I'm hoping this can be an intelligent debate about Microsoft's marketing,
without it being overrun by the usual bunch of offensive kids and anti-Vista
trolls. OK then.......
One of the things Microsoft wants to do is stop selling new XP licenses and
sell Vista licenses instead. I believe the current target for stopping
sales of XP is next month. I vaguely understand they have support cut-off
dates for XP of 2009 and 2014 (I may be wrong about those - but that isn't
central to my argument).
The thing is, why is MS to keen to stop selling XP? I've heard a couple of
reasons:
1/ They have to get a return on their investment in the development of
Vista.
Of course, this can't be right - a sale is a sale, and if they priced XP and
Vista the same, then they get the money whichever the customer chooses.
2/ They don't want the burden of supporting XP - with its security
shortcomings - for longer than necessary. Also, they would be supporting
two operating systems instead of one.
But this seems a bit weak to me. Microsoft is in charge of its own support
policy - it doesn't HAVE to support an OS past a certain date. They could
change the licensing terms for all new sales of XP after June of this year.
For instance, I reckon Microsoft could say something like: "XP will continue
on sale indefinitely, but after the existing support cut-off dates there
will be NO new features, NO bug fixes and we will only consider fixing the
most serious security breaches". I suspect that the support burden on MS
from such a policy would be minimal. They could even reduce it to zero by
not fixing any security breaches, either - "if you have a problem with XP
after the cut-off dates, upgrade to Vista".
I'm prepared to bet that LOADS of people would still buy XP on those terms.
After all, LOADS of people still happily use software every day which is no
longer supported. If it does the job, why not? Basically, previous
versions of almost any software are generally unsupported by their vendor.
In fact, Microsoft is probably rather unusual in continuing to provide
support for earlier versions of Office when a later version has been
released.
This policy - "buy XP if you insist, but our existing support cut-off dates
remain unchanged" - would be:
1/ Good for customers, because they get a free choice whether to buy an old,
stable OS with a familiar interface and a 2009/2014 support cut-off; or a
new, fully supported OS with the latest new features.
2/ Good for MS, because they continue to sell new licences to contented
customers.
Obviously the marketing machine in Microsoft isn't stupid, and they must
have considered this. Does anyone know - or have an opinion - on why
Microsoft are forcing their customers to use Vista after next month, even if
it makes the customer unhappy?
In closing, let me just say this. I develop small software applications.
If a customer said to me "I'd like to buy the previous version of Thackery's
Wonder Widget, because I prefer the user interface, and yes, I accept you
won't be doing any more bugfixes on it", I'd sell it to them! Why on earth
not?
SteveT