There finally may be an end in sight from the lackluster business I’ve been seeing. I took a deep breath when Microsoft discontinued support for XP back in 2014 and took a deeper breath when they announced 10. Once 10 was introduced I stopped seeing lower end Vista computers which meant my little business has been sucking pond water.
According to industry statistics until about six months ago 60% of business computing was still being done on XP computers. Because of that odd high number, much of my business was based on supporting XP. Because their hardware was somewhat obsolete, most of the customers still using XP decided to dump the old and replace it with new.
This week I’m going to talk about life cycles and how it impacts us. It seems like every time we get used to one platform something new comes along and starts our learning curve again. Rather than provide one graphic interface, we’re forced to learn new.
Consumers started seeing Windows for the first time back in 1992 with a major release of Windows 3.1. For the first time we could have multiple windows open. We could copy from one window to another and reference one screen while we inputted to another. Installing 3.1 was fairly straight forward on a DOS based computer.
Windows 95 gave us the start menu which we had right up through Windows 7. With each version from 95 to present it was pretty much required that we also purchase new hardware. Each version in between those brought minor changes, but nothing noteworthy. Most of the tweaks were things the average user would probably never use.
Although Microsoft dabbled with 64 bit operating systems in the past they never really took off until the Vista era. Implementing 64 bit operating systems allowed huge amounts of memory to be used more efficiently. Basically this allowed massive simultaneous operations; or simply, stuff runs faster.
Right around the time we started seeing touch screen devices hit the market Microsoft decided to do away with the familiar start menu and gave us tiles. The ill fated tiles thankfully didn’t last long and the start menu was brought back with 10. I’ve come to the conclusion that Microsoft counted on more Windows customers buying touch screen devices than actually happened.
Technology changes. In fact technology changes so fast that we’ve been forced to adopt and adapt before they kinks are worked out. Think about the first computer you (or your parents) had in the house. It was a big clunky thing that probably cost several thousand dollars. It was sold as the last computer they will ever need.
Although it’s fairly inexpensive to buy a new computer I’ve been noticing a lot more people repairing their old one simply so they don’t have to learn something new. Because of rapid changes, people are sticking with what they know. Instinct tells me consumers are gun shy about changing because they aren’t sure what’s waiting around the corner.
I’ve finally started to see my business get back on track again with the release of 10. Thankfully customers are coming in and asking us to reload their original operating system. Yes, customers who have been anticipating the release of 10 are coming in after their computer has been upgraded and requesting we send them back in time. Oddly, some Windows 8 customers who despised 8 are having us take back their start menu.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)