Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe

prostoalex writes "A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there,' News.com reports. Europe will see a total of 1.2 mln paychecks thanks to the new operating system: 'In the six countries studied, more than 150,000 IT companies will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista in 2007 and will employ 400,000 people, IDC said. Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista.'"

Well, in that case

[Anonymous Coward]

Business will not be "upgrading" if it requires even more staff to admin Vista!

Re:Well, in that case

[tomhudson]

Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista

No, no ... you've got it wrong. Its a feature, not a bug. Since every day will have to be "patch Tuesday", IT departments will be able to better integrate patching into their routine ... by hiring staff dedicated to it.

Actually, the nubmers from the article are total bullshit. Those 650,000 staff would be employed whether the business used Vista or not.

Re:

[ibbo]

It stinks of real smelly excrement.

Obviously been sponsored by Microsoft and said companies future in Europe been in the balance I would jump to the conclusion thats its just MS rhetoric hintng that vista will create 50k jobs in Europe as a means for Europe to stop attacking MS's mode of operations.

I dont think the EU will fall for yet another blatent attempt by MS to pull its own strings in Europe.

They hould stick to the US for that coz we aint playing.

This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

Gives a whole new meaning to the "Broken Windows" fallacy of economics.

Re:

[d3matt]

You sir, beat me to that punchline... Why the A/C?

Re:This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

In case folks don't see why this is funny:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken _window/ [wikipedia.org]

Mod Parent Up Informative

[carpeweb]

The / at the end of your link makes it broken, at least in my browser. I removed the / and found the article. Worth the effort; thanks!

Re:

[Cheeze]

Maybe you should get a better browser. Worked fine in Firefox on linux.

Re:

[TopShelf]

It worked for me fine in IE on XP, as well. Maybe he's using Lynx or something...

Re:

[ichigo 2.0]

Actually it works now, as someone set up a redirect from the 'Parable of the broken window/' article to the 'Parable of the broken window' article on wikipedia. Sometimes the wiki software is a bit too pedantic.

Re:

[jZnat]

Out of the kindness of his own heart, some dude named Vinsci created a redirect so that people don't have to worry about the broken link.

Re:

[brianthesmurf]

To be explicit: In the Broken Window fallacy wealth is destroyed because the window is broken. In the "Vista fallacy" wealth is destroyed because peoples' (users', sys admins') knowledge of their OS is broken.

You've gotta admire the spin though.

Re:

[kfg]

Gives a whole new meaning to the "Broken Windows" fallacy of economics.

It's hardly new. 90% of the "economic boom" of the modern computer industry has been due to the Broken Windows Fallacy for the past decade or so. Mere money is being passed around like crazy, spent on little more than flushing wealth down the toilet, not to mention far too much of my irreplacable time, which I could better spend than fixing stuff that needn't be broken in the first place.

KFG

Re:This is great

[ThePhilips]

90% of the "economic boom" of the modern computer industry has been due to the Broken Windows Fallacy for the past decade or so.

You are so wrong. You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. Absolutely w/o computers. You would understand why the boom happened really: computer market stabilized, became commodity and business at large went from paper-based work flow to computer-based one. In fact, computers now allow small companies to increase business volumes: only because bureaucracy is magnitude cheaper now. Many small/private businesses were often running into NOT limit of productivity - but inability to book all orders properly. Now they can. Computers made that easy.

Though I hardly expect the average underage offsprings of computer era - which are made majority of /. readers /posters - to really understand what really computer and data networks did for small/middle/big companies. We already take all the goods for granted.

Just to give one example, especially important to USA with its large populace of public companies. Before computers came, public companies were really run by few people close to board of directors who have had slight majority of shares. For most of little/private investors it didn't made much of a reason to fly across continent just to participate in meeting/voting regarding some current maters. Now, with advent of computers networks, anyone with no matter how small share of company, can participate in voting - remotely & cheaply. That meant to the public companies whole a lot. Exec officers are now under more scrutiny, since large number of small investors really play role: sum of their votes often is large enough to influence decision making. The sum, to calculate before computers came, was impossible.

Re:

[kfg]

You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. . . Though I hardly expect the average underage offsprings of computer era - which are made majority of /. readers /posters - to really understand what really computer and data networks did for small/middle/big companies.

