Windows 7 is shaping to be an awesome OS. It’s everything people wanted Vista to be and more. Which is exactly why Microsoft should give it away—or offer it dirt cheap—to Vista users.
Windows 7 is the solution to Microsoft’s Vista problem, which is really a nasty hydra of a problem. Let’s not pretend that this isn’t the case. There are three major heads to the beast: Consumer perception of Vista as an abysmal failure and a crappy OS (hence, Mojave); the use of XP instead of Vista in increasingly popular netbooks; and the critical lack of Vista interest from the business community.
Windows 7 neatly resolves them: Word-of-mouth sentiment for Windows 7 has been overwhelmingly positive, even from Mossberg, a dude who spent half of his Sprint Instinct review pre-reviewing the iPhone 3G. Windows 7 is slimmed down when it needs to be, running fantastically on netbooks. And the IT buyers and smartest consumers who skipped Vista have been waiting, cash in hand, for whatever came after, so Windows 7 will have a much more enthusiastic customer base.
The stars are aligned for Windows 7. It could wash the bad aftertaste from Vista out of everybody’s mouth. But that’s only if Microsoft sells it right.
For starters, Microsoft needs to get rid of all the separate licence types (OEM vs. upgrade vs. full) and trim the number of boxed configurations. Give buyers three versions, Home, Business and Ultimate, all at a reasonable price. $129 would be ideal for the first two, with $149 for Ultimate.
Second, every Vista user should get it for $49, or even less.
Apple gave away OS X 10.1 for free, and Microsoft should take a lesson there. It doesn’t matter that Vista isn’t really broken—like OS 10.0 really really was. Or that it was mostly the hardware guys’ fault for not delivering their drivers on time. Or that Mojave proves, at least to the nimwits who appear on camera, that Vista is a warm and fuzzy OS. Or that, conversely, most people who hate Vista have never really used it. All of that could be true, but regardless, people’s perception is that Vista was, is and always will be broken. And perception is reality. In that sense Vista will always lose.
Microsoft screwed up the Vista launch, and well, first impressions are the ones that matter the most. True, it’s already paying for that mistake. But taking that small hit per user wouldn’t just be the final cost of the Vista screwup, it would be “earnest money” as they say in business. Microsoft would be buying something it hasn’t had the opportunity to get in the last few years: People’s faith.
bmaN
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 12:13 PMAmen!
Max
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 1:15 PMSeriously, I’m not sure I’m going to give Microsoft another chance. If I’m going to pay for a new operating system I’ll at least look at the other options available, like MacOS and Ubuntu Linux.
Windows7 for free? How much pain will be involved upgrading from Vista with it’s broken components to Windows 7? Is a fresh install the recommended path?
Ronnie
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 1:59 PMMicrosoft has no hope. It makes no sense to me at all why people bother to buy ‘Ultimate’ for $800 when they have another OS – Linux for just the all time low price of $0.00.
Just because everyone runs Windows, everyone else does it for the sake of compatibility.
My laptop runs Vista Home Basic OEM included, and that’s why I use it, otherwise I’d have installed Linux a long time ago.
If they price Upgrade version higher than A$65, I ain’t buying it.
moz
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 2:32 PMVista is still truly, madly, deeply broken for me. Single sata disks work about the same as under XP but RAID of any sort crawls – less than half the speed of a single disk out of the array (I run mirrored boot + RAID5 storage). Multiple monitor support is iffy – flickering and losing orientation/position on reboot. And so on. Sure, you can call all those “driver problems” but sheesh, if Ubuntu supports the whole bundle OOB why can’t Vista? The problem is that XP64 dosn’t work a whole lot better.
I’d happily upgrade my Vista ultimate to Windows7 if it was affordable. to be honest, probably even if it was pricey. But right now I’m working instead on trading VMware for Windows in on VMware for Linux and not having Windows on the host at all.
