more food for thought
and as a follow-on to the last post, here’s an article (link below) from a ComputerWorld writer, who by his own admission is “not Microsoft's greatest fan”. He basically makes the same general point as Ed Bott, that many of the bloggers and tech new folks did shoddy reporting around the ScriptLogic survey. In fact, this author says: “any middle schooler can tell you that eWeek's headline ‘Microsoft Windows 7 Will be Skipped by 6 in 10 Companies, Says Survey’ is at best an illogical conclusion, at worst a flat-out lie, and at minimum poor reporting.” Well, the illogical conclusion and poor reporting were pretty much what I was getting at in my previous post, but he even went a little further with the middle schooler and lie comments -- but sadly, the fact that such a preponderance of the reports and articles jumped on that negative skew belies an unfortunate state in a significant part of the trade press these days IMHO.
If you have a minute, you might even read this article, it’s not long and he makes some interesting points. [ComputerWorld article] Opinion: Windows 7, FUD and slow news days
And, in case you don’t read it or might have missed it, one of the more interesting points that’s not obvious, but nonetheless pretty important, revolves around this (aspect of the original survey): [from article] “But had any of' them actually said they were going to skip Windows 7? If they did, you can't tell from the questions that were asked.“ In fact, the survey only mentioned the respondents intentions by the end of 2010, which is only 15 months after the general availability of Win7. As this author also points out, to extrapolate that to mean the these folks were “skipping” Windows 7 altogether is just plain wrong. I’ll even go so far as to say that, in all likelihood, those who were holding off on Windows 7 were also most likely folks who didn’t adopt XP until 2-3 years after it’s release, but as he states, no one asked those kinds of clarifying question. I would point out, unlike most others, that this is conjecture on my part, and I have no specific data to back up my claim, but I would also hope that there’s a certain level inherent credibility to my hypothesis – I think it would take far more faith to believe that folks who adopted XP and Vista early would then “pass” on Windows 7, but the actually survey doesn’t allow us that level of insight in any event. But as I’ve said in many previous posts it’s up to you to make the call on who or what you believe. I’m just hoping you see the massive opportunity that Windows 7 represents, despite the press misinterpretations, and put yourself in a good position to take advantage of it, for yourselves and for your customers.
As before, my main point isn’t primarily to cast aspersions at all the folks who blog and report with a jaded or at least parochial (and often anti-MS) point of view, but to continue to alert my audience to the fact that just because someone has a byline and a large forum doesn’t always mean that they know whereof they speak, so please apply copious “grains of salt” to much of the Windows negativism you see and hear out of these presumed “pundits”.
This author ends his article with the following, so I’ll end with this as well. “But as someone who has been doing this stuff for over half my life, skipped Vista without any regrets, but conducted an in-depth review of Windows 7 for deployment in my organization, I personally can't wait to replace XP with Windows 7. I can at least confirm that in my organization, it will save a lot of time and personnel resources over supporting XP. If your organization is primarily Windows-based and your director or CIO puts a ‘6 in 10 skipping Win 7’ article in front of you as some sort of bolstering argument for not at least doing a proper shakedown of Windows 7, arm yourself with the facts.” Given this statement, and considering the source, I’m hoping you are now even more aware of why I believe Win7 will be the massive opportunity I alluded to earlier.