We already did the biggest losers in the tech industry but why not talk about the biggest product flops? Here are a few of the biggest failures of the decade, starting with one monster release from a fairly well-known company.

Winner Loser: Windows Vista

Microsoft has had a hard decade. They made billions, sure, but they haven’t led in mindshare since Windows NT. Geeks flocked to Linux in the early aughts and LAMP now rules the roost when it comes to web servers. Their mobile offerings are roundly and regularly panned and their incremental fixes to products have frustrated users.

Speaking of incremental fixes, how about Vista? When the product launched on January 30, 2007 there was quite a bit of fanfare but no substance. I still remember standing in line to hit the launch party and then listening to Angels and Airwaves play their hit that year. Then Bill said something about burning DVDs and the rest was a blank. Vista disappeared, mostly because it wasn’t “Longhorn,” the long-awaited upgrade to Windows that would add a slew of server-side features. Businesses didn’t buy it and consumers didn’t want it.

Fast forward to 2009 and Windows 7 is on everyone’s lips and Vista is just a bad, bad memory. It wasn’t a horrible OS. It was just not enough to be worth users’ time.

Runners Up

Our take

Devin: How about the AppleTV? It was in a position to really take on other set-top boxes, but Apple just blew it. Not really on the scale of these other flops, but worth mentioning. And although it pains me to say it, the Zune to some extent was a major flop. I love the Zune HD, but the original was poorly marketed… and brown.

Greg: The Cybiko. That thing was supposed to be awesome. I’d be able to talk to chat with all of my friends during class, and my teachers would be none the wiser. We’d crack jokes! We’d play games! It would be a little electronic party, each and every day. And then no one bought it, and I was the weird kid that had a calculator with an antenna on it.

Matt: Let me set the scene: A company previously unknown at the beginning of the decade quietly releases a hit cell phone after a hit cell phone. This company can seemingly do no wrong and constantly reinvents itself to stay one beat ahead of the trend. Then RIM launches the BlackBerry Storm, which will go down in history second only to the N-Gage as the worst cell phone in history.

Nicholas: HD DVD only “flopped” after Warner decided to back Blu-ray. Prior to that it was doing just as well as Blu-ray, which is to say not well at all. Maybe the Dreamcast?

Doug: This is a tough one since there are always plenty of flops compared to good products. I guess the product with the biggest crash and burn factor in my mind would be the Gizmondo portable gaming system. So much hype, so many promises broken. The amazing part was that it actually launched. But it was overpriced, there were no games, and everyone and their mother involved in the project went bankrupt. Even more amazing is that there was supposed to be a Gizmondo 2 launched in 2008. Why launch a successor to a failed product? No matter, as a series of delays, arrests, and a high-profile car crash had doomed the project from the start.

Looks like Microsft may well have a hit on its hands in Windows 7. In just eight hours, Windows 7 pre-orders outpaced the total number of pre-orders for Vista on Amazon UK. Vista was available for pre-order for a full 17 weeks, so this is something of an accomplishment for Microsoft.

On sale October 22, Windows 7… how do I phrase this? The fact that it’s not Vista is reason enough to consider buying it, especially it you’re clunking along on Windows XP. (To think that people, myself included, prefer the nearly eight-year-old Windows XP to Vista says something about the quality of Vista. But let’s not beat that dead horse, for the zillion time.)

IDC analysts predict about 170 million copies of Windows 7 will be floating around Europe by the next of next year. How many of those installs will you be responsible for?

Of course, not that any of this matters. Once Google Chrome OS comes out, we’ll all be like, “Yuck, who stores their presentations on their hard drive? How 2008 of you!” /eye_roll

Win 7 News

Good to see that, sometimes, even the biggest tech companies can come to their senses. Today Sony in Japan announced a new Vaio P model, the Vaio P50 [JP], which comes with Windows XP SP3 instead of the hopelessly problematic Vista Sony shipped their Ps with so far.

The P50 features an ATOM Z520 processor (1.33GHz), 1GB memory, an 8-inch screen with 1,600×768 resolution, a 80GB HDD, Wifi, Bluetooth, WWAN, an SD card/MMC interface and two USB slots. As an option, a 256 GB HDD or a 2GHz CPU is available as well.

The new Vaio P is available in green, white and red. Japanese buyers can get one starting June 6 (price: $895). No word from Sony yet concerning a release outside Nippon.

Windows Vista is a great redheaded step kid to beat, but the OS has really matured. The first few versions were buggy as hell, and sure, there continues to be issues. (I hate the networking) However, it’s a stable OS now. It works mostly fine and is the default OS on 99.9% (or something like that) of off the shelf computers. So, if a random government office needs a notebook quickly, will said office will need to get written permission from the Finance Committee before purchasing one from Best Buy? That’s our government at work, folks.

One Texas company, *cough* Dell *cough* is probably ordering up an Herman Miller Embody for every employee though thanks to this mandate and its $150 downgrade to XP fee.

