Windows users with Vista blisters aren’t too happy about Microsoft pulling XP from the shelves in June. A campaign to save XP is now up and running. A previous effort extended the date, but now Microsoft is looking like it’s going to pull the plug.
Microsoft doesn’t seem to have been getting the message that Vista really isn’t everyone’s idea of the last word in great software. It’s starting to look like the market is in revolt, too.
Some may not remember, but Windows 98, which was a good operating platform, had a lot of supporters, too. XP was initially seen as a bug ridden nuisance, and people really didn’t want to shell out for a new system on principle, simply because 98 got replaced.
I certainly didn’t, and I still have a copy of 98 on both computers. I like software that will run some of my older stuff, anyway.
Vista, however, is not getting a lot of enthusiasm.
The whole Microsoft market principle of hitting users with whole new packages every few years, usually after about two or three years of fixes, isn’t popular.
It may be risky, too. Apple can now handle big demands, and it uses a pretty different market approach, with a very different selling pattern.
Given that Apple can now operate Windows software, removing XP may not be such a good idea. Vista just hasn’t got that market image. The whizzbang graphics and video stuff is all well and good, but really, the home computer isn’t an X Box. It’s for business, and it’s really part domestic appliance, part communications. Most people just do not buy major domestic items on that basis.
It’s not cheap, and having new hardware configurations is definitely not a selling point. People prefer things that just plug in, no mystery, no guessing why something’s not running.
The Sydney Morning Herald:
Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.
No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can't be wowed. They complain about Vista's hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.
The keyword here is “irritating”. If you think about what makes people change brands, that would be the word. Something they used to like doesn’t do that any more, and they don’t like the current version.
That’s basic market dogma.
The really deadly part of this issue is that Microsoft has a major capital commitment in Vista. Ironically, XP is the popular product, and Vista is the lame duck. It’s like replacing a fit athlete with a cripple.
Whether it supports XP isn’t really the problem. The problem is that XP supports a lot of applications that people use daily.
Nobody wants to reload all their passwords, their various online accounts, and the rest of the massive amount of material that wind up on a home PC, just because the maker wants to run another product, and for no other reason. Nor is more hardware exactly a turn on. Added cost, to do what?
XP is pretty trustworthy. I’ve reloaded and repaired it a few times, using the Dynamic Download, which does the updates as well.
Microsoft could do worse than to just build on XP, streamline its somewhat overstocked support system into something like Dynamic Download, and keep developing.
Vista isn’t different enough to justify its imposition on Windows users. Ironically, Vista itself is going to be replaced, in 2010:
Take, for instance, Galen Gruman. A longtime technology journalist, Gruman is more accustomed to writing about trends than starting them.
But after talking to Windows users for months, he realised his distaste for Vista and strong attachment to XP were widespread.
"It sort of hit us that, wait a minute, XP will be gone as of June 30. What are we going to do?" he said. "If no one does something, it's going to be gone."
So Gruman started a Save XP web petition, gathering since January more than 100,000 signatures and thousands of comments, mostly from die-hard XP users who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010.
On the petition site's comments section, some users proclaimed they will downgrade from Vista to XP - an option available in the past to businesses, but now open for the first time to consumers who buy Vista Ultimate or Business editions - if they need to buy a new computer after XP goes off the market.
That last paragraph is a new angle. Nobody’s ever threatened to go back to a prior system before. That it’s on a cost basis isn’t good news for Microsoft, either. And why the hell wouldn’t they? A year and a half isn’t going to make that much difference, nor would three years.
XP users aren’t going to trudge out lemming-like and buy Vista, knowing it’s only going to be operational for a couple of years before it’s replaced.
Suggestions, Microsoft
Do nothing. It’s cheaper.
Keep the XP support, just use the Dynamic Download as the template.
Listen to your customers, for once, and stop with the endless system changes. If it doesn’t need doing, don’t do it.
Go nuts, make the new systems something which can work with existing XP software, just add extras to a reliable system. Think of the cost benefits.
Remember Apple is no longer the harmless little has-been it was when XP came out.
