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Silicon Valley’s most successful search company, Google, has a reputation for innovating new products and services. They are consistently improving their existing products and changing the game for their competitors. But how has the company, which has consistently landed on top of “Great Places to Work” lists, fostered an environment where innovation is the rule, not the exception?

BusinessWeek recently featured an interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt has honed his leadership skills at Sun Microsystems and Novell, and his role at Google is to build “the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google’s rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum.” He has a clear view of innovation as a “culture,” not just a strategy. As he told the interviewer for BusinessWeek, “You have to have the culture, and you have to get it right.”

A big part of building that culture at Google is the often-admired but rarely-imitated 20% rule. As Google’s website recruitment section explains, “All Google engineers have 20% of their time to pursue projects that they’re passionate about. This has lead to the creation of some well-known Google products, like Gmail, and Google News – products that might otherwise have taken entire start-ups to launch.” So no matter how busy, how strapped for time, a project is, the key players will still be able to spend time working on their true passions. Schmidt proudly says, “If you’re the employee and I’m the manager, and I sit down and say, “Our product’s late, and you screwed up, and you gotta work on this really hard,” you can legally say to me, “I will give you everything I’ve got, 80% of [my time].”

Giving 80% sounds counter-intuitive, since most of us blithely promise our employers 100% dedication to any task. However, this strategy not only results in innovative products from some of the companies best minds, but also happier employees. While I’m sure Google’s free gourmet cafeterias are instrumental in keeping their workforce in good spirits, one has to assume that being allowed the freedom of creativity is slightly more satisfying.

Indeed, the Great Place To Work Institute has identified the key components that lead to job satisfaction, and they have little to do with free leftovers from the conference room (although a little food goes a long way). The institute argues that three relationships provide the secret to a great workplace:

• The relationship between employees and management.
• The relationship between employees and their jobs/company.
• The relationship between employees and other employees.

If a level of trust, respect, and collaboration exists between employees and management, their jobs, and their coworkers, any business can imitate Google’s innovation factory. Given the room to be creative, happy employees can provide the innovative ideas that in turn drive revenue. Even in hard economic times, a great workplace can lead to great financial reports. As Schmidt tells Businessweek, “Innovation has nothing to do with downturns. A hot product will sell just as well in a recession as it will in a nonrecession…The strong companies understand this, and during a recession, they invest.”

They invest not only in product development, but also in employee development. The 20% project is a fast and firm rule, not to be tampered with during hard times. Instead of cutting back on benefits and perks, Google maintains them to encourage employee retention and job satisfaction. While many businesses say, “Our people are our most important resource,” Google lives this platitude by giving them an environment where they can be innovative. The Great Place To Work Institute has many tips and tricks for businesses who want to create a culture of innovation and employee satisfaction. By following a model similar to Google’s, businesses can not only imitate the positive culture at the internet giant, but also achieve their lofty financial and business goals.

A new form of e-commerce has been impacting many industries lately: competitive bidding sites. Freelance graphic designers, writers, and photographers use these sites to bid for projects, and sites like E-lance have been getting a lot of buzz. Another industry in which bidding sites are gaining fans is recruiting, and BountyJobs.com, RecruitAlliance.com, and TalentHire.com are giving smaller recruiting firms access to big name clients. These sites, which operate as Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors, have added a Web 2.0 element to the recruiting industry.

Traditionally, large companies seeking job candidates would contact a well-known local recruitment firm. They would draw up a contract and that firm would put forward the names of candidates for the position. If they were lucky, they would find the right person for the job. Online competitive bidding has changed this process. The sites allow any recruiters, large or small, to “bid” on the task of finding a candidate.

Typically, the process follows a pattern: Companies looking for new hires post job openings on the site, and recruiters can contact hiring managers with appropriate candidates. If they like what they see, the employer can them request to see more information about a potential hire and set up interview. If a firm’s candidate gets hired, then they earn a finder’s fee. TalentHire allows headhunters to set their own prices, which adds an even greater element of competition to the process. Most sites either charge a percentage of that fee or charge a membership fee.

