Off Topic: XP vs. Windows 7

Thanks to my soon to be eleven year old daughter's ultimate curiosity for all things downloadable I recently had to reload my XP machine at home.  I couldn't find my XP disc and I had a copy of Vista and Windows 7 available.  I started with Vista as I was worried that the 6+ year old machine with its Pentium 4 3.0Ghz processor and 2 GBs of RAM would perform sub optimally on Windows 7.

I loaded vista and first thing out of the shoot I had driver problems.  Thank god for extra machines because the driver in question was the network card (for non-techies this is bad if you like internet things).  I found the appropriate drivers and uploaded them.  Presto I was running Vista.  On a promo version time-bombed for 30 days from install.  Oops.  No problem, I just go to activemyvistacopy.com or some such nonsense.  Oops again, website doesn't exist.  Quick Google search shows that it has been inactive for 2 years.  Oops.

I had a valid copy of Windows 7 so I decided what the heck - time to upgrade.  Again.  Thankfully the vista drivers flowed through and all my custom hardware (I build the PC from scratch over 6 years ago) all worked like a charm.

A week later and I have to admit - it actually works better than XP.  Small victory for a lost Saturday.

-Kris

Microsoft continues to struggle in mobile - needs to listen to Apple

If you missed the WSJ alert or article, Microsoft announced that their big bet on the teen market, the Kin devices were being killed after just two months on the market.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339402480468426.html?mod=djemalertTECH

How does an organization launch something and then two months later kill it?  There is always the chance that all the research was right, the product was awesome and consumers just hated it.  It begs the question how Microsoft can't seem to translate their success in the software market to mobile phones.

My personal opinion is that Microsoft is spending way too much time chasing the market.  Trying to catch up to Apple and Google rather than trying to innovate on something they have that already works.

Ask any serious video gamer what the two top console platforms are and they will tell you Nintendo's WII and Microsoft's Xbox.  Ask them what the top multi-player platform is and there is no second best.  Microsoft owns the multi-player market from consumer experience to market share and monetization.  Why not try to capitalize on that success.  Rather than chasing Apple and Google, why not build a mobile platform that syncs with Xbox live and drives a really cool experience for people who use and love that platform.  You can control innovation because you already own the services side of it and you can make your fans even bigger fans by expanding the offering.

I'm sure some Marketing guy at MSFT has a dozen reasons why they looked at it and passed but Apple's success didn't come from them chasing anyone.  They listened to their users and created what they wanted in the iPhone.  They leveraged an already huge base of iPod users and took it to the next level.  Its worked really well for them, might be time for Microsoft to borrow a trick from Apple for a change.

-Kris