Com-Central.net

Shades

You just gotta admire Micro$oft's gall sometimes.

www.theregister.co.uk/...ft_haters/

Embattled Microsoft partners have been issued a handy guide on how to deal with "grumbling" customers and address annoying questions about costs, security, and repeated delays affecting Microsoft products.

A pro-Microsoft magazine has published a list of steps partners and certified professionals can take in order to defend Microsoft's brand and convince customers that buying Microsoft is in their best interests (thanks MicrosoftWatch for the pointer).

A Microsoft Certified Professional Online article, thoughtfully titled "Dealing with Microsoft haters", exhorts that Microsoft has handed partners "a gift, but also a responsibility" to protect "what experts call the most valuable brand in the world" (that's Microsoft, in case you were at a loss).

That reality check comes as MCP notes that "ongoing grousing" tends to focus on several key areas: costs of initial licenses and upgrades, security threats and bugs. MCP notes, though, the ongoing delays to Windows Vista is having a damaging effect on Microsoft's credibility. "Microsoft's decision to postpone the release of Windows Vista was among the biggest lightening rods of recent months."

One marketing strategist, Jack Trout of Trout & Partners - in true Steve Ballmer style - tells trembling partners to basically suck it up. No one loves a leader, but leaders get respect, Trout barks. In this scenario, Microsoft is apparently the leader, despite suffering embarrassing product delays, losing the initiative on the internet and search to a generation of startups, and failing to have predicted, contained, or harnessed the threat to its business from Linux and open source.

It's strangely ironic, that Trout's book Big Brands, Big Trouble claims to identify the problems other big companies have made and the lessons they've learned.

For more on the meditations of Trout and reflections on customers' apparently baseless, and irksome concerns, go here. Among other gems: never apologise for the brand, always defend it. Ã‚Â®

Got a tip for ya guys; Spend the money on the problem, not the spin. It'll much more efficient in the long run, and you'll cut down on the suits.

Shadow_Bshwackr

Now how did I miss this post?...lol

For starters, let me say this...

MS has led the world in OS sales because of it's ease of use, software add-on development and hardware compatability. The only other OS that came close to pushing MS off the mountain was Apple and their systems in a marketing ploy, took their computers to the education world. We all know what happened after that.

MS' approach was to make the OS user friendly and copied this approach from Apple who copied it from Xerox (the original icon/execute approach). So what happened to MS' who had and still has the HUGE market share of users in the world?

Their still around and the proof is in the numbers. While it's true some upstarts have taken some of MS' market share, I believe that's an inevitable consequence of being the leader. Someone somewhere will get a 'piece of the pie' after the 'dust settles' and opportunity presents itself. Upstarts such as Ebay, FireFox, Google and Linux (various flavors) were bound to get some of the 'action' and yes, even go on to be a noticeable difference in the giant software company's niche.

Does this mean MS 'dropped the ball'? Yep, in some ways they did as the article mentions with typical big company hype in pre-release software and the delays in their releases. MS is smart enough to know for them to come out on top they have to release a better product. You can thank all those upstart companies for that and so MS has it's 'nose to the grindstone' doing exactly that. In light of all this, it does make you wonder why Mr. Gates and some other key MS players are leaving the company. Do you think they want to retire or does it look as if their ego's got in the way of bullying market share holders?

For the public, it's a great feeling to have more options than one. Wink

Com-Central.net

Select Language

Login

`±`Recent Visitors

`±`User Info-big

Archive Revive
Username:
This is an archived topic - your reply will not be appended here. Instead, a new topic will be generated in the active forum. The new topic will provide a reference link to this archived topic.

Com-Central.net

Select Language

Login

±Recent Visitors

±User Info-big

`±`Recent Visitors

`±`User Info-big