I completely forgot that Windows 7 was launching here in Australia on October 22nd, and I make a living in the IT industry. I was only reminded of the launch by a Radio Rentals advert I heard in the car on the 23rd, an advert which so far is the only advert I've encountered in local media. Checking with my favourite websites later that day saw brief mentions, but a serious lack of hype.

Admittedly I don't watch TV much anymore, and I don't know any Windows fan-boys, but I can recall that there was no way that I could have missed the Windows Vista launch back in 2007.

I remember Harvey Norman proudly championing the launch opening stores at midnight across Australia. It all turned into a bit of a farce the next day when we saw the photos of bemused staff outnumbering customers at all but a few major outlets in Sydney when the doors were thrown open at 11pm.

Harvey Norman opened some of his stores again for a midnight Windows 7 launch this year, with much the same turnout as Vista had.

A changing industry

Microsoft has spent the last couple of years fixing what was broken in Vista. The original plan called for all sorts of new technologies such as WinFS, all of which had to be abandoned when Microsoft scrapped it and started over using the Windows 2003 code base.  Vista's biggest quality problem was this mid development course change, leaving Microsoft with too little time to finish development properly, leading to Vista hitingt the shelves when it wasn't ready. The rest is history, though we are getting a bit of a repeat with the Windows Mobile 6.5 launch that's currently under way.

Looking at the features, Windows 7 offers little advantage over Windows XP. The most obvious benefit is that it looks nicer, and security, although better than XP, is by default weaker than Vista. It's a bit more resource hungry than XP, and it's not quite 100% compatible, forcing Microsoft to include a bizarre virtual machine in the Pro edition that will only work with certain CPUs. The latter issue has me a bit baffled as I've run VMWare and VirtualBox and neither have the narrow set of requirements that Microsoft's virtual machine does. For people running Windows XP, there's just not much of an incentive to upgrade, but disappointed Vista users now have an option besides downgrading.

A changing desktop

The Internet (or "cloud" to some) is fast becoming the primary focus of the average computer user, offering services such as Twitter or Facebook. Bill Gates originally dismissed the Internet, eventually being forced to play catch-up when Netscape burst onto the scene. Once they'd beaten their rival into submission by dumping Internet Explorer for free, they let the browser languish, dissolving the development team. This opening permitted Mozilla to gain a foothold with Firefox. Fast forward a few years and Firefox is a major player in the browser space, with Microsoft's tarnished IE brand struggling, slowly falling behind despite their best efforts.

Google has been well aware of the trend towards Internet based applications, and has been spending big to develop new products and purchase others with potential. This culminated in the announcement of Google Chrome OS earlier this year, a customised Linux operating system that would boot directly into a browser. This is a bold idea, and for many users, a browser would be enough. If this product is successful when it launches, then Microsoft will be in real trouble as Google will have successfully marginalised the desktop, rendering Microsoft's flagship product redundant. With Google Docs already a success, Microsoft's cash cows would both be in trouble.

With the launch of Vista, Microsoft made some pretty significant changes to the Windows interface, rearranging the layout of the control panel and many other parts of the system, enough that the average, non-technical user will have difficulty for a while, effectively having to learn it over again. To top it off, Microsoft introduced the ribbon into Office 2007, which some people think is a great idea, but most seem to have emotions ranging from dislike to revulsion. I'm in the latter camp on this as I can't stand the way everything moves around so that the same thing is not always in the same place. I find it very unintuitive. Microsoft however has decided it was such a great idea that they've expanded the ribbon to other applications. With the differences in the operating system layout, and the ribbon being added everywhere, users no longer have an argument for sticking with Windows because it's familiar. A Mac or Linux with Open Office would arguably be easier to learn for someone who didn't like the ribbon. Please be aware that I'm talking about day-to-day use for the average person, not the installation of either operating system which could potentially be beyond the average user.

Good enough is good enough

Sometime around the middle of this decade, a cheap PC was finally good enough for the average person to do average things, so the upgrade cycle for these consumers was broken. In the last few years, games have also reached somewhat of a plateau, most new titles no longer needing the latest and greatest hardware to run at a reasonable frame rate, and consoles have lured away a significant percentage of the hardcore PC gamers, offering freedom from driver patching and maintenance. This has meant that demand for new PCs, nearly all of which include a Windows license whether you want it or not, is down.

The biggest growth area for new PC sales recently has been netbooks. When these devices launched, the low price of the machines made it a lot harder to justify the relative high price of Windows, leading to some manufacturers trialling Linux. Microsoft fought this trend by dumping XP for free, which has hurt both it's bottom line and and the uptake of Vista. This is not a sustainable business model for a company that has projected $26 billion in costs for the coming financial year, and it's showing in Microsoft's declining year on year income over the last three quarters.

Marketing woes

Microsoft has never been very clued-in when it comes to advertising, seemingly incapable of looking like anything other than a bunch of stuffy suits. Apple successfully played on this image with it's "Get a Mac" series for a number of years, and eventually, Microsoft fought back with a high-profile $100 million advertising campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld. If the idea of poking fun at Microsoft had been handled well, the campaign could have been successful, but picking Jerry Seinfeld to draw a crowd was a strange decision, as he's been out of the limelight for nearly a decade. The first advert, featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, came across as awkward and the whole campaign was subsequently scrapped, replaced by a dull knock-off of the Apple Ads called "I'm a PC".

Microsoft tried another humorous approach, this time involving Dean Cain, another star past his prime. This time the advert featured a woman accidentally coming across her husband's porn collection on a laptop and subsequently projectile vomiting. This attracted attention for all the wrong reasons, demonstrating that any publicity is not necessarily good publicity.

The most recent misstep would have to be the Windows 7 launch party campaign. Linux installfests are an old idea, celebrating a new release by having a get-together with friends, everyone bringing their PC's to a central location where the more experienced users of the group can do a mass upgrade for everyone. Microsoft obviously wanted a slice of this grass-roots support, so they created a "party pack" which included a few miscellaneous party favours (dependant on location) and one copy of Windows 7 Pro, in exchange for the host getting together some friends to spread the hype. This also fell flat on it's face for several reasons, including the hefty EULA that the host and guests had to agree to, and the fact that Microsoft doesn't have a cool image, so most people seemed to take it like it was a joke to be invited to a Windows 7 launch party. There was nothing really in it for the guests as the only item of any worth in the pack was the solitary copy of Windows. Fun was definitely not included.

The future

Perhaps Vista's failure wasn't just that it had faults? Perhaps the reality is that average consumer had moved on by the time Vista launched and no longer cared what the operating system was, just that it was familiar and got the job done? If this is the situation, then Windows 7 sales are going to languish in much the same way that Vista did, despite the fact that is technically better. Time will tell, but Windows 7's biggest failing could be that it's not Windows XP.