Microsoft's Vista Strategy

[mbossman2]

the true success or failure of many computer products (and windows is no different) is the how/if/when business America adopts that specific product.

When you look at businesses, they tend to be very slow to adopt an evolutionary technology and something like Vista is adopted even more slowly. (BTW I work for a top line technology company and mine is included in this...we adopted XP less than 18 months ago as the corporate standard, only 5 years after XP was released)

the reason for this is many businesses thrive and survive with proprietary/custom applications, many of which are absolutely mission critical, and changing the operating system may (and in many cases probably does) cause significant issues with those applications.

So extensive (and expensive) testing is done to hammer out all of the bugs in their application interoperability before it is even piloted with a small number of confined users (which usually uncovers all sorts of other issues). While this is happening, the company is then looking at how to roll out this change to all their users (creating and working on a standard platform has the effect of saving approximately 40% in your support costs and that is A LOT of $$) without causing massive disruptions. think about how YOU would roll out a new operating system to 500 employees and you have to do so (1) without disrupting their productivity, (2) without losing any of their files, (3) you have to do all of this in a period of less than 5 days and (4) you hav a support staff ratio of 1 IT support person for every 100 employees.

While what consumers want/need/desire IS important, it is not the key to a products success (unless that is its target market)...the key for a broadbased technology product is corporate adoption....corporate owned computing platforms far out number the consumer owned platforms.

if you doubt that: I work with 3000 people on my campus so that is 3000 windows PCs + 1500 Unix type workstations (developers have both, one set attached to the internet accessible network and the others connected to the truly private, non-internet connected network for security purposes) + the auxilary server farm of approximately 300 individual production servers and another 100 or so in the "test" environment. These numbers also do not include the PCs for training purposes, engineering test beds, customer demonstrations and the like. I figure that the for every 1 employee there are at least 2 computing platforms (and this campus does not house any of our "main" data centers or "main" engineering sites or customer demo sites on those I beleive the number jumps to 4 or 5 to 1). the average consumer probably owns 1, maybe 2 PCs per household...

based upon all of that, I would not consider Vista a success until business America begins to wholeheartedly adopt it..

And as you can see from above, Dell is still shipping XP thru its business lines and probably will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (while MS ceases shipments of the "older" OS to small OEMs and retail versions, the major players continue to have access to them for quite sometime...their corporate customers demand that)

[mystvearn]

Then they will buy other OEM or give vouchers to people to buy the XP retail?

Well as long as XP still has updates, I am still using it.

[David M]

Originally Posted by Panama Red . David, if you based all your buying decisions on what others say, I doubt you would be drivng a Chrysler Crossfire (I think my memory is correct on this one). Many reviews of that vehicle were less than kind, especially the ones by the Euro loving folks. It just doesn't compare to a BMW, Mercedes, etc, etc, etc. Personally, I think it's a great looking car and if I had the exta money, I'd buy one too. It's one of the few cars my wife and I both like. But the majority of reviews I remember reading gave it medium to low marks. (

Panama,
Under the sheet metal a Crossfire SRT is a Mercedes SLK that was built by Karmann in Germany. It is 99% foreign parts and comes with a tighter sports suspension than the SLK which puts the handling up there with high end Mercedes and Porsches. I purchased it based on Mercedes reputation and having read plenty of reviews. I have owned it for a year now almost to the day and have had zero problems with 21k on the odometer. Apparently we read different reviews because the only complaint I read was that the steering is worm and screw and not rack and pinion and the fact that the car is too small for someone who is 6 ft 4 inches of which I am shorter. There were plenty of complaints about cosmetic items but then that is a very subjective matter. I also got the feeling that many and know for a fact that some of the reviewers are foreign car snobs and it's always been their agenda to trash cars with American labels.

I don't think I am being inconsistent buying this car based on reviews and stating negative things about Vista and the publics current negative perception of Vista. Simply put, the public is wise to Microsoft and their new OS releases and that it is best to wait for the vast majority of the problems to go away before buying. One persons experience with Vista, such as yours and having few problems, does not reflect the overall amount of problems this OS is having according to the reviews that I have been reading.

I don't think I am being inconsistent at all.

