Microsoft still hoping consumers see 'Wow' in Vista
Microsoft is hoping that with some of Vista's wrinkles ironed out, customers will start noticing more of the advantages the year-old operating system has over its predecessor.
In an interview Wednesday morning, Corporate Vice President Mike Nash acknowledged that the initial experience for many consumers was a frustrating one as they found their old software might not work right or that their hardware lacked the proper driver.
But, he insists, the situation is much better now. Not only are the hardware drivers out there, they are readily available.
"You don't have to go on a scavenger hunt," Nash said. "They are on Windows Update."
Just this week, Microsoft said it was releasing three patches that aim to fix some of the most nagging lingering problems with the operating system, including wireless networking woes and USB-related problems that account for 1 percent to 2 percent of all reported crashes.
Microsoft is also toying with a new way of improving its operating system--through its Windows Live online services. For example, the company has offered a photo management program and an e-mail client that essentially replace the versions that are built into Windows. Such a move offers consumers the possibility of a better experience, but without making the kinds of core operating system changes that would force businesses to perform added testing.
"What we've decided is the way to deliver those experiences, whether it's communications or memories, is with Live," Nash said, referring to things like the Windows Live Photo Gallery. "Photos with Vista today is way better than when we shipped Vista a year ago."
By contrast, Microsoft plans to keep its first significant update to Vista itself--Service Pack 1--limited to bug fixes, reliability improvements and so forth
"Service Pack 1 for Vista is not about features," Nash said. "SP1 is about maintenance. Windows 7 is a new version of the operating system."
While mentioning the next version of Windows by its code name, Nash did not offer any new details such as features or timing, although the target has been seen as around 2010.
But there's still the perception issue. While Apple has a new series of ads that poke fun at Vista and the fact that some people are downgrading to XP, Microsoft's Vista-related marketing, at least in prominent ways such as print and TV advertising, has slowed to a trickle, with most of the marketing being done either in-store or online, or through partners.
It's not like I think Microsoft should develop an Apple-specific campaign, but right now the one talking loudest about Vista is Apple. That doesn't sound like a good recipe for Microsoft.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
MS is netural or business like with their adds. I imgaine they could go negative especially with Apple. State some sales figures, like they have sold more copies of Vista than all Apple OS copies....ever. Or bag on Apple for being overpriced and very closed.
I dont think MS cares about Apple at even now with apples gains, they are still a nat on a rino's arse.
I did a chance to play with a new Zune on a friends Vista notebook today. Very nice upgrade....to the point that the Zune is out of beta. Now if they could only Vista fixed up to the quality of the new Zune software.
I wouldn't be so fast to say that anymore. Sure, it's only ~6% (or higher) nowadays, but up from what... 1-2% (maybe 3%) just a couple years back? And growing at their jaw-dropping rate?
All it would really take would be for Apple to drop the base price of a Mac Mini to $400 for Christmas season (okay, $399), and their sales would positively explode.
Then I would suspect that MSFT would get worried enough for it to show.
As far as bagging on Apple for being "overpriced and very closed", err... no on both counts. Windows is just as proprietary and closed (I'm willing to bet moreso) as OSX. I can --legally-- download OSX's core (Darwin), in open-source format. Windows has no such analogue (unless of course you want to shell out a metric ton of money and ink on NDAs to buy the rights to peek at their "shared source" program).
Dunno about the Zune. I saw the first commercial last night for it since roughly last year. To those who don't know any better, the ads are incomprehensible.
OTOH, maybe they cleaned their act up? Who knows? That said, they came way too late to the party. They might have had a chance last year -- if the product (and its marketing, and its supporting software) didn't suck worse than the (long since defunct) Dell DJ.
Also, the Zune has one ginormous hurdle - cross-platform compatibility. iTunes comes out for Mac and Windows. Zune's thingy comes out for Vista, maybe XP, and... that's it.
/P
Those who believe in the the resurrection and the light (that will shine from eComStation) shall not walk in the darkness (blurred vision of the future - FUD) that comes from Redmond!
http://www.linux.com/articles/57358
http://www.ichthux.com/
But then as you slam your head on your desk trying to get things to work another form of Vista WoW comes up.
A simple example. There is a new error manager. I'm still not sure how it's accessed, but every now and then Vista pops up a window that askes if it should check for solutions to probems. I say yes, it makes some reccomendations none of which work. But it's pretty cool. I have problems that I didn't know I had. I can also see that my Media Center has broken 300 times in less than a year and that none of the solutions fixed the problem. 300+ problems and no solution. WOW.
just accept the fact that it shipped with their machines and live with
it, and a lot who went back to XP like myself.
But Wow? Nope. You could hear the balloon deflating on the
marketing campaign shortly after the critics got a hold of it and it
was released to the wild.
I think its only a small amount and most of them are technical. I think more people probably requested XP over Vista, becuase of either hype or fear of change than actually took their new PC back to XP when it came with Vista.
My recommendation is to avoid it
Doug
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
So while Apple and Linux have both seen huge improvements over the last few years and people really seem not to care for Vista, where are we now?
Well, Apple and Linux are still basically the same at 3.3% - 3.9% and vista is adoption is slow, but inevitable.
Vista has been out long enough that if it was going to cause some kind of a market shift to OSX/Linux we would have seen it by now.
and many Mac users are counted as Windows users. Changing
the agent string on your browser is the only way to get some
sites to show pages to you, so people using those platforms
regularly modify the agent string that identifies the browser and
OS.
