Zeph
February 3rd, 2007, 09:56 PM
I found an article on Driver Heaven forums and it really pointed out a lot of the not soo easily seen things that have happened with Vista itself. Yeah, this is going to be a long post, but I hope you read. +rep is welcome ^_^.
source: http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/02/rob_enderle_on_vista_launch/
Now it may actually be kind of smart to do this with a Microsoft OS launch. The biggest problems with upgrades and migrations to a new OS occur in the first three months and things get vastly better after that as fixes are created for OS and application migration issues and more and more people are embraced by these fixes. If you realize that something like a billion PCs run some version of Windows, then, say even a 10% initial migration would be 100 million folks or 2.5 times Apple's estimated entire installed base of Macs. If only 1% of those folks had problems, and typically it will be much more than this, you would have 1 million people in dire need of help and there is no support organization or combination on the planet that could handle that kind of load over a short period of time.
...If Vista eases into the market, then the techies get it first and they, by nature, become part of the virtual support organization that updates to both Vista and the applications that run on it. In effect, the percentage of problems drops and the support capability of the market improves resulting in a sharp decrease of really upset people who can't get this product to work....
I didn't see it directly, but I knew there was definitely something awry with Vista missing the holiday season. Especially with the nickname of M$ given to Microsoft by people who don't really understand the company and the market it operates in. Technical support for a company is a ridiculously expensive service. You always have to have enough people on hand to handle expected demand of the service, otherwise it hurts the company in the long run as people decide to use substitue goods. This is where the brilliance of the upgrade coupons come to play. If you've gotten one, you've noticed that it can take 6-8 weeks for your actual upgrade to be shipped. This is basically crowd control at work. The enthusiasts will be the first to upgrade. They'll also be the ones to find more serious flaws and as the article said, serve as a third party to tech support. Once the coupons starting to ship a couple of weeks after launch, the common users are most likely to call in for support in the initial stages of their upgrade as they're having problems getting things to actually work. Demand for technical support wont accumulate as people with problems are most likely to be able to have all issues resolved by the time another person who has recently upgraded through a coupon has reason to call for support. Controlling the amount of people in need calling in for support for the common problems associated with upgrading an OS is a great strategy and should be noted dearly.
Typically there are a couple of rules to moving to a new major OS release. The first is the migration gets much better, as I've noted, after the first three months because more of the third party applications have both migrated and been patched and because the drivers are more mature (both more reliable and better tuned).
...Is it worth it? That depends on you, I do identify with the PC guy in Apple's ads and it sure was worth it for me. But there is no need to rush, it isn't going anyplace. Some of us just like to get places first.
Drivers, applications, familiarity, and market share. As time goes on, all provide a better and better user experience. That's not to say getting Vista up and going on day 1 is a bad experience, but it will show you when Vista dedicated apps are probably going to start becoming mainstream. I think more than half, if not all, expected H2V to be released shortly after Vista itself. I really didn't think about drivers and a user-base back then, but meh, I wouldn't mind being the only person having H2V Jan 30, 2007. Microsoft would have, though.
We're.... >_>, most people here, are still sitting around wondering when Halo 2 Vista will be released. I, myself, am looking forward to what should be a June/July release. How did I come up with this? I looked at Vista as a whole market and logistics subject. The last upgrade coupons for Vista will, at the latest, reach end-user homes the last week of May. Assuming Microsoft is using the above mentioned strategy for their product placement on the whole, aside from Office which I consider a vital exception, the culmination of 4Q06 sales of Vista will be finalized just as June starts up.
So what has happened from February to June? I'd have to say drivers and applications. nVidia might have quelled the people putting up a class action lawsuit over them by releasing stable drivers that work properly. AMD will have spat out the R6xx series of video cards with their respective drivers and have a decent slew of DX10 cards with a month or two of market saturation with driver improvements to spare. Creative might have actually started doing work during the day to produce working drivers for their X-Fi and Audigy 4 sound cards. Most important, the Vista debug team will have put out multiple patches and updates for the things you can't catch in a debug lab or limited RC. So what does that mean? Less customer support dedicated to things that aren't related to Vista, such as drivers! Come on, dont tell me you think noobs don't complain to MS whenever their video games crash...
So with working drivers, a larger userbase, experienced users, tech support suicide rates dropping, and a solid infrastructure formed, what do you think would be a good idea to do? Why not release some games that require all that, such as Halo 2 Vista? It's a great time for a game release. It's summer, people are looking for something to do, as they have plenty of time to populate servers and more money is spent in summer on luxury items than any other time of the year besides the winter holidays. I'm going to make a few predictiions, and I bet I'll be pretty close:
Middle to late February: Halo 2 Vista update containing information about content. Probably 90% old stuff and 10% new. Just a 'because we care' update.
Mid-March: Weekly update speaking of H2V information being released within the week.
1-6 days later: Media channels releasing 'H2V information reguarding release, required specs, and details about Live Anywhere.
Next weekly update from bungie: Confirmation or denial of H2V information about release, required specs, and LA info.
