January 16th, 2009
"Clearly, confidently, not Vista": Windows 7's new tagline?
Cast your mind back a couple of years ago, or for many Vista users, a few decades ago. That’ll be when your computer froze and you’ve been in a dribbling, catatonic, vegetabled mess ever since. I may well be a fan of the operating system, but for many, it’s the rebirth of the anti-Christ, with “666″branded onto the build string.
For IT administrators, Vista has been a difficult one to handle. For many administrators, the choice to move to Vista has been a slow, if not null option. Sticking with XP has saved many-a-university from an outcry of crashes, data destruction and all-round headaches.
I can remember countless times last year when I was rang by a friend, colleague or random student who found my number in their phone the next morning (too often, to be honest), asking me to come and fix their computer. “What’s wrong with it? Are you on Vista?” It was always “yes”.
As someone who knows sod all plenty about marketing, I looked over the evolution of the Vista tagline, “Clear, Confident, Connected”, to speculate how the next version of Windows, as keen as it is to move away from Vista, will be.
Clear
Well, clear yes, I can see that one; a clever word play with the Aero Glass feature. But on the other hand, it wasn’t exactly clear from first sight why the memory usage was so high, or why there was so much bulky crapware on the computer, or even why it would randomly crash, because they’d turned off the Software Licensing service by default.
Confident
No, because once you first press the power button on your computer, you shouldn’t have to sit cross-legged on your chair, crossing your fingers to hope Vista will boot up without a trouble. You should be able to sit down to Windows 7 confident knowing what you already know about Vista, except this time it’ll actually do what you want.
Connected
Yes, but not when you wanted it to. I still have trouble connecting to my VPN for university access. When I connect, it stays connected and doesn’t disconnect once I’ve used a local resource, but decides to connect half way through an Internet Explorer browsing session. Why? Why do that?
Or… failing all this, Windows 7 will flop just like Vista did, and XP will be crowned the best operating system the company have ever made. If that’s the case, they shouldn’t bother pursuing another operating system, in my honest opinion.
Zack Whittaker, the youngest in the ZDNet network, is a British student at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he studies BA (Hons) Criminology and Social Policy. His insight into the next-generation is unique and first-hand, sharing his knowledge of the here and now but more so what's next and how to get there.
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| 01/16/09