[IntegraGSR]

If something works (XP), why change it? I understand the need to learn and tinker because that's what geeks do, but I can't tell you how many of my clients/friends have used Vista and asked where they could buy a copy of XP to install over it.

[Pride]

Originally Posted by David M I don't think I am being inconsistent buying this car based on reviews and stating negative things about Vista and the publics current negative perception of Vista. Simply put, the public is wise to Microsoft and their new OS releases and that it is best to wait for the vast majority of the problems to go away before buying. One persons experience with Vista, such as yours and having few problems, does not reflect the overall amount of problems this OS is having according to the reviews that I have been reading. I don't think I am being inconsistent at all.

No, The PUBLIC is not wise. You choose to listen to the many negative reviews which are all of the SAME complaints and really those complaints are drama queen type complaints.

Simple fact is you have yet to try it for yourself yet you CHOOSE to listen and belive the negative complaints which all are from the same type of people. And CHOOSE to ignore all of the many good comments about Vista.

Might i add the PUBLIC voted Bush into the white house not once but twice all the while complaining they didn't want him.

[hitchface]

No politics. Might start up something ugly

Like I said, there is good to Vista, it isn't all bad. It is bad enough, however to keep a lot of people from it.

[HAL9000]

Careful Pride.... you're potentially opening a political discussion which isn't allowed here.

[Pride]

Originally Posted by HAL9000 Careful Pride.... you're potentially opening a political discussion which isn't allowed here.

Oops yeah true. I didnt mean it as so the point i meant to get accross was the "all the while complaining about him part"

[MaxRat]

This thread like most others that debate stuff is getting to the point of being pointless.....

Is doesnt matter is Vista is better or worse than XP...but what does matter is...the people who have Vista like it and feel it was worth the cost...

I have been running Vista since the early Beta's and I can personally tell you some of the beta 2's run a bit better than the initial release...atleast for me....

Networking was quicker...Media Player would automatically pull your music across the network and load it for you on the Vista rig if you elected to when prompted....

There are some features that were/are omited from earlier beta's but hey...whatever...

Vista is suposed to be better but just the oposite of XP if that makes any sence...

It does have issues just like ANY OS in it's initial release form....My only issue with it right now is sound quality...

Sound quality from Media Player seems to vary too much from MS OS's...I am Triple Booting between XPpro, XP64 and Vista-32 and for me the best sound I have yet to match comes from XP64...I am not sure why but thats the way it is...both XPpro and XP64 both use Media Player 10....Vista uses 11..and I think most part is due to the DRM...

and as soon as I figure out how to disable it I will know...

But all in all Vista has some decent features...Just about everything I have thrown at it works fine with UAP off....with it on it's a long drawn hassle that has Advil written all over it...

It's all good if someone likes Vista and runs it while others use XP...it's called Opinions and sometimes we should keep these to ourselves and all it does is waste valuable real estate space here when we could be contributing to something more important or more worthyness of a post...

I for one am glad post counts dont count in here...

Back to Lurking....

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by MaxRat ...it's called Opinions and sometimes we should keep these to ourselves and all it does is waste valuable real estate space here when we could be contributing to something more important or more worthyness of a post...

A big AMEN! from me.

[David M]

The public has voted with their pocketbooks as reflected in sales. That's not my opinion....it is fact. Even Steve Balmer has admitted to poor sales.

http://news.com.com/Sales+of+boxed+V...3-6159700.html

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/04/05/vista.awareness/

http://digg.com/tech_news/Ballmer_Bl...or_Vista_Sales

http://computerworld.com/action/arti...intsrc=hm_list

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/02/16/1654202.shtml

[YukonMaster]

Originally Posted by perkster The one thing i think is wrong is people like dell selling new machines that are barely vista capable, because while it will give them the latest OS it will not give them the best experience with it as the computer will just about be able to cope rather than thriving with it. i think they should either have 1.5-2gb min on all vista machines they sell or should at least warn users about the experience.

It says on the label, Vista Capable, (if currently running XP) or it will be running the version of Vista that will perform the best for that computer. I found that running Vista Home Premium on my laptop (specs below) runs nice even with aero. You wouldn't be able to do any AutoCAD or image editing etc. with that amount of ram but it isn't bad.

AMD TL50 Turion X2 1.6 Ghz
1 Gb DDR2 Ram