Michael Dell Says Windows 7 Will Make You Love PCs 627
ruphus13 writes "In a recent talk at the Churchill Club, Michael Dell addressed several topics, including the fact that Windows 7 is poised to take advantage of the upgrade cycle. Dell has always been a strong MS OEM ally and it is now hoping to cash in again from the impending upgrades. From the post: 'Dell made plain several times that he sees the installed base of technology as very old, and sees a coming "refresh cycle" for which he has high hopes. "The latest generation of chips from Intel is strong, particularly Nehalem," he said, adding, "and Windows 7 is on its way." (The operating system arrives Oct. 22nd, although Microsoft's large-volume licensees are already getting it.) He pointed out that many business are running Windows XP, which is eight years old. "I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now," he said, "and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement."'"
Yeah, right. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a well know fact that Michael Dell uses Ubuntu exclusively at home, and only trots out the pro-Windows stance when paid to by Microsoft, so none of this should be taken seriously. Not that anyone sensible would take anyone saying 'Windows is good!' seriously.
Tricky talk, in my opinion. (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote from the story: "He pointed out that many business are running Windows XP, which is eight years old." [Should be businesses.]
That's a bit tricky, in my opinion. There is no migration path directly from Windows XP to Windows 7. If you are using Windows XP now, it is necessary to re-install ALL your applications, and re-configure ALL your settings. For us, that easily takes 40 hours. Windows XP has had a VERY high cost of ownership for us, and here we go again. Microsoft did not want to finish the work, apparently, and provide a way to convert automatically from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Also, Windows XP is not 8 years old, in my way of perceiving the matter. Windows XP was very troublesome until service pack 2 was released on August 25, 2004. So XP is actually 5 years old, because that is the date of what could be said to be the first release candidate.
It doesn't matter how old an OS is! We are not in the OS business. We are happy with what works for us.
In our experience it is better to buy components and build our own computers. The inside of a mass-market computer is amazing. Everywhere costs could have been cut, the components have been made a little cheaper, and sometimes a lot cheaper.
Well...I agree with him. (Score:5, Interesting)
After installing Windows 7 (started using it at RC level, I think), everything just feels smooth. It actually made me want to use Microsoft's included products for everything. It definitely has more appeal to me than OS X now.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way to Microsoft or its subsidiaries. I just really like Windows 7.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:3, Interesting)
Still lovin' my Win2k (Score:2, Interesting)
Tell me again why I need to upgrade? Oh yeah, I'm missing a bunch of DRM. And I can't run the latest IE. Hmm... that's a shame...
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would agree. A computer is just that a computer. The same thing with the OS. It is just a bunch of instructions for the computer. I have a Mac, it is a nice tool for me it does what I need it to do for the most part. I don't expect to switch in the near future... However I could and would if I find that it is no longer the tool that I need to do my work. I have done switches in the past.
1987 - 1994 I used MS DOS with some windows 3.1 as a toy. By 1993 I had Desqview running on dos as I needed better Multi-tasking support.
1994 - 1999 I primarily used Linux as I had the need for really good multi-tasking (DOS, Windows 3.1 and Desqview didn't cut it)
1999 - 2002 I primarily used Solaris as I needed a rock solid system. That can handle high load gracefully
2002 - Current I primarily use OS X as I am doing more "professional" work, So I needed something slightly more Microsoft friendly but still have many of the Unix advantages.
Now what will the future hold... I don't know. Right now the Mac does what I need it do. But for the future who knows. Perhaps Ill use Plan-9 or Android, Maybe even Windows.
Re:Can somebody tell me why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Can somebody tell me why? (Score:1, Interesting)
For a /. geek, what does Windows 7 have that's *really* useful/desired/cool vs. Windows XP? Not trolling, just haven't had the time to install it/play with it yet.
It's newer and less awful than vista. But it's still really NT with an updated interface and some new bits glued to the side.
