Who will buy Vista?
So who’s going to upgrade to Vista when it emerges later this year? (Dec 1st supposedly) If the XP launch is any indication then expect to see the early rush of early adopters - usually the geeks. Most folks will let it mature for a year or two, for the major bugs to be fixed, a service pack or two to come out, and to make sure that the manufacturers of their favourite (non-Microsoft) software complete their compatability testing and issues upgrades or patches if necessary.
When I upgraded to XP, I think I waited about 8 months and still some of my software didn’t run under XP. Some patched, others had no upgrade path and I was forced to buy new versions or switch to a competitor. Now that’s a silly way to do business - it’s not like Microsoft don’t give out plenty of alpha versions of their operating systems for vendors to test their products against. I hope Vista will be different. For starters, I hope that Microsoft will learn from their XP release and make sure Vista is more XP-compliant than XP was 98 compliant. (OK, so I know that XP and 98 ran off two totally different kernels)
Being a geek, I’d like to upgrade to Vista the month it comes out. It looks awesome! If they can iron out the memory and performance issues that are being reported, it should perform well too. Follow the story in the Vista blog. However, since I run a lot of expensive software on my machine, I shall be sure to check with every manufacturer to be sure I won’t have to purchase a costly upgrade (again!), before I rush out and give my hard-earned cash to Fry’s. Of course most people, perhaps 80%+ of Windows users, will never choose to upgrade, they’ll just get Vista when they purchase their next machine. Even then, I know of more than one person whom upon buying a nice shiny XP-equipped Dell, wiped it to re-install 98. Luddites!
How soon will you upgrade? Post a comment below and let me know.
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:29 am
Heard today Microsoft is delaying Vista release until next year!