The Inquirer reported yesterday that Intel have decided that they will ‘never’ deploy Vista on any of their corporate network.

What will hurt Microsoft the most is the answer Intel gave when asked what they will use instead of Vista:

The official answer is ‘nothing yet’, the one where they try not to offend is ‘likely Windows 7′,

Its a case of Windows 7 strikes again. And Microsoft are to blame. THEY are the ones who have seeded the Windows 7 idea into the tech market and any users out there who are put off by Vista are bound to anchor down and wait for the next version.

It seems that every day Vista becomes more and more like Windows ME.

I really wanted to download Firefox 3 yesterday. I waited all day for the update to appear on the website but nothing came so I logged off for the day, went to the pool and then relaxed with Euro 2008 for the evening.

Today I noticed that I had this email:

Check the time, go on, it says 6:35 PM last night. Now, I wasn’t online at this time. I was neck deep in chlorine infested water trying to work out why the pool was so busy for a Tuesday night.

Anyway, my point is they failed. I wanted to be part of the Firefox 3 download day thing but they messed up by sending the notification email at a truly stupid time when clearly between 9-5 would have been the sensible choice.

What they should have done is mailed me 2 days ago with a link to the site of a UK based (fast) download and the time at which they were planning to allow downloads to start. THEN I could have scheduled my time to at least check my email before I let the day end.

Hell, they could have even opened up a torrent file on the site so I could set it going and left it to download the file when they started seeding.

Unfortunately I won’t be upgrading to FF3 today. Or tomorrow actually. Not because of this scheduling mishap but because it seems that a few key add-ons which I use daily are not yet compatible.

Not that I won’t download it. In fact, if I download it from work AND then from home, does that count as 2?

If anyone missed C4′s ‘The Inbetweeners’ here is a rather hilarious taste:

More on the trail of the missing Vista marketing. It turns out Microsoft ARE advertising Vista. I’ve heard a couple of Ads on the radio (TalkSport) over the past week and today I got a TechNet email titled: “Why should you upgrade to Windows Vista?”

The email started with an apology:

“one of the implications of the increased focus on security was that compatibility with Windows Vista was not where we wanted it to be at launch. Over the past eighteen months, Microsoft and our partners have made tremendous progress in compatibility, performance, and battery life.”

It then went on to list a few “key facts”:

• Windows Vista now supports more than 77,000 printers, cameras, speakers and other devices.
• More than 2,700 software programs are “Certified for” or “Works with” Windows Vista; 97 of the top 100 consumer applications are compatible.
• 62% of small businesses said Windows Vista saves them time, and 70% said it makes them more productive, according to an independent survey.
• More than 140 million copies of Windows Vista have been sold, making it the fastest selling operating system in Microsoft history. Even Macs run it.
• 71 percent of Windows Vista customers like it better than their last operating system.
• People familiar with Windows Vista are two to three times more likely to have a favorable impression of it.
• Every 10 PCs that switch to Windows Vista is the equivalent of taking an automobile off the road, in terms of greenhouse gases.

I had to laugh a little at the “Even Macs run it” fact. Like they threw that in at the last minute and some Mac user out there is going to jump ship based on this email.

Not sure about the “71 percent” thing? Almost every Vista switcher I have spoken with agree that it is ‘better’ in some ways than XP but not enough to rave about. I can imagine they asked a lot of new, maybe non-techy users that one.

Overall however I’m impressed. Not by the facts in the message but by the fact that I have received at least some sort of clue from Microsoft convinces me they DO care about Vista and aren’t already digging its grave.

The one thing where the message didn’t explain however was the key differences between the 5 different versions. Something that has surely been putting users off since launch.