Windows 7 Strategy – some thoughts
I’m just noting this down because, in a sense, windows 7 has to fight a lot of battles. On the surface these might all be hard battles to win – however, overall they’re all dependent on one key element.
Windows 7 Vs the Cloud OS
Talk of the advent of paradigms that make the PC’s OS relatively unimportant has been going on for decades, and it hasn’t happened yet.
And there’s a reasonable chance it’ll never happen. as people add more and more devices to their personal collections, they want smarter and smarter devices and a more powerful, and yet familiar, OS to handle all of this.
Phones, video games, GPSes, and all manner of devices are becoming more powerful. It’s ludicrous to assume that people will want to switch to a model where their data and computing power resides in the cloud. They might switch to storage of non personal items in the cloud. However, they will still want easy, immediate and controlled access to their personal files and items of nostalgic and other value.
There is just too much power in ‘privacy’ and ‘personal’ for people to ever give up all their data to an entity in the cloud. Perhaps, if we devolve into a dumber, more controlled race – yes. Not otherwise, and definitely not in the next 5-10 years.
Windows 7 Vs Linux
This is a much more interesting fight simply because it was all but over until the promise of netbooks breathed some life into Linux. And Windows XP and Microsoft’s aggressive push for XP in netbooks put an end to that.
With Windows 7 working well on netbooks, and Microsoft making it a point to ensure support, this battle is almost over.
Windows 7 Vs Mac
The truth is – without Steve Jobs there is no Apple, and Steve Jobs is out of the equation. He might never come back. In which case this battle is over too.
In case SJ does come back, we will see Apple renewed and restart the OS war in full swing. Windows 7 is the first OS that has taken away Apple’s much coveted ‘better UI’ title. Multi-touch, the new start bar and just an overall visually beautiful Windows 7 means even people who would’ve preferred a Mac for aesthetic reasons are flocking to 7 instead.
Assuming there’s a 75% chance Jobs isn’t back, this is a non starter.
The Key Underlying Thread
All of these battles have one key element – Windows 7’s opponents only have a chance of succeeding if Windows 7 is not a good Operating system.
With an impenetrable 89% market share of the OS market, Windows really is in an enviable position.
Google has the right idea i.e. change the paradigm to a cloud OS or to a 3rd party developer based open OS like Android.
However, Google is slowing losing it’s once unquestioned, immaculately pure image. And, let’s be honest, that has always been Google’s biggest advantage – as it becomes a true giant with nearly 70% of the search market, that no longer works.
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Filed under: Window 7 Rants
Must work for Microsoft, Windows 7 is slow and that is on a MSI board with 4gb of memory, 3.2 dual core processor, nvidia PCI-e card with 256mb of memory. Ubuntu 8.10 rocked on the same hardware. Also no apps, you have to chase down apps to make it usable and as for IE8 all this time and still a poor comparison to firefox. Having used Linux for some 15 yrs as well as Windoze and even Beos it boggles the mind that people still put up with Windoze when OSes like Linux have become so easy to install and are free. Just think virtually no problem with viruses, few worries about spyware and the like and no foolish software leases where you but it but you don’t own it.