Vista or XP – A Customer Choice?
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Since its initial release, a war has raged between Microsoft Windows Vista (Vista) and its predecessor Microsoft Windows XP (XP). This war has been brought about by the only two universal constants, change and the market’s resistance to that change. Looking back several years, the resistance to Vista is taking many of the same forms as the last battle between two Microsoft products.
Back when XP was first released, I remember countless calls from users wanting me to assist them in switching things back to the “familiar” classic interface. I also remember complaints that nothing worked with XP, and that the platform was quite unstable. Fast forward to today and we find the same song, second verse.
Recently Microsoft announced that it intends to remain firm on the decision to stop production and licensing of new XP programs, a decision which was originally pushed back by consumer demand. Many still hold out hope that Microsoft will once again push back the discontinuation of XP, but should they? The internet is littered with “expert” articles comparing XP and Vista.
Groups and reviewers who have run countless benchmarking programs are trying to prove “once and for all” that XP is better than Vista, and declare that Vista has no place in the market. However, in almost every case of these reviews, the deck has been stacked against Vista as they once were against XP when it was first released to the market.
In the end, the revolutionary features for which Vista allows and the options it makes available for use will be realized as more and more software is developed with Vista’s capabilities in mind; and as history proves, people will become familiar with the change and get used to Vista… That is until it is time for it to be replaced, and once again the cycle of change and resistance to that change repeats itself.