Vista delays have Microsoft employees calling for changes

The long-time Apple rival announced last week that it would delay the much-hyped update to its Windows operating system until November for corporate customers and early 2007 consumer versions — effectively folding its hand on the 2006 holiday shopping season.

An article on PC Pro points to one disgruntled insider named Who da'Punk voiced his feelings in a blog posting under the heading "Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!"

In the posting the anonymous employee complains, "I was upset at missing the back-to-school market. Now we're missing the holiday sales market. [...] So not only did we miss last year's opportunity, we're missing this year's opportunity, too."

In closing, the employee points his finger at the Redmond, Wash.-based company's senior management: "People need to be fired and moved out of Microsoft today. Where's the freakin' accountability?"

The tirade triggered a huge discussion amongst the company's employees in the blog's comments with several demanding that chief executive Steve Ballmer (remix) top the list of people who should be on the chopping block. One said "Being a 10+ year vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels." Another countered with: "Clamoring for a bunch of people getting fired is a waste of time. It’s OUR fault that this company is a disaster. You know who is responsible for our mess, US. It’s your fault."

"Ballmer has to resign anyway. Or eventually get fired," said a third. "Under his leadership, we did not foresee the major evolution waves that happened during these last years: modular OS, virtualization, portable audio/media, [and] search. In all fields, we either lost, or suffered significant challenges."

The discussion also revolved heavily around Vista and Mac OS X. "Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again what do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs," one proclaimed employee wrote. Another put it less bluntly: "Folks, the only difference between Vista and prior releases (back to at least NT4/Windows 2000) is the size of the [::expletive::] up."

Meanwhile, another poster claiming "inside" knowledge said Apple is preparing to stomp Microsoft with its next major operating system upgrade, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. "Apple is preparing a big attack against Vista with Leopard. They are preparing this for over 3 years now," wrote the anonymous poster. "Tiger's under-the-hood improvements make it possible to keep any significant feature secret until a month or two before shipping."

Microsoft has said it is delaying Vista in order to beef up the security, but there are said to be major problems in other areas of the OS such as the Media Centre (MCE). "Why exactly is MCE so bad? Didn't anyone test this puppy before kicking it out the door and having another PM party?," asked one employee.

Nevertheless, the Vista delays already appear to be causing a minute domino effect. Microsoft also announced last week that it will put off the consumer release of Office 2007 so that it is in line with the new release schedule for Vista.