Is Microsoft deliberately trying to screw up Windows 7?

Windows 7 is a nifty OS. I’ve been running it on a test machine here for months now and it’s fast, stable and easy on the eye too.  In fact, it’s such an improvement over Vista that even well-known Mac fans like Leo Laporte have very publicly said how much they love it.

So, with Windows 7 being so well received, here’s my question;

“Is Microsoft deliberately trying to screw up Windows 7?”

Let me explain.

Windows 7 upgrade

The marketplace has been asking for a single version of Windows for a long time – so the user gets the ability to turn on or off the features they need.  A single version of Windows 32 bit and one for 64bit users.  Nice and simple.  After all, this approach works fine for other operating systems. However, even though people have been demanding a single OS since the first beta of Windows 7, it’s not going to happen.  That’s right, instead of using the launch of Windows 7 as a chance to give their users what they want, Microsoft decided to create 6 different editions of the same OS.

To give you an example of how unnecessarily complicated this makes buying the correct version, Windows blogger Paul Thurrott has written a post that’s 2,600 words long, trying to explain the differences between each edition. Of course, these versions are all priced differently too.

By the way – Once you have decided which of the 6 editions of Windows 7 to get, you have to make another decision. Do you do an upgrade (from Vista), which Microsoft recommends – or do you do as everyone outside Microsoft recommends (including Paul Thurrott ironically) and do a clean install?

Here’s my point: Windows 7 was Microsoft’s chance to win back some of the good faith it lost, after releasing Vista. Yes, Vista today is not as sucky an OS as it was, (still sluggish though) but the original release was horrible.  This angered a lot of loyal Windows users; people who have stuck with the OS since Windows 3.1 or earlier.

I find it amazing that Microsoft is not better able to tap into the needs and demands of it’s users.  Many are so mad after their Vista experiences, that they wanted a FREE Windows 7 upgrade. This was clearly never going to happen.  But by shipping Windows 7 for almost the same price as Vista AND with the same version problems as Vista, Microsoft are showing that they are either not listening to their customers or that they don’t care.

With Apple and Google breathing down their neck, they might just want to reconsider that approach.