Connecting the dots ...
Fellow Windows Vista victims, there’s light at the end of the tunnel: we may soon set ourselves free and only have to pay a $50 ransom. I just did.
The $50 ransom is not a bad deal. Forget the myriad of Win7 SKU’s and whopping prices all the way to $319.99. I’m calling BS: the real standalone Win7 price is $50 or $100. Period.
The proliferation of affordable netbooks is good for everyone – consumers, that is. Computer manufacturers loath it (high volume, low margin business) and so does Microsoft: they can’t exactly sell $100+ worth of software on a $200 machine. So they come up with all sorts of evil plans. 
Put the last nail in the Vista coffin. Windows 7 is on the fast track.
– good summary of the Windows situation by Signal to Noise. Yes, Win 7 Beta will be available for download starting tomorrow, and it promises to be less of a resource hog than Vista. Microsoft also talks about providing free upgrades to Windows 7 for Vista users – at least those who buy Vista after July 1st.
Good start, but not enough. The upgrade assurance is vital for both Microsoft and more importantly its OEM partners, the computer manufacturers to avoid a slump in computer purchases while waiting for the next OS.
But let’s not forget what Win 7 really is: it’s Vista Final. As it has been widely discussed, Win 7 does not have a new kernel, it’s all about lots of incremental improvements to Vista. In other words, it’s a Vista that works – using the Microsoft lingo perhaps it should 
be called Vista SP3.
Make no mistake, the accelerated move to Windows 7 is a marketing decision, not a technical one. Vista became such a disaster that Microsoft finally realized no amount of marketing can save it: it was better the abandon the shipwreck and start with a clean slate, a “new” Windows product.
But that leaves millions of Vista victims behind, who did not want to by this junk, but had no other choice when they bought their computers. I’ve repeatedly said that Windows 7 should:
OK, I know … fat chances for the letter of apology. But I am serious about the upgrade: customers who paid for Vista deserve a working (SP3-level) OS. Abandoning those millions would be akin to a hit-and-run on a mass scale.
Update: Finally, I don’t feel alone anymore: Jason Perlow @ ZDNet agrees: Windows 7 Should be a Fixta Free For All:
…since Windows 7 is essentially a performance and usability fix for a defective product, I’m of the increasing opinion that a Windows 7 upgrade should be free to anyone who was conned into buying Windows Vista.
(This post originally appeared on CloudAve. – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)
If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7 – says Ed Bott on ZDnet. Windows 7: Mojave My Ass –complains Jason Perlow. Dwight Silverman confirms: Sorry, but Windows 7 isn’t a return to Windows XP, while others don’t refrain from some name-calling.
Sorry guys, you’re all wrong.
You’re debating the merits of an operating system based on it’s UI. Sure, if you migrate from XP to Win7, some of the changes can be confusing – but it’s an initial change, the learning curve is not that steep. I actually side with Ed Bott here, the search box to launch programs is a more user-friendly approach than having to remember the names of all *.exe files a’la XP.
But it does not really matter. Mojave my ass? Mojave was a bogus experiment (in fact a PR blitz dressed up as an experiment) showing happy “users” who liked the Vista UI – but hey had no chance to assess what fails in a short demo, and that’s what doomed Vista, not appearances.
Windows in all flavors, be it XP, Vista or 7 is not an application. It’s a friggin’ operating system whose job is to get us into applications and get out of the way. In today’s flurry of blog posts Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has the right approach, presenting performance tests – yes, performance is key to judging how good an operating system is.
The other key criteria is how invisible it stays. Think about it: any time you have to get down to OS level typically means something does not work right. It’s the stupid unexplainable little things like:
The list could go on, but I think you get my drift: Windows 7 (and any other OS) will be judged on how well computers will run, let users interact with real application without having to touch the OS itself.
Finally, to address the speculation about Windows 7 upgrade paths, let me just reiterate this:
OK, I know we have fat chances for the apology – but I really mean the free upgrade part.
(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)
For two days in a row TechMeme was overflowing with Microsoft news coming out of PDC: Azure, Windows 7, Web Office (whatever the MS name will be). But on the very day that supposedly all belonged to Microsoft there was a stream of seemingly unrelated items on TechMeme all pointing in the same direction, none too good for Microsoft.
Joe Wilcox @ Microsoft Watch declared that Windows Vista No Longer Matters :
Contrary to ridiculous assertions recently made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows Vista is a flop. If businesses aren’t buying Vista, after waiting six (now seven) years, it’s no success. Yet, during the last day of the Gartner 2008 expo 10 days ago, Steve asserted that Vista “has been extremely successful.”
Success in terms of revenue does not mean actual product acceptance. The fact is, most of the Vista revenue comes from consumers, not the corporate Market. Consumers don’t intentionally buy Vista, they buy computers: good luck trying to buy a system without Vista on it – unless it’s a Mac or the refreshingly new category of Netbooks. And if you cough up the extra $50-$99 most OEM’s charge you to “downgrade” to XP, it is still booked as a Vista sale! Like I’ve said before, don’t be blinded by Vista sales numbers. No wonder MS omitted the Vista licence count during last week’s earnings announcement.
