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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

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Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#91

Post by sempron64 »

abhinav22 wrote: post #41

I don’t like Microsoft Windows or any of its newer products Windows 7 was the best version and Office before 365 was good too - now they just really milking everyone with subscription payments

Windows 7 definitely beats Windows 10 from a privacy, simplicity, and UX consistency perspective. I wish MS had backported the kernel improvements and relegated UWP to to third-party apps instead of integrating it everywhere.

I must disagree with you on Office 365 though. It is a marvel. Microsoft has re-engineered compatibility with document, spreadsheet, and presentation formats with a 30 year legacy from scratch, enabled multi-user editing on these formats, and crafted a web experience almost equivalent to desktop. They've really had to innovate to keep up with the advantages of Google Docs, and while they have not matched it from a speed perspective, they're no longer out of the running with consumers. Word and Excel Online are now free with a Microsoft account, and I found them just last week to have a rich selection of templates and had compatibility with Office documents I was sent. Office 365 is also very reasonably priced for it's Family license.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#92

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #16
baybal2 wrote: post #9

No he didn't. He turned the company even harder to farming plumpy corporate clients whom they already had on software+service deals with "cloud" thing subscriptions. A Microsoft salesman who visited us last year was almost begging us to switch to Cloud AD from regular AD. This is how hard they are moving toward that. It was just a long delayed admission that you can't make a lot of money on offline boxed software sal…

I don't know, this seems like it falls in the category of "a company's goal is to make money". Corporate clients just have no right to complain that Microsoft's sales model isn't structured in the way they'd prefer. It's different for personal usage, of course, but all of their personal usage software I'm aware of still has an offline option.

> Corporate clients just have no right to complain that Microsoft's sales model isn't structured in the way they'd prefer.

How do you figure? If I'm a business and I want things a certain way, and you won't provide that way to me, then I have every right to complain. Complaining is how I tell you I'm not satisfied and therefore might not buy or continue with your product.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#93

Post by natural20s »

xiphias2 wrote: post #23

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

Thanks for posting this. I thought it was just me or my laptop or my hardward config. Or the thousands of photos. YES the lag after hitting the windows icon... or searching or trying to open a folder with more than 100 items... it is very real and annoying.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#94

Post by abhinav22 »

DataGata wrote: post #74
abhinav22 wrote: post #41

I don’t like Microsoft Windows or any of its newer products Windows 7 was the best version and Office before 365 was good too - now they just really milking everyone with subscription payments

With office 365, you basically pay for a Dropbox subscription and get all of their office software on multiple computers. Seems like good value

Most of us already bought office before in a perpetual license.

I’m not sure but I assume companies also had perpetual licenses of Office, so for them to fork over a consistent stream to Microsoft for O365 just to ensure they have the latest version with all the updates is quite expensive over the long run. But most people think in terms of the sticker cost of 1 year and Office 365 and other subscription apps look cheap in that light.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#95

Post by lazycouchpotato »

habeebtc wrote: post #63
cheschire wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I was lucky and just had a string of good PFE’s, but my experience with MS support has been great.

I am a PFE currently. It's the hardest job I have ever had. My colleagues are all rock stars.

What's PFE?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#96

Post by ndespres »

RedShift1 wrote: post #76
cblconfederate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

Open start menu, search for x. Can't find it. Close start menu, open start menu, search for x, instant result. Sigh

Or search for a term like "System" and get results like this, all with the same icon:

1. Bing web search results for "system"

2. System Information, a program that shows a report about hardware and software in your computer

3. Settings, the modern control panel app, which has a panel called System

4. The old "System" control panel

5. "Change Your System Sleep Settings", or some other randomly-chosen specific setting from inside the modern System control panel.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#97

Post by nix23 »

MekaiGS wrote: post #73
cblconfederate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

I honestly have no idea where all the Windows settings are anymore so I just search instead. I wonder if this is a way to boost bing usage.

Activate Godmode ;-)

Create a Folder with the Name:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#98

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

xiphias2 wrote: post #23

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

Windows 2000 was peak Windows UX. XP was tolerable, but already started the decline with gimmicky UI stuff that made things actually worse.

I'll die on this hill.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#99

Post by wesleywt »

abhinav22 wrote: post #41

I don’t like Microsoft Windows or any of its newer products Windows 7 was the best version and Office before 365 was good too - now they just really milking everyone with subscription payments

You get large amount of storage and an always updated product. I am gladly paying for subscription.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#100

Post by dageshi »

muststopmyths wrote: post #85

nah, he turned the stock price around which is why Wall Street and MSFT employees love him. Every single thing he's credited for "turning around" was launched under Ballmer. My reading of Ballmer from the outside (I'd left long before the recent transition years) is that he probably trusted his division heads too much. He figured they knew what they were doing and he just had to steer the giant ship gently in a gener…

Microsoft seems like one of the few companies that can actually succeed with cloud. They have a massive inbuilt market of customers using microsoft server products that they can transition into their cloud, I don't know that there's any other company other than AWS better positioned to do well in that market?
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