Five Vista perception problems Windows 7 must overcome
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Wide Angle Zoom You can just feel Apple getting ready with a new slate of "I'm a Mac" ads featuring Windows 7. They'll have to roll off Microsoft like Teflon.
Poor Windows 7. Months before its official launch, it's already fighting to live down the reputation of its older siblings. It's bad enough it has to fight perceptions of insecurity (I'm looking at you, XP) and bloated incompatibility (Vista, anyone?). But like the poor kid entering a high school after his older brothers have spent years being serially suspended for misbehaviour and general hooliganism, Windows 7 has an uphill battle ahead of it. Whether the perceptions are earned or not is irrelevant. Undoing them is a monumental process either way, and it all rests on the shoulders of a kid whose only mistake seems to lie in carrying the family name.
Carmi Levy: Wide Angle Zoom (200 px)But undo these perceptions it must. Windows 7 promises to be Microsoft's most crucial launch ever because the company's very future has never been in as much question as it is now. Its two cash cow franchises, Windows and Office, are mooing a little less deeply these days thanks to a seismic shift away from the traditional PC model. While Vista's problems are more perception than anything else, there's no escaping the cruel reality that the age of Windows-everywhere-by-default is over. As conventional desktop and laptop PCs give way to all sorts of new form factors running all sorts of new operating systems and connecting to the outside world in all sorts of unconventional ways, Microsoft can't afford another lukewarm Windows launch.
So far, at least, Windows 7 looks like Microsoft's best bet yet to lay to rest long-held perceptions that its OS offerings are bloated malware magnets that needlessly clutter end-users' lives. Before Microsoft declares ultimate victory, however, it needs Windows 7 to overcome five key perception challenges:
