IRREVERENT News

REDMOND - Microsoft's latest O.S. delivers "much more consistent, user-friendly.. crashes and hangs" for users, says C.E.O. Steve Ballmer.

"With as massive a codebase as we've got, we can't say that random crashes and lockups are a thing of the past," Ballmer told the press. "But I can say we've made those irritating, random crashes much, much more consistent and regular, so much so that it should cost you much less time and money to recover from them going forward."

"We've taken all our contempt for users and made it friendly and recoverable," said Ballmer.  "We've learned from the past."

Users have greeted the new operating system warmly, especially those suckered into Windows Vista.  "This is a definite improvement," wrote Scott Johansen, senior writer with PC Industry Magazine.  "It took a mere 19 hours to upgrade from Vista, and I only lost two hard drives worth of data, most of it backed up.  So reinstalling software took far less time than usual."

"I really appreciate the time they put into the new graphical look and feel," wrote Julie Harmon, software reviewer for Windows Unlimited magazine.  "For example when I hit my first BSOD [Blue Screen of Death] the other day, it actually rendered inside a nice window pop-up.  I still felt stupid, but it really softened the blow."

"It delivers what I really look for in an operating system: tons and tons of features, some simple games, and a forced hardware upgrade," wrote Julie Swanson, blogger for the industry watchdog "PC Times."  "I won't go out and buy a new motherboard just willy-nilly.  And it never occurs to me that I need a new video card.  Now I've got these things and I'm a better person for it."

Yet other industry analysts were reserving judgement, taking a "wait and see" approach.  "Yes, this is better than Vista, but they'll pry XP from my cold, dead hard drive," said Tom Thompson, senior analyst at PC World.  "I like the my BSOD just the way it is.  I did something wrong and I deserved to be punished.  Just the way I like it."

"Sure the economic impact of Windows 7 is ginormous," wrote Sheldon Moniker, senior economic analyst with the think-tank Warham, Cheeters & Associates.  "Hardware manufacturers and retailers alone stand to make a killing here, like shooting lame, defenseless ducks drowning in a barrel.  But lets not forget the pirate and hacker sites, each making a bundle off illegal downloads with ad revenue.  These dollars get immediately funneled into developing improved viruses, spyware and all sorts of Trojan software, which in turn drive profits for Symantec, McAfee and other anti-virus developers. A new Windows release has a huge economic ripple effect, not unlike what we saw with Hurricane Katrina."