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Lister on Vista

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.
 
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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