PDC has shown that Microsoft is now eager to forget about Vista, a bad dream, fully focusing on Windows 7. They must have realized that no multi-million-dollar marketing campaign can fix Vista’s badly tarnished reputation.
Where public opinion is more divided is whether this was just a perception issue, or actual product problems. Count me in the latter camp – no Mojave Experiment can convince me otherwise. The problem with Vista has never been appearance, or features as originally designed: it’s the zillions of inconsistencies, little things that fail every day turning us Vista-users into Vista-sufferers.
The stream of messages coming out of PDC appear to confirm this: it’s clear that Windows 7 does not mean major architectural, infrastructural changes – that’s what Vista did. Win7 is all about the user experience – in other words, putting the finishing touches on Vista. I said over a year ago: we don’t need another desktop OS. But I guess I am OK with Windows 7, provided Microsoft:
Whether it’s Vista or Windows 7, almost doesn’t matter – it will likely be the last major desktop OS MS releases, and as such it represents the end of an era. Obviously Microsoft themselves recognizes it (finally!), this years PDC is all about moving to the Cloud, be it the Azure initiative, or the announcement of moving Office to the Web. (To be precise it’s the announcement of a future product announcement).
This trend will only be accelerated by the shift in what devices we use for our (cloud-based) computing needs. Time to Leave the Laptop Behind – says The Wall Street Journal, joined by Coding Horror’s Jeff Atwood who declares: The Web Browser is the New Laptop. Every day another Netbook is announced, at lower and lower prices, and they change how we access information forever. I’ll be devoting the next post to this subject, in the meantime leaving you with another post from Henry Blodget: Microsoft Windows: The Beginning of the End.
(Originally posted @ CloudAve)
WindowsNow reports that Windows 3.11 has officially reached its end-of-life. Wow! Obviously obsolete as a standalone product, it is still being sold in embedded systems – until November 1st, 2008. Who would have thought?
I actually liked that OS… in fact I also liked DOS 3.1 – even though I had the PC-DOS version on my system, cause where I worked back then, people believed they would soon squash this nasty little company putting out the MS-DOS version. 
CNet reports that “the Globalization Institute, a Brussels-based European Union think tank, has recommended the EU require all PCs to be sold without preloaded operating systems such as Microsoft Windows.”
The recommendation is for PCs and Operating Systems to be sold separately, breaking Microsoft’s monopoly, increasing competition. I’m not exactly a Microsoft-fan, in fact just recently responded to Robert Scoble who asked: Why doesn’t Microsoft get the love?:
…just look at the examples above. There are a lot more. They all show a corporate culture that does not have the customer in focus. It’s hard to love such a company, no matter how great many of the individual employees are.
So, I guess it’s time to celebrate, the EU would finally break the monopoly. And we’ll be free to buy our hardware, OS, Software all separately, trying to get it all work together. No big deal … after all, no-one ever had to hassle with non-working device drivers even with the pre-installed, pre-configured systems? But wait, it gets better:
There is no reason why computer operating systems could not follow the same model as computer hard drives and processors, which comply with standards that allow for broad compatibility as well as competition in the market.
Now, this is a pretty poor analogy: as far as I know, the hard drive and processor come installed in the computer – or are they suggesting the EU mandate unbundling those, too? We could just buy the PC components separately, and assemble it ourselves. Hey, I have a friend who never buys complete systems, he loves building them. Oh, and he fixes his car, too.
But me, well, I happen to be the lazy consumer type, expecting these things to work out-of-the-box. Preferably one box. Answering my own questions: yes, selling windows-less computers is probably a good idea, but only to the extent there is a market demand for them. Certainly not mandated by governments.
Related posts: Michael Gartenberg, Geek Speaker, BetaNews, TECH.BLORGE.com , Macsimum News
So the next OS from Microsoft will be Windows Seven (where’s Windows 6?) – does anyone still care?
I simply don’t get it: Vista is barely out, nobody seems to like it, CIO’s refuse to upgrade, analyst firms tell them to wait, individual users who tried it switch back to XP, others time their new PC purchase so they can still get an XP machine – generally speaking Vista was as poorly received as the ill-fated Windows ME.
Apple is gaining market share, the major computer manufacturers are offering Linux PC’s, the Web OS concept is getting popular, applications are already on the Web – can anyone clearly see the shape of personal computing in 2012? (Yes, I know MS plans for 2010, I’m just adding the customary delay.) Will it still matter what OS we use to get on the Internet? How can Microsoft be so out of touch?
Considering the resistance to Vista ( see this Computerworld article on making XP last for 7 years) why would the world want to upgrade switch to yet-another Windows OS in five years?
Of course I’m not saying nobody cares. This hypnotized crowd certainly does. 
Update (7/23): ZDNet’s David Berlind is asking the same question.
Update (7/25): Why ‘Seven’ and Not SP1?
Update (8/9): a very good analysis by eWeek: Broken Windows
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