Comments on: Why Microsoft doesn’t really care about the UK

By: Huzaifa Ali

Huzaifa Ali — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:54:37 +0000

I think in starting months UK did very well with Windows 7, Their advertisers their promotors did so well.

By: Laurence

Laurence — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:47:25 +0000

I have worked in high tech all my life and have had an awful lot to do with US suppliers. Basically, their market is so huge that filling a few orders from international customers is a pain as it also means setting up a small support department as well. In Europe it is common practice for most suppliers to run retail and trade price lists. Trade customers get the discount because they do the support. In the US the manufacturer only has a retail price because they do their own support. Most people in that company will claim to be unaware of any other pricing structure. ‘If you wanna buy then you pay the price’ and this goes for overseas trade customers and anybody else as well.

The result of all this is that UK suppliers have to purchase their stocks at US end user prices and the end user price does not include support for user variants and so on.

Cry as you might, the only way to solve this problem is to get off our collective butts and make and patent some competitive products. This seems unlikely as our wonderful government is quite happy to specify MS software for much of our education and government works. They even support MS when they endow some of our universities with super new buildings and bursaries. What a cheap way to get the UK’s best ideas away from these shores at the speed of an email. If the UK government is that daft then MS reasons the UK people must be daft enough to let MS screw them all possible ways and so that is exactly what they are doing.

By: David Wright

David Wright — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:14:39 +0000

@ Ian Shepherd – What exactly are you doing with these machines? :-O

My Vista machine is still running the original factory install from 2007 and hasn’t significantly slowed down or crashed.

Likewise, my old desktop and laptop machines (now used by gf and her daughter) run XP and haven’t been rebuilt for a couple of years.

At work we have a network of machines, which are allegedly poorly specced, which haven’t been rebuilt for anything up to 5 years and nobody has any problems with them…

By: Ian Shepherd

Ian Shepherd — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:57:54 +0000

In response to Pete Best’s statement ‘Why would anyone bother upgrading to Windows 7 anyway?’, I would say that there are many good resons for doing so. I used to run an Acer Ferrari and an Advent 9315 on Xp and Vista respectively. Both machines are used heavily and are always multi-tasking. Xp crashed or crawled to a stop regulary, and Vista was a complete disaster requiring a complete rebuild every three months or so despite oodles of RAM.

For the past 5 months I have been beta testing Windows 7 Ultimate on both machines. Apart from improved speed and many built in improvement features, neither machine has ever crashed and throughput remains high despite being left on for weeks at a time. Networking works as it should and computing has once again become a joy.
I am totally sold on Windows 7 and have preordered the commercial release.

This is the first operating system from MS that I can really say does work without grief. It might be argued that MS ought really to have offered it for free to all those who went through the pain of Vista. But I have no doubt that even if this does not happen, Windows 7 is going to be a huge success. Thank you MIcrosoft, and well done. Oh, I am a European customer.

By: k burton

k burton — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:58:28 +0000

i have preordered this

MICROSOFT WIN7 PROF PREORDR

what an I exactly going to get ??????

I expected a full version so I could just install it on a new hard drive

thanks

By: John Lindsay

John Lindsay — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:36:09 +0000

@John WIlliams – you’re right. I once drove from Florida to South Carolina. After a few hours I stopped at a garage in Georgia just over the Florida / Georgia border. I was talking to the guy serving and he claimed to never have left Georgia and was very proud of it too. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that I think the Garage was 10 miles from the border.

Now you can go back to dissing Microsoft – sorry for off topic.

By: John Williams

John Williams — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:14:57 +0000

As Alan A says this is an American issue. Many Americans have little idea of life and conditions anywhere outside the States. I suspect for some it’s outside their State. They seem to assume that as we speak English it must be just like the U.S.
You doubt this? Sahra Palin ran for VP.

By: Alan A

Alan A — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:43:50 +0000

All of this is an American thing not exclusively a Microsoft thing. Lovely people but their culture and education is totally parochial and insular – the same as Britain 100 years ago when it too had an empire.

By: John T

John T — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:38:15 +0000

Indeed, just to reinforce HK & JohnAHind’s point, I believe the term required here is ‘breach of contract’ Matt.

It would be Tesco that would (in this hypothetical instance of non-delivery) be in breach of contract, and therefore Tesco that needed to be sued – as it would actually be nothing to do with Microsoft, (odd as that may seem).

Should Tesco have been given misleading information from Microsoft which lead to their own misleading advertisements and false contracts, then that would be for Tesco to take up with Microsoft at their own leisure, not the consumer.

Pursuing such a small claim as this through your local County County would be very inexpensive – I believe around £20 – refunded if you win, (although thankfully it’s been a number of years since I’ve had to sue anyone, so I don’t have the exact figure to hand).

Also, I have to agree with HK’s other point: I really wish people wouldn’t be quite so rude with anyone they disagree with, there really is no need…

Anyway, to the theme of the article:

I do like Microsoft’s OS’s above others, simply because they ‘just work’ and are ubiquitous & therefore compatible with pretty much everything I could ever wish to use, either hardware or software. However, there IS a higher point at stake here, in that they, (and so many other companies) do at times seem to hold us, the non-American consumer, in absolute contempt.

It’s really not good enough.

By: JohnAHind

JohnAHind — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:52:56 +0000

Matt: “JohnAHind, what are you going to sue for?”

If, as PC Pro implied, they send me an upgrade version rather than full retail as advertised. As I said, I do not care if IE is included or not since I will be using Firefox and, as you point out IE is free anyway. But Microsoft promised us full retail versions for the price of upgrades, and just because they *could* now ship upgrades does not mean that it would be legal for them to break an existing contract to do so (as PC Pro implied they might).