Michi Knows

It seems Dell is caving to public demand rather than Microsoft’s will. They are going to begin offering XP again… well, for their business customers.

Interestingly, they got this idea from their recent Digg clone, which they use to figure out what their customers want by using a open suggestion and voting system. It appears having XP was the top request among its customers. Still, it blows that they ignore their non-business customers who might be interested in XP.

This is an important move for Dell since a recent report pointed out that it was losing market share to all of its rivals. It lost 14% of its US business in a period where the industry grew 3.6%. (side note: Apple grew the fastest in the same period at +30%.)

It was rather amazing that computer makers would switch to Vista so suddenly, knowing full well that business consumers aren’t interested in the latest and greatest.

This all paints an interesting picture for Microsoft: they worked so hard on Vista, but nobody really wants it. Sure, XP has its problems, but it works. And since Vista pretty much requires a new computer the cost of adopting the new operating system is higher than any previous version.

Microsoft made some critical mistakes when it was deciding on how to upgrade its operating system. By focusing on the visuals instead of performance, they’ve made the system less appealing to business consumers. And since they faked the whole security model upgrade, it hasn’t exactly impressed the technical people who might have jumped the gun for it. We’ll see how this plays out this year as Microsoft increases its pressure on its retail distributers to sell more Vista machines.