New Media, Marketing and Entrepreneurship

Okay, so this post is going to be short and quick. Its about a piece of software called Windows 8. The consumer preview was launched a couple of days back and with the frenzy around, I downloaded it on my system. It took a fairly long time to download and when it did, It took a whole effort on installing it.

While the install was happening, I always had this strangely un-nerving feeling, as to something is not going to be right. Anyway, the install happened and just when I turned on the laptop and used the system twice, I found that Windows 7 was probably better and faster to use than its more dashing new born cousin.

Now I always thought, since this is a consumer preview version, it will get installed as an additional software on my system, taking some disk space and that I can always un-install it. Though to my utter surprise and (disgust) later, I found out, that Windows 8 has over-written the Windows 7 installed on the system and no go back to Win 7, I would need to first take a back-up, re-install Win7 from the boot up DVD which will also help me un-install Win 8.

What pissed me off?

While I have been personally impressed with the Windows phone, the way Win 8, got installed into my system, seems like an intrusion. It never prompted me as a user, that my current Win 7 will be over written. All it said was that I need to un-install MS Security Essentials, which I said was a fair chance to take to check out the new Win 8 preview.

Its a sad state that the user which MS was targeting is now pretty miffed at the fact that he was not even asked first for a consent to sit into his system. Now one can always say, it was in the fine print and somewhere in the conditions which I accepted by checking some radio button while install, but if it was this critical, as a user I should have been made aware of what changes the install will do to my system.

I would certainly not advice anyone right now, to install the Win 8 preview, the UI is good, though more from the touch perspective. On my laptop, I would still prefer Win 7. And if you still go ahead, ensure that you make a disk partition first and then go ahead with the installation.

The Lesson

Tech companies must understand that the user today is far more evolved and would hate it if something (anything) happens without his/ her consent, even if the product is superb. Its not just about the product, its about ME (the user).

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Before I start this post, I must confess, that since childhood, like many others, @billgates has been a hero. I always dreamt of seeing him and had my brush with him, when I LIVE blogged a session which he chaired, while being felicitated by NASSCOM, in New Delhi.

When I was pursuing my bachelors, Microsoft was a name which resounded like a dream coming true and a company to work with.

A couple of days back when @billgates joined twitter, I was looking at what comments have people to make and it was interesting to see how someone who may not stand even an inch to where @billgates does (whatever it may be, I respect the man, a self made achiever). There were all sorts of comments starting from welcoming him, to people talking about their Apple iPODs and the downfall of the Microsoft era.

At a recent conference which I blogged, one of the highly placed speakers, Founder of a Cloud based business application services company from India, had a bold statement to make, that MS is going to be history soon. At that time, I may not have had the understanding of the real dynamics of his statement, but today as I get to know more about the deep mess, I realize how things have shaped up and being a person I am, I still think, MS has all the chances in the world to fight back.

While reading an interesting post by a previous MS employee at the New York Times as to how MS lead to creative destruction, I was not much shocked at the story, as it was something, I knew from my interaction with many similar others.

In multiple minds, while writing this post, I am an entrepreneur and run a startup and I understand how the leadership of a company truly affects the entire structure and hierarchy. The mindset, the culture. Almost each one of us today has grown up, seeing the Office, Windows OS, though today the quality has gone down, there is no innovation and we have stopped expecting the days when Microsoft was supposed to be telling the future.

Though being an optimist, I again want the company to bounce back, fight the clutter. There is nothing really impossible. Its a shift required at a large scale, but that is what is required, otherwise this would make for the saddest story in business.

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