Windows 7 upgrade from XP or Vista: Yes or No looking from a user perspective

Windows 7 is commercial avaliable since 22 October. A lot is already  written about Windows 7. In this blog I will share my personal experiences about Windows 7. I have used a lot of different operating systems in the past on my laptop. Windows NT 4 workstation, Windows 95, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Photo credit: Oskay

During my upgrade to Windows Vista is was the first time that I had a negative experience in the upgrade of my laptop. Of course some things improved but I also lost some things which works perfectly in Windows XP. I will give my 4 biggest disappointments:

1. Power usage. Impossible to configure brightness difference of my screen between plugged in and running on batteries. I'm always looking to the optimal power management configuration when running on batteries. It gives me a lot of flexibility. The longer I can run on batteries the better is my user experience. Overall I experience 20 percent less time running on batteries.
2. Wireless network connectivity. I work a lot at home and in the office. Both have their own wireless network. To travel between home and the office I uses the sleep or hybernate function to close my laptop.  In 60 percent of the situations reconnecting to the internet works fine however in 40 % I need to turn of my wireless card or reboot my machine. As you can imagine this is a bad user experience especially because rebooting takes a lot of time to do.
3. Hibernate does not work in combination with Sleep. My laptop is configured to sleep when I close the lid. At the end of the working day I hibernate my laptop with the power button. If I close the lid to early, my laptop switch to sleep. At home, I open my laptop which wakes up from sleep and continues the hybernation process. On XP the hybernation process is not interupted by the sleep process.
4. Availabilty of drivers. For instance for printers and camera's

Because of my negative experiences with the upgrade from Windows XP to Vista, I decided to wait a few weeks with upgrading my laptop to Windows 7. I wanted to hear the experiences of other people. After hearing mostly good stories from a lot of people I upgrade my laptop to the 64 bits version of Windows 7. Unfortunaltly, I need to do a reinstall because an upgrade from Vista 32 bits to Windows 7 64 bits is not supported. The new install of Windows 7 was amazing fast. Within 15 minutes I was connected to the internet. However the rest of the day I was busy with reinstalling the rest of my applications, including service packs and security updates. For instance:  MS Office, Live Meeting, Communicator, Antivirus Software, Visual Basic, SQL Server 2008 including Reporting Server and Analysis Server etc..


Are my 4 biggest disappointments solved with the upgrade to Windows 7 ?

1. Power usage is not solved. Power usage is the same as on Windows Vista.
2. Wireless network connectivity is solved. I do not experience reconnections problems anymore between different wireless networks.
3. Hibernate does not work in combination with Sleep. This is not solved.
4. Availability of drivers. This is solved. I decided to upgrade to the 64 bits version of Windows 7. Without any problems I could find all 64 bits drivers I needed.

Should you upgrade to Windows 7? The answer is Yes but it depends.

• Are you running on Windows Vista? Yes upgrade to Windows 7 without any doubt. It will improve you overall user experience.
• Are you running on Windows XP, my advice is to upgrade to Windows 7 when you planned to replace the hardware.
• Buying new hardware: Vista or Windows 7. Buy Windows 7. In case you have more the 3 GB of memory, select the 64 bits version. This will avoid manually memory configurations to use all memory.

I realize that a lot of users can't make the choice them selves to upgrade. There are more factors to consider, like application compatibility. For what I have seen, if your application runs on Vista it will also run on Windows 7.  Within my company we did not make any changes to our application Globe to get certified for Windows 7. We only add some typical Windows 7 features to it like the jumplist.


What do I like the most of Windows 7?

The answer is simple: Live taskbar previews. Look to this movie if you do not know what live taskbar previews are.

A dutch version of this blog post is available on the computable site.
Enjoy using Windows 7.

The advantage of an emotional relationship with your customers.

One week ago I enjoyed a week of holiday in Centerparcs. This was my fourth visit to the park. During this last visit I could recognize some things in which Centerparcs values their loyal customers. These loyal customers are called Friends. As a Friend of Centerparcs you get some additional privileges:

• Check in via the internet.
• Friends are allowed to check in in their apartment at 13:00 instead of 15:00
• 2 free activities
• Tickets to get every day a newspaper for free in the supermarket
• Welcome chocolates in the apartment
• Thank you email for being a customer after my holiday

With these simple privileges Centerparcs creates an atmosphere in which you feel comfortable. Centerparcs is building an emotional relationship with his customers instead of only a transactional relationship.

These privileges are appreciated by the customer but also results in added value for Centerparcs.

• Check in via Internet saves time at the welcome desk.
• Check in at 13:00 will spread the arrival time of new customers.
• 2 free activities generate extra revenue for drinks and food during these activities.
• During visit to supermarket for free newspaper additional snacks or drinks are bought.
• Thank You email with at the end a question to participate in an online Survey. The Thank You letter will results that people are more willing to participate in the survey. This survey is very valuable for Centerparcs.

Overall result of building an emotional relationship is a win – win situation. Customer feels more comfortable. Centerparcs invests in newspapers and chocolates but generates revenue with additional drinks and get higher participation in the online survey. It saves costs for the welcome desk.

Therefore I have one advice. Invest in an emotional relationship with your customers. What is better than a happy customer? They will tell the story. This blog is an example of it. It is free publicity.

Customer experiences and social media: Product manager should visit customers every 2 weeks.

Last week, I did two invoiced customer visits. In the past I have done a lot of customer visits as a support expert. During these troubleshoot consults, I had one mission. Solve the issue and make the customer happy. When I arrived at the customer site the atmosphere was already set by the things which had happened in the past. You start the visit with a meeting with the director, ICT manager, accountant and one or more users. They all have a story to tell. You NEED only to listen. When they are finished their story, you need to summarize their story in 2 sentences. If you are able to do that, you have already 50 % of the solution. The customer wants to get the acknowledgement that YOU understand his situation. With an invoiced visit, on request of the customer, the atmosphere is different. It’s more positive. The software is running and they need some specific help or advice. The conversation is much easier, however YOU need to listen and to observe. During your consult you will use your software with the customer. Look critical how these users are using your software. Is this the way you have designed it? If not, do not say: The customer is using it wrong. For what kind of reason, it is not clear for the customer. Find the reason and change the software, so the customer will use it in the right way. Sometimes you are surprised why a user is doing something. Ask him why he is doing this. He will tell you a workaround, which he has accepted in the past. This is a nice opportunity to improve the software. Customer experience will be great, if you can tell your customer one week after your visit, that his ‘accepted workaround’ is fixed in the next release.


As product manager, it will be your lucky day when this customer is using social media to tell this great customer experience to the community. This is a win - win situation. More and more people will use social media. At one day it will happen that you will get positive feedback on your product in a Google search. This is the best advertisement you can get for your product.

Positive experiences told by YOUR happy customer to the community.

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs: What is the URL of your company? The homepage of your company is Google, Yahoo or MSN. As mentioned in You can't stop it anyway, once people become more active in social media, there’s no way how you can control how things go. Who will write, who will find and who will comment on these experiences. This will even more happen with negative experiences.

As a product manager take the opportunity to visit every 2 weeks one customer. Do not only talk, but really do something with your software and the user. You want to see the 'accepted workarounds'. Remember: Think from a user perspective instead from a technical perspective. If you do these kind of visits for free, you have already the first positive customer experience. It will cost some time but you will get paid for it.

Do you agree on this? Please let me know YOUR opinion about this.