would make our job easier and make Vista at any level an easier sale. If I can not only build their system, but put a backup on my shelf so that I'm the first place they turn when something goes wrong with their system, it allows me to add added value and support into the equation."

He retorts back about how this wasn't the place for this kind of discussion, there's nothing he can do about it, etc. and finishes of with:

"Well, it gives you the ability to sell a premium SKU (with Vista Ultimate)."

###

Honestly, I wasn't surprised by his initial response, but I am surprised in the way he came off about it. He really tried to make me feel stupid and out of place asking such a question, and ended up coming off hostile to it, even when I was perfectly calm and not confrontational in any way, shape or form.

I don't know about you, but I was in marketing (matter of fact, I still hold a position on the board of my local AAF club) and these type of meetings are exactly what this is about - not only do you get to inform your frontline sales force about new product, you also get to receive valid feedback and concerns about what they expect their challenges to be in the field. If anything, this is exactly the right place for this kind of discussion.

He even made it a point to look my way and say 'this one DOES contain backup" during the giveaways later, which was completely inappropriate.

Overall, a good response would have been to leave it at it being an upsale item. A better solution would be to tack it onto Home Premium, which would have made that an EASY upsale. What would be best, though, is if they just gave out the tool to system builders as a support utility, which would solve both problems.

He made a good point about Ultimate not being the right fit for everyone in his presentation. When it comes to my market segment, I cannot feel valid upselling my clients $175 when they just need a backup solution.

###

NOTE: Please do not make this out that I'm anti-Microsoft. Overall, I really liked the guy and gave him high marks in his presentation. In fact, as far as presenters go, he was one of the few guys who was really on the ball and wasn't constantly referring to notes or fumbling through tech specs. He was funny, he was straightforward, and he knew his stuff...which is what made this so shocking to me.
 
Lothar the Lotharian said:
I don't know about you, but I was in marketing (matter of fact, I still hold a position on the board of my local AAF club) and these type of meetings are exactly what this is about - not only do you get to inform your frontline sales force about new product, you also get to receive valid feedback and concerns about what they expect their challenges to be in the field. If anything, this is exactly the right place for this kind of discussion.
Click to expand...
Given the lack of competition in the operating systems market, MS does not need customer feedback.

I think your question was well founded and appropriate.
 
"Given the lack of competition in the operating systems market, MS does not need customer feedback."

True. They could quite easily be still selling Windows 2000 and they'd have the same market share.
 
Here's some more of my Microsoft notes:

Ultimate Extras

Ultimate Extras are pretty much a bust. I really don't see this as being a motivating factor as far as being able to sell more copies of Ultimate. The only one that really appeared to be a must-have is DreamScene, but it can be annoying and distracting. What makes it must have is the 'oooh' factor whenever trying to sell to customers - most customers will probably turn it off eventually and opt for static backgrounds in the long run, though.

When previewing it, the presenter asked the audience what we'd like to see instead of his zen-garden desktop, which lead to an overwhelming chant of 'fire, fire, fuego!'. Well, he was right, that was a little disturbing, but a funny bit in the presentation.

I asked one of the reps in the booth later on about it, since it might allow builders to integrate additional branding into their desktops and he wasn't able to help. Fortunately, he did have a screen up on a computer about it, and I was able to find the information on my own. It seems that Stardock worked with Microsoft on it, and it uses the GPU to do most of the work, so desktop users won't see that much impact. The DreamScene builder Stardock offers right now is a little limited (would love to see play options, such as play once instead of a constant repeat), but hopefully it'll come around.

The bitlocker security extra is also pretty neat, but I think I agree with Paul Thurrott's opinion that this should have just been included across the board as a utility instead of a Ultimate-only toy.

###

Installation

Ok, the Vista minimum specs are, suffice to say, silly. There is absolutely no way that a user could expect any decent experience using their minimum recommendations. Although, that being said, the transparency of the Microsoft rep was refreshing. He even openly admitted that you couldn't even install Vista on that setup (Vista is only on DVD, and minimum specs suggested a CD-ROM drive).

After which, he shifted it over to the AMD rep to speak about what hardware would provide a 'realistic Vista experience'. Here's what was stated:

Low - 3200-3600+ Sempron w/ DX9 capable graphics, 1-2 gb of ram.
Mid - 4400+ X2 processor with 2 gb of ram
High - 6000+ processor

Overall, they both agreed that the minimum 20 gb drive wouldn't be sufficient, especially if the end user wants to save any TV or a lot of music to their system.

Speaking of operating system size, Vista's install footprint is about 8 gb of disk space. The MS rep made a comparison to one of the first versions of Windows, and the fact it took up most of available hard drive at the time. So, since hard drive space is comparatively larger nowadays, by percentage of hard drive taken up, Windows is actually smaller than it was back then (audience chuckled, pretty good joke).

