Spellbinder7’s Weblog

• Most people like to buy their hardware and software from two different vendors, this is a form of variable insurance.
• Little market for upgrades… internal (mostly) or external.
• Apple is not capable of delivering to enterprise… they can barely offer products to SoHo.
• Existing infrastructure of over a decade to overcome.
• Performance issues with OS X for gamers (niche) and servers (corporate).
• Seen as somewhat hostile to open source community.
• It would put computer vendors out of business.

Here are some possible reasons why Vista may have failed (at least so far).

• Most individuals own Athlon XP, Pentium IV and Pentium D level hardware and not more recent hardware like Athlon 64, Athlon x2, Core Duo and Core 2 Duo.
• Requires a GPU or semi-highend integrated graphics. This creates an issue for low-end computers, notebooks and the corporate environment.
• An individual will get better performance with Windows 2000 or XP.
• Stability is not really an issue with operating system utilizing the NT kernel like Win2k and XP
• Release dates: November and January and slow buying seasons.
• Cost for “good versions” of Vista are more expensive than in the past.
• There are too many versions of Windows Vista.
• With time you can lock down XP with a firewall, AV, anti-spyware and sandbox.
• Seen as Windows 98(augment upgrade) or worse, ME (UI and lame applications).
• Seen as a bad attempt by Microsoft to be coo… i.e. OS X clone.
• Hard to develop for (more closed… issues with x64).
• Microsoft is becoming more of a niche market for high-end corporate and elite tech markets (Ultimate like versions of Vista, Office and Visual Studio) and in the process this has led to disillusionment with more seasoned (veteran) users and beginners alike.
• Seen as hostile to open source.
• Vendors requiring new hardware to be purchased rather than updating existing drivers… unlike when Windows XP was released.
• Unix is still hot, the OS subsystem under Windows that provides Unix services is limited to Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate and it is crippled.