microsoft Microsoft Consigning Itself to the Recycle Bin of History

[Major Plonquer]

What do you mean? I'm confused.

Dear I'm Confused,

You're talking about pure conjecture. Nothing has been announced and no policies are "hard". Patience.

MP

[Major Plonquer]

So they would be in effect stacking the user/device CALs now?

Was just speaking to that consumer gambit in another thread. I think there is certainly some merit there. One other constant I've noted is that MS seems content to alienate professionals/decision makers to make that consumer push. The perceived greed of this push to consumerization is what I find the most appalling. Its making long time MS proponents start re-evaluating if this is the horse we want to be hitched to if it goes off the rails.

Congratulations, you win Mixed Metaphore of the Month Award. Even Chinese peasants like us know that horses don't run on rails. The have "hooves", which would be difficult to integrate with the steel tracks, even if the changed the gauge. I stood behind a horse once and I got the impression they may run on methane. Trains run on steam, deisel and electricity Horses aren't as big as trains and they leave a trail of dung everywhere they go.

2/10

[Shane Nokes]

Congratulations, you win Mixed Metaphore of the Month Award. Even Chinese peasants like us know that horses don't run on rails. The have "hooves", which would be difficult to integrate with the steel tracks, even if the changed the gauge. I stood behind a horse once and I got the impression they may run on methane. Trains run on steam, deisel and electricity Horses aren't as big as trains and they leave a trail of dung everywhere they go.

2/10

Normally I wouldn't correct someone on this matter, but here I feel that I should say something small.

The term off the rails while frequently referring to the concept of a train going off the track is also a phrase that is used to describe what can happen with a horsecar is the horse is spooked.

Then again it is unlikely that a 'Chinese peasant' of the era would have ridden on one...so that's quite an understandable mistake. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsecar

[AnotherITguy]

To everyone whining about Windows 8 not ready for the enterprise, there is a simple, and low cost solution.... "CLASSIC SHELL" beneath the metro user interface, its there, once you have that, its good to go. and how do i know this, i have my main desktop running Windows 8 Pro right now..

[Dot Matrix]

To everyone whining about Windows 8 not ready for the enterprise, there is a simple, and low cost solution.... "CLASSIC SHELL" beneath the metro user interface, its there, once you have that, its good to go. and how do i know this, i have my main desktop running Windows 8 Pro right now..

Enterprise is never, ever, going to deploy third party junkware like that.

[Rickkins]

Enterprise is never, ever, going to deploy third party junkware like that.

Here's a newsflash, sparky. The only junkware here is the damn metro interface. Classic Shell saves win8 from itself.

[Growled Member]

^ Still, he is right. Enterprise would never use third party hacks like this.

[trag3dy]

Congratulations, you win Mixed Metaphore of the Month Award. Even Chinese peasants like us know that horses don't run on rails. The have "hooves", which would be difficult to integrate with the steel tracks, even if the changed the gauge. I stood behind a horse once and I got the impression they may run on methane. Trains run on steam, deisel and electricity Horses aren't as big as trains and they leave a trail of dung everywhere they go.

2/10

Something going "off the rails" means it's going crazy. IE doing something that doesn't make any sense. It's just a saying.

[MorganX]

/Facepalm

I'm glad I can't see the original post for this thread...the thread title was enough for me to figure out it's a hit piece without merit. :(

Why would you say that? Microsoft has made risky and questionable decisions and they dominate desktops and enterprise datacenters. What they do not only impacts the stability of our workforce, but because of their market dominance and our reliance on their products, it effects our economy and individual budgets if they make pricing decisions.

I think this deserves discussion. Much discussion. Even discussing whether or not it is safe for one company, especially one that is clearly as internally screwed up as Microsoft is these days, to have so much control. Given they can't even work together across divisions right now, I think a forced break up of Microsoft would be a worthy topic of friendly conversation.

[chrisj1968]

There seems to be a deep polarization among us technical users about Windows 8. The only thing we can almost all agree on is that Windows 8 wasn't made for the enterprise and simply won't work there (for the majority). The general consensus among us has been that Microsoft will correct this with Windows 9 and this would have fallen in line with businesses typical upgrade cycle (they adopted XP, skipped Vista, adopted 7, and are expected to skip 8 to adopt 9). The email I got from the WSJ this morning eludes that MS may have killed Windows 9 for the enterprise before it even ships.

Microsoft seems to be in a very dangerous position here. They are running the risk of putting all of their eggs into the consumer basket and they really don't have any experience depending on them as their primary customer.

Source: The Wall Street Journal - Morning CIO EMail

The crux of the problem is Microsoft is moving from charging companies per device for their licenses and are moving to charging them per user. Meaning they will have to pay more for devices shared by many employees and can end up paying multiple times for the same license (such as paying for Windows Phone in the phone purchase then again when an employee uses it). Microsoft seems to be trying to "tax" companies on all of their employees no matter how casual their computer use.

have they officially started development of Windows 9?

