Trashing Vista
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
(Credit: Business Week)
A number of companies are opting not to embrace Redmond’s latest operating system and, like GM, are waiting for Windows 7 instead, so reports the Business Week posting Closing the Door to Microsoft Vista.
Unfortunately some decision makers are still buying and drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid, and hoping for a better outcome. More of them are joining the chorus saying “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
General Motors (GM) may take a detour around Vista, the latest computer operating system from Microsoft (MSFT). The automaker has encountered so many speed bumps getting Vista to work on its machines that it may just wait for the next version of Windows, due in 2010 or 2011. “We’re considering bypassing Vista and going straight to Windows 7,” says GM’s Chief Systems & Technology Officer Fred Killeen.
Vista taxes all but the most modern PCs with hefty processing and memory requirements. Many of GM’s PCs can’t even run the system. “By the time we’d replace them, Windows 7 might be ready anyway,” Killeen says. Then there are compatibility problems with all the software that needs to run on Windows. GM’s software vendors still haven’t ensured all their programs will run on Vista trouble-free. So the company is sticking with Windows XP for now. Killeen figures GM could install Windows 7 in three or four years.
Many of Killeen’s counterparts across Corporate America are finding themselves similarly vexed by Vista. The resulting delay or rejection of Microsoft’s flagship product is stepping up pressure on the company to expand other areas of its business, including online software. Vista was first released in late 2006, but the dismay with it has come into sharper focus as slower-than-expected uptake affects Microsoft’s bottom line, Google (GOOG) spiffs up its own free versions of competing software, and corporate tech managers move to put more Apple Macs on employee desks.
Microsoft looks to have been masters of selling visions and eye candy to most decision makers for years.
My posting Microsoft Twelve Step Recovery Programs may need a bit of revision.
It seems to me, Microsoft is continuely plastering do-everything and over featured user interfaces on troubled code. It’s like heaping more layers of frosting on a cake that’s molding on the inside. The cake may have marketing flash and sizzle, but customers are getting sick eating it. For what ever reason, they keep coming back and paying, and paying, for more sugar highs from the frosting.
Looks to me like denial and addiction behavior. Maybe Microsoft Twelve Step Recovery programs are the next big thing.
The seemingly rejection of Vista by corporate America may be signaling Microsoft is going south from its zenith.
…John
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