In a recent post on Ars Technica,  Emil Protalinski gets Microsoft’s take on this phenomenon:

“Overall we are finding our call center volume is down significantly more than we expected,” Barbara Gordon, vice president of customer support for Microsoft, told CNET. The drop in the number of calls doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that Windows 7 has fewer problems than Windows Vista. Microsoft added two online resources leading up to the operating system’s release that may have made the difference. “What we have found is we are seeing far more take-up of self-service…forums and Twitter to get responses.”

I have converted all of my office computers and laptops (except the Macs of course) to Windows 7 (saving one Vista Ultimate and XP SP3 for specialized apps). My own experience was generally less installation headaches (except finding certain drivers).  Where I was pulling my hair out with Vista issues, I am wasting less of my small company resources and finding more outlets with answers.

What has your experience been?

This is about the 20 millionth blog post or article that has been written with some reaction to last week’s *new* Google Chrome OS announcement. For the most part, it was a surprise announcement – mostly because it was not leaked to the press.

I have posted about Google in a mostly positive light (“Google: No brag, just fact”; “What’s the Thing with Bing?”) but I do not own any Google stock or have any financial interest whatsoever, directly or indirectly. And, my point-of-view is going to be widely different than most of what is out there. Since I am not wedded to any particular technology, all I have to ask is, why would or should I care (as a CIO, consultant, consumer, etc.)?

I have read some great posts (PC Mag’s Michael Miller; CIO.com’s Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols) that have really thought out and carefully presented the author’s arguments in the following major categories: 1) Microsoft killer; 2) Linux killer; 3) gives Google the keys to the world; 4) is it really ‘open’;  5) is this really ‘new’? All good questions and perspectives, but the answers don’t really mean much.

So, to the fundamental question: why would I (or you) care? I guess I would care if it changed my (or your) life in some way or another, positively or negatively. So, if I am a CIO, I might be concerned about this throwing a monkey-wrench into my carefully thought out strategic technology plan.

Maybe I was planning on rolling out Windows 7. But, now, I might be worried that I am going to be playing the IT version of the game “52 card pick-up”.

Now, as a consultant, I might welcome all of this uncertainty. Consultants get rich when there is a lot of head-scratching going on and someone has to come in and tell the folks what to do.

As a technologist, I might be fuming (or celebrating) that this is going to be marginalizing the good work of the open source community and related foundations that have coordinated and sponsored projects to get some cohesion in a smaller set of more robust Linux distros. Why might I be upset? With Google “branding” and financial might, they might be a force that pulls from, rather than nurtures, the continuing development of mainstream (read Ubuntu) Linux. On the other hand, I might now have many more opportunities to work on the newest of the new things.

As a consumer, I can already get a netbook with Linux and OS X on a Mac, will there be something magical that happens with new product capabilities?

Naw. Bottom line is that the CIO will move forward, as planned.  The technologists will have spirited debates like they always do and groups will splinter off – as they always do. As a consumer, I’ll just be wondering what new feature I will get to pay for in some new gadget.

At the end of the day, it is all about innovation, competition and all the things that need to keep happening to advance the state-of-the-art and either create new value or steal more share of what is already there. Microsoft still stands out in the ‘crowd’. Of course, that ‘crowd’ is becoming one of more or less equals.

And I never, ever, thought that Java would be an Oracle product.

So things change.

And that is exactly what we want. Without it, we still might be running Windows 98 SE. There is so much stuff out there, it will be decades of disruption before the things we talk about now are as ho-hum and boring as telephones, flushing toilets and electricity.

Until then, it will be like Al Bernstein once said, “Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.”

©2009 George M. Tomko All Rights Reserved