One of the biggest mistakes, according to Microsoft itself, was a disastrous stop-and-start approach to Vista development. The Windows 7 development team learned from this, and made a concerted effort to define features and objectives first, in order to avoid a similar staccato development cycle.

Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, said “our goal is to make sure customers can treat the beta of one of our products like a release candidate and treat the release candidate as a final version.” Huh? I sure hope that quote is taken out of context, because that strikes me as a grave misunderstanding of the release policies a corporate software vendor should be pursuing. If you encourage customers to treat a release candidate as a final version, you can bet someone somewhere will! And then, when said moronuser looks to get support, they’ll be out of luck.

Via Infoworld.

Microsoft has been putting together the Windows 7 Technical Guarantee Program and it appears that it’ll likely go into effect starting July 1st of this year. It’s that program that lets you purchase a machine with Microsoft’s current operating system and then upgrade it to the newest one when it launches, similar to what the company did when getting ready for Vista.

The program will apparently be optional to OEMs, so not all companies will be participating. But you can guess that a computer with a “Free upgrade to Windows 7!” sticker will probably sell over a similar machine without.

TechARP got a hold of all the technical documents but here’s a quick rundown.

• Good on new PCs with Vista pre-installed purchased after July 1, 2009.
• Versions will synch – Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium, Vista Business to Windows 7 Professional, Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate, etc.
• 32-bit to 64-bit upgrades not supported, but clean install will be allowed.
• Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrades not supported, but clean install will be allowed. Also, your OEM will have to be participating in the XP downgrade program.

The program dates could change based on when Windows 7 will actually be available but this should give everyone a pretty good idea of what’s coming.

TechARP [via Slashdot]

Service Pack 2 should build in native Blu-ray burning and improved HD video playback. Plus, a few under the hood enhancement hopefully will be included which should improve WiFi and DirectX performance. Still, forget about Vista and focus the nerd herd into Windows 7 development. The beta is stellar and hopefully the finally version will be just as good.

Microsoft is currently in court over the dubious claim and that’s where this tantalizing detail was revealed. According to expert, Keith Leffler, 

I have been asked by Plaintiffs’ counsel to estimate the amount of revenue earned by Microsoft from the licensing of Windows XP on Vista Capable but not Vista Premium Ready PCs sold to Plaintiffs. In Microsoft’s Supplemental Responses it estimates that it received revenue of [redacted] from Windows XP licenses on upgradeable PCs sold in the U.S. during the April 2006 through January 2007 period. From the estimates of Windows Capable but not Vista Premium Ready PCs compared to all upgradeable PCs as in Table 1, I estimate that [redacted] of the [redacted] from Windows XP licenses on upgradable PCs were for XP licenses on Vista Capable but not Vista Premium Ready PCs — those PCs purchased by the Plaintiff class. From these figures, I have, therefore reached the opinion that Microsoft revenue from the Windows XP licensing on Vista Capable but not Vista Premium Ready PCs sold to Plaintiffs was $1.505 billion.

Makes you wonder just how bad Microsoft wants Windows 7 to succeed. Enough that everyone will forget about Vista. Windows ME was quickly forgotten after XP launched so it can be done.

This has to be hard for Microsoft. Generally when Microsoft launched a new OS, the old one is shuffled out of the door by manufacturers. Sure, most PC users will not upgrade older systems until at least one Service Pack, but new computers would always have been loaded with the latest and greatest OS.

That changed when craptastic Vista launched. Thankfully, the operating system has at least reached a point of usability but the fact that some PC makers still offer Windows XP – sometimes at a pricey premium too – shows that the Windows world isn’t too happy about Windows Vista. Windows XP runs so well on a variety of hardware where Vista doesn’t even like some brand new systems. Who knows if this is going to be the last delay of death for the OS. Early versions of Windows 7 are slated for launch in ’09 so maybe Microsoft will keep XP around until 7 can take its place.

You can download it directly from Apple by clicking here.

The above is a scan of some Windows Vista promotional material. But, is that an old MacBook Pro this perfect family is using? Now, Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on silver laptops chassis but wouldn’t it have been wiser to have something more distinctly PC?

Or what about this? These sure do look like PS3 controllers, but again, there are plain ol’ PC controllers that resemble PlayStation controllers. Surely someone at the Vista marketing department must know that the Xbox 360 controllers work perfectly well on Vista machines?

Just something to ponder.

