I just saw this on
Digg today and even though it's from October, it's a really well written piece. They document the past history of such products as Windows ME and make assumptions about
the uneasey future of MS's flagship OS, Vista.
Quote:
So what went wrong with Vista in the first place? Let’s start off with the elephant in the room. The product was overpriced from the outset. Why was it so expensive? What was special about it? All the cool and promised features of the original vision of Longhorn were gutted simply because it was beyond Microsoft’s capability to implement those features.
This failure to deliver what was promised—even after several delays in the product’s release, by the way—did nothing to excite anyone. It made the company look bad. It directly resulted in a no-confidence vote that was manifested in a lackluster reception and low sales. Microsoft should have scrapped the project two years ago and instead patched XP until it could deliver something hot.
To make things worse, there are too many versions. Exactly what is the point of that? Don’t we all just want Vista Ultimate? The other versions seem like a way to maybe save money for some users who cannot afford to get the real thing. You can be certain this version glut results only in complaints about what each variation is missing.
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Other than shatty gaming performance, it's really not that bad. But I agree, it's not epic by any means. But then again, I hear Leopard (for the Apple folks) was a huge 'meh' release as well. Eventually, marketing can only sell so many widgets...as Microsoft is finding out...and the hard way at that it seems.