I’m going to be on vacation until May 2nd.

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Scoble, How Microsoft can shut down Mini-Microsoft. Ugh. I totally disagree with everything here and I should be totally writing a spec instead of responding to his rant.

Terabyte storage for everyone. I almost have a terabyte at home. It’s okay, though I’ll probably need some more soon. Putting it in the cloud would be nice, but my pipe wouldn’t support streaming HDTV from the cloud. That aside, how does giving this to everyone change actually change anything? Scoble doesn’t offer any clear end user benefits that a terabyte would bring to justify the cost. Why would my mother wants this? And how do we profit from it?

Dual monitors plus Vista for everyone at MSFT. Almost everyone in my group has at least two monitors (or one really big one). I can’t think of a single dev who has just one. Many have three. Maybe the evangelism group has a smaller hardware budget then the product teams :). As for Vista, lots of us have Vista running on one or two machines in our office/home already.

Public compensation change logs. I disagree that compensation should be public. Let’s publish the pay range associated with a ladder level to clearly spell out the incentive of moving up the ladder but going all public with all compensation information will cause much more harm than good. Do you want your neighbors, friends, local businesses to know how much you are paid?

Speed bumps. As a program manager it’s my job to shield my developers, testers, designers, etc. from as much red tape as possible. Yes, we could be more nimble, but when you’re shipping software to hundreds of millions of people, the red tape is usually there for a damn good reason.

Marketers need to explain themselves. More conversations are good. However, Microsoft’s marketing problems do not stem from a lack of conversations between marketers and their end users. Rather, it’s because Microsoft is a technology company first and foremost. Everything else is a distant second. For us to embrace marketing and integrate it so it’s a part of our sole requires a huge cultural and organizational change within the company.

Conclusion: Do I think Microsoft has some structural issues which might prevent our stock from swinging back to being a growth stock? Yes. Do I think Scoble comes close to addressing those issues? No. He doesn’t even lay out the problems/issues, but somehow has the solutions. So what are the problems? What are the solutions? As much as I’m all for blogging, discussions of that nature should be kept within the confines of the hallways here in Redmond, and shouldn’t be debated on our blogs.

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If you’re part of the CTP program we just released build #5365. With each new build expect MCE stability to increase. However, I know some of you wanted me to post when I had switched over to Vista fulltime at home and unfortunately I still haven’t. My blocking issue is that there are problems with my ATI x700 video card playing back ATSC content. Hopefully we’ll get that fixed soon, because I can’t live without my HD!

Keep up the good work posting in the beta newsgroups. We’re pushing to get more program managers from eHome in there posting and responding to questions, but it’s hard given how busy we are trying to get Vista ready for you.

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Aaron has the scoop on the latest MCE hotfixes:

• Windows Media Digital Rights Management hotfix (KB913800)
• April 2006 Update Rollup for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (KB914548)

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Not that I encourage hacking MCE 2005 to apply themes, but our new theme can’t be that disliked if people are creating themes for MCE 2005 to make it look like our Windows Vista version :) (via ChrisL).

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Paul Thurott is out with his latest Windows Vista review and spends a good portion of the article talking about Media Center. From, Windows Vista February 2006 CTP (Build 5308/5342) Review, Part 5: Where Vista Fails:

In Windows Vista, Microsoft has irrevocably broken Media Center. It’s a horrid update to a wonderful bit of software, an ugly stepchild of beautiful parents. It’s so bad, I don’t even know where to start.

Now where do I start with my rebuttal? :)

First, the color scheme, it’s not final. Don’t get too hung up on look and feel and fit and finish in the early CTP builds.

Second, the new start menu navigation model. We debate a lot internally about what’s changing and whether the changes are for the better or for the worse; this new start menu rarely comes under fire. Why? Because this new start menu enables users to get to areas of the product much faster than the old model of having a home page and then home pages for each experience. I won’t spend the time walking through this now, but will in a later post.

Third, the horizontal galleries. This topic too warrants its own blog post. In short, we’re making a big bet on users having 16×9 displays. As such we’ve designed an interface, that is in our opinion, optimized for wide screen resolutions. Personally, I’m undecided about whether I like the change or not. Originally I was adamantly opposed to it, but it’s growing on me :).

Fourth, remote controls. Yes, we have new remote controls coming. If you were at CES 2006 they were in use at our booths.

Fifth, changing the interface. Yes, we’re changing the interface, and existing users will have to spend some time getting aquainted with the new interface. But given our new distribution strategy of bundling Media Center with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate, Media Center will go out to orders of magnitude more users; new users. Users who have never used Media Center before. Users who likely aren’t going to care that we’ve changed the interface.

Sixth, WMP. I’m glad to hear Paul likes the changes to WMP. I also like the changes and think it’s a big improvement from WMP 10. But, I think WMP still has a lot of room to grow in terms of a simple user experience. And I totally agree with Paul that we need to work harder at providing thoughtful transitions between 2′ applications like WMP, PIX, the Windows Shell, and their 10′ equivalents in Media Center.

What are your thoughts on the changes? Have you installed build 5342? What do you think?

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