

The Cancer Of Microsoft’s Tastlessness - mikecane
http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/the-cancer-of-microsofts-tastlessness/

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AndrewDucker
Microsoft is right.

I've reinstalled two laptops in the last six months (for friends) - and was
able to use the correct serial number because it was on the bottom of the
laptop.

Without that they'd have been stuck with a machine that didn't get updates and
warned them about being unverified all the time.

~~~
robgough
Would it have been so difficult to undo the usually single screw to enter the
battery compartment. And it's clearly stated in the article that the reason
they wanted the label on the outside was for "branding". Ridiculous.

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pedalpete
The author definitely gets points for the title, but the Microsoft serial
numbers is only 1 of 9 stickers on the back, and takes up maybe 20% of that
sticker real estate.

Is this really Microsofts fault?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
>The author definitely gets points for the title

They'd get more points from me if "tastelessness" was spelled properly.

~~~
mikecane
>>>They'd get more points from me if "tastelessness" was spelled properly.

DOH! So this guy coined Reeze's Law. It states, once Post or Send is hit,
typos multiply. And there is no way to see them until everyone else has.
Thanks.

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Tichy
That story doesn't seem to make much sense. I can only guess that Lenovo was
getting money (or a reduction on the price for the Windows license) for
displaying the sticker. After all, if you buy a standalone Windows, you are
not forced to attach a a sticker to your notebook afterwards. So Lenovo could
have just bought standalone licenses.

So Micrososoft paid for an ad, and Lenovo didn't want to display it despite
getting the money. Might be bad taste to pay for an ad on a notebook to begin
with, but it is a different story.

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aresant
On the one hand it's a good move to pound into people's brains that all base
belong to Microsoft - design be damned.

On the other hand does it really help to associate your brand with the bottom
of the barrel laptop / desktop?

And then hide the Microsoft brand on Xbox360 / Zune?

MSFT is more like a country in a state of perpetual civil war than they are a
computer company.

~~~
ejames
Having come from Microsoft not too long ago, I really think that "warring
city-states" is a much better description of how Microsoft internal politics
works than the typical Microsoft-as-monolith metaphors.

~~~
glhaynes
Do you think it's more a "warring city-states" structure than most other very
large corporations?

~~~
ejames
As Microsoft is the only very large corporation I've worked for so far, I'm
afraid I can't really make a comparison.

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moron4hire
These things are machines with which we do work. To make them such extensions
of ourselves that we start identifying ourselves by them ("I'm a Mac, I'm a
PC") is pathologically _insane_.

It's the bottom of your computer. If you care _that_ much about what the
bottom of your computer looks like, then I tend to doubt you don't care enough
about your work.