One of the reasons this new system has caught on is that it benefits both recruiting firms and employers looking for the right candidates. As an employer testimonial at BountyJobs says, “I get to try new search firms without all the hassle of getting them signed up with a contract.” Contracting is not only a hassle for large companies, but also can lead to a stagnant pool of qualified candidates. On the flip side, recruiting firms and lone headhunters get access to powerful clients without making endless cold calls or wasting time with negotiations. A recruiter testimonial raves, “BountyJobs allows me to focus on what I enjoy doing the most, which is recruit!”

While there are some snags in the systems, most of the sites have protocol in place to prevent major problems. For example, sometimes job hunters work with multiple search firms, and this can lead to them being recommended for the same job by two different people. Awkward, to say the least. However, most sites have a feature, rather like a time stamp, that allows the employer to see who put forth the candidate first. This ensures that if he/she is hired, the commission goes to the correct person.

Competitive recruiting sites are not yet popular enough to compete with large job boards like Monster or HotJobs, and they target a different audience. The site’s give recruitment firms and individual headhunters access to larger, more lucrative clients. The pricing scale, competitive candidates, and ease of transactions have opened up this industry like never before. It’s no wonder sites like this are taking off.

For businesses fighting the tide of the economy, spending money on user-centered design seems like an illogical thing to do. However, that is exactly what a recent webcast from Human Factors International suggests. The well-known usability company is helping businesses prepare for slow economic times by focusing on connecting with users through great design. Some of their suggestions include:

• Adopt “wide-angle lens” thinking

To weather a rough patch, businesses should focus on long-term goals and stay the course on projects that will extend beyond a short-term slowdown. As the webcast pointed out, most recessions in recent years have lasted just 17 months or less, and many businesses have development cycles much longer than that. By keeping an eye on the ultimate goal, you can ensure that you will be prepared with the best offerings once the situation improves.

• Spend where it counts

According to a recent Forrester report, top organizations across industries are spending money to improve usability and make online customer interactions more enjoyable. While it may seem counterintuitive, laying out a little money on research can make a big difference during economic times. Unfortunately, this is often exactly where companies cut back. However, by getting to know your customers better and investing in their needs, you can help stabilize profits and revenues by keeping loyal users and attracting new ones.

• Innovate

One sure way to avoid the pitfalls of a recession is to innovate a new product or service that gets consumers excited. Our economy is largely based on faith, and if consumer confidence increases, so does consumer spending. A revolutionary new product or service can gets users buzzing and spending, and it can uniquely position your business to survive a slowdown intact.

• Align across teams

Many businesses streamline their employee structure during recessions, often with layoffs. This does not have to be the solution if you can foster communication and organize teams to perform at a higher level. Just as geese fly in a V-pattern to reduce drag and improve efficiency, you can align efforts to reduce overlap and improve workflow. One way to do this is through collaborative tools like WIKIs and online document sharing. Give teams the ability and incentive to share knowledge, work together, and improve performance; this will eliminate duplicative efforts and save you money and man-hours.

• Validate and measure success

While this is an important development step for any product during good economic times, it becomes doubly useful during a recession. Test features, gather user feedback, and apply metrics to help with future upgrades. By continually improving your service and features, you ensure that customers will continually find new value with each visit or interaction. This builds loyalty and excitement for your product and gives users the assurance that their needs are recognized and implemented.

Though we all must make changes during an economic slow-down, it is possible and even essential to keep the value that your users require. By thinking long-term, investing in user experience, providing innovative products, cutting down on internal overlap, and continuously improving products, businesses can ensure that a recession does not sink their prospects. Visit Human Factors International for more information and additional webcasts.

We’ve all been through a major software upgrade at work, and we’ve all experienced the training hiccups and usability headaches that follow. Traditional enterprise software is complicated, clunky, and difficult to learn. At my last job, an upgrade of our inventory database and customer service software paralyzed the company for weeks because the new system was so hard to use. Training was time-consuming and complex, and even the IT department was confused about how to perform our usual tasks. However, the days of impossible enterprise software are nearly behind us, as new offerings are mimicking the ease-of-use of our favorite websites. By incorporating web usability standards and familiar interfaces, new business software tools are edging out the clunky competition.

