XP to Open Few New Windows
Despite Windows XP’s promises of improved stability and a generally more useful interface, not even Madonna can make it the right choice for many computer users.
Hyped as the most significant new operating system from Microsoft Corp. since Windows 95, XP in fact faces serious hurdles in each of its three target markets--buyers of new computers, corporate users and upgraders.
The toughest of those is the new-computer buyer.
In the next few months, the system will become the automatic, pre-installed “choice” for anyone who wanders into a computer store. But computer buyers are on the endangered species list. PC sales are falling for the first time in more than a decade, and early sales of XP-loaded machines are “abysmal,” said analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group.
In the corporate market, XP offers few advantages and some disadvantages compared with Windows 2000, which came out just last year.
And many of the most obvious customers--consumers with aging versions of Windows--are either barred from upgrading because of their old software or hardware or shouldn’t bother, experts say. “The people who stand to gain the most from running XP can’t get it,” said John Taschek, who runs the PC testing lab for trade publication EWeek.
For those with old copies of Windows, the good news is that an upgrade costs only $99, half the price that first-time customers pay. People who are cutting back because of fears about the economy “may see $100 as a reasonable expense, while $800 to $1,000 [for a new machine] isn’t,” Enderle said.
The bad news starts with the fact that users of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 aren’t eligible for an upgrade. And home users of the more recent NT and Windows 2000 systems can upgrade only to Windows XP Professional, which is more expensive than the home edition Microsoft is aiming at the broader market.
That leaves only a slice in the middle--consumers with Windows 98 or Me.
Even then, upgrading is not a clear bargain, analysts said.
In general, Windows 98 got pretty good marks. Windows XP does many things better but nothing earth-shattering. “For a lot of people, Windows 98 really isn’t that bad,” Gartner Group Research Director Michael Silver said.
Windows Me was a dud, making an upgrade potentially more worthwhile. But since fewer copies of that system were sold, there’s less of a market.
And that’s not all. Even when Windows 98 or Me users want to upgrade, the odds are good that their hardware can’t handle it.
Microsoft says that to use Windows XP, computer owners need a CD-ROM or DVD drive and should have a chip with a 300-megahertz clock speed, such as an Intel Pentium processor, and at least 1.5 gigabytes of available hard drive space.
The surprise killer in the compatibility struggle, however, is the machine’s memory. Microsoft recommends having 128 megabytes of random access memory, or RAM. That rule wipes out a lot of consumers who could otherwise rest easy in upgrading.
When Windows 98 began shipping, most machines had 64 MB or less of RAM. Not until the end of last year, as memory prices finally fell substantially, did most machines come with 128 MB.
“Memory was expensive, so people didn’t buy it,” Enderle said.
Any new operating system comes with other inter-operability wild cards as well. The code in Windows XP was developed from the Windows NT and 2000 corporate systems, instead of previous consumer Windows editions.
So Microsoft has worked hard to make sure that many old programs and components will still work. Among other things, users can make XP emulate older versions of Windows for specific functions.
But some hang-ups remain, and experts recommend checking Microsoft’s Web site and vendors’ sites and running programs that check for compatibility.
To all of those issues, Microsoft has an unsubtle answer: buy a new PC. It and the computer companies plan to offer rebates and other deals to encourage shoppers.
But given the economy, that sales job is a hard one. The two biggest chip firms this month said they expect a very small increase in PC unit sales in the fourth quarter from the one before.
“We’re not expecting many folks who were not already planning to buy a PC to run out and buy one just for XP,” said Gartner’s Silver.
With many older computers working well enough, consumers are tired of being browbeaten into upgrading every two or three years.
“This idea that you need to continually upgrade is a marketing concept for a company that has already saturated its marketplace,” said analyst Roger Kay of IDC.
PC penetration of U.S. households held steady at 60% this year, the first time since at least 1994 that the rate didn’t increase every six months. A semiannual survey this summer by San Francisco-based Odyssey, a market research firm, found the fewest people planning to buy a new PC soon than at any previous time in the last four years. Among current PC owners, the percentage planning to upgrade has fallen further, from 12% in the beginning of 2000 to 7% now.
A marketing campaign can help, said Odyssey Managing Director Sean Baenen, but not if it just stresses lower prices and speedier functions.
“It’s not revolutionary,” Baenen said of the message behind XP. “Just doing the same thing faster is not a reason to upgrade to a new operating system, let alone upgrade to a new machine.”
As XP makes its way into more computer factories, the system will inevitably win a large share of the consumer market. The evidence to date, however, suggests that will come later than Microsoft would like.
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Times staff writer Joseph Menn covers Microsoft. He can be reached at joseph.menn@latimes.com.