The ever-sassy Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is pointing out that Apple is essentially lying like Satan lied to man about the cancer-causing potency of high-fructose corn syrup. In “Bean Counter,” for example, Apple suggests that Microsoft spends more on advertising than on “fixing Vista.” Adrian tells the honest truth:

For each $1 of sales Apple spends:

– 1.9 cents on Advertising
– 3.3 cents on R&D

For each $1 of sales Microsoft spends:

– 2.6 cents on Advertising
– 13.9 cents on R&D

This would be interesting except for the fact that Microsoft has to spread that 13.9 cents over 89,809 employees, most of whom, presumably, are building new software products to replace Vista. Apple’s 28,000 employees are also hard at work building hardware, something Microsoft rarely has to worry about, so we’d assume there is a 10 cent spend in that $1 on prototyping and manufacturing. Apple also produces approximately 20 real products – most of them retreads of old products – while Microsoft has plenty of teams producing stuff that may never see the light of day. OS X is already strong and steady – it doesn’t need a Vista moment to make it better – and the products are generally popular. And those Vista/Windows ads did suck.

Again, Kingsley-Hughes is essentially trying to get a rise out of us MacTards. Negative Mac stories are delicious link-bait and ZDNet could use them some link bait – no harm no foul. That said, we should always remember that no matter how jovially bumbling John Hodgman appears, Microsoft is still number one in terms of market share. Calling Apple out for trying to convince people to buy their products is un-American and frankly socialistic. Could Marx’s evil theories behind this scurrilous, vindictive vituperation? Perhaps, friends. Perhaps.

Read this line and you’ll understand how Joe Wilcox (and pretty much everyone else online) over at eWeek feels about Windows Vista:

Vista is headed to as quick a death as Microsoft can give it. Someday soon, some gun-toting Microsoft executive will lead Vista out back and “Pop!”

Screaming “Vista sucks!” is by no means a novel idea, but Wilcox uses, you know, evidence to support his claim, that Vista is dead to Microsoft. For example, Microsoft didn’t bleat endlessly about Vista licenses sold during last week’s earnings call. Is that because sales are down, or because sales weren’t as impressive at last quarter?

There’s also netbooks, the tiny half-laptops that, for whatever reason, people are snapping up. Needless to say, RAM- and graphics-hungry Vista doesn’t exactly run well on netbooks, which is why so manufacturers offer XP or Linux in lieu of Vista. If Microsoft can’t sell its fancy operating system to manufacturers of netbooks, where is growth going to come from, Mars?

This is why, by the way, Microsoft is so bullish on Windows 7—ignore that whole Vista thing, ’twas but a minor setback.

This Life Takes Vista site is either fanboyism to the extreme or some junior associate at Microsoft’s ad firm playing around. Whatever it turns out to be though, it’s safe to say it ain’t from Redmond as the HTML is loaded with Adobe Dreamweaver tags. Props to whoever made it ’cause some of the center photos are clever – like the one above. Still, WTF is it?

PCs and Macs are always poking and stabbing at each other; Genius Bar this, everyone uses Windows that.  Can’t we all get along? Everyone knows which one is superior. 

Second video after the jump.

He says they’re also not afraid to lean down in order to ship faster, which can only be a good thing considering how enormous Vista has gotten. In fact, it looks as if the time it’s taken to get Vista to a real working state may be enough that you can skip right over it with their blessing. Make this something people can put on a netbook, people. Make it something people want to upgrade to. Whether you look on Vista as a qualified success or an utter failure, we can all agree it was more of the same. We’ve really had the same Windows for a decade now. We want to love it, give us a reason!
[via El Reg]

Looking at what’s available there… I don’t see how they can even run Vista on this thing.

Windows 7 might be on its way sometime soon, but Vista should get SP2 before the new OS drops. According to some ZDnet sources, Redmond is aiming to update Vista first so it will be interesting to see if any new Windows 7 features come with it. Details should drop from Microsoft about the upcoming service pack within the coming months but there isn’t any firm release date as of yet.

I sadly missed this story last week but it bears further inspection. Charlie “The Animal” White wrote a piece “fact-checking” the claims that Vista is buggy, slow, and a big hassle. While I cannot agree that Vista is a sub par offering from Microsoft, I can unequivocally state that it’s good enough for the average user and no matter how much we whine and cry we’re all going to ride the Vista train when we pick our next PCs and laptops anyway, so why bitch? Take this bit of knowledge on Vista crashing:

This one is pure propaganda. In our experience, the only crash we’ve experienced happened when we installed the new version 8.0 of iTunes (how ironic!), and even that didn’t result in the dreaded Blue Screen of Death — just a hard lockup that required a cold boot. System Restore blew out the problem, bringing everything back to normal in minutes.

Sadly, crashing is subjective. Charlie probably has some nice hardware at home and Joe Sixpack in Sixpackton, Wisconsin (next to Madison) is probably still using an on Dell he bought in 2005. Old tech for some is “good enough” for others.

Microsoft isn’t stupid. It’s slow, but not stupid. They know that they can dump bloatware onto the market because it drives upgrades and hardware sales. Without hardware, Vista is just a very boring DVD.

I know working with Vista extensively is a pain in the ass. Doug complains about it all the time and I prefer to install XP Pro on any test machines I’m using just to ensure a baseline. However, Vista is here and it’s not going anywhere. We must accept our fate and/or move on – to Linux, OS X, and points beyond. Excelsior!