Unity Plaza, Sri Lanka’s IT hub, used to also be a hotbed for software piracy. Expensive software burnt onto a single DVD sold for less than the price of a burger. Software is expensive, and people tend to steal what they can’t afford. Microsoft was a company that suffered heavily. Microsoft’s fight back with Windows 8, its new operating system, comes with a carrot and stick enticement.
Pirated Microsoft products disappeared from Unity Plaza due to strict policing. That was the stick approach. With low pricing, comes the carrot. The carrot is sweetened by making it modern and fun.
Released on October 17, Windows 8 finally shifted the popular operating system into an app-driven system. “There is an app for that,” which used to be something iPhone and iPod users could boast about has now translated over to the PC. The new Windows also costs less than it used to. For computers running Windows 7 purchased between June 2 this year and January 31 next year the Windows 8 Pro upgrade comes cheap at less than Rs. 2,000 – or US$ 14.99 online.
New operating systems are all about “ecosystems”. Apple’s OS X for computers and iOS for mobile devices have dedicated app stores. So does Google’s Android. Even open-source Linux with its Ubuntu distribution moved to a store-driven model for programmes. The only player that was missing from the party was Windows. Not anymore.
Windows 8 has built-in apps for many things: weather, finance, news, photos, music and video. It gets a gorgeous email client. Google services too, integrate well. For users who read a lot, it’s a charm to use. For those who don’t, it encourages them. It’s all about consumption, and Windows 8 delivers content. A lot of it.
Want to research on Wikipedia? There’s an app for that. Sharing photos? There’s an app for that too. Want to come up with random corporate jargon to impress colleagues, Dilbert-style? There’s an app for that too, and it comes up with gems like “uniquely architect multimedia based catalysts for change.”
Upgrading is seamless. All settings and files are migrated when the upgrade is complete, and in some instanced the computers manufacturer provides software to make sure everything works. The first few hours on a Windows 8 system is a strange affair. However it’s not complicated. Windows 8 is perhaps the most intuitive yet, and for the first time, everything just seems to work.
Right now, with the price so low, it’s a pretty obvious choice to make. Windows 8 transforms what used to be a dull man in a business suit to a hip, omniscient being with lots of eye-candy. The app environment works great. Possibly for the first time in history, it gives Macs with their OS Xs some competition. Microsoft isn’t dead yet. Open Windows, it’s ready.