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Vista Perception vs Reality
Microsoft has been on a publicity blitz to try to
shake off the idea that Vista isn’t doing as well as
hoped.
Mike Nash, who’s the Microsoft executive in charge
of Windows, has been personally calling journalists
and bloggers to give them a host of statistics that
he says show Vista is a success. He revealed that:
• 140 million copies of Vista have been sold so far;
• there are now 2,700 programs which officially run on Vista; and
• 86% of Vista users say they’d recommend it to a friend.
• there are now 2,700 programs which officially run on Vista; and
• 86% of Vista users say they’d recommend it to a friend.
He also said Service Pack 1 has proven a great
improvement, claiming it cuts the average start-up
time in half to just 45 seconds.
Nash told
News.Com that “The perception of Vista is a lot
better for the people that have used Windows Vista
than (for) the ones who haven't. At some level, a
little seeing is believing."
Probably the biggest problem with Vista’s public
image is that it’s the first edition of Windows
that’s so heavily aimed at people running newer
computers. In the past, each new edition has been
designed to work well on older machines.
That means a lot of people who’ve compared the two
systems are existing XP users who’ve replaced it
with Vista on a computer that’s a few years old,
rather than on a brand new machine.
When they then talk about the problems they have
with Vista, other people may get the impression the
problem will affect all computers, even brand new
ones, and that it’s down to Vista itself being badly
designed.
A good example of this is Microsoft’s claim that
more than 90% of programs designed for XP will run
fine on Vista, and that the figure is 99% if you
only consider the best-selling programs.
This may well be true, but the statistic is for the
current editions: in reality, many XP users are
using older editions of software. Obviously these
work fine with XP, but they are much more likely to
be problematic with Vista. People experiencing these
problems will often feel they outweigh the benefits
of Vista’s new features.
It may seem unfair to Microsoft that people make
such comparisons and give Vista a bad rap, but
that’s the reality they have to deal with. The irony
is that they’ve probably done as well as can be
expected in terms of sales so far. Given that there
are problems running it on older machines, they
really shouldn’t have expected to sell a huge number
of standalone copies of Vista for people to upgrade
their existing computers.
There seem to be a couple of other key problems with
marketing Vista. First of all, there’s a feeling of
disappointment among some computer users simply
because Vista received so much advance publicity
that it couldn’t live up to the hype. Some people
who’ve tried Vista have been disappointed because it
doesn’t have some of the new features that were
rumored.
Secondly, Microsoft hasn’t done a great job
persuading businesses to upgrade to Vista. Companies
with a lot of computers are a lot less likely to
“give it a try” in the same way a home user might
do, and so are much more affected by reports from
those who’ve experienced a problem.
There’s also an irony with the release of Service
Pack 1. Now would be the ideal time to persuade
skeptical businesses to get Vista because many of
the early kinks have been worked out. But to do so
would involve acknowledging the original release had
flaws – which hostile reporters would probably seize
upon.
The major lesson here is that perception is often
far more important than reality. The big challenge
for Microsoft now will be to persuade XP users it’s
worth upgrading (even if that involves buying a new
machine) rather than trying to hold on until Windows
7 is released in a couple of years.
John
Lister is a freelance writer from Manchester, England.
After graduating from a professionally-accredited
journalism degree course in 1998, he spent six years
running the press office for Plain English Campaign, a
pressure group working to make public information
clearer. He now works full-time writing articles and
producing summaries of newspaper reports.
His technology-writing experience includes daily
articles for the Infopackets technology newsletter. His
other specialties include the professional wrestling
industry, about which he has written two books.
Check out some more of his work at www.johnlisterwriting.com
John Lister's Articles
Friday May 29th 2008: Windows 7: Lucky For Vista?
Friday May 22nd 2008: Microsoft Pushing Vista's Green Appeal
Friday May 15th 2008: Microsoft having a tough time in British schools
Friday May 9th 2008: Vista Perception vs. Reality
Friday May 2nd 2008: Windows Vista SP1
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