XP-Yes, Vista-No

Has Microsoft's strategy of forcing users to 'upgrade' whether or not they want to hit a snag? In the case of Windows XP, it seems that may indeed be the case. Microsoft had originally planned to stop selling Windows XP by January 31, 2008, but was forced to extend that deadline to June 30, 2008. However, now a new challenge to Microsoft's plans has surfaced, according to a story posted today on Yahoo! News. yahoo! reports that,

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can't be wowed. They complain about Vista's hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.

For them, the impending disappearance of XP computers from retailers, and the phased withdrawal of technical support in coming years, is causing a minor panic.

Take, for instance, Galen Gruman. A longtime technology journalist, Gruman is more accustomed to writing about trends than starting them.

But after talking to Windows users for months, he realized his distaste for Vista and strong attachment to XP were widespread.

However, as the writers note, the real pressure for Microsoft may be the almost 70 percent of business customers who have not yet 'upgraded' to Vista. The Yahoo! story quotes analyst Al Gillen as saying 'You really can't make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you'.

I recall talking to a data storage company recently and inquiring if they had changed over from XP to Vista. The CIO simply laughed and replied that Vista was too buggy to even consider using in the immediate future. I was relieved, since my own interaction with Vista, while limited, has failed to enthuse me about the latest Microsoft operating system.

I think ultimately Microsoft's arrogance, coupled with their less-than-stellar record of product releases may do them in as others work to topple their near-monopoly on the business platform market. Should that occur, they may well point to the failure of Vista as the starting point for their fall. Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

More Thoughts on Vista

As some of my devoted readers may recall, I wrote a couple of short pieces about my opinions on the Microsoft Vista operating system both before its release and two more that were published sortly after it released on February 2, 2007 and again on Febrary 6, 2007. These were based both on my experiences testing Vista's long-running 'beta' version code-named Longhorn, and my long experience with Microsoft products. Among other things, I noted security expert Harry Erwin of the University of Sunderland as saying that,

I think they may have gone overboard on security. Their programmer productivity has reportedly dropped to a level that they won't be able to sell Vista at its price point. Mac OS X has been beating them on price for some time now, and this may make it worse."

Now Captain Ed Morrisey who is himself no beginner at using computers weighing in on the (dis)advantages of using Microsoft Vista. Writes Captain Ed,

Just FYI, I have been using Microsoft systems since CPM DOS on the Apple IIe, and used to build my own computers from scratch until it got so cheap to buy pre-constructed systems about ten years ago. I worked as a net admin for a Fortune 100 company for a few years as a second hat during my call-center days. I'm not exactly a novice at this. I'm figuring that this will be my last Microsoft based system ever. The low price simply isn't worth the hassle any longer.

I wholeheartedly agree. Like the good captain, I have become accustomed to XP, though I hate Microsoft's penchant for thinking that they know better than I what I actually want to do. this tendency is most marked in Word, which is constantly trying to auto-format my text, but it is latent in virtually every Microsoft product I have ever used. However, Vista's tendencies for weird behavior, coupled with the many levels and the insanely high price have made me a permanent convert to Apple's far more robust OS X (although I am highly irate with Apple's decision to change the Software Update so that I cna no longer work with it running in the background. Bad APple! Bad Apple!)

However, Apple is much less intrusive and far more permissive in allowing users (especially expert user) wishes to be fulfilled. I wish that Apple had shown more marketing and sales acumen back during the OS wars, but that battle is forever lost. All we can do is try to force Microsoft to actually consider their customers once in a while.

Thoughts on Vista

Microsoft's that is. An interesting letter from a computer security expert in the United Kingdom was posted on Jerry Pournelle's site. To get to the original, simply click on the link and scroll down to the 'Subject: Microsoft Vista" section. I reproduce it in full as follows:

Subject: Microsoft Vista

I think they may have gone overboard on security. Their programmer productivity has reportedly dropped to a level that they won't be able to sell Vista at its price point. Mac OS X has been beating them on price for some time now, and this may make it worse.

-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information Systems Security, University of Sunderland. http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw
Weblog at: http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php

I have thought for some time that Microsoft is not doing a very good job on their new operating system. Vista is simply a repackaged and (probably) re-programmed version of the aptly-named 'Longhorn' (for the inordinately long time Microsoft has been promising it) and it is still not out. Longhorn itself was promised at least since 2003. Now I read that Microsoft has postponed the release of Vista yet again.

In the meantime, Apple Computer has managed to get OS X released, updated and made into a top-line OS. All for the price of US $129.00 on average for a single-user copy. On that thought, I agree with Dr. Erwin's analysis on the potential price point of Vista. Windows is already ridiculously expensive, and if the price goes up much more, I think more people will commence thinking of switching to a different operating system. The various flavors of UNIX/Linux are mostly free and OS X is not a budget-buster either at it's current pricing. Ergo, Microsoft had better get this new OS out and working in fairly short order, or they may find themselves in trouble, in my opinion. Even Windows users won't wait forever.

Courtesy of Jerry Pournelle.