Oh, my. It’s Microsoft. On YouTube. And it’s not that cute ad about the MS iPod redesign. They’re trying to push Live and Vista via YouTube. And leaving comments open. Desperation? Courage? Insanity? You decide.

One thing this proves to me is that Microsoft’s Soapbox isn’t getting enough attention. I mean, do you know anyone who uses Soapbox? Me neither. TechCrunch has the Microsoft video as well as an amusing screenshot of a few less-than-flattering video comments.

The problem with taking potshots with Microsoft is – it’s too easy. Perhaps we should applaud, instead, their decision to swallow some humble pie and use their rival(Google)’s video platform to try and get some positive visibility for their much maligned new OS.

Why the sudden outpouring of hate for Vista? What makes it any worse than XP when it first came out, sans Service Pack 2? Microsoft probably shouldn’t have hyped the new OS without taking into account the environment that awaited it.

Tech magazines and experts knew that most existing home computers  were woefully ill-equipped to showcase Vista to its full advantage. Microsoft chose to airbrush over the simple fact that their new OS doubled XP’s minimum requirements and it wasn’t helped by their so-called hardware partners pushing out machines that struggled with Vista. Part of the blame rests on all the computer makers who didn’t do enough to provide consumers with optimised-for-Vista machines.

Is it too late to salvage Vista’s reputation? Unless they come up with a Service Pack 3 that erases most of the bloat, cuts startup time by half or make UAC less annoying, I’d suggest Microsoft work on a new, less antagonising OS. And bring it out on frickin’ time, will ya?

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Entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 2:10 pm under Microsoft, Opinion, Vista, YouTube.

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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