A crack in the Microsoft fortress?
Dell's decision to offer an older operating system on some of its computers is not a good sign for the company.
from the May 2, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Mr. Scoble says that employees within Microsoft have told him that people are very unhappy because it takes so long to get anything done, such as work on a project or innovate.
Scoble himself worries that Microsoft seems too comfortable with its Goliath status in the computing world and seems to be content with creating copies of successful products already created by its competitors. The classic example is the much-panned Microsoft Zune MP3 player, a copy of Apple's megasuccessful iPod.
As for Dell's decision to offer Windows XP again, Scoble says it is the result of just how successful Microsoft has been at getting companies to use that particular operating system (OS) on their computers.
"Many businesses that run hundreds or even thousands of computers don't want to move to new stuff because of the cost. Switching 20,000 machines is a huge dislocation, and there is no upside," Scoble says. "And Dell is not going to turn away customers who don't want a new OS, for fear they will just go somewhere else, or just not buy at all."
Robert X. Cringely, a columnist for InfoWorld and writer of a popular blog (http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/) agrees that the news from Dell is a mixed one for Microsoft. After all, he points out, Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., still makes money when people buy XP.
The more troublesome development, he writes in an e-mail, is Dell's decision to offer Linux, an open-source operating system, on some of its machines.
"I think what's more significant about this is that it signals: (a) Dell's independence from Microsoft – Redmond can't afford to retaliate against one of its biggest resellers; and (b) Dell's willingness to listen to its customers, which has been loooooong overdue," he writes. "The decision to continue supporting XP came out of its online suggestion box, Ideastorm.com, as did the decision to offer an open-source OS. A third reason is probably tech support. I am sure that Vista has been generating a lot of calls to Dell's support centers, and that selling XP will result in fewer of them.
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