Ballmer's green comments make me sick

At the CeBIT exhibition in Germany this week, Steve Ballmer got on stage and told the world that Microsoft takes "green" issues seriously.

This was from the big banana of a company that, for as long as anyone can remember, has created software that is as greedy for PC resources as the Bush administration is for oil.

Ballmer even cited research from UK-based magazine PC Pro, which found that if a company ran 200 Vista-based PCs it would create less greenhouse gas emissions than if that same company used 200 Windows XP PCs. According to the research, this was entirely due to Vista's power management tools and nothing to do with how the PCs would perform while being used.

Cobblers! Windows Vista does not use fewer resources than XP.

For example, US IT services company Softchoice says Vista is the most power-hungry Windows desktop so far. Vista's minimum CPU requirements, according to the company, are 243 percent larger than that of XP.

Implying that Vista uses less power than XP is disingenuous and a sign of desperation.

Earlier this year, Ballmer said that the US$500 million -- yes, that's half a billion dollars -- Microsoft has already spent on marketing Vista wasn't enough and it needed to spend more to generate "consumer excitement".

If Microsoft really wants to excite its customers it should get back to basics and create genuinely innovative software -- instead of spouting increasingly unbelievable marketing claptrap.