Windows 7 is going to be successful. It’s going to be successful for the same reason that Vista was failure. It’s not going to be because of advertising and it’s not going to be because of the new taskbar or the easier home networking features. No, it’s going to be because of word-of-mouth; and the buzz surrounding the recently leaked Windows 7 beta is almost every bit the opposite as the buzz was around the pre-releases of Vista.

Vista was doomed from even before the start. The prolonged development period, the over-promising and under-delivering, and the abysmal support from third-party driver developers generated plenty of negativity. People even hated the name. This kind of bad buzz is nearly impossible to reverse, especially for Microsoft; too many people get a perverse pleasure out of seeing them fail.

It didn’t matter that a good percentage of users were using Vista not only successfully but happily. It didn’t matter than Service Pack 1 had fixed most of the issues that people had with it. There was nothing Microsoft could do but limp along and get the next OS out as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was the hard lesson that Microsoft needed because Windows 7 certainly shows a company that has learned from its mistakes. It also shows a company that has learned the value of positive word-of-mouth.

People are scrambling to get their hands on the Windows 7 beta and most everyone who does so is returning very positive reports. I’ve put it on two different and mostly modern machines and the experience with both was wonderful (doing fresh installs and not upgrades, mind you). On only one did I need third-party drivers, for instance. It was surprising. But I was in for a few surprises. For example, when I upgraded the video drivers through Windows Update, Windows 7 didn’t need to reboot; it just switched to the new drivers after blanking the screen a couple of times. When I increased the DPI on my media center PC, it didn’t require a reboot either; I just had to log out and log back in. These are the little things that make Windows 7 so much better than Vista and XP both.

There will, of course, always be XP stalwarts but, in the face of Windows 7, that’s just pure stubbornness. These are the same people who probably got fussy when upgrading from Windows 3.1 to 95 or 98 to XP. Unfortunately, regardless of how much Windows 7 does things better, it can’t overcome familiarity. It doesn’t matter if in Windows 7 a particular task can be performed more quickly; the user who knows how to do it without even thinking in XP, even if it requires more steps, is going to choose that familiarity over having to learn a more efficient but different way. You just can’t beat that. You can’t convince a dog that this brand new bone is any better than his old, worn out bone. This is a convincing argument, too: there isn’t really anything so significant in Windows 7 (or Vista) that will make people who are perfectly comfortable in XP to upgrade. But, for those who do decide to be adventurous, they’ll be rewarded in thousands of subtle ways. Everything in Windows 7 is simply better even if it’s different and requires relearning something (except perhaps the Vista-style task-oriented Control Panel).

But, this is not Microsoft’s OS X, as many had hoped after hearing the early reports of MinWin, a completely new UI, and so forth. This is, to some extent, Vista Part II in the same sense that 98 was Windows 95 Part II. No matter what, though, don’t make the mistake and label Vista as the same as Windows ME; that’s a lazy comparison. If anything, Vista was most like OS/2. It had hardware requirements that were too steep for the average user, it lacked drivers, it was too expensive, it was too different, and it required a ton of patches and service packs before it really began to shine for anyone except the hardcore. Although Vista will always be regarded as a failure, it was only a failure at launch; it became a damn fine OS… eventually. Unfortunately, few were willing to believe it.

Word-of-mouth. It’s more powerful than millions of dollars of advertising and more powerful than an army of magazine articles. It’s even more powerful than whatever it is the word-of-mouth is talking about. Apple is arguably the king of word-of-mouth (well, perhaps second only to Duke Nukem 3D). You can’t convince me for one moment that their commercials are meant to actually sell Apple products. Do you truly believe anyone has ever watched one of those commercials and then suddenly bolted up out of their chair and exclaimed, ‘Good grief! They’re right! I must buy a Mac!’ Of course not. Those commercials are Apple’s own Silver Shamrock commercials from Halloween III. One comes on and some Apple fans suddenly burst into seizures and start gibbering to whoever is unlucky enough to be nearby about how great Macs are and how much Vista sucks.

Microsoft knows this now, as well. The Mojave Experience commercials, as deceitful as they were, were not there to sell anything. They were there to say, ‘Shame on you,’ for those who had judged Vista based on a few minutes’ worth of playing around or viewed Vista negatively just based on what they had heard from others. Their ‘I’m a PC’ commercials, too, worked the same way: not to sell Windows but to reassure PC users that it’s okay to run Windows, that they shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. As amusing as Apple’s ads sometimes were, they were designed to humiliate and as much of an Apple fan as I am (I’m typing this on a new MacBook Pro and I’ve bought new iPhones as soon as they’ve come out, for crying out loud), I still find it shameful and it makes me feel a little embarrassed for Apple.

But, that’s all about to be over. Windows 7 has already convinced a lot of people to upgrade, even to a beta, and Microsoft hasn’t had to spend a single penny on advertising yet. Apple, on the other hand, has an uphill battle with Snow Leopard, an OS upgrade that is almost entirely behind the scenes; that’s not the sort of upgrade that’s going to get Ma & Pa Midwesterner to stand in line at the Apple store. They’re going to find it difficult to extend this particular anti-Vista campaign onward into Windows 7 territory. What are they going to say?

Mac: Well, it looks like you’ve finally got it right with Windows 7.

PC: Yeah, it feels pretty good!  [stretches arms out, flexes]

Mac: That’s great, PC. I’m really glad to hear that.

PC: So, how are things going with you? How’s Snow Leopard coming? RAAR! [crouches down a bit, makes claws with his hands, slowly looks around]

Mac: Uh, it’s pretty good. We’re adding Microsoft Exchange Support…

PC: Oh? [eyebrow raised]

Mac: And we’ve done some serious optimizing of our core software technologies…

PC: [looks around, distracted]

Mac: And brought in 64-bit support… [looking increasingly uncomfortable]

PC: Good for you! I’ve had that for years, you know.

[cue Apple logo]