Windows Vista no longer matters

The future for Windows Vista is looking decidedly terminal according to a report in eWeek Microsoft Watch:

Microsoft is moving beyond Vista to Windows 7. Windows Vista no longer matters. If it did:

  • Enterprises would be buying it
  • Consumers would be demanding it
  • Microsoft wouldn’t freak out about Apple’s "Get a Mac" ads
  • The hottest new computer category, netbooks, would ship with Vista
  • Microsoft would be aggressively advertising Vista, instead of trying to bury the brand
  • Developers would be creating hunky Vista apps; instead, projects like Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista are being abandoned

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Vista ever since its consumer release in early 2007.

On balance, though, I like it, that opinion almost entirely based on looking at the operating system from a usability point of view compared to Windows XP. I wouldn’t want to go back to XP.

Yet I can count on hardly more than one hand the number of people I know who run Vista on their computer and have more good things to say about it than bad.

And I don’t know anyone working for a large corporation which has rolled out Vista beyond testers and early adopters.

So Microsoft Watch reckons Windows 7 will be The One.

If Windows 7 is the successor to Windows Vista, I’d say Microsoft has a giant task on its hands to convince enterprise customers (in particular) to make the move. In fact, I think every vendor of proprietary software is looking at challenging times ahead (see this feature in this week’s Economist for an indicator).

Let’s not even mention the cloud for the time being.

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Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Paula Cassin

    I’m a Vista user and must agree with you!
    There’s potential for me to be a happy Vista user, but the current bugs that crop up combined with the difficulty of actually solving the issues means that I stay irritated and live with my slightly crippled computer…

    The last time I tried to sort one out it took hours with help desk guys from Toshiba (my laptop brand) and application provders, installing patches that didn’t solve my problem, repeating my issues several times to various ‘paid-by-the-hour contact center reps, being driven bonkers by computer voice recognition IVRs… and I refuse to pay Microsoft to help me fix problems I shouldn’t have in the first place.

    I do agree that the interface is good and now that I’m used to it I prefer it over XP…We’ll see what happens with Windows 7. I won’t be an early adopter though!

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