Windows 7 repeats the Vista ripoff

I've enjoyed listening to John C. Dvorak for years on Leo Laporte's podcasts. Dvorak writes a column for PC Magazine which also puts his stuff online. The column posted today is, IMHO, spot-on:

By John C. Dvorak

The glory days of Microsoft ended with Vista for one reason, and one reason only: Vista Ultimate. It was part of an ill-advised scheme called "subtractive marketing" or "fake versioning"—purposely taking features out of a finished product to create an artificial range or selection.

Who ever dreamed up the Vista Ultimate moniker, I consider that individual responsible for the decline of Microsoft. This is where the tide turned. Microsoft had been selling disabled versions of its products for some time, but never went to the extreme that it did with Vista, and now we see the company doing the same thing with Windows 7.

This is all the same one product, folks. What is the point of selling six versions of the same code base? It does not cost one nickel more to manufacture Windows 7 Ultimate than it costs to manufacture Windows 7 Home Basic, and the differences are confusing to just about everyone.

Microsoft could sell a single version of the new OS at some median price just as easily as it can sell disabled versions of the product for various prices. The public will realize this eventually.

The psychology is just bad, because the code for Ultimate is done. Why not just sell everyone Ultimate?

This is like selling a car that is complete and loaded with everything when it's manufactured (we'll call it the Lincoln Ultimate). But you need a downgraded version of the car, so after the Lincoln Ultimate comes off the assembly line, you rip out the leather seats, discard them, and put in cloth seats, in order to sell the car for less money. You could have just as easily left in the leather seats. It would have been easier on everyone!

Or try this analogy. I walk into a store that is having a sale on coffee mugs with cracked handles. They are selling for $1 instead of $10. People are buying the mugs for a dollar, and the last one is sold just as I walk in.

"We're sold out, but here is what I'll do for you," the owner says. He grabs a perfectly good $10 mug and cracks off the handle and sells it to me for $1. I'm left wondering why he didn't just sell me the mug with the handle intact for $1. It would cost him nothing more, since it was a good mug he broke. What would be the point of doing what he did? I perceive that something is wrong with this person, especially because he thought he was doing me a favor to move some inventory.

There is a sense of larceny when one witnesses this sort of scam. The Ultimate product is coded. It is finished. Why is Microsoft taking features out of the product after they have been designed in? Is the company doing it to create a totally artificial line up of different products for different markets? Apparently so, but why? The Ultimate product would have serviced all these markets in the first place.

I think this sort of thinking comes from the idea of the value-add. You sell a basic product, then sell some add-on or plug-in or utility for a little more money. This, I think, people can fathom and accept, as they did with different versions of Microsoft Office for the school and the home. So what if the MS-Office for the home does not include, say, PowerPoint? Not including something in a bundle is one thing, but disabling features in MS-Word is something different.

The subtractive approach that Microsoft is using generates plenty of ill will. Someone buys Windows 7 and expects it to have a feature. But no, you got the wrong version. XP-compatibility, for example, does not exist on many versions. This would be a crucial thing to have, especially on the cheaper versions, since people on a budget are more likely to be running old code. So Microsoft has to field support calls about this and people get irked.

The company should pull the plug on this entire scheme ASAP. It was the reason Vista failed. It generates ill-will. It generates suspicion. And it's stupid. Stop doing it Microsoft!