V
VistaLetDown
This whole string of messages to and from MS confirms my worst suspicions and
validates both the technical salesperson's warning at Sam's Club plus my
relative's admonition NOT to purchase a new PC with Windows Vista.
I have the retail-purchased MS 2003 Home Office CDs sitting in front of me
and installed on the PC I am writing this on, but have been told that they
will not work with Vista. Since I can not find a new PC from a retailer
without Vista installed, I will be forced to pay any extra $500 for new
Office 2007 software that will then produce documents that my university
colleagues can not use on their NT workstations. So I cannot use a PC with
Vista for my new position at the university. I will have to wait until the
whole university system switches to Vista, if they do.
This , I believe, is a Microsoft travesty. MS has always ensured in the past
that documents created on previous generations of MS software and OS would be
compatible with new. Your response clearly confirms that MS is still
developing multiple patches to do this, with no guarantee or roadmap in
sight. And that someone on your level can not even say what is going on. I
can not afford to risk purchasing a new PC and software that will not work
until MS finally works out it's known and acknowledged problems. (In fact, I
owned an HP 3-in-1 OfficeJet that MS never developed the promised drivers
for. So it only worked as a fax machine.)
The Sams' Club salesperson told me that a number of people who had recently
purchased the new PCs with Vista were all very disappointed and had to return
their PCs because the software was not compatitble with previous years so
they could not run any of the documents in their archives. My guess is that
this is costing HP a lot of money on such returns, despite the good faith
arrangement they made with you to sell their new machines with Vista instead
of giving people a choice of Vista or NT.
After being a PC and MS user for over 23 years, in business and at home, I
am now about to purchase a Macintosh laptop to avoid this huge SNAFU in the
future. I suspect many others are coming to the same conclusion as I am. At
some point the MVPs at Microsoft will learn that talking down to consumers
and/or expecting them to install endless patches as if they were technically
trained IT people will no longer work in a world where the consumer is king
and other companies are making it safer and easier to buy and use their
machines.
validates both the technical salesperson's warning at Sam's Club plus my
relative's admonition NOT to purchase a new PC with Windows Vista.
I have the retail-purchased MS 2003 Home Office CDs sitting in front of me
and installed on the PC I am writing this on, but have been told that they
will not work with Vista. Since I can not find a new PC from a retailer
without Vista installed, I will be forced to pay any extra $500 for new
Office 2007 software that will then produce documents that my university
colleagues can not use on their NT workstations. So I cannot use a PC with
Vista for my new position at the university. I will have to wait until the
whole university system switches to Vista, if they do.
This , I believe, is a Microsoft travesty. MS has always ensured in the past
that documents created on previous generations of MS software and OS would be
compatible with new. Your response clearly confirms that MS is still
developing multiple patches to do this, with no guarantee or roadmap in
sight. And that someone on your level can not even say what is going on. I
can not afford to risk purchasing a new PC and software that will not work
until MS finally works out it's known and acknowledged problems. (In fact, I
owned an HP 3-in-1 OfficeJet that MS never developed the promised drivers
for. So it only worked as a fax machine.)
The Sams' Club salesperson told me that a number of people who had recently
purchased the new PCs with Vista were all very disappointed and had to return
their PCs because the software was not compatitble with previous years so
they could not run any of the documents in their archives. My guess is that
this is costing HP a lot of money on such returns, despite the good faith
arrangement they made with you to sell their new machines with Vista instead
of giving people a choice of Vista or NT.
After being a PC and MS user for over 23 years, in business and at home, I
am now about to purchase a Macintosh laptop to avoid this huge SNAFU in the
future. I suspect many others are coming to the same conclusion as I am. At
some point the MVPs at Microsoft will learn that talking down to consumers
and/or expecting them to install endless patches as if they were technically
trained IT people will no longer work in a world where the consumer is king
and other companies are making it safer and easier to buy and use their
machines.
