Got an ugly shock from Dell… it was Vista.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, thinks that we’re all excitedly ready to lap up Vista. Nothing could be further from the truth; Vista is a vinegar in software form, but what’s even sadder is they don’t understand why this is so.

I suspect the ones that will be hurting from it will be PC distributors, such as Dell.

Case in point, we we to order a new Dell computer this week, however the only choice for the operating system was Vista in it’s many, ugly, hydra-headed flavors. What would have been an instant no-questions purchase turned into a customer service call to see if it was possible to get the machine with either XP, or nothing.

We don’t want to deal with multiple versions, we don’t agree with the new lease-like licenses, we don’t want to support anything with the DRM, we don’t want to deal with the newness and immaturity, we don’t want to have to have a hulking machine, we don’t want to deal with Microsoft, we don’t want equipment phoning home, we don’t want to fret virtualization — and feature wise, Vista just doesn’t feel worth it. Don’t even get me started on the lameness of Zune. Already we’ve hit the point of frustration and cost that OpenOffice has actually become more than a viable solution, but a frequently used on. We no longer use Microsoft servers – no exchange, no more MS-SQL; we’re all Linux based now.

So pause and digest that: Vista is deemed as a negative-value item on a machine purchase.

Dell has to deal with human calls, and our developers are buying and bringing in Macs.

Basically the common wisdom goes that if you can get someone to adopt something, they stick with it, if not out of emotional familiarity, however if you piss ’em off and they cross the threshold enough to switch and find a new solution, especially one that works, that becomes the new norm.

I ponder. If Microsoft alienates itself from homes and schools, and prices itself out of the range of small businesses, then how long before new blood and new business growth turn into a long term predictive trend?

Steve, I think your missed projections are just the tip of things to come.

UPDATE 19-Feb-2007: Ballmer blames pirates for poor Vista sales! But wait, there’s a problem with that Steve… people would have to be using Vista if they pirated it.

The phone-home scheme of Vista would actually show people using it, but it doesn’t. But if Vista is suppose to be copy-protected, how is the average user base then thwarting it? Did Microsoft Genuine Advantage fail? Isn’t the operating system suppose to be unhackable and the kernel protected from modification, so secure to run life support? Are you actually implying it’s insecure and that it can be pirated? And, if the product is as amazing as you claim, how, since historical evidence shows pirating increases sales, wouldn’t that further suggest people aren’t pirating?

You can’t have it both ways, Steve — pirates and copy-protection, security and hacked. Face reality. People don’t want Vista, they don’t want to lease software, they don’t want cumbersome license agreements, they don’t want DRM, they don’t want applications or operating systems tied to physical hardware, they don’t want to be told they can’t run virtualization, and they don’t want to buy new machines.