Posted on 11/24/2009 6:18:32 AM PST by Willie Green
My thanks to @girlygeekdom on Twitter for highlighting what must be the most surreal Internet marketing plan ever - British girl band the Sugababes are being used to promote Windows 7. There is a website called 'sugababeslovewindows7' to announce it.
I'm as flummoxed as anyone by this. Let's take to one side the fact that I'm a 44 year old man and not at all in the Sugababes' market - what exactly is this trying to say about the brand? That it's easy to use? OK, check - but surely it's no longer acceptable to dismiss young females as incapable of mastering difficult stuff. I know, I have a nine year old daughter and she already speaks more Spanish than I do.
So maybe it's supposed to be trendy? OK, maybe...but it's an operating system, guys, not an item of clothing or new dessert. Mac OS is arguably more fashionable but that's how you get about 5 per cent of the market. This stuff needs to be fashion-proof. Perhaps they think it's going to appeal to a particular demographic? Again I see no reason it should do so; a good OS should ideally be suited to everyone (and compared to Windows Vista, Windows 7 is doing a good job on that score).
I'm the last to blame the Sugababes, in case anyone's wondering. I have no doubt Microsoft is paying plenty for their promotional services and it's not in me to wish less income on anyone. It's Microsoft's view I find completely bewildering. I suppose coming from the same company that chose the Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' for the launch of Windows 95 only to have to edit it so the line 'You make a grown man cry' wasn't heard, this isn't a surprise. But even so...a girl band?
I’m a Windows user, but I like the Mac. I like the Mac a lot; where the Windows experience is ‘Good Enough’, the Mac is a highly polished, very well thought out and easy to use answer. One is a short answer, just enough to get full credit; the other is an elegant novel, not only answering the question, but anticipating and answering the successive questions that follow.
This is yet another instance where Apple knows how to market itself, Apple knows how to define itself, and how to present itself to it’s target market.
Microsoft still hasn’t figured out what a target market is.
I decided to give it a try. When I ran XP, I used the 200 interface that I preferred. It was functional, and efficient. I don’t see that option with Windows 7. It looks too much like OS X in my opinion. (I thought Apple actually got it right wth System 7, interface-wise).
On the other hand, installation was MUCH smoother, and I only crashed it once, and was able to do a controlled shut down.
The system ranked 5.9, is that okay in other people’s experience?
Apple, in my opinion, has one HUGE disadvantage over PC’s:
Price
I visited the Apple Store the other day, as I’m in the market for a new laptop.
A good-sized Apple Notebook costs $2,499.
I can buy three decent PC laptops for that.
Install Linux... you'll save money and your laptops will perform better.
Can’t argue with that, you are 100% correct. Apple is expensive compared against the PC. Some would argue that you pay more for a quality product, but the fact is that the Quality in Apple products is not superior to that of the PC products - aside from the OS X software polish. That is why there is such an active ‘Hackintosh’ market.
People are buying a $300 netbook and installing OS X on it. All the polish of of the Apple product, at a fraction of the cost.
My ONLY beef with OS X is the lack of applications; but with Boot Camp, I can have polish for personal things, and brute functionality for work.
2,499 that is typical of mac crap.
Haven’t done the ranking, as I kind of find that pointless; what matters to me is:
1. How long do I have to wait for the boot process to complete so I can do what I want to do?
2. How responsive is my machine, compared to Visa or XP?
3. How stable is the new OS?
In my experience, with my HP laptop; it boots faster than Vista by a long shot. The machine appears to scream, I mean I’m clicking on IE8 and surfing the net faster than my Quad Core XP machine can even open IE8.
It’s never crashed .... ever.
The downside is that for reasons unknown, I could not upgrade from Vista to Win7. However, every file was backed up in a folder on the desktop - just copy the files I needed, and re-install my applications. Pain in the butt; but it worked without issue. For reasons I do not understand, Win7 is far ‘faster’ than Vista on my laptop.
The ONLY reason I have not upgraded by Quad-core (Core 2 Duo) boxes is because there are no supported drivers for my Dell laserprinter. I just can’t justify the improvements in performance in my 2 PC’s against trashing a perfectly functional Dell laserprinter.
Running the Dell P1500.
It’s a good solid workhorse. However, I have been unsuccessful in getting this (32 bit driver) to play well with a 64 bit OS.
Granted, I only paid $99 for it. But there is nothing wrong with it, and I put a 6,000 page engine in it, plus 32 Meg of RAM. For home use, it’s perfect. Not too large, robust, never jams, clean prints and inexpensive.
And I understand your point regarding the expensive printer and support for future OS releases. Having worked on the PC side of the house, to get a certified driver for an old product is going to cost at least $150K. The business decision is a simple one. How many sales will result fromthe cost of $150K investment in a new driver? Had a friend who spent several thousand on a SCSI driver that was written for Win98SE. For whatever reason, the compatibility mode didn’t work when he upgraded to Win2K - so he had to toss the scanner after just a year of use.
For normal desktop applications and web applications, Linux has come of age (functionally). Butt...
Computers have reached commodity status. You buy the one that runs the programs you want to run, for the cheapest price. John Dvorak has a good article pointing out that for the last 10 years, software developers have simply been adding bells and whistles to existing applications, keeping us from enjoying the blazing speed of the new hardware.
Most people buy Windows machines because that’s what they know and they are cheaper. They don’t want to run Windows apps on Mac and they don’t want to pay the 50%-200% premium for the hardware.
I keep a K45 XP Shuttle box (about $150 invested) attached to my Internet line because it runs my Magic Jack. Otherwise, I run one Linux box and a laptop XP computer for work and surfing. I keep a gaming machine in the den. Oh yeah... The Linux netbook with a solid state hard drive survives nicely in motorcycle saddle bags.
Brands? Who cares anymore? OS? Not important most of the time.
My 24” iMac sits unused most of the time because it just doesn’t do anything that the other machines aren’t already doing. It’s a fine machine, but so are the others.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the Chrome OS. Most of the time, it will do what I want. Computers are becoming like televisions. We will have several, all different, for different purposes. Operating systems are becoming part of the commodity. They are no longer significant.
Still, Macs and Xnux handle the TCP/IP stack better. I don't know what the hell's wrong with MS that they have so much overhead with TCP/IP.
The Linux netbook with a solid state hard drive survives nicely in motorcycle saddle bags.
Crash and Burn: 1 in 3 Notebooks fail within 3 years
Personally, I’m looking forward to the Chrome OS. Most of the time, it will do what I want.
Only when connected online.
When disconnected, your machine becomes a useless boat anchor.
"Cloud computing" is an abomination.
I'll never buy a computer that I can't use independent of the Internet connection.
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