Saturday, February 17, 2007

Windows Vista Action Pack Subscribers - problems in MS Land

I have written already on the new Windows Vista product from a retail perspective.

Now I write from the Microsoft Partern perspective. My business is a Registered Microsoft Partner and an Microsoft Action Pack Subscriber (MAPS).

Here is an extract from an email I wrote to MS today.

I have been reading a lot about the new Vista Licensing included in MAPS.
Nick Mayhew Blog
David Overton Action Pack FAQ
David Overton Windows Vista Clean Install
David Overton Windows Anytime Upgrade
David Overton Clearing up some things re vista and the action pack
Microsoft Windows Anytime Upgrade
MSMAPS wiki
Partner website FAQ

I have a number of concerns that I would like to air, though I am not hopeful of any resolution. Here we go regardless.

First of all I note that the MAPS is targeted at those partners supporting business and as such includes Windows Vista Business edition., not ultimate. Quote "Windows Vista Ultimate—a consumer and small-business edition—is targeted at high-end users, gamers, multimedia professionals, and personal computer enthusiasts." We are a partner who services some businesses, but over 50% of our customers are gamers, high end purchasers (PCS over $4000) and multimedia professionals. As such we need to be able to support this product and by forcing us to effectively pay for an upgrade has marginalised us through the generic demographic assignment so thoughtfully made by MS.
As a follow up to this I note "(Australian Note: Windows Anytime Upgrade is not available in our country at this time - advice coming on what you can do)" So how the heck are we supposed to get Ultimate?

Second I am concerned that MS has not made any provision for the use of VM to make complete installs of Vista (as opposed to upgrades)

Third it is assumed in numerous places in the above websites that partners buy PCS with OEM software. This is not the case. We custom build our PCs for internal business use and demos. We deliberately use specific parts to create PCS that emulate our customers hardware rigs. Most gamers and Multimedia professionals are very particular about the specific hardware requirements and never buy and off the shelf system. Why are we forced to install XP and then upgrade to VISTA, often with poor support by XP for SATA Raid, On board Network adaptors etc. This has just increased our build time for internal PCs.

Fourth, why is there no support for Vista 64 bit. The Beta versions contained 64bit. How are we supposed to trial the full version and demo it to our 64 bit customers?


I realise you are hamstrung by the MS legal eagles on these questions and don’t expect you will change anything because I complain, but can you please continue to pass the message on - maybe if enough of us take the time to register our complaints and ask MS to consider the partners who do not fall into their convenient demographics, they might eventually listen.

Thanks for listening.

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Posted by: Jethro | 12:23 AM |