No Wonder
As usual, all of this is unscientific. It has to be, there is no “scientific” research about this kind of stuff. But I was curious about how many people had upgraded to Vista, and how many to Leopard. I found two polls online. The first was run by MacTips:
677 people answered, and of them, 75% said they had already. Compare that with this long-running MSNBC poll that started a few months after Vista’s release, asking similar questions about that OS:
Only 11% said “yes,” or up to 30% if you include the “maybes.” More than half are holding off for the foreseeable future.
This mirrors a lot of what I have seen and heard; I have not yet met a person in the flesh who has said that they actually like Vista. Everyone I have met who has it has some major complaint about it.
And before you dismiss that Vista poll as being too unscientific, note that Net Applications measured Vista use at just under 8% of the total, or about 9% of all WIndows users:
Meanwhile, my own site’s stats put Vista users at just under 13%:
Either way, the number hovers very close to the 11% figure in the MSNBC poll. Which figures. Businesses are “leery” of Vista, and “have no appetite” for the new OS. The recognize what most regular buyers seem to be realizing: Vista brings very little advantage in exchange for the headaches it poses.
Leopard, while it still has its own bad spots, brings a long list of improvements that people are talking about and enjoying. I myself failed to make Time Machine work, and turned off Spaces after having too much trouble with it. I am not enamored of much in the new Spotlight, either. But that’s the end of my troubles–and I very much like a lot of the other improvements. Quick Look is fantastic. I’m still working with Stacks, but find them a solid improvement. Some elements of Spotlight are an improvement despite its other lacks. The dictionary is better than ever. Safari 3 is a major boost up. I plan to get .Mac and make full use of the “Back to My Mac” feature, not to mention getting to use iChat a lot more. Every day, I stumble upon something new in Leopard, and most of the time I am very pleasantly surprised.
Even better, the system runs fast and crisp–even on my 3-year-old pre-Intel PowerBook G4. Vista, on the other hand, is a slow memory hog which usually cannot run at all on computers made more than two years ago. Service Pack 3 (SP3) for XP just came out, and it runs twice as fast as Vista does.
All this reminds me of the old Canadian joke from the 80’s: In America, you have Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, and Stevie Wonder; in Canada, we have Brian Mulroney–with no hope, no cash, and no wonder!
Microsoft says that “the ‘Wow’ is now,” but all they have is Vista–with no speed, no customers, and no wonder.
Just some of my thoughts to add to yours. I am now on my first mac and have upgraded to leopard. Really like it and like you find new things that I enjoy and use every day. Just did a total XP reinstall on a computer I use at my office. XP is a good OS. I am now a mac forever person, but I have to admit when i use XP I find it effective and useful. Perhaps it is that I am used to it but even on a 6 year old laptop it works quickly and efficiently.
I think most people using XP think that it is really fine for what they are doing right now. Upgrading is too costly and with too much uncertainty to make it worthwhile. My above case is a good example. My 6 year old laptop could never make the jump to vista yet runs XP smoothly.
I guess everyone will have to become vista users when they purchase their next computer so why waste the money now.
Plus, the marketing idiots at MS creating twenty different versions, what is that about. That has to be one of the worst ideas ever! I guarantee, if all you had to do was buy one upgrade–just walk into the store and say “Vista Upgrade please” MS would have seen its sales much much higher than they are now.
One of the reasons I bought a Mac was that for me to get a bilingual computer I would have had to buy a PC with Vista and then buy a vista upgrade to get the features I need. Total cost would have been more than a mac.
I bought a computer last summer. It came with Vista on it. Fortunately it came with a gig of memory- the manufacturer included ‘double’ memory so the thing would work okay. I got it home and my brother tried to install XP professional, but failed, (and he works for Intell). A couple more ‘geek’ friends attempted too, all eventually punted. So back came the vista. It has a more mac like look and feel, and I appreciate that, but its performance is a dog, and every time I seem to know how to navigate the changes Windows has made it seems like I have to relearn how to work everything all over again. I am okay with Vista, but I would have preferred to stay with XP. I occasionally have compatibility problems and fumble with the look and feel, so it slows me down as well as the machine. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are features on it that I like. Its just on balance, at best, only a half step forward and I would much better have the higher efficiency of XP.
XP was the long hoped for version of Windows, the one that finally achieved the functionality and stability that OS/2 achieved 15 years ago using only one tenth the resources. I would obviously prefer to stay with XP. Given the way that Microsoft seems to botch up operating systems, its a shame that IBM didn’t win the war it fought with Microsoft over OS/2 and windows.
If I had the money I would get a MAC just to play around with stuff – Garage Band really intrigues me and it comes free with the MAC.