Friday, May 18, 2007

Have you switched to Vista?

KFYI - "The Valley's Talk Station":
"Dell, which is tied with HP as the largest computer maker in the country, quietly announced it was going to offer Windows XP again on models in two of its lines, the Inspiron and Dimension.

This follows an intense series of posts on Dell's 'IdeaStorm' blog, which was designed to allow direct feedback from consumers and end users to Dell's management.

(Dell, if you have not been following the company, has been hammered of late for poor management and terrible customer service.)

'We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,' said Dell on its blog.

Why is this significant?

This is a clear shot across the bow of Microsoft and sends two messages I think are really interesting:
1. you shipped Vista before it was ready and without any compelling, must-have features and
2. Windows XP is good enough for most people and we don't really care to learn a different way of doing things."

I'm not planning to use Vista for at least a year - Win XP is working fine, and I even have Win98 on some computers. The only person I've talked to who knew someone with Vista said that laptop couldn't connect to their home LAN, despite the best efforts of several computer savvy folks who were strongly motivated to get it working.
Gateway decided to keep offering WinXP earlier this year.

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