By Kenneth Saxe, MCSE, MCSA, MCPS, MCNPS, CNE
Stambaugh Ness Business Solutions
Senior Technical Consultant

Back in the 1980's I worked for one of the leading IBM Partners in Texas. At the time IBM was "top dog" and businesses could not get enough IBM Personal Computers.  We were literally selling them by the skid load.

In 1987 IBM introduced their second generation personal computers called the IBM PS/2 line. The PS/2 architecture ultimately failed in its attempts to maintain IBM's personal computer market share. Due to the higher costs of the closed PS/2 architecture, customers preferred competing PCs that extended the existing PC architecture instead of abandoning it for something new and different.

Despite several marketing attempts IBM never regained the personal computer market share after that.

Microsoft introduced Windows in 1985. Through various releases (Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP) Microsoft gained in the desktop operating system market. In 2004, IDC announced that Microsoft Windows had an amazing 90% of the desktop market share.

The advancements were not without some setbacks. In June of 2000, Microsoft released Windows Millennium (Windows ME). This product, riddled with bugs and errors, was a dismal failure and caused embarrassment to the people at Redmond.

Windows ME was criticized by users for its innate instability and unreliability, due to frequent lock ups and crashes. A PC World article dubbed Windows ME the "Mistake Edition" and listed it as the fourth "Worst Tech Product of All Time."

Microsoft redeemed itself by introducing Windows 2000 and later Windows XP. These products were much more reliable and stable. Windows XP eventually became an industry standard and has been the operating system of choice for several years. By January 2006, 400 million copies were in use.

Windows Vista

Let's jump ahead to January 30, 2007. Microsoft introduced Windows Vista. Very quickly end users found that to run Windows Vista successfully they needed to have the right hardware. Most computers that were even two years old were not going to run Vista satisfactorily.

In addition, users found that the operating system was more complicated to use than Windows XP. They were asked questions they were never asked before and weren't prepared to answer.

And we can't forget the all-important device drivers. Many USB thumb drives, digital cameras and printers no longer worked under Windows Vista. A small number of peripheral vendors had "Vista-compatible" drivers available but many recommended purchasing new and approved models of their products.

It is a fact. End users buy computers to run application software, not operating systems. And, regrettably, many popular software applications – including business critical accounting software – were not initially Vista compatible. Some software vendors had patches, fixes and workarounds. But many simply did not and would not work with Windows Vista.

New Car Blues

Let's say a car maker designed a new model car - their latest and greatest! But this new car was slower and more complicated to drive than last year's model. And, by the way, your current MP3 player, GPS and other favorite gadgets were not going to work in this new car even though they worked in last year's model. Plus the new model won't fit in your current garage and will require you to buy or build a new one. 

How excited are you going to be about replacing your current car with this new model? How quickly do you expect this car maker will begin to lose market share? In many ways, Microsoft is just like this car maker.

One must ask whether or not with the introduction of Vista has Microsoft also gone the way of IBM after introducing the PS/2. Time will tell.