One such innovator is SuccessFactors, a San Mateo, California-based SaaS company which provides employee performance monitoring tools to businesses all over the globe. Their on-demand platform allows employees to create personalized profiles and set goals, monitor projects, and fill out evaluations. One of SuccessFactors clients, Belkin International, told the Wall Street Journal, “Most people just went in and used it [the program], no problem.” SuccessFactors purposefully used a familiar interface for their product to eliminate the need for ongoing training and tutorials, which can cost companies thousands of dollars and man hours.

CEO Lars Dalgaard says the system is “very much like an enterprise Facebook,” and the profile page was built on a social networking model. Employees can connect through personalized profiles, which display information such as work history, education, professional training/certifications, and a personal photo. Belkin uses this feature so that employees in different offices can get to know each other, despite having never met. By mimicking the look, feel, and ease-of-use of popular sites like Facebook, SuccessFactors can cut down the time it takes for employees to begin using their tools.

Another good example of this is Salesforce.com’s on-demand enterprise software. With over 1.1 million subscribers, Salesforce’s sales management service is one of the most successful tools in the SaaS industry. CEO Marc Benoiff told the Wall Street Journal that his visions, “was basically a replica of the Amazon.com user interface.” Training offered for the program is minimal, since many employees who use the internet on a regular basis are already comfortable with sites like Amazon, Ebay, or Facebook.

Some of the traditional website features that have sneaked into business software include “progress trackers”, which tell employees their “profile is 25% complete” or their goals are “65% completed”. Other packages have used a color-coded system to indicate progress on projects or documents, which gives employees immediate access to the information they need most. Many have incorporated search functions based on web algorithms, and sharing tools that automatically send emails to collaborators when changes have been made to a product or document. RSS feeds, like those used to stay up on favorite blogs and websites, are sneaking into enterprise systems so employees can follow the progress of a project or goal.

Both Salesforce and SuccessFactors are web-based, so it was only natural to apply web usability standards to their products. This trend, however, is likely to expand to traditional software companies who are daily losing market share to SaaS products. Both Oracle and SAP posted below-expected earnings for the quarter, and they are struggling to compete with innovative interlopers like Salesforce and SuccessFactors. Poor usability not only frustrates businesses, but also costs them money in training, man hours, and ultimately customer service. Perhaps user experience and usability should take on a greater role in their development process, as it clearly matters to businesses who use their products.

Scott Adams’ popular workplace comic strip, Dilbert, has undergone a Web 2.0 makeover. The new Dilbert.com hosts a blog, features flash displays of newly color strips, and invites readers to outwit Adams by creating their own punch lines for favorite strips. Some industry watchers are speculating that the Web 2.0 flavor is an attempt for the popular strip to survive the waning popularity of print media, but fans don’t seem to think this is necessary. Indeed, user comments on the beta site are very critical of the upgrade, despite the chance to participate in Dilbert’s anti-Utopian office culture.

Adams told technology blog Machinist that he’s always considered his readers to be active participants in his content decisions for Dilbert. “People e-mail me with ideas, I draw the comic, they hang the comic on a wall,” he says. This trend towards user-generated content is at the center of Web 2.0 culture, and it makes sense for even traditional entertainment offerings like comics to capitalize on it. Dilbert.com has embraced this through what they call “mashups”, which will allow readers to create their own versions of Dilbert cartoons. The first feature to be added will let users insert their own captions into the final frame of the strip. The mashup function will expand in May to allow users to caption the entire cartoon, or allow them to write the first frame and pass it to friends to fill in the rest.

I added my twist to this strip:

Though the process was fun, the user interface leaves much to be desired, which I suspect is the reason behind the readers’ revolt. First of all, the new site required users to run Flash to look at every strip, and many have complained that this feature slows down their machines. Archived strips were hard to find, and it seems some readers are on the verge of revolt. One says, “I just registered to tell you, that the new layout sucks big time! Lose the layout or lose your readers!” Another user jokes, “Which of the Dilbert characters is responsible for this?”

