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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME Adults are supposed to be able to face mistakes and admit them -- and then move on. Microsoft has never been able to do that. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 Without competition, Microsoft has no reason to own up to the real reason XP is betterDec. 9, 2001 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt Don't look now, but Microsoft, the company behind the Windows monopoly, is once again trying to hide something from you. Microsoft is so embarrassed by the failures of the three weak sisters in its operating system family -- Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me -- that it is covering up the most important difference between those versions and its latest operating system, Windows XP. Microsoft advertises XP as a "media" operating system, whatever that is supposed to mean, instead of telling you precisely why XP is important: It doesn't lock up, run out of memory and crash the way the three previous versions of Windows do. You might assume that Microsoft doesn't want to call attention to those failures in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me because big companies try not to admit that they did anything wrong. That would invite lawsuits from angry customers demanding compensation for lost data, lost time and lost business. But in fact Microsoft is simply embarrassed. It does not know what to do. If it could be honest about the differences between Windows XP and its three weak sisters, the company would be admitting that it knows those versions of Windows are, in fact, badly designed. And since the company that designed those versions of Windows is none other than Microsoft, it would be ridiculing itself. That's the way Microsoft approaches this. Everyone who has a life, all of us living in the real world, must find this sort of attitude pitiful. Adults know how silly such an attitude is. Children, by nature, have a hard time owning up to mistakes. Adults are supposed to be able to face mistakes and admit them -- and then move on. Microsoft has never been able to do that. Without competition, Microsoft has not even needed to do that. Imagine how different the operating system market would be if many different independent companies produced their own versions of Windows. These versions would all be compatible with each other, just as all independently produced PCs are compatible with each other. Yet each would be different in significant ways. One might be bulletproof in daily use; another might run faster, a third might provide better support for older peripherals. A company making one version would want your business, and so it would compete the way companies have competed for eons. It would tell you why its product was better. And that means it would tell you why that "other" product was worse. So if Windows XP came from Softmicro, while Windows 95, 98 and Me came from Microsoft, you can be sure that Softmicro would waste no time advertising XP's virtues. "Won't crash the way Windows 98 does!" an ad might say. "Won't eat up your school reports! Won't cost you an entire weekend every few months trying to get your PC to work properly!" Wouldn't that be grand? But we're stuck with reality. Microsoft makes all versions of the monopoly operating system used worldwide. Windows XP is ... well, it's swell. Mostly. And Windows 95 is ... well, it's an older version of Windows. A creaky and unreliable older version. So's Windows 98. So's Windows Me. Darn. So's your mother. Shouldn't Microsoft own up and be straight with us? |