Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

bigdavejonnyt — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:38:41 GMT

Swift car related comment then you can all get back to banging on about h/ware and s/ware.

Neil - A Ford over an Audi?

Ha [repeat to fade]

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

David Overton — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:24:18 GMT

Neil,

your comments are very valid - there is nothing wrong with American cars - I spent 5 fantasic years with a ford and several years with what was a GM car (Vauxhall in the UK). However, we should also recognise that all the products out there - cars or computers, have a place. Some people want Apple - that is their choice. Me, I don't find them useful enough, so I want a PC.

Thanks for your comments though.

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

Neil Davis — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:29:09 GMT

Sure there will always be an IBM, at least in the foreseeable future. Just as there will always be a Ford, a GM, Chrysler… or will there be? No American aspires to own an American car. Success is driving German or Japanese. Just as no one under 30 want’s a PC (or a Zune for that matter).

/*****************************************/

Not that my opinion matters, since I am an American, but this statement is completely moronic. I am a successful application developer, in that I make decent money and I am employed. I used to drive a BMW 3 series.

I now drive a 2007 Ford Mustang. The above statement is wrong LMAO. At least one American drives an American car. I can afford overpriced imports with horrible maintenance records and crap quality, but I like the Mustang better. I got sick of all the BMW BS. Before you blast me for being wasteful, my car gets 26MPG on highway, 18 avg. It's about the same as the 325 or the 4 cyl Volvo turbo I have. Fit and finish is excellent, and I even have heated leather.

European and Japanese cars are not all they are cracked up to be. In fact with the spate of Audi, BMW, and Mini problems plaguing drivers of these cars, and the lack of personality inherent in Japanese cars, I'm glad I bought American. www.consumeraffairs.org if you don't believe me.

Talk to me about not wanting American cars while I'm winding past 80MPH in 3rd gear with some G loading pushing me deep into the seat, car not in the shop for the 8th time on the same problem. I think you are thinking of the K-Car and this sentiment is decidedly 1986.

-Neil

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

David Overton — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:01:17 GMT

Alasdair,

These changes are not the only ones made to Action Pack - the process of screening who gets them has changed considerably. As have other processes - we will continue to have a multi-pronged attack on piracy.

The upgrade "trick" as you put it is known about, but it is now harder for people to pass this off as OEM media or a "OEM Recovery Disk" with their label on it. We also always look for ways to lock these sorts of issues down.

We are also running a campaign to get people to "tell" on partners who are doing this so we can remove their actions from market.

Of course the actions of pirates and our response impacts us all and while this is not desirable, as I said, with the UK having a "low" piracy rate on Windows at >10%, we have to find ways to make it harder all round for pirates.

However, coming back to my point - how many times do you really, really, do an install where there is NO OS on the system using your action pack licenses? Think carefully as the maximum answer lies in the licenses. It must have taken me a good extra 2-3 minutes to do a clean install from a machine that already had XP on it, and that included the wiping of the hard disk.

Finally, While I do appreciate the problems it cause, we really, really, really, need to see the complaints hit our indicators (this is anicodtal through this blog and hopefully, through all the other information we have provided I hope you can see that we do care and try to share information and processes).

Please, please, please contact the regional service center if you wish to let Microsoft know what an impact this makes on your business. https://partners.microsoft.com/PartnerProgram/ContactMicrosoft.aspx has all the details on it.

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

Alasdair Stewart — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:25:10 GMT

Hi David,

I'm sure most of us here have heard of the way to 'trick' the Vista upgrade process by installing twice. As that's the case, then your points are surely again moot?

1) They can still do this

2) They can still do this

3) They can still do this

Microsoft have, fairly or unfairly, been criticised that WGA and the other anti-piracy stuff only affects the honest consumer and the dishonest pirate keeps going. Extending this to Action packs again makes little difference, those wanting to be dishonest can still do that (with an extra 45 minutes work), and only continues to alienate those who actually pay for and use them properly.

