I was going to the bathroom today, and it dawned on me… (as things typically do when I’m in my primeval “think tank”) If anyone is going to make a dent in Microsoft’s operating system dominance, NOW is the time!
Microsoft unleashed its Vista operating system to the public, to find it very poorly received. In the past, hoards clamored to upgrade every OS. Corporate IT departments worked around the clock to prepare for the new challenges and bugs that each new OS would bring, and pushed for early adoption due to the desirable new features. Vista adoption in Corporate America has been slow… very slow, and it’s apparent that Microsoft is losing steam.
What do they do next? They no longer have a ubiquitous platform. Their user base is fragmenting into those who really likes XP, those whose machines won’t support Vista, new users who are stuck with Vista, and then those ardent Vista HATERS who will stop at nothing to point out its failures and shortcomings.
So if you are Microsoft, having recently lost your founder and visionary, what do you do next?
If Apple/OSX or any Linux desktop OS is going to emerge to compete with Microsoft, now is the time.
We bought a laptop last year that came with Vista – we had no choice, and I HATE IT!! I would pay quite a lot of money to find a smart IT person to get me a copy of XP and overhaul my entire system – it’s slow, it crashes constantly, and we pay £10 a month for tech support just so Compaq can tell us to back up our system and reboot. AAARRRGGHHH!!!!
I haven’t had any problems what’s wrong with me?
oh yeah and I was going to say… you are more of a nerd than I ever thought possible. Thinking about operating systems on the pot? scary.
We have Vista on our new desktop computer and we are hating it.
I’ve been using Vista for a year and I love it. It has been flawless for me and most of my co-workers. Granted, I work for Microsoft, but I have to use the same installation disks as everyone else. The biggest thing I’ve found is that if you have a computer with components that were made for Vista, it works wonderfully. If you’ve got an older machine, it’s not quite so great.
XP was around for five years–far longer than any other operating system before that. But people made the same complaints about XP, Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows 95, and Windows 3.1 that they do about Vista.
True, the adoption rate has been only around 100,000,000 in the last year. That’s not as high as they like. But, even if the OS market were to disappear, Microsoft would still be around for a long time. And, coming from inside the belly of the beast, there are a LOT of cool things that will be coming out in the not-too-distant future.