For those who've been away for the weekend: on Saturday we noted (ta, Tim Anderson) a document posted by Microsoft aimed at enterprises about "Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista".
It wasn't only us who'd noticed it; apart from Tim, there was also marco's tech world. They both went into it in some depth, with thoughtful criticism.
And then Microsoft made the document disappear, sometime between Friday morning (when it was noticed) and Friday afternoon. (That's OK - we have a copy.) Why? What is something we said? Or that all the critics said? Or that it said? (Note: this Microsoft blog says that link will "be up shortly". We'll be waiting with diff...
For criticism there was plenty. As Tim noted,
What about performance? In my view, this is far and away the primary problem users have with Vista. It is not in any sense a misunderstanding, however Microsoft spins it. It is bewilderment: why does my new machine, which should be fast, spend so much time spinning its little bagel when I want to get on with my work?
Marco also had plenty of criticism, based on having used Vista for a year (though he retains XP on his home laptop):
it is overall tone [ of the document] that I noticed. I remembers a dozen years ago Bill Gates claiming Windows 95 was a perfect piece of software, any criticism coming to it was only because the users were unable to use it properly. At the time, this was somewhat of a mantra at Microsoft, blaming users. The same happened again a few years ago, with claims that Windows XP was secure, provided its users didn't make any dangerous operation... maybe including connecting to the Internet!
He has plenty of other points, including that the article contains factual as well as grammatical errors:
" Application compatibility is the biggest issue preventing IT Pros from adopting Windows Vista into their organization." OK, so they get it! But immediately after this they write "Part of this is perception based on fact" which is a self-contradicting statement. Is is a fact or a perception? Pick one!
But now of course the document has disappeared. Is it being revised? Did they decide it was all a big mistake? Is it being sent only in paper form to enterprise clients (in which case what happens to those embedded PDF links? "I've tried pressing my finger on the paper, but nothing happens").
And just as interesting, who wrote it?As Tim Anderson points out in the comments on the Marocantu post, the PDF's metadata says the author is "Darrell" - "perhaps Darrell Gorter" (he's the XXX).
So we head out to track down this wonderful, mysterious attempt at spindoctoring. Perhaps a Google alert for "misunderstood features site:microsoft.com" would do it..