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

David Overton — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 14:57:21 GMT

One final thing, lets consider what people used to do who pirated Action Pack:

1) They used to sell PCs to people who did not know they were getting Action Pack licenses

2) They would use it to make quotes to customers cheaper for deploying solutions to them

3) They used to use it instead of buying legally licenses software.

For options 1 & 2, if you were competing against these people honestly, your prices always appeared uncompetitive. With the latest changes, this is no longer the case as they can't use this mechanism to beat you

For option 3, they would not give you any revenue to buy software, but migth expect you to support it if you supplied the hardware - not exactly the fairest thing to do. Again, this becomes harder with the changes in Action Pack.

ttfn

David

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

David Overton — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 14:28:17 GMT

Grant,

Microsoft spends a huge amount of time listening to partners and customers - the fact that we can only supply Upgrade media is not evidence that we don't listen. If you read the FAQ - every other concern that people had has been addressed - the right to use previous versions supplied with Action Pack, how to do a clean install using upgrade media, building demo systems, demoing Vista Ultimate, documenting the anytime upgrade path and point out cheaper sites for anytime upgrade besides that supplied by Microsoft. Hopefully the FAQ shows just how much we listen and respond. We have responded to every concern raised by partners except 1 - OEM vs Upgrade media.

The reason for changing from OEM to upgrade was because we saw HUGE piracy on the action Pack keys and media. You still have 10 copies of the OS - the ONLY impact is when installing it on a system is that you have to boot from an existing Windows OS - you can still do a clean install from there.

If the ONLY value you saw in the Action Pack was the OS, then the upgrade media is still in it and has got to be just 20%ish of the retail media price in the shops - an 80% discount is pretty fantastic. However, you have already mentioned Windows Server which is included and I would hope that Office is good for you too. Many people find the products in Action Pack good to use in their business and find that it helps them to be in business. We review the list of products desired and add to the list shipped based on the feedback.

As a Microsoft registered partner you get the Action Pack for own use software, access to sales and marketing materials, the ability to come to seminars that are limited to partners and more. As a SBSC partner (in the UK) you also get to be listed before all other come the top of the list of partners in the Small Business Referral tool, access to Managed Newsgroups which is paid for support and access to events and people restricted to SBSC membership. As a Certified and above partner you get paid for telephone support, MSDN access and more licenses, plus a dedicated account manager.

I think the benefits you get are amazing, and would be hard to beat. Every Microsoft programme is heavily steered by feedback from partners and customer, so listening is something we take very seriously.

In fact to put this issue in perspective, partners complaints have dropped here in the UK recently meaning that we are just not seeing people getting excited about this issue.

Having said all of that, you should always be evaluating what is right for your customers and your business - if you don't think it is Microsoft, don't sell them Microsoft. You are in business for you, not for Microsoft. I would not expect a £200 kit from Microsoft to be the swaying factor. Obviously it is great to hear things you want changed, but sometimes the changes are not all possible. I used to sell and configure Linux and Unix Servers and I am glad to be in the Windows world.

If you really want Microsoft to know how much you dislike the changes - contact your regions support centre and tell them - my blog is not official enough for them to use in their partner satisfaction information.

thanks

David

re: Its not often I get a comment that makes me respond on a personal level, but here is one. Action Pack, life expectance of Microsoft and your business

Grant — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:33:52 GMT

Whoevver posted that to you David was really right on. Some of your comments, seem to be overly critical and over aggressive and dare I say stubborn. Microsofts latest play regarding the vista upgrades has already made me evaluate ubuntu for our servers(to which I was pleasantly surprised) and make me look at macs for my solutions for my office.(which are due for upgrade) I personally believe that Maps customers are calling out to Microsoft and unless we see some shifts in policy us influencers are going to be moving to other solutions.. how much longer would it take for our customers to follow?

#1 rule is to listen to your customers...and microsoft seems to have completely ignored even their partners so their customers don't stand a chance.....