When a general audience observes Windows being used everywhere, it is natural to assume it is the best operating system. In reality, very few people have seen alternatives to Windows. Even fewer people had a prolonged hands-on experience with another platform. Microsoft are exploiting the placebo effect, giving unnecessary and unproductive software, which you truly think helps you, but only helps lock your data to one particular vendor. Often the vendor destroys the very same community that it pretends to cherish. One day in the future, people come to realise that better software is out there and that influence of the group has shifted its balance. But is it too late once data has been locked to a vendor and habits become less reversible?

Windows used to be a great operating system. I cannot deny it. Yet, I am thinking about 1992-1995 or thereabouts when Windows spread like fire owing to its nice tools (and piracy). It has been static in terms of productivity ever since and it is now lagging behind the competition. It has lost its edge rather quickly — something that even “the” Microsoft evangelist admitted to.

Lock-ins, proprietary and narrow-mindedness allow Windows to live longer than it truly deserves. A large number of people in newsgroups I get involved in ask about data conversions that will redeem them from Microsoft proprietary and allow them to reclaim their data. It is only then, several years later, that ex-Windows users understand that this placebo was in fact poison.

Businesses are said to always be in a state of growth or diminish. Experience shows that they can never remain static. Encouraging is that fact that Windows loses more users to other operating system than it manages to attract at the moment. Balance has shifted.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 3:00 pm and is filed under O/S. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.