While some people will grimace and groan at the smallest change in their routine (Dilbert readers may be particularly prone to this, I suspect), the users’ problems with Dilbert’s Web 2.0 makeover seem justified in their disappointment. The user interface of the new site is abysmal, and fancy new features are not what readers want. It seems like some basic usability testing could have prevented this backlash, and hopefully the site’s developers are reading the user comments and taking copious notes. More isn’t always better; better is better. A little less emphasis on trendy techniques and more consumer research could have made for a smooth, controversy-free launch.

That being said, I still find myself exploring the hard-to-navigate archives in search of the perfect strip with which to prank my boss and coworkers. On that account, the new site is a brilliant example of the power of user-generated content. Die-hard Dilbert fans get the opportunity to step into his cubicle hell (and out of their own), and that just may save Adams’ his online readers.

Some employers are offering a new employee benefit to compliment traditional health care practices: a second opinion. Large companies such as Genzyme, J.B. Hunt, and EMC have teamed up with a new service called Best Doctors, which provides a second look at medical records to assess the accuracy of diagnoses and treatment plans. Best Doctors, which consists of a team of experts chosen by their peers, can evaluate the work of a primary care physician to ensure that patients are receiving the correct care. The Boston-based company has partnered with employer health plans and worker’s compensation carriers, and their service is changing the way companies look at health care.

The goal of Best Doctors is to “give our members the power to make informed medical decisions.” The company was founded in 1989 by a group of physicians at Harvard University School of Medicine, and it has expanded to include experts in all medical fields. They draw their consulting doctors from a pool of 50,000 top specialists from around the world, which is how they’re able to make the most accurate diagnoses and recommend the latest treatments. Peer surveys are used to recruit new doctors to their pool, using questions such as, “If you or a loved one needed a doctor in your specialty, to whom would you refer them?”

The Best Doctors service is meant to work side-by-side with employee health plans and physicians. As a recent press release explains, “When a patient calls Best Doctors, they are connected to a nurse who listens to all of their questions. Best Doctors compiles the patient’s medical information and selects an expert doctor from their database of 35,000 [now 50,000] physicians who is best qualified to assist the patient. The specialist examines the case and answers any questions posed by the patient. The findings are delivered to both the patient and their treating physician, so they can confidently choose the most appropriate next steps together.”

While it seems logical that a program which gives employees access to top medical experts might add cost to an insurance plan, Best Doctors suggests that correct treatment and diagnosis can save companies significant amounts of money. Indeed, having a specialist opinion from the start can cut down on mistakes and misdiagnoses, allowing patients to spend less time and money on expensive tests and inappropriate medications or treatments. Best Doctors “change rate” is astonishing. They change the initial diagnosis 22% of the time, and they modify the treatment plan for 61% percent of patients! On average, this adds up to $21,689 in savings by reducing unneeded medical costs.

Their website features testimonials from employers who have used the service. Stephen Wood, president of Insurers Administrative Corp, says “We’ve introduced Best Doctors as an added benefit that drives up quality of care. It really paid off. We’ve saved between $50,000 to $75,000 thanks to this program and maybe saved a life or two.” Indeed, as important as it is for employers to reduce the cost of providing health insurance to their workers, it can be even more important for employees to have the best possible medical care in case of serious illness. Hopefully, for the sake of the average worker, services like Best Doctors will become standard in employee benefits packages.

In today’s work-a-day world, most of us have multiple projects or tasks that we are working on simultaneously. Some handle multitasking well, and others struggle with it. That is why, under any circumstance, it is important to prioritize. The same is true of web development. However, corporate web developers have taken it one step further. A recent article in the New Hampshire Business Review discusses the hows and whys of prioritizing features and tasks within a web development cycle.

Any businesses developing a new site or conducting a redesign will end up with a long laundry list of changes, functionality, or new features to be added. Under these circumstances, “the challenge is not brainstorming new opportunities, but rather prioritizing all of the different options you have for upgrading or redesigning your site given your resources.” In order to maximize the usefulness of a website, each potential new feature must be carefully analyzed for its value to the company. Will the time it takes to complete each feature result in a better, more productive or more appealing site? The article suggests considering three specific factors when evaluating each change on your list:

CUSTOMER NEEDS: Customers should always be the first priority, since they determine the success of failure of a business or product. Correspondingly, any new features to a website should address their needs and desires. Thus, the first step in the prioritization process is to conduct research with actual users. This can be done by any number of means, including online surveys, focus groups, responses from promotional material, etc. Some corporations may even want to consider launching a beta website to show customers what the current plan is for the site. Based upon their reactions, a company will know if they are heading in the right direction.

