Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been under sustained fire this week, following his acknowledgement that new PCs marketed as “Vista Acquainted” may not have met the expectations of some customers. However, he went on to defend the Redmond giant’s decision to certify such low-spec machines as “a question of choice”.
“We want to ensure as many homes and offices as possible have the opportunity to experience the ‘Wow’ of Windows Vista”, said Ballmer. “So, for Vista Acquainted PCs, running less than 3Gb of memory, there is a new streamlined ‘performance’ mode, which includes an intuitive textual interface and contemporary two-colour design. Vista’s ‘performance’ environment is also highly customisable, through the config.sys and autoexec.bat files and will boot on almost any machine in a matter of minutes. Wow!”
However, Alice Hooper of technology analysts Garter is less than convinced by Microsoft’s defence: “As well as being more than somewhat reminiscent of Leopard’s iText feature, Vista ‘performance’ mode smacks of a poorly-executed, marketing-led afterthought. It’s also far from intuitive. I mean, ‘Retry’ I understand, but what’s the difference between ‘Abort’ and ‘Fail’?”
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