I've been running small businesses since well before the MITS Altair was introduced. I've hand wired vacuum tube bistable multivibrators. As a child I learned to type on a Salvation Army Remi

Re:

[ThePhilips]

You would also then note that M$ doesn't really play important role in OS business per se. M$ really doesn't understand where from its fortune came from.

M$ was earning money making early very different PCs behaving similarly. Or in other words, all those fancy "white boxes" have had all the same interface with the same DOS based OS. M$ power was in control of hardware companies - not in its OS. DOS & Windows was a tool of such control. (Thief's knife has little value unless put against someone's thr

That's a Fairy Tail with M$.

[twitter]

You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. Absolutely w/o computers. You would understand why the boom happened really: computer market stabilized, became commodity and business at large went from paper-based work flow to computer-based one. In fact, computers now allow small companies to increase business volumes: only because bureaucracy is magnitude cheaper now.

Are you trying to tell me that the average M$ shop is paperless? Hold on a second. ... OK, now I'm back from laughing and crying. Large companies have some rudiments of paper replacement. Small companies have simply been throwing their records away or still have paper files. The M$ monopoly has cost us all lots and lots of money.

At fortune 500 companies, pdf and tiff may indeed have replaced paper records, but M$ had nothing to do with it and the actual work is still done one paper. If the company is highly regulated, like a nuclear power plant, they might have called in IBM to make a document serving and saving system and that has marginally decreased total costs. IT costs, as a portion of the total budget did not change at all! Employees loath and distrust their M$ workstations to the point that they carry their actual work on floppies or USB fobs. The M$ "file servers" are even worse about keeping data. All of the work in progress is printed out and done with pen and paper. The results are laboriously typeset with M$ Word. This is not the office of the future.

Small businesses have it even worse. In one way they have an advantage, a lack of legacy systems to draw them down. The problem is that they do not trust the local IT people they can afford to move them into the future with free Unix derivatives. They could do it all with free software but M$ spends billions of dollars a year in FUD to keep them from doing that.

I'm old enough to have seen it all happen and am bitterly disappointed by the slow pace of change. Family members helped computerize medical records at a large regional hospital back in the 70s. They hooked up a terminal in his house back in the day Ma Bell rented people their phones. My first "real" computer was an IBM clone. I hooked a typewriter to it and used it to print my papers, mail and CAD in the 80s. That is the model still used by most companies. 25 years later all correspondence, records keeping, even scratch work, should be electronic but it's not.

The overriding problems for large and small businesses using M$ are poor GUI and poor reliability issues. A lack of virtual desktops forces printing of all real work in progress. If you can't spread it out on your computer, you have to spread it out on your desk. M$'s notorious lack of stability and "complex" file formats rules out their use for real records keeping. Even if the business is bright enough to waste money on Acrobat distiller, so that formatting issues go away, the underlying OS and file system lacks reliability. As noted, only large companies have spent the big bucks on document archive systems people believe in. I've written elsewhere about the way the combination of poor GUI and reliability ruins place keeping and wastes employee time on reboots every day. All of these issues are solved in free software.

The cost of all of this intentional waste may indeed produce hundreds of thousands of jobs. How else would Bill Gates have all his billions? The problem is that every penny spent is waste and we would all be better off if those people were making things that people want and need instead of endlessly running circles around broken equipment which has failed to deliver on it's promise for decades.

Re:

[Keith Russell]

I just had an epiphany.

Twitter is astroturfing.

Not intentionally, mind you. He wouldn't take Microsoft's filthy lucre, nor do I think he's trying reverse psychology to promote them. But every time he posts something like this, his good intentions just end up so much proverbial paving material.

Simple cause and effect should tell you that his worst-case-scenario form of "advocacy" is a blight on this forum. Initial posts are characterized by name calling, long-disproven talking points, unqualified as

Re:

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

I understand it and I'm not to happy about it. In addition to making small companies capable of handling quite a bit more data, computers have allowed big companies to grow to a point never before seen. Before computers came around, there really was a point where a company got so big and incompetent it fell over on itself. Now they get so big that they can change the very rules of the environment within which they live in the name of more efficient survival. Don't tell me I don't understand at all what

Re:

[the web]

HAHA, I was thinking the same. This is an absurd conclusion. The money spent internally by companies trying to make the new version of windows work could be spent externally on money making pursuits. And actually grow the company, raise profits, benefit employees. Instead they are mired in an economic stalemate.

