Five reasons why Windows Vista failed

On Friday, Microsoft gave computer makers a six-month reprieve for Windows XP sales on newly supplied PCs . This does not apply to industrial use, as licensing agreements allow IT services to continue to install Windows XP for many years, which is another nail crammed into the coffin of Vista.
Vista's reputation has long been corrupted, which is tacitly recognized even by Microsoft in its advertising campaign .

IT services almost ignore Vista. In June (18 months after the release of Vista), a Forrester Research study showed that only 8.8% of corporate PCs worldwide are running Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft has published an accelerated release plan for Windows 7 , which may be released as early as 2010. This only confirms IT services in the opinion that you should just skip Vista and wait until, in time, Windows 7 will become the standard OS for business.
How did Vista stay with the nose? Let's look at the five main causes of Vista failure.

5. Apple successfully demonized Vista

The competent advertising campaign I'm a Mac from Apple has successfully created an image of Vista as a buggy, annoying and difficult to use system. Only after two years of ruthless beating, Microsoft recently responded with its campaign I'm a PC to somehow maintain the honor of Windows. It looks like they managed to bring back a little charm to PC and Windows brands, but it's too late to fix the useless Vista image.
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4. Windows XP is too deeply ingrained.

In 2001, when Windows XP was released, there were about 600 million computers in the world. More than 80% of them were running Windows, but they were divided between two main platforms: Windows 9x (65%) and Windows NT / 2000 (26%). One of the main goals of Windows XP was to unify the platforms and this goal was achieved over time.
In 2008, there are already more than 1.1 billion computers in the world and more than 70% running Windows XP. This means that almost 800 million computers use XP, which makes it the most widely used operating system of all time! This is a huge inertia that must be overcome, especially among IT departments that have built their development and applications based on Windows XP.
Believe it or not, Windows XP can significantly increase its presence in the market in the next few years. Due to what? Due to cheap netbooks that capture the market. These inexpensive machines are powerful enough to provide Internet access for most users, but they do not have sufficient resources to run Windows Vista, so they work under Windows XP or under Linux. Intel hopes that this market expects explosive growth in the coming years.

3. Vista is too slow

For many years, Microsoft has been criticized by developers and IT professionals for “blowing up software” —adding too many features to their programs made the code huge, and the applications cumbersome. However, this has never had a significant impact on program sales. And only in the case of Vista, "inflating software" finally caught up with Microsoft.
Vista consists of 50 million lines of code, XP had 35 million lines at the time of release, then it grew to about 40 million. "Inflating software" led to a significant slowdown in Vista, especially when working on something other than the newest and fastest hardware. In spite of everything, the latest version of Windows XP is significantly more productive than the latest version of Vista . No one wants to use a new computer, which will be slower than its old computer.

2. Vista nobody waited

Already forgotten, but when Microsoft started Windows XP, they tried to change the business model of OS distribution to switch from boxed software and change customers to subscribers. Therefore, they abandoned the traditional names of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Instead, the name Windows XP was chosen.
XP meant “experience” and was part of Microsoft’s long-term strategy. The main objective of the strategy was to get users and organizations annual fees for using Windows - XP was essentially a constantly evolving product, but it included all updates as long as you paid for the subscription. Of course, Windows stopped working on your PC if you stop paying. That is why product activation came in a pair with Windows XP.
Microsoft released Windows XP and Office XP at the same time in 2001, both of them included activation and should eventually lead to migration to a subscription. However, at the end of 2001, Microsoft abandoned the concept of a subscription for Office, and soon returned to the business model of packaged software and the old development model for both products.
The idea of ​​releasing additional releases and software updates to replace global box releases every 3-5 years was a good concept. Microsoft simply did not figure out how to make this business model work, and despite the fact that the idea was considered correct, it turned out to be easier to return to the old model, which was simply not very suitable for the realities of today's IT world.

1. Too much is broken

One of the main reasons for the popularity of Windows XP was the combination of compatibility with hardware, programs and drivers, like in Windows 9x and the stability and industrial strength of the Windows NT line. The compatibility issues were huge. Getting one platform with high compatibility made it easier for users, IT services, software manufacturers, and hardware.
Microsoft forgot or neglected the fact that when Vista was released, despite the long beta period, a large number of existing programs and hardware were not compatible with Vista. Because of this, many common programs and peripherals were useless in Vista, which made it impossible to use for most IT departments. Many incompatibility problems have arisen due to increased security.
After Windows was attacked by an evil chain of viruses, worms, and other destructive programs in the early 2000s, Microsoft launched the initiative of Trustworthy Computing to make their products more secure. One of the results of this was the release of Windows XP SP2, which paved the way for XP to become the most widespread OS in the world.
Another large part of Secure Information Systems was the still-over-closed version of Windows, which Microsoft released as Vista. It was indeed the safest OS Microsoft ever released, but at the cost of annoying user features, such as UAC, requiring a lot of convoluted confirmations to perform simple actions, as well as problems with software incompatibility. In short, Vista has broken too many things that users are used to doing in XP.

Conclusion

Many argue that Vista is more widely distributed today than XP at the same stage after its release, so it seems that Vista will eventually replace XP in the corporate segment. I disagree. XP had transparent arguments for migration: transfer machines from Windows 9x to a more stable and secure OS, and machines from Windosw NT / 2000 to OS with better compatibility. And of course, you get the benefits of using one OS on all machines, which makes maintenance easier.
Vista has no significant advantages for IT to take the place of XP. Security is no longer a big problem, because XP SP2 is very stable and most IT services have protected it well. Microsoft will have to abandon the release strategy of the new OS every 3-5 years and just concentrate on one version of Windows and release updates, patches and add new features on a regular basis. Most IT departments are essentially already subscribed to Microsoft services, so the business strategy is ready.
To apply a subscription model for small businesses and individual customers, instead of shutting down Windows on the user's PC, if it has not renewed the subscription, you should simply not be allowed to receive new updates if the subscription is not renewed. Microsoft may even work with OEMs by selling something like a three-year Windows subscription with each new PC. The user will have the choice to renew his subscription after the completion of this period.