If Mom had been an experienced former IBM consultant and current distinguished Vice President of Research at Gartner, that is. Gartner analyst Yvonne Genovese served up a warm helping of something to Steve Ballmer at Gartner's ITXpo symposium in Orlando today, according to ComputerWorld.

CW overplays the whole "mom" angle, but it's a scene that no doubt many regular Vista users would like to replay with Microsoft's CEO, perhaps with harsher language. Genovese took Ballmer to task over difficulties using new operating system (which her daughter apparently encouraged her to purchase), to which he apparently had no better response than "Users appreciate the value that we put into Vista."

Apparently not.