Re:

[KlomDark]

What? You all gone communist? Are you saying you don't get paid anymore? Or am I not following your meaning?

That's like saying...

[Saven Marek]

A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there

That's like saying hurricane Katrina was a boon to the New Orleans economy, as it instantly created thousands of search & rescue, demolition, rebuilding and emergency management jobs.

You can spin anything any way you like.

Re:That's like saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what those 50000 are doing at the moment? Wandering the fields, looking at trees? Maybe, just _maybe_ they're supporting XP? Well, in that case, I say that 50000 jobs will be lost when Microsoft ships Vista, because of the decreased need for XP support.

that's economics for you

[oohshiny]

Sadly, that's how economist think and work. The Exxon Valdez disaster, for example, was a boon to the US economy according to standard models of economics, because it created lots of jobs.

The reason for such silly conclusions is that large, unquantifiable costs are ignored. In the case of Vista, it will probably create lots of jobs (because it will be a lot of work to install and maintain), but those jobs will not be productive jobs--they don't contribute to what the companies using Vista actually are supposed to do.

In different words, a company producing widgets will still be producing widgets pretty much the same way after Vista has been installed, they'll just have sunk a boatload of money into migrating, retraining, licensing, and hardware upgrades. Furthermore, the computer specialists doing all that work are kept from doing something actually productive. As a result, the cost of widgets has gone up and the economy is worse off overall.

Re:that's economics for you

[Registered Coward v2]

They are an orginisation attempting to make money with content including copyrighted material, which the copyright holders are legally entitled to recompense. But their business model is more like the modern day equivalent of a tv station, so they should be paying in a similar way to how tv stations pay for their use of copyrighted material.

I think you've confused marketeers with economists. Economists (at least the smart ones) ask a fundemnetal question:

This activity occurs at the expense of what?

Evert transaction occurs at the expense of another - if I buy a sweater then I don't buy a TV. You can't just look at any one action but need to look at the impact of that action.

Politicians and marketeers trumpet job creation - those pork barrel projects - they create jobs and pump taxes back into the economy (which I will use to buy more votes) - forget what the original taxpayer might have done with the nmoney had we not taken it in taxes; spent some percent running the government (a deadweight load of sorts) and actually put less back in then we took out.

If Vista makes companies more productive then they can create more jobs - if not then teh net effect is zero (or less because of switching costs)

Re:

[carpeweb]

If Vista makes companies more productive then they can create more jobs

I was going to take it a step further: shouldn't the more productive companies be able to cut jobs because they can produce the same output with fewer people? (Yeah, ok, I know this is a stretch for something like Vista, but it was someone else's fantasy to start ...) That kind of job-cutting could fit in the Creative Destruction model of economics, which is a bit different from the parable of the broken window, I think.

Still, I

Re:

[jank1887]

but don't be silly. If True Cost was factored into everything, we'd be paying $6/gallon for gasoline in the US. (Some say $13, i think it depends on how you allocate defense expenditures.) We can't have that, this is America dammit! True Cost Economics [adbusters.org]

On the other hand, if you also calculate my ecological footprint, if everyone lived like me, we'd need four planets to support us all [earthday.net]. Good thing everyone doesn't live like me. It's good to be on top.

Re:

[LoudMusic]

Sadly, that's how economist think and work. The Exxon Valdez disaster, for example, was a boon to the US economy according to standard models of economics, because it created lots of jobs.

That's like saying the WTC destruction was good for real estate in NYC. Where that may be true it's rather far from a good thing.

Re:That's like saying...

[Pflipp]

Only goes to show that "economy" as an indicator of public benefit has had its best years...

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

It's all about partial truth. The 50k increase in jobs is one thing; the 75k loss is another exercise with which we need not nag the reader.

Re:

[hodet]

Actually economists do this all the time. Natural disasters (man made ones too for that matter) stimulate GDP growth. Whether the cause was positive or negative is usually overlooked. I once recall an Finance professor in University stating that what this economy needs is a good war. His tongue was firmly planted in his cheek but the point was made.

