DON'T.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?_r=1&oref=sloginBy RANDALL STROSS Published: March 9, 2008
ONE year after the birth of Windows Vista, why do so many Windows XP
users
still decline to “upgrade”?
Microsoft says high prices have been the deterrent. Last month, the
company trimmed prices on retail packages of Vista, trying to entice
consumers to overcome their reluctance. In the United States, an XP user can now buy
Vista Home Premium for $129.95, instead of $159.95.
An alternative theory, however, is that Vista’s reputation precedes
it. XP users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and friends
about Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip that couldn’t
handle Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The
applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other
hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the
necessary software, the drivers, to work well with Vista.
Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an “upgrade”?
Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go
well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity
later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer,
regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick
with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.
Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person,
Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category —
“this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”
Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows
Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in
all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie
Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo —
lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-
editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a
$2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.
It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naďf. He’s Mike Nash, a
Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is
dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A.
Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief
operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but
exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the
company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.
Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at
Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished
product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the
nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when
they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does
Not Play Well With Others.
We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most
senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit
filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in
Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents. The
plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006,
before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista
Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that
turned out to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the
features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits.
Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the
suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last week
appealed the certification decision.)
Anyone who bought a PC that Microsoft labeled “Windows Vista Capable”
without also declaring “Premium Capable” is now a party in the suit. The
judge also unsealed a cache of 200 e-mail messages and internal reports,
covering Microsoft’s discussions of how best to market Vista,
beginning in 2005 and extending beyond its introduction in January 2007. The
documents incidentally include those accounts of frustrated Vista users in
Microsoft’s executive suites.
