Just can’t see the Vista
An interesting discussion over at TC, apparently Gartner says MS wants Yahoo because Vista is collapsing.
The referenced story is at ComputerWorld.com and affirms what I’ve said for years, which is that if the MS suite has simply never been designed for its users. It never had to be, because there was never competition for that user. Online advertising brings a revenue option to writing and hosting these very simple and most-needed functions (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) such as found in Google docs.
We are humans that have a limited lifespan and not so much time to weed through a maze of just to achieve simple aims. Lots of businesses use only Macs and lots are switching to OpenOffice. They find it’s increasingly costly and silly to employ a phalanx of specialists just to maintain very basic functions. Then, where’s the motivation to “upgrade” just to acquire a bewildering and unmanageable set of arcane options that destabilize and crash on literally every use?
It’s a bit extreme to say that “Online advertising revenue is their only real hope” but let’s face it, really good usable alternatives are becoming available in the market and the MS suite will have to regain its prior stability and consider “users” perhaps for the first time ever.
At this point, the effort required to switch to an alternative is less than the effort required to invest in Vista and face the scores of head-against-wall moments that await.