Here’s what happened when a guy moved to Vista. 

The worst problem is drivers.  It took me hours to get the right combination of drivers to get my scanner working again. I’m pretty upset that my HP 5150 printer software no longer works.  The driver works fine, but the software that allows me to clean the inkjets fails so now I have horrible looking printouts.  You’d think with all the time Vista has been in development that this wouldn’t be an issue.  My Logitech mouse driver doesn’t install and, believe it or not, it didn’t even install the software for my Microsoft keyboard.  I had to search Microsoft to find it.

And here’s the reply he got from someone on line.

Vista is prime time ready period. It is not Microsoft’s responsibility to make your HP printer drivers work properly. It is HP responsibility and HP responsibility only.  It is not Microsoft’s responsibility there are no drivers for your mouse.  It is Logitech’s only.  Microsoft has published detailed info on how to make drivers and software compatible with Vista.  They had the beta and release candidates out for a long time plenty of time for non Microsoft I repeat non Microsoft companies to get their stuff right.  Microsoft has done everything they possibly can do to help other companies make their products compatible.  So if HP sits on their rear with drivers for your printer it is HP fault not Microsoft’s.  Learn to blame the right people.

"Learn to blame the right people."  Hmm.  That is the problem, isn’t it?   Where does responsibility fall?

When I used Outlook a few years ago, I would spend some time everyday weeding my in-basket, getting rid of the spam.  Apparently, Microsoft believed that spam was my problem.

Enter Gmail.  Google believed that spam was their problem and they created a way to solve the problem.  Instead of 10s and sometimes 100s of spams a day, I now get one or two.

I perfectly understand Microsoft’s point of view.  They are drawing a line in the sand.  This is what we expect corporations to do.  This is what makes them rational economic actors.   Right?

Well, this is not clear.  What is happening here is a weird value scrape back.  Microsoft makes magnificent software in the form of Outlook and Vista, software that creates tremendous value for the consumer, and then it scrapes some of this value back in the form of a value tax. 

And this is of course precisely what Apple and Google have learned: when you create value, you can’t recall any of this value.  You cannot ask Grant to give up several minutes everyday weeding  spam.  You can’t ask the Vista customer to spend a weekend hunting for drivers.  You have to build the product so that it doesn’t expose the consumer to any value tax. 

It is finally a question of boundaries.  And, yes, drawing a line in the sand is the thing that corporations do well.  This is the thing we ask them to do.  We don’t want them to solve all the problems in the world.  We are not asking that Vista come bundled with an answer for world peace.   We are merely saying a consumer good can’t get in its own way.  It can’t impose on us a value tax. 

References

NGC457.  2007.  Vista is Ready For Prime Time Period.  A reply to Silver-Surfer57.  here.  (No permalink.  Please scroll down.)

Silver-Surfer57.  Windows Vista Ultimate: Not Ready for Prime-Time.  CNet Reviews.  January 25, 2007.  here.   

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Wordle for the image.