Uphill battle for the desktop

Here's a great story. My in-laws recently upgraded their personal computer. A nice, well equiped Dell, PC. They also finally upgraded to DSL from a 56K modem and AOL account. A few days info their migration we all started seeing them sending mail from a new address. An msn.com address, gasp! Not only did I wonder why they chose MSN, but some of their computer-savvy siblings as well. So later that week, my wife called, she could tell they were struggling with setting up an email account, and as she helped them, she asked why they chose MSN. Their answer was enlightening. They said "Well, when we clicked the Email button, it took us to MSN, so we thought it was already set up on the computer and we had to." How do you compete with that? Essentially what they are saying is that it doesn't matter if there is a superior product out there. They may not know about it. And even if they do, how do you convince them that its worth the effort to install and learn it? I don't know, if you ask me, it's quite an uphill battle for anyone to replace Windows as the de-facto personal desktop.

(2004-12-20 14:24:05.0) // Permalink