Re:

[amichalo]

I wish the mod system went to 6!

This is this biggest piece of crap to come out of Redmond sinc ethe brown Zune.

Re:

[Elektroschock]

Or: concentration camps as a job machine for individuals who get new opportunities on the slave labour market.

On the downside ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista to destroy 50,000 jobs in Europe

Due to the cessation of Windows XP, hordes of people employed to manage, fix and repair systems based around Windows XP will lose their jobs.

Luckily they are mostly expected to get jobs managing, fixing and repairing Windows Vista systems.

Thats it?

[Lordpidey]

It's a Microsoft sponsored study, I'm suprised that they didn't say it would create 20 billion new jobs, cure aids, end world hunger, capture osama bin laden, find WMD in Iraq and still be simple enough for someone as stupid as Bush to use (ok, that last one might be stretching it)

Re:

[uradu]

Actually, they got the number wrong. It's supposed to be 88,ooo million billion jobs a year in the Greater London area alone.

Re:

[LifesABeach]

I can not help but think that when Vista crashes on to the scene that Grandma, and Uncle will find free products like Edubuntu [edubuntu.org] a little bit more useful than having to buy a OS, AND a new box.

"Slowly, one by one, the penguins steal my sanity" - Unknown

Re:

[samurphy21]

If that were the case, it would be a boon to India's economy, not Europe's.

Re:

[carpeweb]

... and how are European political weasels distinct from North American, African, Asian and other political weasels?

Re:

[stubear]

The male species wear capri pants.

Yup, that's it.

[theolein]

If I was in the Bush family, I could pass nuclear physics by pissing out the window in the morning, or are you trying to claim that the Shrub got where he has without the help of family and friends in high places?

in other news...

[192939495969798999]

Microsoft placates to populous to try to pressure EU to stop suing them for monopolistic practices. Could this read any more like a spin piece to deflect from the EU lawsuit stuff?

But how does announcing this help their business?

[hakubi]

Or is it just an attempt to derail any European plans to charge them with more anti-trust violations since MS is helping their economy? I just don't see the point here.

Re:

[1u3hr]

Why should the EU care about not Vista not being shipped to them? Apparent, because they will miss out on the possible 50,000 jobs it would create.

If MS can sell that, I can advance my plan to replace PCs with offices full of Bob Cratchetts doing accounts with fountain pens and abacuses. I can create 5 million jobs overnight.

Too complicated

[fractalus]

Businesses are already overwhelmed by the costs of administering Windows, and the sad thing is, Microsoft makes Windows admins re-learn everything every few years because they change the One True Way to manage a network. They say they're trying to make things better, but it's the same problem with developing for MS platforms: everything changes every few years.

Vista is so complex that it's going to be a nightmare to try to get a handle on it. These new jobs are glaziers making glass for windows broken by boys throwing rocks. False industry, and a burden on resources. These people could be doing something productive but instead they'll be put to work holding Vista together.

Re:

[jimicus]

These new jobs are glaziers making glass for windows broken by boys throwing rocks

IIRC, that analogy generally works best if it's the glaziers throwing rocks ;)

Obviously bollocks

[Proud like a god]

Clearly these "companies [that] will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista" are ones that would have been doing the same with XP.

Same goes for those that "will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista." Because previously they were using XP.

Vista brings nothing to Europe, but this is just about the EU actually making a stand against Microsoft's illegal actions.

Re:Obviously bollocks

[nwbvt]

Not necessarily. If it is harder to develop applications for or maintain Vista than XP, then jobs will be created. Of course, generally you want your new product to increase worker efficiency, not decrease it...

Re:

[Proud like a god]

Exactly. As already stated all over these comments, making more tech support jobs is going to take people who were already doing other things and tie them up with fixing Microsoft's problems instead of doing something more beneficial to the economy.

There is a shortage already

[mattcasters]

There is already a shortage of capable ICT personel in Europe.

Oh wait...

Broken window falacy of economic activity

[Realistic_Dragon]

Having 650,000 people chasing around doing things that do not need to be done is *not* good for the economy unless the end result is that production is greater (over the whole economy) than the gain that could be made of the alternative use of their time.