FredFrog
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 3:39 PMI brought Vista Ultimate under the premise that I would get all these wonderful additions – which amounted to ? OH a couple of games – just what you want when you buy the most expensive BUSINESS focussed version of the operating system ?
Seriously, I concur with the sentiment. I recently attended an accounting software house who were about to release the most important upgrade in their companies history this year and they were going to give their customers “substantial” incentive to upgrade.
Supporting so many different versions can be cost prohibitive – some bean counter at Redmond should do the numbers and do the numbers on supporting Vista VS getting all these customers over to Windows 7 at a very “reasonable” cost. That way they can have a ceremony at Redmond and finally put to rest the Vista legacy once and for all.
The issue is: Is anyone listening to the customer – you know, the ones who have the buying power, the ones who have a choice ? Perhaps the boys at Redmond should get away from their spreadsheets and the computer screens and see what really is driving the customer demands – because for the majority of businesses, Vista provides no-better a platform that XP did for Wordprocessing, spreadsheets, email, internet etc.
Bob
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 3:44 PMStupidest article ever.
Vista’s bad image only lingers in the minds of moronic blog writers and Microsoft haters. Most of the general public either never cared or actually used Vista and saw it was fine.
90%+ of computer users are going to use Windows regardless of the price, and for most of those users the price is built into the cost of a PC (and therefore essentially charged to Dell, HP, etc.)
$49 for an OS upgrade? That is a seriously naive suggestion. The largest sections of the market won’t even be upgrading – they’ll upgrade when they buy a new PC with Windows 7 preinstalled.
@Max
What broken components of Vista are you talking about? Vista works better than any other Windows version for the most part. It still has occasional issues with the millions of software and hardware items available in limitless combinations, but that is unavoidable.
Anthony
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 5:18 PMTotally agree. But knowing Microsoft they’re bound to screw up with the public awareness. Look at Apple’s switch ads: It’s penetration is enormous enough for average Joe to have seen it and yet not understand what it’s all about. And that’s the sort of penetration MS needs with 7.
Luke
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 6:03 PMAmen! x2
Wok
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 10:00 PMYeah no.
Vista is the best OS around for most people, sure it has its problems but so do all other OS’s whether that be lack of support for common applications or lack of familiarity.
XP Vistas only real competitor is still around because it has continued to mature into an exceptional OS. Vista while better than XP isn’t that much better (and yes there are tradeoffs especially with performance) hence Vistas seemingly poor uptake and obviously poor image.
Yes Windows 7 is what Vista could/should have been; I agree discounting Windows 7 to Vista users is a good way to go to keep the existing customers happy.
OEM’s versions need to remain.
Upgrades should be available from Vista (very cheaply) and XP (cheaply).
The price of full versions (does anyone really get these?) should be a little more realistic.
Office should be available with the OS at a massive discount.
Agree there should only be three versions. Ultimate users should get more too… perhaps some more of the “Power Toys” and the like by default.
Bone Heads
Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 9:00 PMAre you bone heads kidding??
I’ve got 2 PCs (a quad and a core 2 laptop) that run Vista…MAGIC.
No BSODs, no crashes, no f’n anything…it KICKS XPs arse.
Retards…use Vista for a while and get back to me.
The retard media hype is making me ill.
Win 7 for $USD49 sounds good though.
Sign me up.
Raymond Dunton
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 2:06 PMBob.
You might think $49 for an upgrade is naive, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Microsoft has done this. If you search on the internet, you will find that Microsoft allowed users of Windows 98 to upgrade to what was the new operating system at that time, Windows ME, for … you guessed it, only $49. I don’t expect they will do that, but I do agree with the poster that owners of the Vista OS should have a similar upgrade path for a greatly reduced rate. Perhaps it wouldn’t be $49 this time, since this is 9 years later, but Microsoft could look into allowing Vista users to upgrade for a very reasonable price.
Stupid vista
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 11:58 AMVista is painfully slow with the hard drive, to a point where I dont know how anyone can use it