Linux is really pretty well entrenched in the US server and Asian
desktop markets. Some governments have also adopted it as the
standard operating system for education and government
(several in Europe, and South America, and also China). It's
dominance isn't challenged by Windows in any of those areas.
The biggest upset is likely to come from Apple. Their growth has
outpaced the industy for the past 3 years straight. European
sales growth is now over 45% and they seem to be on course to
sell 8 million Macs in 2007. For calendar year 2007, Apple
seems to be on course to be the third largest computer vendor
in the US with about 6.5% of the units shipped (compared to Dell
with 28%, and HP with 24.3%). If they follow the same trend
they've been on the past 3 years, their percent of US computer
sales should be around 10% in 2008 and increasing. Mind you,
most Apple sales are to consumers while HP and Dell sales are
to businesses.
Microsoft's "ace-in-the-hole" is really enterprise/institutional
license accounts. They are charged a license even if they don't
use the software. Vista sales have been almost non-existant at
retail (particularly compared to OS X), but volume licenses have
been huge. The problem here is that many of those customers
are complaining that they aren't seeing value for the money they
pay and Microsoft's handling of these customers will decide
whether they can get away with charging for unused licenses the
way they do.
Also, applications are dog-slow on it.
Some say "the hardware needs to catch up w/ the software" but if that is the case, who is going to buy a computer?
My Vista machine is going on eBay soon...
I've been considering going back to XPx64, but why would you sell hardware based on a flawed OS?
"Catholicism Wow!" PR campaign in the move Dogma.
It works great! My games play about the same and my software works about the same ( IE 7 works better! ). Vista is just an easy target for internet complaints. Sure it was a bit of a trial to upgrade ( I won't kid you about that ) but in the end after upgrading the software and the drivers it works great! Yes I said great! Since I upgraded only a month ago I don't know how it was back in Jan. But now it even works great with MS Office 2002! Yes I said 2002! So when I read stuff like this I realize it's either people just complaining or they didn't do their homework for upgrading. Sorry but it works fine and gets better with each update. I like it better than XP because XP is what it looks and feels like. Old. The fact of the matter is the software that runs on XP was begining to make XP look old. No other software lets a product cycle run for 6 years without an upgrade. MS had to do something. Sorry but just tired of reading the falsehoods that people print about Vista. By the way it's not that different from XP to operate so the learning curve is small. Since I'm still using my office suite from 2002 yours should work fine. Do your homework because XP will be phased out eventually and with good reason. When you have a piece of software that has to work with others eventually reworking things under the hood will be necessary ( rather than just a patch ) to insure smooth operation for new items. That's where the important changes are for Vista. Under the hood. However I like the look of Vista also. It' much easier to find your way around the OS and the search function is much improved ( a personal gripe of mine with XP ). Sorry but I feel very strongly about this as I keep reading things about Vista that are half truths or not truths at all. If I can do it with my 4 year old computer anyone can if their computer isn't too much older. The alternative would be never to upgrade or learn anything new. In following that logic why not just go back to Windows 3.1! Or DOS even! Where I work at a local college I remember when a dept. Was all set to upgrade to Windows 95 from DOS. They were all upset because they had to learn how to use a mouse. Within a week they found out how easy it was and how unfounded their worries were. That's what this reminds me of. Trust me learning a new route to work is more complex than learning how to use Vista.
Obviously, you can't please everyone.
To me, switching to Vista was a breeze. It had it's irritating problems (lack of drivers and performance mostly) but the new UI took perhaps 30 seconds to adjust.
Exactly...when you reinvent the wheel, it should still be round.
wow indeed
http://www.itworld.com/Comp/2296/071114leopardmauls/index.html
[i]"Combined with other sales of other operating systems including Tiger, Apple had an overall 60.7 percent share of the market in October -- that's a big jump from the 15.5 percent share it had in September, which was itself the highest share Apple had managed to get so far in 2007.
While some of the kick from the launch has started to wear off, [b]Apple remains in top place in the Japanese operating system market in November. For the week of Nov. 6 to Nov. 12 the single-user license of Leopard had a 40.4 percent share. The nearest competitor was Microsoft's Windows XP Home Edition SP2, which had a 10.5 percent share.[/b]"[/i]
(emphasis mine. mostly to shut up the astroturfers)
Incidentally, Vista is in 5th place there - behind two versions of XP and "OSX Leopard Family" (I'm thinking the 5-pack license thingy?)
Vista will have a long, long, long way to go before they catch up to [i]that[/i].
Somehow I doubt that is what you mean though.
Do you have the figures for when Vista was released? I expect there was a sales spike there too. What would you have to say to that? I bet there was one. What does that say about sales? Shiny new objects always generate sales spikes for a time.
This is the basic reality of economics. Only mentioning one side would be rather... well, ignoring / hiding the facts.
I would have no qualms about using Vista on a new machine.
What a waste of hardware to roll back a Vista computer to XP. Running 2 GB RAM on a 512 MB RAM OS? What do you think the losses to your company are for the wasted RAM, graphic capabilities and ethernet up grades you've virtually disabled are?
I'm not sure MS is missing the boat here, whom might it be?
I understand that O/S producers need to make a living...most of us do. But, you can't make a living when you ignore your customers to learn new interfaces. It just doesn't add up.
Everyone have nice holidays wherever your are and whom/whatever greater power you believe in.
- Vista is and always will be...
- by Heebee Jeebies November 14, 2007 2:48 PM PST
- Total and utter crap.
- Reply to this comment
-
-
- Well...
- by Commander_Spock November 14, 2007 3:06 PM PST
- ... here you have an alternative:
- View reply
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
W O W!