Mother's ire puts Ballmer on defense over Vista

For a few minutes during Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer's appearance at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference here, emotionless management-speak gave way to a mother's frustration with the Vista operating system.

"I'm one of those early adopters of Vista," said Yvonne Genovese, an analyst who was interviewing Ballmer along with fellow analyst David Smith on stage at a conference forum. "My daughter comes in one day and says, 'Hey Mom, my friend has Vista, and it has these neat little things called gadgets -- I need those.'"

Said Ballmer: "I love your daughter."

"You're not going to like her mom in about two minutes," said Genovese, while the crowd laughed. She went on to explain that she installed Vista for her daughter -- and two days later went right back to using the XP operating system. "It's safe, it works, all the hardware is fine, and everything is great," she said of XP.

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News source: ComputerWorld