Forgive the Daily Star-style headlining
I spent about 7 hours with some smart people yesterday. One of them, a dyed-in-the-wool Windows sysadmin, showed us some cool technology but it was very noticeable the way he expressed how he had no idea how to sell Vista to his clients. He could force it upon them but how to actually “sell” it and make it actually “value” was proposed as something that would be difficult.
We’ve seen how Microsoft is courting games developers to make new games only run under Vista in the old-fashioned concept that games drive the industry forward. Hey, Billy-Boy, games drive sales of hardware, using it as a club to make people buy your next piece of software is going to be a hard sell – especially to developers who want to appeal to everyone with a vaguely recent machine.
Even Paul Thurrott claims Microsoft’s handling of Windows Vista has been abysmal
So, how is this going to be pushed? I figure a version of Office will be thrown out the door which only supports Vista and does something new and exciting with pivot tables. They’ll kill all OEM sales of XP so that Dell and the other box builders will be forced to ship Vista to everyone buying new hardware. (Hint to PC-based companies – stock up on your XP licenses if intending to grow).
I’m actually looking forward to running Vista on my MacBook Pro – just in virtualisation you understand. By then I’ll be running Leopard for day-to-day operations and it’ll be nice to compare. Based on what I’ve seen of Vista and based on the testimonials of the guys I know on the beta track for Vista – it ain’t going to be ready for January.