The
human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes
people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat
of the pants. -- Theodore Roosevelt
True, President Roosevelt was not discussing Microsoft management
when he spoke those words, but were he alive today he might well approve of
their use in this case. There is a battle looming in the world of personal
computing. A fight that will pit the mighty against a foe that still does not
know its own strength: Microsoft against that host of loyal PC users for whom
Windows XP is the operating system of choice. Now, before you yawn and wander
off, dismissing this as a nerd-centric argument that could never possibly
impact your life, let me ask you a question:
If you had a product
that worked well, did nearly everything you asked of it and offered greater
satisfaction than you had from previous versions; how would you like to be told
that you would have to switch to an obviously inferior product because the
maker would no longer supply or support the thing that works so well for you?
That is the situation that XP users are in. They like the XP
operating system. Why? Windows XP works. It is as simple as that. That is not
something you hear in such an absolute way about Microsoft products, but after
years on the market, service patches and upgrades, XP is perhaps the most
stable, usable operating system to come out of Redmond, Washington
in decades. Now, just as PC users have the same reliability as Mac and Linux
users, Microsoft is preparing to shove their captive audience to Vista, whether
they like it or not.
Not that they can go into each and every machine and install
Vista. Well, actually, from the technology
point of view, if the computer is hooked to the Internet, they can do that, but
then how would they charge you? Instead, no new machines will come with XP,
only Vista, and support for XP will be
diminished and then, after a suitable period of time, eliminated. Of course,
you don’t have to take this, you can go to Linux, the open-source, Unix-based
operating system; or you can go to a Mac. In either case, you would actually be
moving to a stronger, more crash-resistant operating system and there is
nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, it could mean new hardware, a new
computer system, and it would certainly mean new software applications. That
adds up to a great deal of money, enough to make turning your back on Microsoft
economically infeasible. Add in any industry-specific software that may only
run on Windows and you are even deeper in the mire.
So there you are, a captive audience being told that you
must move on to a product that has a well-earned and terrible reputation.
According to USA Today’s Andrew Kantor, “I can say confidently that it's not
yet ready for primetime. Yes, it's pretty, and yes it has some nice new
features, but they're nothing gotta-have spectacular. Further, Windows XP works
very well, but we live in a society that thinks we need to constantly upgrade
our stuff. With Vista, I think the pressure to
upgrade overwhelmed the testing process. Too many things are going wrong.” Some
of the things you can encounter with Vista include problems with the system’s
copyright protection system, various difficulties working with files, a
tendency to think that it is actually pirated, the odd mandatory hardware
upgrade…the list goes on and if you want to indulge yourself just Google “Vista
User Problems” and wait for the deluge of blogs and articles.
Of course, Microsoft responded. It took them a year to do
it but by March of this year we had Vista Service Pack 1. Here, supposedly,
Microsoft took care of well over a hundred issues dealing with hardware,
application compatibility, reliability, performance, power consumption,
security, new technology support, standards, desktop administration and
management, setup and deployment, interoperability, feature or API changes, and
a raft of general improvement and enhancements including its alignment with
Windows Server 2008.
The Fix
List is huge and painfully technical, it boils down to Microsoft’s promise
that Vista will play well with others. That is
great, but the problem isn’t Vista itself. The
problem is the high-handed way that Microsoft is pushing its customer base
toward a product that most users still don’t want. In spite of the fixes, Vista’s reputation is so bad that no one considers it an upgrade
from XP. In fact, many consumers actually purchase a downgrade when they buy a
new PC. They pay to go from Vista to XP. Is
that a step backwards? Not if you care more about functionality than flash.
It is also a message, one that the folks at Microsoft need
to hear loud and clear. People really don’t want Vista.
They don’t trust it and after a year, during which Microsoft did little more
than compile user complaints, a service pack is not going to do much to help
the non-believer. Microsoft’s response? Have they moved to regain the trust of
those burned by their new copies of Vista? No.
Do they accept the fact that they need to prove this will work as well as XP?
Not even close. Like the missionaries and crusaders of old, if gentle
conversion won’t work, use the sword; if the masses won’t convert to Vista, take away the alternative.
Of course, is any of this necessary? Not really. Vista is the result of Microsoft’s occasional desire to
reinvent the wheel. Once they had XP so stable, they should have kept it and
improved upon it, building on that strength and stability as new technology and
capabilities were developed. The agony that has been the Vista
experience did not have to happen! However, now that it has and Microsoft
thinks they have a handle on it, they are going to push for it.
Is this the action of an industry leader? No, it is the
action of a boss. According to President Theodore Roosevelt, “People
ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open,
and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” Microsoft is
not leading the computing public toward something new and better, it is driving
them to something unwanted and unnecessary. The question is, do you have a
right to refuse?
After all, you own the computer, even if
you are, in essence, leasing the software. Is it not up to you to decide what
software you will or will not place on that computer? This has been the core of
the arguments over predatory end user license agreements (EULAs) and the right you
give companies like Microsoft to install upgrades and other pieces of software
as they see fit. I think that it is at the core of this issue as well. You have
a right to have something workable and useful running your computer and since
Microsoft is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly, it has a special
responsibility that over-rides its rights to make anything they see fit without
taking the needs and wants of their consumers into account. Once they do that,
once they start driving rather than leading, then it is time to break that
monopoly and reintroduce them to the real world of the open market.
Microsoft started small—very small—and
now it is a giant. There is opportunity here so the question is: Who is next?
Maybe you.
Far
better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy
nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory
nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt
