Is Windows 7 just Vista rebranded?
My thoughts and experiences are that I have never seen any OS released by Microsoft, server or workstation (and I’ve been watching and using them since MS-DOS) that was “customer” ready upon its release. After the release of Vista my skeptical opinion on Microsoft’s new OS releases was reaffirmed in a big way. Microsoft made major and wide sweeping changes to how their operating systems work in the shift from XP to Vista. In addition to these fundamental and broad changes to the OS, Microsoft prior to Vista had a “hand-in-hand” type relationship with major software and hardware manufactures. If there was a compatibility or functionality issue with a piece of software or hardware the creation of a fix would most of the time be a collaborative process between the manufactures of that product and Microsoft (directly or indirectly). This all changed with the release of Vista.
Without going into too much detail, Microsoft changed the game on all the companies that make products for their desktop OSs with the release of Vista, from HP all the way to Cisco. Unfortunately they forgot to these companies that they were changing the game. This caused major compatibility problems for users who made the switch to Vista during the first year(s) of its release. More importantly Microsoft lost ϋber amounts of brand trust in their Windows OS Microsoft OS. Windows customers had working hardware and software prior to the upgrade to Vista, but not after the upgrade. When users would look for support for the non-working hardware and software they would naturally go to the company that was representing the change, Microsoft. Microsoft foolishly took the hard line stance of “Vista isn’t the problem; your hardware/software is the problem. Contact its manufacturer and get support from them for these issues.” This sparked bitter feelings between customers, manufactures and Microsoft, making many users and IT admins long for the good old days of Windows XP.
To exacerbate the problems users were experiencing Microsoft would continually disrupt the status quo. After hardware and software manufactures would patch and update their products to be compatible with Vista, Microsoft would (automatically and without warning) rollout a security and operating system updates that would break software and hardware. What had been working just fine prior to the update would possibly not be working after the update. It was entirely possible for a company that had, say 15 Dell desktops in an office space running the Vista OS to be working when everyone left for the evening and to not be functioning the following morning due to the patch Microsoft installed the previous night. As you can imagine, this could range from bad to catastrophic to a company depending on its reliance on computers.
I have spoken with friends and customers who work with or for large companies the size of Coke or Boeing and it is interesting to hear what their IT department’s stance is on the adoption of Windows Vista. If you ask the CIO “Are you running Vista?” or “Are you planning on moving your desktops and laptops to Vista?” it normally sparks one of the following responses: A) laughter B) an incredulous look and a shaking of the head in to the negative C) both A and B combined.
You can imagine the horror a response of this sort would generate to the Microsoft corporate sales rep when they approach Fortune 500 companies and try to sell them on the adoption of Vista on their 10,000+ workstations and laptops. After having been shown the door numerous times buy CIOs all around the world, Microsoft started to learn that they were paying a disservice to their customers with the whole “Vista experience”. Granted, it did take 2 years for this to sink in, but it did finally and thankfully register with them.
Once Microsoft accepted that they had made a major boneheaded mistake with their whole Vista product and campaign they decided to focus on producing a product their customers would actually want, need and adopt. You may be surprised to hear this but Windows 7 is actually built on the same structure as……….Vista. The big difference is that it is built on the Vista platform with the intent to fix the all of the short comings Vista had. To better figure out what the short comings users and IT admins were having with Vista, Microsoft did a really uncharacteristic and downright strange thing: They asked their customers what their problems were AND they actually listened. But what is even more shocking is they didn’t just listen, they listened and acted on the feedback from those customers. I guess fear is in fact a great motivator.
The end result of this two-way communication and interaction between Microsoft and their customers is Windows 7. In one form or another, Windows 7 has been running on IT geeks computers around the world for almost a year now. They have worked with it, found issues, made suggestions and given feed back in an open forum. Microsoft would take that feedback, make changes, fix problems and release those changes back to the geeks so they could start the process over again. This went on for months and it was an entirely open process. The purpose of this development transparency was to help build and reestablish trust in Microsoft by the geek and IT admin communities. Microsoft showed its dirty laundry to them and then asked computer users, geeks and gurus to point out where its laundry needed cleaning. Microsoft would clean the laundry. This process then repeated over and over again.
What we are left with is an operating system that was designed to meet the needs of Microsoft’s customers.
All of this boils down to a few things:
- Windows 7 is not Vista (thank God).
- Microsoft is scared, no terrified of Windows 7 flopping like Vista with corporate customers.
- For the time being Microsoft realizes that they need to listen to and serve their customers.
- Windows 7 is an OS that is truly like nothing Microsoft has produce before. It was built with customer collaboration and feedback in an open forum.
- Windows Vista, much like Windows ME will be treated and viewed as the “red-headed stepchild” of operating systems.
