"Upgrading" to XP
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I was recently reading Eric Sink's book "Eric Sink on The Business of Software", which is largely reprints (slightly revised and reorganised) of his weblog[^] and his erstwhile MSDN column. In one good column, he tells us to "Act Your Age"[^]. In this, he talks about your potential market being split into four groups: Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Conservatives and Laggards, with the bulk of the market being in the middle two groups. Windows 'crossed the chasm' from Early Adopters to Pragmatists a long, long time ago. Most of the Conservatives own Windows XP and are familiar with it. Sink has this advice for people in this stage of their market development: "In the Pragmatists and Conservatives stage, listen even more carefully. These people are nothing like you. You're a geek and you enjoy technology for its own sake. They just want their problems solved, and they don't care in the slightest about the religious wars we fight amongst ourselves. Don't assume you know anything about the problems they're facing. Oh and by the way, we're the ones who are abnormal, not them. "Remember, Pragmatists are practical. They want no-nonsense solutions to their problems. If you throw in a feature just because one of your developers thinks it was cool, the Pragmatists will not be impressed. "If you're selling to the Conservatives, don't start making gratuitous changes. Conservatives are like cats -- if you move too fast, you'll scare them." The Conservatives and indeed the Pragmatists are scared by the changes in Windows Vista. Microsoft have got to take on the pain of guiding Pragmatists across the chasm again. That said, by anyone else's standards Windows Vista is a rip-roaring success. It's leapfrogged Windows 2000 into second place behind Windows XP, with Mac OS a definite fourth, in the web analytics I look at (HitsLink[^]).
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991 -
I was recently reading Eric Sink's book "Eric Sink on The Business of Software", which is largely reprints (slightly revised and reorganised) of his weblog[^] and his erstwhile MSDN column. In one good column, he tells us to "Act Your Age"[^]. In this, he talks about your potential market being split into four groups: Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Conservatives and Laggards, with the bulk of the market being in the middle two groups. Windows 'crossed the chasm' from Early Adopters to Pragmatists a long, long time ago. Most of the Conservatives own Windows XP and are familiar with it. Sink has this advice for people in this stage of their market development: "In the Pragmatists and Conservatives stage, listen even more carefully. These people are nothing like you. You're a geek and you enjoy technology for its own sake. They just want their problems solved, and they don't care in the slightest about the religious wars we fight amongst ourselves. Don't assume you know anything about the problems they're facing. Oh and by the way, we're the ones who are abnormal, not them. "Remember, Pragmatists are practical. They want no-nonsense solutions to their problems. If you throw in a feature just because one of your developers thinks it was cool, the Pragmatists will not be impressed. "If you're selling to the Conservatives, don't start making gratuitous changes. Conservatives are like cats -- if you move too fast, you'll scare them." The Conservatives and indeed the Pragmatists are scared by the changes in Windows Vista. Microsoft have got to take on the pain of guiding Pragmatists across the chasm again. That said, by anyone else's standards Windows Vista is a rip-roaring success. It's leapfrogged Windows 2000 into second place behind Windows XP, with Mac OS a definite fourth, in the web analytics I look at (HitsLink[^]).
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991Mike Dimmick wrote:
The Conservatives and indeed the Pragmatists are scared by the changes in Windows Vista. Microsoft have got to take on the pain of guiding Pragmatists across the chasm again.
Scared? More like confused. I am an early adopter and even I think Vista is a poor choice in OS at this stage. As for success, Vista isn't a success, even Microsoft's numbers are being reported as below what they were expecting.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Andy Brummer wrote:
Watson's law: As an online discussion of cars grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving the Bugatti Veyron approaches one.
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I was recently reading Eric Sink's book "Eric Sink on The Business of Software", which is largely reprints (slightly revised and reorganised) of his weblog[^] and his erstwhile MSDN column. In one good column, he tells us to "Act Your Age"[^]. In this, he talks about your potential market being split into four groups: Early Adopters, Pragmatists, Conservatives and Laggards, with the bulk of the market being in the middle two groups. Windows 'crossed the chasm' from Early Adopters to Pragmatists a long, long time ago. Most of the Conservatives own Windows XP and are familiar with it. Sink has this advice for people in this stage of their market development: "In the Pragmatists and Conservatives stage, listen even more carefully. These people are nothing like you. You're a geek and you enjoy technology for its own sake. They just want their problems solved, and they don't care in the slightest about the religious wars we fight amongst ourselves. Don't assume you know anything about the problems they're facing. Oh and by the way, we're the ones who are abnormal, not them. "Remember, Pragmatists are practical. They want no-nonsense solutions to their problems. If you throw in a feature just because one of your developers thinks it was cool, the Pragmatists will not be impressed. "If you're selling to the Conservatives, don't start making gratuitous changes. Conservatives are like cats -- if you move too fast, you'll scare them." The Conservatives and indeed the Pragmatists are scared by the changes in Windows Vista. Microsoft have got to take on the pain of guiding Pragmatists across the chasm again. That said, by anyone else's standards Windows Vista is a rip-roaring success. It's leapfrogged Windows 2000 into second place behind Windows XP, with Mac OS a definite fourth, in the web analytics I look at (HitsLink[^]).
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991Mike Dimmick wrote:
Microsoft have got to take on the pain of guiding Pragmatists across the chasm again.
Convincing the early adopters to port some key software wouldn't hurt either...
every night, i kneel at the foot of my bed and thank the Great Overseeing Politicians for protecting my freedoms by reducing their number, as if they were deer in a state park. -- Chris Losinger, Online Poker Players?
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Mike Dimmick wrote:
Microsoft have got to take on the pain of guiding Pragmatists across the chasm again.
Convincing the early adopters to port some key software wouldn't hurt either...
every night, i kneel at the foot of my bed and thank the Great Overseeing Politicians for protecting my freedoms by reducing their number, as if they were deer in a state park. -- Chris Losinger, Online Poker Players?
Well, a very large part of the Windows software base does work unchanged on Windows Vista (although custom actions in Windows Installer are problematic due to UAC changes [*], so installing them might be tricky). But that's the point - it's unchanged. You can run it equally well on Windows Vista or on Windows XP. The few cases where they've forced it are some of their own games (um, Halo 2 on Windows? barely uses DX10 from what I've heard). Office 2007 works on both, you get slightly more Glass in the window on Vista, big whoop. No major advantage in getting Vista over XP. It would help if Microsoft would support something other than just their latest developer tools, and that not even very well. :mad: I actually can't use Windows Vista at work because I still need to use eMbedded Visual C++ (3.0 AND 4.0) and they simply crash. No fix planned because, well, they were free, and they're out of date anyway. VS 2005 'replaces' them - if you only want to support CE 5.0 and Pocket PC 2003 and later. Sorry, I still have some customers with PPC 2002 and Windows CE 4.2 out in the field, and MFC/CE 6.0/3.0 (it's a bad hackup of MFC 6.0 for the desktop) to ATLMFC 8.0 is too big a jump anyway. [*] This is because users normally installed as administrator. If your custom action requires administrative privileges you were supposed to say that it shouldn't impersonate the installing user, but few did (and IIRC the 'no impersonate' is not set by Visual Studio for VS-generated packages). Under Windows 2000 and XP, it was possible for an administrator to mark a package for installation by unprivileged users, where you'd get bitten by this, but this feature only makes sense in managed environments and isn't used much.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991