Vista's Consumer Launch
by
Randy Mears
With Microsoft Vista already in the hands of business, the coming launch of Vista to the consumer market (January 30th) seems a little anticlimactic to me. I haven’t seen the kind of excitement, ahead of Vista’s release date, that I recall from previous releases of new Windows Operating Systems. Perhaps the early release to business has taken the wind out of the sails, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. When XP came out, I remember migrating all of my Windows home computers, almost immediately. I also remember that upgrading was a priority to most of my friends and relatives (I encouraged them to do it and I often helped).
The attitude surrounding Vista migration seems different. In my circle, there is very little interest in upgrading. The current conventional wisdom is to delay buying any new machines until you can buy them with Vista pre-installed, but don’t bother upgrading your current Windows XP systems. In other words, don’t worry about getting a new OS until you need to upgrade your hardware (conversely, delay upgrading your hardware until that anticipated new OS is available). In light of this story, I can’t help but wonder whether Microsoft feels the same way. That’s right; Microsoft is going to support Windows XP for the standard 2 years but is adding 5 more years of extended support.
There is another possibility for this lack of enthusiasm; maybe we are just growing tired of it all. With so much time, energy, information and know-how invested in the OS that we currently use, and the element of risk that we face when we upgrade, maybe we are beginning to decide that incremental changes just aren’t worth it anymore.
