Some Salesmen Don’t Know When to Shut Up (or Time to Give It a Rest)

This afternoon, Ed Bott has given us his opinion on the reason for success of Windows 7, which may be partly true, but is mostly just wishful thinking. He states that the availability of drivers, essentially the same ones that should have popped up during the early stages of Vista beta testing, will now make the successor to Vista a success.

I know that Windows 7 will be a success, but not exactly for that reason. The reason that Windows 7 will succeed is because the greater public is itching to have something new and different. It has been a good run for XP, and those who aren’t facile or clever enough to change the looks of Windows have been using the same, now tired, and not that well color-coordinated themes for 8 years. They have seen enough of the whiz-bang graphics that Vista, OS X, and Linux distributions have, and they want some of that. They will buy because, though Windows 7 is really not that much better technically, it looks cool to the average person.

Those less interested in looks, and more in performance, will possibly move to 64 bit Windows 7, but only if they have a true need. Not many do.

Others will simply follow the herd, so of course, Windows 7 will sell a ton.

What Bott doesn’t realize, is that a good salesman does, is shut up after a while, leaving the customer to wrestle with his conscience, and this usually leads to a purchase, if there was any movement that way to begin with.

Bott, and his benefactors, still are not quite sure of the ability of Windows 7 to persuade those happy with Windows XP to switch.  He should be a bit worried.

Many will dismiss this as a very slanted view, but ask yourself what the purpose of articles like Bott’s are, and it will come to you.

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