Late-April/Early-May: Weekly updates about the H2EK talking about basic information and showing off some of the test cases used to test the EK before it went Gold.
June/July: Release.
source: http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/02/rob_enderle_on_vista_launch/
Now it may actually be kind of smart to do this with a Microsoft OS launch. The biggest problems with upgrades and migrations to a new OS occur in the first three months and things get vastly better after that as fixes are created for OS and application migration issues and more and more people are embraced by these fixes. If you realize that something like a billion PCs run some version of Windows, then, say even a 10% initial migration would be 100 million folks or 2.5 times Apple's estimated entire installed base of Macs. If only 1% of those folks had problems, and typically it will be much more than this, you would have 1 million people in dire need of help and there is no support organization or combination on the planet that could handle that kind of load over a short period of time.
...If Vista eases into the market, then the techies get it first and they, by nature, become part of the virtual support organization that updates to both Vista and the applications that run on it. In effect, the percentage of problems drops and the support capability of the market improves resulting in a sharp decrease of really upset people who can't get this product to work....
I didn't see it directly, but I knew there was definitely something awry with Vista missing the holiday season. Especially with the nickname of M$ given to Microsoft by people who don't really understand the company and the market it operates in. Technical support for a company is a ridiculously expensive service. You always have to have enough people on hand to handle expected demand of the service, otherwise it hurts the company in the long run as people decide to use substitue goods. This is where the brilliance of the upgrade coupons come to play. If you've gotten one, you've noticed that it can take 6-8 weeks for your actual upgrade to be shipped. This is basically crowd control at work. The enthusiasts will be the first to upgrade. They'll also be the ones to find more serious flaws and as the article said, serve as a third party to tech support. Once the coupons starting to ship a couple of weeks after launch, the common users are most likely to call in for support in the initial stages of their upgrade as they're having problems getting things to actually work. Demand for technical support wont accumulate as people with problems are most likely to be able to have all issues resolved by the time another person who has recently upgraded through a coupon has reason to call for support. Controlling the amount of people in need calling in for support for the common problems associated with upgrading an OS is a great strategy and should be noted dearly.
Typically there are a couple of rules to moving to a new major OS release. The first is the migration gets much better, as I've noted, after the first three months because more of the third party applications have both migrated and been patched and because the drivers are more mature (both more reliable and better tuned).
...Is it worth it? That depends on you, I do identify with the PC guy in Apple's ads and it sure was worth it for me. But there is no need to rush, it isn't going anyplace. Some of us just like to get places first.
Drivers, applications, familiarity, and market share. As time goes on, all provide a better and better user experience. That's not to say getting Vista up and going on day 1 is a bad experience, but it will show you when Vista dedicated apps are probably going to start becoming mainstream. I think more than half, if not all, expected H2V to be released shortly after Vista itself. I really didn't think about drivers and a user-base back then, but meh, I wouldn't mind being the only person having H2V Jan 30, 2007. Microsoft would have, though.
We're.... >_>, most people here, are still sitting around wondering when Halo 2 Vista will be released. I, myself, am looking forward to what should be a June/July release. How did I come up with this? I looked at Vista as a whole market and logistics subject. The last upgrade coupons for Vista will, at the latest, reach end-user homes the last week of May. Assuming Microsoft is using the above mentioned strategy for their product placement on the whole, aside from Office which I consider a vital exception, the culmination of 4Q06 sales of Vista will be finalized just as June starts up.
So what has happened from February to June? I'd have to say drivers and applications. nVidia might have quelled the people putting up a class action lawsuit over them by releasing stable drivers that work properly. AMD will have spat out the R6xx series of video cards with their respective drivers and have a decent slew of DX10 cards with a month or two of market saturation with driver improvements to spare. Creative might have actually started doing work during the day to produce working drivers for their X-Fi and Audigy 4 sound cards. Most important, the Vista debug team will have put out multiple patches and updates for the things you can't catch in a debug lab or limited RC. So what does that mean? Less customer support dedicated to things that aren't related to Vista, such as drivers! Come on, dont tell me you think noobs don't complain to MS whenever their video games crash...
So with working drivers, a larger userbase, experienced users, tech support suicide rates dropping, and a solid infrastructure formed, what do you think would be a good idea to do? Why not release some games that require all that, such as Halo 2 Vista? It's a great time for a game release. It's summer, people are looking for something to do, as they have plenty of time to populate servers and more money is spent in summer on luxury items than any other time of the year besides the winter holidays. I'm going to make a few predictiions, and I bet I'll be pretty close:
Middle to late February: Halo 2 Vista update containing information about content. Probably 90% old stuff and 10% new. Just a 'because we care' update.
Mid-March: Weekly update speaking of H2V information being released within the week.
1-6 days later: Media channels releasing 'H2V information reguarding release, required specs, and details about Live Anywhere.
Next weekly update from bungie: Confirmation or denial of H2V information about release, required specs, and LA info.
Late-April/Early-May: Weekly updates about the H2EK talking about basic information and showing off some of the test cases used to test the EK before it went Gold.
June/July: Release.