I also like the fact that Vista no longer uses HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), so if you're doing lots of system installs, you no longer need to maintain multiple unique images for your various hardware-specific system builds. That is a huge plus for Vista, and probably will be right up there with security as far as selling points to corporate clients.

###

Office 2007

Office 2007 has some really noticeable improvements. In most corporate environments, it may be worthwhile to upgrade because they've really made an effort to make everything more usable and make it to where you don't have to hunt to find features in Word. The ease of use and look of Excel's new chart features are awesome. If anybody remembers the old chart generator, this one completely blows it away with truly 3D beautiful graphics.

The presenter made a good point when going over the new PowerPoint...it is "a program that can be used for good or it can be used for evil". They've added in graphic themes to really help spice up those bland presentations, and they are easy to use. The different color and style options were easy to manipulate and preview once the initial theme was applied.

Word really shows off the style upgrades by allowing you to live preview items more than ever, and moving pictures and graphics around in layouts is no longer the pain it used to be. Characters easily flow around your graphic as you move it from point to point. Also, the live previews of font changes on the entire selection really is handy.

Overall, the presenter referred to Office as 'the dark closet that we would just throw features into and close the door real quick'. It now no longer is that, and is much cleaner and easier to use than ever.

I can't help but think that OpenOffice had a hand in this. Without competition, how long would they have stayed with the 'closet' method? But, then again, competition is a beautiful thing. It'll only drive both products to aspire to more.

Final note: They have really no plans to make Office 64 bit, and for good reason. Do you really need your documents to open up .01 ms faster? Makes sense. Two questions I didn't get to ask, but I wanted to were:

* Have you done anything to improve the portability of presentations? I hate it when you have to move a project from someone's box to the presentation machine just to find out you've got to fix some broken link to some video or audio file.

* Have you done anything more with GPU acceleration of shows? Video can sometimes lag on starting or bog down, would wonder if they made any improvements in that regard.

###

Compatibility

Well, application compatibility in XP really didn't work for me. That's mostly my experience, and I'm sure a bunch of DOS gamers feel the same way, but anyways, they mentioned that it was built in, so I mentioned it here. But what do you do if it doesn't work?

Their answer: Virtual PC 2007.

Whereas I'm glad it's a free download, someone in the crowd made a good point - it's not really free. You have to either buy or find an old copy of whatever OS you want to run. For personal use, I would have taken a unique spin on the downgrade rights and allowed you to run one of any of the basic Windows images at a time.

The argument presented against this was that each virtual machine is still a machine that needs a license, and if they didn't do it that way, some corporations would be running 800 virtual copies of windows across thin clients and they wouldn't make any money.

I don't know, I'm pretty sure you could put some sort of restriction on it that would still make it useful for one copy that would prevent them from doing such a thing. Surely you wouldn't mind adding in an extra line in the EULA to facilitate that...ok, I'm just getting snipey with that comment, but I could really see the audience member's point. If that's plan B for compatibility, then you should really step up and find a way to make it work for the single-user standpoint. Servers are something else completely different, and I'm sure developers would love you for it.

###

Other Windows Bits

There were some other honorable mentions. One was the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool, which allows you to scan a network and find out which PCs are Vista-Ready (I wish they would have shown it in action, because I sure hope it's comparing vs. recommeded specs, not minimum).

Another was the Reliability Performance Monitor, which shows you reports and a graphical timeline of system log events.

Finally, the demonstration showed us a new level of big brother tools for locking down your users. While this sounds great, I can imagine plenty of situations where a user might need to do something and I also feel that over-using such tools makes your users feel like they aren't trusted and really shows a lapse in your company's ability to train them how to effectively use their equipment. After all, if user policy was not only conveyed in a meaningful way on a regular basis and actively enforced, then many of the 'oops I clicked on some funny attachment' errors wouldn't stand a chance.

Most IT folks probably don't want to hear that - it's my opinion that user education comes first, or else I may restrict and frustrate my users from doing things that are valid to their job. But, extreme user policy is the norm for big corporations because it's - survey says - easier.

Ok, sorry for the rant there, folks. The final bit I've got is about the questioning popups that constantly come up. Are you sure you want to move that file? Really? Anyways, the MS presenter told us we should learn to love them, because it's there for our user's protection. Whereas that may be true, with all the billions of dollars pumped into R&D, surely they realized there must be a better way, and I hope they find it soon. Otherwise, we'll have a nation of users that will be pestered to death or just turn off the protection, which they demonstrated how to do while stating, "Just don't ever do this."

###

AMD & Seagate portion of the notes will be up in a bit, thanks for reading.
 
Hey guys, just wanted to mention, please give me feedback. Again, this is just the view from my chair, and my vantage point on IT/Systems Integrators as a whole. Also, if I have mis-stated anything above, feel free to flame me, I'll double check my notes and grovel/retract/correct it if I'm wrong.

Thanks again for watching.
 
The commercial retail release is DVD only, but you can special order Vista CD sets from the Microsoft Vista homepage for a minimal charge.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top