The Ek’s Files

One of the foundations of the free-market economy is that competition drives innovation and value, and that’s good for the consumers who purchase and use goods and services. By and large, that’s a tough principle to refute. In general, the harder that makers of goods fight for our dollars, the more they’ll offer us for the money.

That’s all well and good when there are multiple producers competing for your consumer dollars. But what about when a company’s only competition is… itself?

Yeah, you know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Microsoft is one example of a company that’s had a virtual lock on many of the categories of software it sells. Take operating systems, for example. Who does Microsoft compete with when consumers are purchasing an operating system? Their market share is so overwhelming that Microsoft’s only competition is itself. You’d think that’d be a good thing for Microsoft. But when does the average consumer purchase an operating system? Generally, only when they buy a new computer. Microsoft makes money every time someone buys a computer that comes with its operating system installed. So new versions of Microsoft products are competing mainly with earlier versions of the same products. Does the consumer benefit from this?

It’s in the interest of any company to find ways to get consumers to buy more of their products, and Microsoft is no exception. So, they periodically create new versions of their products and hope that the improvements over previous versions are enough to compel consumers to buy these new versions. There’s no doubt that there was a definite benefit for consumers in upgrading to Windows XP from earlier versions of Windows, and XP appears to have been a hugely successful product for Microsoft. Windows Vista, however, doesn’t appear to have captured the interest of consumers at all. Few users have upgraded existing computers to Vista, and a large number of consumers have “downgraded” to XP from Vista on newly-purchased PCs.

It’s not so much that Vista offers few compelling reasons to upgrade from XP. It’s more that there are no compelling reasons for creating a new consumer operating system right now (besides to compete with Microsoft, anyway). The hardware is fast enough and the software is capable enough for most consumers who use their computers to surf the web, write letters, read their email, and listen to music. Maybe the hard-core gamers aren’t happy yet, but the rest of us are. We are reaching a point where, until someone comes up with new and innovative ways for consumers to use their PCs, the current hardware and software is good enough. How fast does my computer need to be for me to run Office and surf the web? No longer do we have needs to be filled. We only have companies trying to get us to spend more money by manufacturing needs that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

But the marketing machines crank on. Before Vista, Microsoft put significant effort into convincing the world that XP was secure. Now, we’re told we must upgrade to Vista because it’s more secure than XP. Besides, Vista is full of other great new features, like its spiffy new user interface with transparent windows. It looks soooo much nicer than the old dated XP user interface. Yawn. And now it’s even better at making sure your copy of Windows was purchased legally instead of stolen! What a wonderful feature for consumers, eh? You can have the Windows Genuine Advantage! Never mind that Vista’s performance is poorer than XP, at least on comparable hardware. So, if you’re contemplating an upgrade to Vista, don’t forget that hardware upgrade, too, okay? That’ll make Dell happy, too, don’t you think?

Don’t get me wrong. I have no quarrel with a company pursuing profit, and no one holds a gun to the heads of consumers to purchase these products (except that often times companies will do whatever they can to make it more difficult to use older versions of their products, starting with dropping technical support and proceeding to make such things as interfaces and file formats obsolete). But when upgrades are downgrades and downgrades are upgrades, that’s a clear signal that the product (or company or industry–take your pick) is stagnating.

Well, I’ve had enough of marketing. I’ve had enough of being told that I need the Windows Genuine Advantage (and yes, my copy of XP is legal). I’ve seen enough of “Windows needs your permission to continue.” Yes, I’m upgrading my computer from Windows XP–to Ubuntu Linux.

I’m not going to extoll the virtues of free software here. Plenty of others have done that. The simple fact is that Ubuntu is easy to install, well supported, and I can do anything in Ubuntu that I used to do in Windows XP. Some things I can do even better. Linux (regardless of what distro happens to be your favorite) is rapidly becoming a viable alternative to Windows in the consumer market. Maybe it’s not ready for Grandma yet, but anyone who’s a little computer-savvy oughta be able to handle it now.

I’ve never been a Microsoft basher, or a Linux anti-Microsoft snob (you know, the “M$=Evil” crowd). I’ve actually been pretty happy with Windows XP. But this time, Microsoft lost to its competition: Microsoft itself. So I guess competition is indeed good for the consumer.

So when’s Apple going to release its OS for use on PC hardware? That’d make things interesting, don’t you think?