johnnymk

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/conte...129TX1K0000535

The Vista experience is broken. It's long past time to fix it.


Not since Windows ME or Mac OS X 10.0 have I observed a more troubled consumer operating system. This is a difficult post to write, because I really don't want to beat on Microsoft about Vista yet again. But yesterday's continuation of the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit and several conversations I had today are reasons to look at what Microsoft got wrong and why the company should make things right.

Simply put: Windows Vista is a train wreck, but it didn't have to be. Unfortunately, my "Wow" moment was accepting Windows Vista for what it is. Vista will succeed in the marketplace because of the huge infrastructure built up around the operating system. But that doesn't mean most people will like using Vista, or even ask for it.

To be absolutely, unequivocally clear, major analyst firms like Gartner, IDC and NPD say that Vista has had no perceptible impact on PC sales. None. A successful operating system would create PC sales pull. Vista is anything but. Microsoft can spew off about license shipments all it wants—now more than 60 million for Vista—but counting means little when the majority of PCs ship with the operating system anyway. That's not a customer choice, but the option presented to buyers.

When OEMs like Dell and Lenovo break Windows rank and ship Linux on desktop computers, something isn't right with Windows.

The reasons for the Vista disaster are simple:

Vista introduces too much complexity compared to Windows XP.

Windows XP is a pretty good operating system.

Microsoft had the wrong priorities.

Vista shipped before it was ready.


OEM and Microsoft Vista priorities are out of synch.

The "good enough" problem
The first two reasons are intimately intertwined. Windows XP is a successful product. Service Pack 2 made the operating system rock-solid reliable, and five years in the marketplace made for customer familiarity and a broad infrastructure of supporting applications, peripherals and PCs. For many people, Windows XP achieves what some analysts call the "good enough" threshold.

When something is good enough, its successor or replacement has to be a whole lot better to succeed.

I have six criteria for measuring successful technology products. They should:

Build on the familiar;

Emphasize simplicity;

Hide complexity;

Let people do something new they wished they could do;

Do what they're supposed to do really well; and

When displacing something else, offer a significantly better experience.

While all six criteria interrelate, the last one is most important for Windows Vista.

In North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Windows is a mature market. How any company should sell into a mature market is very different from how to sell into growth markets. When TVs were new and everyone wanted one, manufacturers didn't need to worry as much about feature differences. Subtle feature changes, like going to color from black and white, restarted the sales cycles. But once most everyone had a TV, market growth dramatically slowed and remained fairly stagnant for decades.

In this century, larger-screen and flat-screen TVs deliver a significantly better experience. People are buying new TVs again.

In Microsoft's core markets, most people have at least one Windows PC already, which is most likely running reliable Windows XP. To fire up sales beyond normal PC replacements, Vista needed to be a whole lot better than Windows XP. The opposite is the case: In many ways, the Vista experience is worse, because of increased complexity.

Complexity defines Vista. Examples:

More versions with confusing and poorly differentiated feature sets

Poor match of confusing features to PC hardware, particularly graphics

The need for most people to upgrade hardware to support some of the poorly differentiated features

Too many incompatible applications and hardware

Confusing, unclear and frequent security pop-ups

Shouldn't the goal be to get people to upgrade? There are barriers instead.

Putting revenue before customers
How could Microsoft take such a catastrophic marketing approach? Money is the simple reason. A close examination of how Microsoft brought Vista to market reveals priorities out of synch with customers but not with shareholders. Microsoft behaved as a monopoly should. In the absence of competition in a saturated market, the company looked for ways to maximize revenue per customer, with the expectation that most businesses and consumers would eventually upgrade to Vista anyway.

I make no value judgment here, although some Microsoft Watch readers will presume so. Monopolies aren't illegal in the United States, and Microsoft legally acquired its monopoly. Additionally, businesses, like the people that make them, have a survival instinct. Microsoft acted out of revenue self-interest.

A careful look at the Vista SKUs—and Office, for that matter—makes it clear. Microsoft increased prices by shifting around features. Windows Vista Home Basic isn't comparable to Windows XP Home. The newer version offers fewer core capabilities for the same money. Meanwhile, the more costly Vista Home Premium is XP Home's realistic market replacement. Vista Ultimate is pure price increase, particularly for consumers and small businesses that need advanced networking and security features.

Then there is Windows Vista Enterprise, which, along with some essential Vista deployment tools, can only be purchased through Software Assurance contracts. But that's not how most businesses buy Windows—they get the software on new PCs.

Microsoft's revenue-over-customer priority is a major part of the complexity problem that makes Vista less appealing than Windows XP. The company introduced three new versions and arbitrarily moved around features to maximize revenue and margins per SKU. It may be Microsoft decided that it couldn't release a new version of Windows that was improved enough to fire up sales. If so, the company acted in the short-term best interest of shareholders.

Ready or not
The last two reasons are related. Microsoft shipped Vista before it was ready, or perhaps before the market was ready. The company relied on new Windows Update features to push out enhancements, compatibility fixes and even new drivers between release of the gold code and the Jan. 30 launch. Microsoft continues to push out compatibility and driver updates.

The need to issue these updates reveals that not everything was ready—otherwise, why have any updates at all, particularly after release of gold code but before the software was widely distributed?

Meanwhile, there is related and clear disconnection between Microsoft and its OEMs. Their priorities simply aren't in synch, and that hurts the Vista experience. I conversed with someone today about the Windows Experience Index. The person complained that his Vista rated his laptop only 3.0 and that other people made similar complaints. He's a gamer, and disables many Vista features to improve the gaming experience.

He also noted the number of cracks he has seen that let Vista gamers disable even more features, including anti-malware. Why? Because the experience isn't good enough with the graphics chips shipped on many computers, particularly notebooks. Problem: Cracks for improving performance also are used to infect computers with malware.

The question: How should Microsoft fix its broken Windows? I contend that the experience is broken, but, Vista users, what do you think? How has your experience been? If you think the Vista experience needs fixing, what would you want Microsoft to do? Our comment lines are open for your thoughtful responses and fierce debate.