Now while I could probably be convinced that Windows Vista has _some_ productivity benefits over current systems I doubt it's really that large. In many cases the net contribution of these 650k people is going to be in fact negative as their disruption and need to prove their own continued usefullness actually decreases productivity of society as a whole - fixing things that aren't broken for example.

Re:

[tgv]

Since it will only cost money to deploy Vista, it will take away investments from production. So the export will drop. That's not good. Unless Microsoft offers to pay these 650000 people, of course.

Re:

[gbjbaanb]

Having 650,000 people chasing around doing things that do not need to be done is *not* good for the economy

I don't know, all those project managers spend their salaries, helping to keep the economy afloat... :-)

EU

[owlman17]

And here I thought that more and more countries in the EU are going Linux and FOSS. I do assume, if the study is true, that European copies of Vista won't be including Windows Media Player.

Re:

[wild_berry]

I think that the AntiTrust Dept wasnt Microsoft to document their seurity subsystem in a way that it doesn't eliminate the market for anti-viral, spyware and firewall products. It may be that Vista won't be allowed to include MS' Vista Firewall, Windows Defender or OneCare in addition to Windows Media Player.

Re:

[Bert64]

Packet filtering capabilities should be an integral part of every TCP stack, the fact that a market has grown up around providing these features to an OS which lacks them is ridiculous, and such a market deserves to cease to exist...

When it comes to anti-spyware and anti-virus, these are both a bad idea in any case... It's foolish to allow this malware onto your machine and then try to remove it. Microsoft should be improving the OS so it's more resillient to such things, and therefore has no need for addit

Conflict of interest

[tinkerghost]

It's already been pointed out by many people that for MS to be involved in anti - malware/spyware software development is a conflict of interest. GM cannot sell a car and then sell wheel retainers to keep the wheels from falling off if you hit a pothole. They have to make the wheels work right to begin with.
For MS to sell a product that fixes the faults in their principle product is a conflict of interest. They should be required to fix the original product, not allowed to double dip on the fix also.

Re:

[jimicus]

I do assume, if the study is true, that European copies of Vista won't be including Windows Media Player.

You assume wrong.

The Media Player thing didn't result in Microsoft being forced to flog XP without Media Player in the EU. However, they are obliged to make a version without Media Player available. Nobody else, however is obliged to buy it.

OEMs, not much liking the idea of customers complaining that "Joe down the road just bought a new PC from (some other major OEM), and HE got media player!" for the

Sure it will.

[SharpFang]

Huge boom in independent services of user support, helpdesk, troubleshooting etc. Lots of jobs for getting failed critical systems back online. And a huge boom in disaster recovery sector.

Re:Sure it will.

[trash eighty]

and counselling for IT personnel who have had nervous breakdowns

Decline?

[njen]

Does the study state the decline in jobs for XP related positions? I think it evens itself out in the end...

On the other hand ...

[LaughingCoder]

According to the article, from what I could tell the jobs were all just about upgrading hardware and software. There was no discussion about unique capabilities of Vista spawning whole new industries or applications.

If I were an IT decision-maker in Europe I might read this differently. Hmmm, 50,000 jobs is a lot of Euros. What exactly are we getting for that huge expenditure? Maybe we should think a little more carefully about doing this upgrade and consider the alternatives.

Re:

[oohshiny]

There was no discussion about unique capabilities of Vista spawning whole new industries or applications.

What "unique" capabilities would that be?

Re:

[LaughingCoder]

Exactly. That was my point. One would expect a Microsoft-sponsored study to highlight any new and unique capabilities if they could think of any ;-) Apparently even they are admitting is "just another Windows upgrade".

Of course...

[c0l0]

...the study did not explicitly mention that about 40.000 of those were actually psychotherapists.

Steve Gibson was right

[sphealey]

Back around 1992(?) Steve Gibson[1] wrote a column in which he predicted that by the year 2000 50% of the world's population would be employed supporting Windows for the other 50%. At this point I don't think he was far wrong.

sPh

[1] The old SpinRite guy who wrote a lot of good utilities in the DOS era.

Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet jesus, they're bragging about what a maintenance and support nightmare they're creating?
They probably could fix overpopulation too if they'd ship cyanide capsules with the installation media.

How is that good?

[forsetti]

So, running Vista is sooo much harder/more complex/less efficient/ than previous OSs that *more* people need to be hired?!? And that is a good thing how?

=="Vista to cost European companies $3bn/year"

[gjuk]

50,000 jobs at, say, $60,000 each = $3bn. That's $3bn on top of license fees. That's $3bn just to do what you can do already. That's not good. Of course, moving to Linux is hardly cheap on support, but there's no license fee. Seems to me that this would be an ideal time to switch (not that big companies will). Still - it's hilarious that papers will carry this sort of PR puffery from Microsoft without question.

TCO?

[SirCyn]

How is Microsoft lowering TCO when one small continent will need over half a million more people just to keep Windoz running?
Sounds like one more piece of ammo for Linux, the BSDs, or even Apple.

Re:

[SirCyn]

Eep! I should have known better than to post at 8:05 am.
Where's the edit button.....

Too bad...

[Firehed]

Unfortunately, each and every one of those 50,000 is a beta tester. Sounds like they won't be selling as many copies as they'd hoped. I wonder how many new "jobs" it'll create worldwide...

How many more jobs would be created if ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If I am selling software, and my next release is going to require my clients to hire 50,000 more people install and minister it, I would keep it quite confidential.

If this is how one creates jobs, one can create even more jobs if Europe switches to CP/M or IBM 370/155 or Cyber 170 NOS.

Switching costs?

[pesc]

So is this how much it will cost to switch from XP to Vista? Notice how we are not talking about costs to switch now, but how many jobs it will create?

How many jobs will it create to switch to Linux instead of Vista? Is it time to rewrite the TCO studies at the get-the-facts campaign?

News?

[xinu]

Population count of europe? 6.5 billion? 50,000 some how doesn't seem like newsworthy stuff.

To paraphrase:

[tygerstripes]

Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe (at Symantec).

Assuming, of course, that the EU gets their way [slashdot.org] :-)

Fixed it for ya...

[Linker3000]

"A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there...,"

"A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be such a pain in the ass to install and support that it 'will create more than 50,000 IT support jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of complaints for companies there..."

I'm amazed at the arrogance of publishing this

[Andy_R]

"Microsoft admits Vista is so broken, that another 650,000 people in Europe alone will be needed to keep it running."

Did nobody in Microsoft's PR department see that this is bad news of monstrous proportions? Were they really shouted down by people who think the public is gullible enough to believe the 'broken=good for the economy' spin? At a time when businesses like mine can see no benefit whatsoever to changing to Vista, I'm stunned that they didn't bury this story as deep as they could. There's somethin

In other news...

[bigattichouse]

Another study showed that getting rid of computers completely would create MILLIONS of jobs for something called "file clerks" and other information workers. Something called "stenaography" would blossom as a new field, and "typists" would be in high demand at EVERY company WORLDWIDE!

So basically it's an economic disaster

[gelfling]

for the companies that buy it.

Vista to create jobs

[mrjb]

Vista creating jobs is a good thing. Or is it just a euphemism for reduced productivity?

Terrorist creates 50 000 jobs in Europe

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

"A Terrorist-sponsored study found that terrorist attacks will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 security and rebuild jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there,' News.com reports. Europe will see a total of 1.2 mln paychecks thanks to the new operating system: 'In the six countries studied, more than 150,000 IT companies will produce, sell or distribute products or services countering terrorists attack in 2007 and

What the article is *really* saying

[walterbyrd]

"You beter leave msft alone, you mean 'ol EU, you. If you stop msft's abusive business practises, then you will all lose your jobs, and be out begging in the streets. So there."

50,000 Lawyers jobs

[tezza]

Et alia. [slashdot.org]

another microsoft-sponsored study

[flacco]

god how i despise these propagandistic manipulative bastards.

Vista will cost 2.5 Billion dollars?

[nuggz]

So Vista will cost companies 2.5 billion Euros (50k employers at 50k Euro/each)
How is spending an additional 2.5 Billion Euro a good thing?
Or did they do this to draw away from the 5 Billion (100k new jobs) later in the article.