[MorganX]

true and I am no expert in enterprise licensing but haven't they been paying twice already for Windows (once for OS and then CALs or whatever they are called) - how is this new?

No, per device for OS, per user for CAL. The CAL is for things such as Exchange, SharePoint, (previously Lync which is now a separate CAL), SCCM, etc.

Server, Terminal Services, etc, have additional CALs that can be per user or device, whichever works out best for you. That's the gist, but licensing can get tricky.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

have they officially started development of Windows 9?

Microsoft always starts working in the next version of Windows as soon as the current one ships.

[MorganX]

There seems to be a deep polarization among us technical users about Windows 8. The only thing we can almost all agree on is that Windows 8 wasn't made for the enterprise and simply won't work there (for the majority). The general consensus among us has been that Microsoft will correct this with Windows 9 and this would have fallen in line with businesses typical upgrade cycle (they adopted XP, skipped Vista, adopted 7, and are expected to skip 8 to adopt 9). The email I got from the WSJ this morning eludes that MS may have killed Windows 9 for the enterprise before it even ships.

Microsoft seems to be in a very dangerous position here. They are running the risk of putting all of their eggs into the consumer basket and they really don't have any experience depending on them as their primary customer.

I'm going to pick and choose what to respond too, it's a lazy Sunday. I don't agree Windows 8 isn't for the enterprise. It has some great Enterprise features and performs beautifully in a VDI environment (which is the way to go these days to quickly deploy/redeploy desktops if you can afford the infrastructure). I think the Modern UI was shoehorned into the enterprise because Microsoft needs it in the consumer space and could really care less about how the enterprise feels about it. They have total market dominance and know the enterprise will just have to deal with it. There will be more than enough in the industry who see the higher maintenance as job security, lol.

I actually think MS is OK in the enterprise. I think they may be consigning themselves to the recycle bin of history due to their consumer failures. I personally don't believe as many people are using Windows 8 as MS would have us believe because of all the problems. There should be an uproar.

I have a Windows 8 Desktop, Lumia 920, and Surface RT. And they cannot sync together easily. Surface can't sync with Desktop at all. It can sync with phone but the phone app does nothing more than drag and drop. No playlists, no media conversion. The Lumia, to sync music and playlists you have to jump through hoops with multiple apps or revers to Windows Media Player classic which works better than any combination of Xbox Music, Windows Phone App, Xbox Video, and legacy Zune client on Windows 8. Unfortunately it's not present.

Just syncing Xbox Music playlists doesn't work as it won't find the local files if it's not where the playlist originating. The matching/streaming service is a joke. Yet today my Lumia 920 started streaming some songs I didn't have on my phone from the cloud, yet if I sync a playlist and manually copy the files over (since Music app or Windows Phone app won't sync music and playlists to Windows Phone 8 or Surface RT) it won't find the songs.

No way anyone who has used iTunes/iPhone/iPad on Windows or Mac is using Windows 8 and a Windows Phone or Zune and a Windows Phone 7 without screaming WTH!!!! So I don't believe that many people are using it. Can you imagine if the latest release of iTunes couldn't sync music and playlists or movies to the iPhone or iPad? It's ludicrous (as Mike Tyson would say).

Because of this, the Surface Tablet WILL be a monumental consumer fail. And when it does, now justify the problems and regressive usability in many areas, Windows users were asked to bear for the Modern UI which was made for tablets and phones primarily, and shoehorned onto the desktop?

We'll see how things are after Christmas. The first time a Surface consumer can't get their music and playlists onto their Surface or Windows Phone with their new Windows 8 PC, we'll see how successful Microsoft has been. Just the fact that a company of Microsoft's stature could release this mess, I'm thinking they will fail in the consumer space. They clearly don't have a good brain trust running things.

In fact I would actually like to see the team responsible for the Windows 8 Music and Video apps along with the Xbox Cloud Music Service for Windows. I just want to see them. I have a feeling they will look, out of touch. Take that however you like. These products feel like Microsoft was short on staff so they took expendable people from the SQL group, Server Group, Dynamics\CRM Group, and Office Group, put them together in a room, and said meet the Windows 8 Core apps group. If that is indeed what happened, they've actually done a helluva job.

Edit: And one more thing, the time it takes to create 3 20 song music playlists in Media Player Classic, searching your library and adding each song to a playlists is 100x longer using Windows 8 Search and the Xbox Music App. But don't try it, even when you create them the #$%@# won't sync and work right on your Windows 8 tablet or phone.

Edited December 3, 2012 by MorganX