That's like saying Mac OS X is BSD with an updated interface and some new bits glued to the side. I mean come on. Actually used 7? Its usability has SKYROCKETED over XP, let alone its handicapped accessibility and many other important aspects.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Then they need to stop making crap and go back to quality. High priced Studio laptops are built like low grade toys, the keyboards squeak and a host of other problems of flimsy... how about the screen hinge screws backing out making the screen floppy...
Sorry but dell quality has tanked HARD in the past 4 years. If I'm going to drop over $1200.00 on a laptop it will not be a dell anymore, I want at least some semblance of quality at that price or over...
Windows 7 will make you love your PC IF you ran vista. Most everyone that I know t hat runs XP looked at it on my laptop and said, "Nahh, XP works for me." They will still have a hard sell.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:5, Interesting)
The Mac user experience is vastly different than XP and Vista. So much so, that people who switched are not going back to MS anytime soon.
I tried switching. I bought a mac. And I don't like it. (For many reasons, which I won't whine about here). That very different user experience just didn't work for me. So just this week I'm selling my mac and switching to a machine running Windows 7. I like it better than OS X.
Not that most people are like me (and I know one example proves nothing), but I'm the counter-example to your claim, who is happy to switch back.
(Of course, also in consideration is that windows 7 actually runs quite well NOT on new top-of-the-line hardware. I'm running it on a netbook and it's chugging along quite happily.)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dell screwed up, big time, and now they're in a deep hole. In the 90's, I was influential in steering 3 companies to being all Dell houses. It was fun. Someone would ask why we should pay more for a Dell, and I could demonstrate what happens when I called support. I'd call Microsoft for a question about Power Point first... it's always fun being ridiculed by a moron, which is all the support Microsoft offers for us peons who only own hundreds of their licenses. Then, I'd call Dell for the same question about Power Point (or whatever Microsoft product was pissing me off that day). Dell support would say, "That's really a question for Microsoft, and we don't technically offer support in cases like this. However, the answer to your question is ..."
Dell support was awesome. Then, during the off-shoring mania that swept boardrooms across the country in 2001, Dell fired all their on-shore support and routed our calls to guys in India who make Microsoft's support look good. Sure, Dell has dropped their prices a ton since then, but what matters having productive employees, not saving $100 on their laptop. Dell went the other way - super cheap, low margins, undercutting everyone else, offering crap support. The machines are still pretty good, and lately they've offered "Gold support" on all their products. What morons... don't they know how hard it is to convince your boss to pay $300 for a support contract on an $800 computer? HP went the other way, only offering good support, at higher prices. The difference - happy customers. A couple years ago, my boss overrode my support for Dell, and now all our high-end servers are HP. They're great machines, with incredible support, and we buy them, even though they cost 2X over Dell's.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:1, Interesting)
I have no doubt that a skilled user can successfully use (and might even prefer) Windows. Used properly, the problems of PCs can be solved. After many years of fighting the good fight against the problems, I simply lost patience. I saw the Vista trainwreck coming, and decided to jump before it became my problem. Just because I CAN solve the problems doesn't mean I SHOULD.
Mac users are known for their arrogance, which is reinforced every time they see a PC user struggling with a problem that is somehow mitigated on the Mac. Case in point: My father got tricked into clicking a URL in spam, ended up installing the "Windows Anti-Virus Pro" virus by accident. No matter how many times you tell someone to never click anything in an e-mail, some people are going to do it anyway. He had a nasty variant of the program; highly resistant to countermeasures. I spent two entire evenings walking him through the removal process. This is not the first time. An experienced user is smart enough to never click a URL in an e-mail, and yet I STILL lost a lot of time helping someone who fell into the trap. Dad and I are NOT impressed. His next machine will be a Mac. Mine already is. Not planning on a return to MS anytime soon.
Price has become a major factor keeping MS afloat in a world that has developed alternative solutions that offer certain advantages. Give away the price advantage, and it's going to be an uphill battle to sell the product to anyone who has agonized over the BSOD, viruses, or other problems. At that point, the MS target market becomes new users, with the demographic shifting rapidly to children. In other words, people who don't have enough experience with the product to carry a grudge.
