One company where I worked I was assigned to offer technical support for
products that were no longer produced. The company understood the value of
keeping "older" customers happy who were waiting for extra money in their
budget to purchase the company's newest gear. (The gear we designed and
produced was microprocessor based scientific measuring instruments.) The
customer who still used our older equipment had to pay for the technical
support since their warranties expired after 2 years of purchase. The trick
in getting the older customers to come back to us and purchase the newer gear
was for the company to design and manufacture gear that was superior to the
older versions AND superior to the competition's. Eventually the company that
I worked for could not keep up with the competition. It could not compete
price-wise and quality-wise in the market place. I had quit my job before the
company went under.

How this story pertains to Microsoft:

I have XP and Vista. I am slowly beginning to see the superior advantages of
Vista over XP. It was not immediate because XP pretty much fullfilled my
computering needs. But Vista is now showing me how I can get some of these
jobs done faster. The reason I went to Vista was because I saw how Microsoft
was constantly trying to improve XP. (And they did.) It seemed to me that
Microsoft was serious about fixing their OS and competing in the marketplace
and I took a chance on Vista. I'm glad that I did.

Microsoft is at a critical point where they have to keep their current XP
customers happy.

I figure Microsoft will support XP for several years even if they
discontinue producing and selling it. Microsoft customers will eventually
gravitate towards XP or Apple. It would be a humongous marketing blunder for
Microsoft to leave their XP customers out in the cold.

oscar


"Steve Thackery" wrote:

> > In the end, Microsoft will sell up to 3 OSes for 1 PC bought today.
>
> Canuck, I don't think I really buy your "conspiracy theory" version of
> Microsoft's Vista marketing tactics - selling you a crap OS so you have to
> upgrade once or twice more. I think Vista is below par for three reasons:
>
> 1/ The current code base has "gone critical" - much of it is top heavy,
> messy, riddled with legacy workarounds and compatibility bodges, and has
> become almost unmaintainable (although see my next note).
>
> 2/ MS abandoned the development program for what would have been XP's
> successor in 2003, after having already invested a few years of development
> in it. The reason was Microsoft's belated realisation of the serious
> security flaws in their current OS architecture. In fact Vista was begun
> again, almost from scratch - based in no small part on Server 2003 code. So
> basically Vista was knocked together in a real hurry.
>
> 3/ I get the impression that some of the key, top personnel may have moved
> into different roles, leaving the Vista development team somewhat less
> competent that it should have been. For instance, although the UI is better
> than XP's (in my opinion), it is riddled with inelegancies and
> inconstencies, suggesting it really wasn't properly thought through. And
> the file copying debacle is a classic example of incompetence: at RTM is was
> bloodly hopeless, and even now, after SP1, it's still not as good as XP.
> They "fixed" something that nobody thought was broken.
>
> The first two points are easily confirmed just by reading various insider
> blogs. The third is mostly just an impression I've got by reading between
> the lines, and using Vista myself since it came out.
>
> I don't think MS would deliberately release a below-par product, intending
> you to pay again to get a fixed version. I don't think they would take such
> a risky strategy now that there is significant competition in almost every
> area they play in.
>
> The best way to keep customers - I would suggest - is to do what Apple do.
> They release a product which everybody thinks is superb, and make the next
> product even better, and so on. By doing that they build up a committed
> customer base who thing Apple walks on water, and who keep coming back for
> more. I bet MS would like to do that if they could.
>
> I think Microsoft's OS team has lost the plot - no more, no less.
>
> SteveT
>
>