Microsofties to get Windows 8 Surface tabs
Touch your work PC, like it or not
Microsoft has found an eager early audience for its Windows-8-powered Surface Ultrabook: its own employees.
The software giant is reportedly giving each of its 94,000 full-time staff a Surface computer for work and home use, in a gesture of mass Windows 8 munificence announced at the company’s annual staff meeting in Seattle’s KeyArena.
Fifteen thousand Microsoft employees attended the event, and were addressed by Steve Ballmer and other top execs.
As part of the event Microsoft said work PCs would go over to Windows 8. Geekwire reports Microsoft is accelerating the rate at which it upgrades its employees' PCs as part of the en masse move to Windows 8. The Seattle Times reports that staff get to choose between desktops, laptops, Ultrabooks or tablets.
Employees are also getting new Windows Phone 8 handsets – a repeat of the giveaway Microsoft made of phones running Windows 7. ®
COMMENTS
So that they can add 94,000 to the number of units they can claim to have shipped/distributed/sold?
Surely this is pure common sense.
In one hit, you'll have a large number of types of users for the Phone/Tablet, so Microsoft can create an internal website for bugs/comments/requests, and get a wide range of feedback.
Not only that, but if the developers use the device they work on, they have more incentive to fix the bugs they find, they have more incentive to write apps they want, add the features they want, etc etc.
Many companies do this, i know that because the company i work for offers a similar scheme (although nowhere near the Microsoft scale)
Common sense
It is crucial for MS to eat it's own dogfood, only then do you get first-hand usage feedback about what seemed a good idea but doesn't work well.
Whatever you think of Microsoft...
... that's quite a decent swag bag of goodies.
I once got a bottle of cheap plonk from my employer - magical moment, will never forget it.
Normal practice
I remember, about a decade or so ago (okay 12 years.. time flies), being forced to swap my perfectly servicable MacOS 9 office system for one running OS X 10.0.
All I'll say is that at least Windows 8 is actually ready for market, and has an existing set of apps. 10.0 was anything but.
I remember we were also force-migrated onto Apple's dreadful (and still dreadful) Mail.app. Dealing with even my tiny volume of email was a nightmare until I ran the MacOS 9 Eudora app through ResEdit and "rectified" its user-agent string into a more politically-palatable form.
But when my boss found out... he got me to repeat the hack on his copy :)