Re:Dell & Win 7 (Score:1, Interesting)
It's all an effect of living in the proprietary world. With Linux, drivers in the kernel get built from source. Some may have needed some clean-up to be 64-bit capable, but generally they were already pretty portable, being part of the Linux kernel.
In the Windows world, they set up this ecosystem where nothing is free. It's their own fault they made it so they can only ask nicely for the hardware makers to release 64-bit drivers. Hell, if they wanted, Microsoft could reverse-engineer stuff like and make the drivers themselves, just like has to happen with a lot of Linux drivers.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reason it's not getting panned as a resource hog is that Vista only ran well on almost "bleeding edge" hardware, and 2.5 years later that's "hey it runs well on a couple year old sytem."
Runs smoothly (with aero etc off of course) on my 7-year-old barebones computer I never got around to throwing away, and on my gaming PC it runs just as fast as linux did. Well, it feels as fast, anyway.
:D) and some of the UI improvements are pretty nifty! But then again I'm a gamer so I need a windows-based PC, so I suppose I'd be a bit biased.
I rather like it, myself. It's got the very few features I liked about vista (sound mixer!
Re:They are trying too hard. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly, Microsoft is pulling all the marketing stops out (same thing they did with Vista). What's the point? What's the real RTO on Win 7? If I have a computer that performs all of the features I need it to do why would I upgrade?
11 Years ago my father bought a $6,000 top of the line Gateway with Windows 98 and it was a blazing fast. 4 years later it was a paperweight but will the same be said of today's average machines? I still have 4 - 5 year old PCs in production use with no problems. They're fast enough and when they die I'll replace them with $300 models. Intel lost, the CPU has outclassed every app that most businesses/users need and now it's MS's turn. They are trying to justify this new OS for which very few people have any real need. XP looks dated? Who cares? Show me one truly useful thing Vista/Win 7 can do they cannot be done with XP.
-Joe
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)
I look at Windows 7 in this way: do I prefer Windows 7 to be a hit and make MS some money (deserved or not), or for it to fail and having me still be supporting IE6 in Web Apps for decades?
To me, this means: Windows 7 is tah bezt software EvaR!!
Re:Can somebody tell me why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Vista's 32-bit ASLR is beatable too. That's more a function of the size of the address space than the implementation. The 64-bit ASLR in both Win7 and Snow Leopard is much more robust. It's a wash.
Vista's massive problems are well-documented and are certainly not FUD. I hope that Windows 7 fixes them for the sake of the computer world at large but that doesn't mean they've got anything worth switching back for. You don't even get a Perl or Python interpreter preinstalled in Windows; how backward can you get?
Re:Pricing & piracy (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll offer two (devoid of any actual insider insight - but there's a long tradition of that in not only the Internet, but the printed word) theories:
Some executive at Microsoft made a name for themselves (and thus a career play) by putting together some really nice slides showing how much money Microsoft can make by "monetizing" all the "pirated" copies of their software. This would fly as the culture of Microsoft drifts further and further away from it's old technical base and the reigns are held more by bean counters. That message would also find more fertile ground as Microsoft's numbers start taking hits due to economic changes and market saturation.
Another, even wilder, theory is propaganda. Microsoft is fighting the perception that the OS is a commodity. Once the OS becomes a interchangeable layer, a lot of the lock-in strategy that's prevalent in Microsoft's products starts to fall apart. "Piracy" once played in to Microsoft's strategy of ubiquity. Illegal copies were helping push market share which put critical weight behind Microsoft's products (which might not been a deliberate tactic, but if it's not broken, why fix it). But as the market has changed, we have this push to commoditize the next layer of computing: the OS. Microsoft is not keen to become the next IBM. So they need to ensure people don't see Windows as this freebie thing you toss on a machine but rather one of the points to having that machine. So even if they know their anti-piracy measures won't stop "piracy", they don't care so long as it provides a way to introduce the idea that Windows has special value; people have a very different attitudes depending on perceived value.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)