[Gllug] Windows 7

[John Winters]

On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:37:18 +0000, Shannon Carver
<shannon.carver at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Don't get me wrong, I'm no more a Windows Fanboy than anyone else here,
but
> find the same old "This new version of Windows is hopeless, I'm sticking
> with the old one" a bit tiresome, as I don't consider that's ever been
the
> case (apart from when that Monstrosity Windows Me came out)!

I think a large-part of the non-take-up of Vista is down to something quite
different.

Since time immemorial, Microsoft have sold new versions of Windows with the
message, "This next one is going to work properly and do what you need -
honest guv."  With XP, and from the point of view of a large percentage of
their users, they actually made the mistake of delivering on that promise
with a widely available, consumer oriented version of Windows.  Until XP
came along, there were always major issues which made the majority of users
keen on getting hold of an upgrade.

XP certainly still has its faults, but they are manageable, and more to the
point a lot of XP users don't see them as faults in XP - they think that
all computers are like this.  They therefore don't see why they would want
to upgrade.  This applies both to home users (it does all I want) and big
businesses (it does all we want and it would cost *phenomenal* amounts of
money to upgrade all our systems).  Yes, there is still an "ooooh - shiny!"
contingent who will stay up all night to buy a new version when it comes
out, and power users who actually gain benefit from a 64-bit installation,
but for a very large percentage of people the USP for Vista/W7 simply
doesn't exist.

To an extent the same is true of Linux.  I run Debian Lenny on my
day-to-day systems and Debian Squeeze on a test box which I update about
once a week.  There's very little difference between them - certainly far
less than there has been in earlier iterations of the release cycle.  I
probably will upgrade when the new version is released, but not for any
terribly compelling reason, and I certainly wouldn't do it at all if it
were difficult or involved significant cost.

The computer is reaching commodity status - it Just Works(TM).

John


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