I made a comment over on “XP era ends: Will Vista step up?” (additional content added here after the **** break). Microsoft is discontinuing Windows XP pre-installed systems to force everyone to Vista (or to Mac and Linux as the trend seems to be).

Microsoft planned for Moore’s Law… right down to forecasting what people will be using “in 5-7 years” from when they started writing Vista code. They simply overshot. The reasons?

-Web-centric. Huge computing power is not needed for most web apps where many people spend their time. The other big use with Office productivity suites are really in refinement periods now - minor tweaks but not much extra need for power. So no consumer push other than the minority of gamers (that push graphics cards more than cpu’s), and fringe video or movie creation/editing. Look at the popularity of the ASUS Eee pc - it’s way underpowered for Vista, probably crawls under XP (but works well under Linux).

-Hardware Marketing Fog. The chip makers stumbled over the last few years with Moore’s law - they had to put gangs of cpu’s together to try and get back on Moore’s course rather than vastly more powerful singles. Most software has yet to be specially (re)written to use parallel processors. So hardware marketing is a confusing fog of brand terms (look at a Sunday advertising insert) trying to convince people to get a new computer. It’s confusing enough that many people give up and go to the Apple> store - since there is a very limited selection.

The fix for all this?

-Rescope Vista, make smaller incremental improvements more frequently (look at the release cycle for Ubuntu.. major improvements every six months). Don’t call them “service packs” but rather “improvement packs”.

-Slim down Vista. Find out how to make it run “more like XP” until hardware catches up again. Brand it “Speedy Vista”. Or put an easy to configure “turbo button” where a user can run with eye-candy or super fast by “downshifting to pass”. This includes refusing to allow hardware vendors (and MS itself) from packaging bloated advertising/trial software with new systems.

******

Microsoft made a mistake in overshooting hardware capabilities that would be available and that customers wanted/needed. Getting back on track will be difficult with Microsofts corporate system - they are not geared for what is going on in the industry. It’s much like the domestic US automanufacturers struggling against Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing system. Toyota was setup to build in small batches with continuous improvement. Much like Canonical Ltd does with Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu is launched on a six-month improvement cycle. Meanwhile, the production system at Microsoft is geared to produce a wonder every five to seven years.

When your forecasting needs to look five years out compared with six months out, you are bound to make larger errors that are more difficult to correct.

So a challenge. Figure out how to make incremental improvements in your process and your company. Think small, light, and quick. If you want some pointers, give us a call.

Cheers!