That 5 Billion is money that can't be spent on other things, is it really a good idea to flaunt how much vista is going to cost us?

Oh, it certainly will

[Opportunist]

Think of all the people needed to recode your stuff to work around the mandatory DRM, so your software keeps running!

Not to mention all the people who'll take up the challenge of being the first to whack DRM out of it so the spice flows again.

interesting numbers ..

[rs232]

"The launch of Windows Vista will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries"

At an average salary of UK£30,000 that would mean Vista adding 1.5^52 or roughly UK£1.5 BILLION to the European economy. Thats US$2,823,734,500 DOLLARS. I don't think so.

"IDC believes that more than half of the gain in Windows-related employment will be specifically related to Windows Vista. It is growth that IDC believes would not occur were Windows Vista not in the market,"

I fai

What MS really mean is....

[DataCannibal]

..don't mess with Vista or the MEP [heatonharris.org.uk] gets it..with a chair!

50,000 Jobs' Worth of Expenses

[repetty]

Another way to look at this news... Vista is going to create and additional 50,000 jobs' worth of additional expenses.

This is a good example of spin.

50,000 jobs?

[catdevnull]

Wow...given what I've seen of Vista, Microsoft is wise to beef up their help desk like that! :)

Arg! No. Vista will cost companies 6.5 Billion

[CFD339]

Vista will not CREATE I.T. jobs, it will mean companies need to hire 50,000 more employees to support it. I.T. is a COST CENTER in a company, not a center of profit. A common figure tossed around for the "fully weighted" cost of an I.T. employee (pay + benefits + facilities + management) is $130,000 US. It's just a placeholder, but tends to work for large scale budgeting.

Taking that number and multiplying it by these new jobs which are going to be required to support Vista, and you're draining 6.5 Billio

Redundant Jobs

[shatfield]

This is Microsoft saying that they are good for the "people", but not good for "business". Any employer with even a bit of business sense will see this for what it is -- Microsoft's new product will make them pay more money for more people to do what their current employee base is already doing. This is the creation of redundant jobs.

This is a losing proposition for Microsoft among businesses that can say "no" to Vista and are not afraid of jumping ship to other, more cost effective computing solutions.

Is

In other news

[foniksonik]

A hurricane hit the state of Louisiana, creating an estimated 100,000 new jobs. 99% of the jobs created were in the field of Re-Construction, the other 1% were estimated to be in the Legal field....

Neighbor state Mississippi is concerned that those 100,000 jobs are going to come from their labor pool, leaving them bereft of any Re-Construction laborers though they did say the lawyers and clerks will not be missed.

Alabama state said they were jealous as they hadn't seen that many new jobs created in the last

Sadly...

[Quiet_Desperation]

...all the jobs will be guards for the "relocation" camps to which those that violate Microsoft DRM will be sent.

Aw, geez, here comes another Flambait mod. Oh well.

Surprise! Windows creates jobs!

[Frobozz0]

I doubt anyone on this board would contend that MS's craptacular software accounts for a massive segment of the IT sector. Without it, thousands of people could maintain their own computers with OS X.

the EU better watch out

[stock]

As seen in Michael C. Rupperts book 'Crossing the Rubicon' page 159 :

(http://crashrecovery.org/us-army-unix.jpg )

"It was also not by coincidence then that, in the same winter of 1994-95, McCoy revealed to me that he was using former Green Berets to conduct physical surveillance of the Washington, DC offices of Microsoft in connection with the PROMIS case. FTW has, within the last month, received information indicating that piracy of Microsoft products at the GE Aerospace Herndon facility were like

TCO

[LordWoody]

Does anyone else find it funny that after Microsoft's long campaign touting how Linux has a higher TCO than Windows, they are sponsoring a new study that says businesses will have to spend a ton more on IT staff to install and maintain Vista?

50.000 jobs?

[squizzz]

Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe

Sounds like an army of IT workers supposed to assist Europe's migration to GNU/Linux...

Re:

[Dunbal]

but if the goal was creating useless jobs; we might as well go back to sending snail-mail and using typewriters

      I agree with you. I thought all this modernization and automation stuff was supposed to REDUCE a company's investment in labour, not increase it.