Gizmodo has been running an interesting series of videos (part I | part II | part III) where they interview Bill Gates. They chopped the interview up into smaller pieces (as in, 2 minutes a pop), but the fourth installment only lasts 16 seconds. Bill Gates does say something very honest and open, though. After Gizmodo asked him what product of the last five years he would've wanted polished a little more, Gates answers: "Ask me after we ship the next version of Windows. Then I'll be more open to give you a blunt answer."
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2005-10-19
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He knew that the interviewer wanted to ask a question about Windows (Vista) because most medias rant about the quality of Vista.
They could also ask: What Apple product could have used a little more polish before release? What would be the answer? Leopard? The biggest portals wrote articles about Leopard bugs. They wrote it's not ready for release... These complicated products like an operating system .0 version can't be polished enough.
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2005-06-29
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I like Bill's franchise. He's a nice person, even if Microsoft itself is evil.
Regarding Vista, it had been delayed so much that if they had delayed it a little more, like 6-12 more months, they could have polished it, added the extra features, optimized it for lower-end hardware, etc... The extra delay wouldn't have been a problem for the end-users, but the improvements would have been worth it.
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You mean frankness, right? Franchise means something else. ^_-
Regarding Vista, it had been delayed so much that if they had delayed it a little more, like 6-12 more months, they could have polished it, added the extra features, optimized it for lower-end hardware, etc... The extra delay wouldn't have been a problem for the end-users, but the improvements would have been worth it.
Yeah. Vista is much better on my laptop after optimized drivers were available. Video playback is nice and smooth now. Should see about turning off the pre-load cache so I don't run out of memory (so quickly) when I'm running Firefox (less than a day; takes almost a week in Ubuntu). Need to get more RAM, in any case. Will see if 2GB really does make a difference.
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I don't think anyone will disagree that Vista was released before it was fully ready. Unfortunately, Microsoft tried the "it's done when it's done" mentality -- and it backfired miserably for them, so they rushed Vista to market.
Isn't assuming he's talking about Vista a little bit reaching, though? You could easily make arguments for a few other Microsoft products that haven't reached their full potential thanks to premature releases... Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Windows Automobile.
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you guys seem to focus only on the cheap thrill byline I think the other videos were interesting. Bill Gates didn't pull any punches and was pretty honest with the performance of his company. Its also interesting that unlike Ballmer(and on the other end of the spectrum, Jobs), Gates doesn't feel the need to bash Apple and in-fact gives them kind of compliment.
I'm no MS fan at all (I haven't used windows at home for 3 years) but I did find the videos interesting and Bill Gates was actually likeable.
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I'm no MS fan at all (I haven't used windows at home for 3 years) but I did find the videos interesting and Bill Gates was actually likeable.
It's funny to think of Bill Gates as likable but it would seem to be that way. He's tried to change his appearance over the past 30+ years.
Gates rarely resisted bashing competitors in the past but now that he's mostly retired, he seems to have taken a more laid back view. I'd never think honesty possible but his willingness to talk about the issues is an incredible change.
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I helped my father setup his new HP Vista PC. On a fast system with lots of memory it runs quite nicely. The annoying snags we ran into were device support. Our older HP scanner wouldn't work with Vista and after contacting HP tech support they apologized since there was no Vista driver available for our model. Based on the amount of time Vista took to come to market I would have expected some sort of earth shattering compatibility mode/virtualization feature for older XP drivers. I thought about downgrading it to XP but we ended up just buying a cheap USB scanner. All the visual eye candy is fun to play with but doesn't really add too much to the ease of use.
Edited 2008-01-11 00:01 UTC
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I think you are absolutely 110% correct in that some form of computability should have been implemented. The heart of the issue of course is that it is not Microsoft's job to write drivers for other manufacturer's. In this case it was HP's responsibility, to which they have no excuse given the time they had. But with said I think they should have anticipated to certain degree.
The reality is that companies such as HP do not write new drivers for older hardware simply because they see this as a wonderful method to push people to upgrade their hardware. There is a remarkable difference between consumer and enterprise driver availability when it comes to Windows. Right now if you have a brand new HP server, you can still get Win2k drivers. If you have an old DL380 you can get everything from MS-DOS to Windows 2003, Netware, Solaris, Redhat, and Suse. But then again businesses have never put up with this kind of tactic, while consumers do.
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At least that's understandable to a certain extent. I have a brand new Dell Vostro with Vista Business that refuses to connect properly to my AP at home. Also refused to connect to the rogue AP I have set up at work, but since it's the same make and model, that's understandable.
To clarify, it is able to authenticate and connect, it simply craps out on DHCP and leaves me with the 169.x curse. Although my XP laptop, XP desktop, linux desktop, this same laptop running openSUSE, my vonage router, HP officejet, Nokia 9500 and a buddy's iPod can all obtain a DHCP address, apparently Microsoft assumed that Vista users would be connecting to a Windows-based DHCP server so they decided to implement a protocol setting that many non-MS DHCP servers do not.
Net result is a knowledge base article with a registry hack, including all the doom and gloom warnings about editing the registry, simply to return Vista to the same level of DHCP client functionality that XP had. As well as every other freaking DHCP client on the planet.
But I'm not bitter...
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