I’m not a marketing major or anything, but in reading the page about the upcoming versions of Microsoft Vista, can I just ask a favor of you?
Apparenly you have taken a page out of the US Government’s House Ways and Means Committee and their never ending quest for Tax Simplification. Those of us in the beancounter industry refer to these actions to ‘simplify’ as “Full Employment Acts for Accountants”.
We have in the umpteen versions of Vista – the “Small Business Edition”. Oh gawd, says I. Includes the following unique features “Backup and Shadow copy support”. Uh our server does that. Castle and Server Join networking. Okay Castle is peer… if “Server Join” isn’t the same thing as fully supported domain active directory full glue…. ala Small Business Server….. so help me …
Okay so I probably shouldn’t rant before having all the facts but I’m come on Mr. Ballmer…you are making it harder for us in the marketplace of Small Businesses called Small Business Server with XP Homes, this version BETTER glue and glue good to SBS boxes otherwise it should not use the name “Small Business edition”.
Don’t ship anything… not Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006, not anything that isn’t fully supported without issues on a SBS box if you use the words “Small Business” in the name.
Just once I’d love it if your computer wasn’t set up by Ron Markezich but instead you walked into Best Buy with a hat on your head or something so folks wouldn’t recognize you and you go try to buy a computer and set it up yourself.
We already get headaches now with licensing…. don’t add more. Please.
On the other side of that coin, if Vista SB and SBS2007 are really closely integrated, then we could have a really useful solution for the small business space.
Have you noticed that Home Premium has an integration with Quattro Home Server? I wonder if *very* small businesses (2-10 users) might be better off in that space rather than SBS.
Don’t forget Small Business Financials which is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than Small Business Accounting.. hello we need education efforts out in the field. People are over whelmed over worked and over saturated with information.
YES PLEASE KEEP IT SIMPLE!!
Anne Stanton
Business Consultant
The Norwich Group