Analyst / mother vents Vista frustrations to Ballmer

October 11, 2007 – 9:00 am

Steve Ballmer has been doing quite a lot of talking lately, and his most recent noteworthy conversation came when he addressed an analyst and mother who was noticeably displeased with Windows Vista. During Mr. Ballmer’s appearance at the Gartner Inc. conference in Orlando, Florida, Yvonne Genovese took the liberty of kvetching to him about her early adopter struggles. She explained that she felt the need to revert back to XP merely two days after caving to her daughter’s request to pick up Vista for those “neat little things called gadgets.” Steve went on to exclaim that he “loved her daughter,” but the mom carried on by asking “what should people be seeing that we’re not seeing?” As the debate unfolded, Ballmer insinuated that while there was “a lot of value in Vista,” it has been more difficult for customers to implement due to heightened system requirements and a less-than-stellar amount of available device drivers at launch. Of course, he also noted that Service Pack 1 would address “a lot of the customer feedback,” but we don’t get the feeling that was what Ms. Genovese was looking to hear.