BUSINESS VALUE: This has to do with assessing the bottom line. In this step, it is important to consider the following questions: What are you trying to accomplish internally? Will this feature help you accomplish that? Is this feature cost-effective? How will it increase the usability of the site? The answers to these questions will help to prioritize different features that a company may be considering. For example, suppose a company wants to reach out to new customers through a new product. What feature can be added to the website to promote this product among new users? How do current customers respond to this product? Does it gel with current branding, or will it confuse existing users? This stage is all about analyzing a potential new feature from a business perspective to ensure that money spent on a site will be worth it.

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS: This analysis is best done by the IT team in conjunction with real-world users. After the “customer research” phase, the relative technical cost of these features can be analyzed. However, this must go beyond the monetary cost. Other factors to consider include: the time it will take a tech team to develop these features, the amount of space these features will require on the website itself, what kind of maintenance will be needed, and how users with different levels of technical experience will use the features. This is a crucial consideration for any new site or upgrade.

This type of prioritization makes sense not only from a development standpoint, but also for the bottom line. After all, adding features that don’t meet customer needs, that are unwise from a business perspective, or that are unrealistic in terms of technological resources is a sure way to fail. Successful development teams carefully evaluate new features based on their potential to pay off in terms of user experience and financial success. By following the above protocol, any new website has a much better chance of success.

Online surveys have long been used by marketing teams to gather feedback on consumer products or customer satisfaction, but now the trend is starting to enter the workplace. Many employers struggle to accurately gauge employee moral. It’s a taboo subject in the workplace, and employees are not comfortable sharing their impressions and suggestions with managers or HR representatives. Web-based surveys are a great way to assure confidentiality and gather constructive feedback while enhancing employee engagement.

Surveys can be beneficial in a number of ways. You might discover a shortcoming that was not obvious to management, such as a technology gap or a customer service failing. You also might find that employees are not being utilized to the height of their abilities. Employee satisfaction surveys can alert you to problems and opportunities you didn’t even know existed. Acting on the results of employee surveys can reduce turnover, improvement management techniques, identify cost-saving opportunities, fill gaps in training, and reduce communication problems. Without gathering this information, you have no way to solve the unidentified problems in your workplace.

Surveys conducted online give employees the chance to express their concerns in a controlled, self-directed, and anonymous way. Many companies offer web-based applications for building and administering surveys, and they all aim to help you measure the impact of your employees on your business goals. One of the benefits of using an outside survey firm is that it assures employees that their direct managers will not be responsible for gathering or analyzing their responses. Many companies in this industry will host the survey on an outside website, issue passwords to employees, and assure that no one at your company has access to identifying information.

Perhaps the best-known service is offered through Gallup, which is a market leader in statistics and polling across industries. Gallup can help an organization not only collect data, but also organize and interpret the results. In addition to measuring employee engagement, Gallup offers consulting services that can help companies determine a course of action after the data is analyzed.

Another provider of employee satisfaction surveys is HR Solutions, which offers support to businesses during every step of the survey process. Their service is aimed to help you design, write, and code an online survey, and they can collect feedback, provide analysis, and develop an action plan based on the results. Their website’s press release section also offers helpful articles and advice for those who wish to conduct employee surveys on their own. Many other companies also offer online employee surveys, and some let you craft your own questions.

While many businesses understand the benefits of measuring employee satisfaction, it’s difficult to know what kinds of questions will yield the best results. Many surveys use a rating system (1 for strongly agree, 5 for strongly disagree, etc.) to gauge a number of opinions. Consider the following questions as a starting point:

• What is the best thing about working at Company ABC?
• What is the worst thing?
• Does your position challenge you Why or why not?
• Do you enjoy coming to work? Why or why not?
• How would you describe the collaboration within your team?
• What would you do differently if you were managing your team?
• How do you think Company ABC’s customers view them?
• What would be your advice to a new colleague?
• If you could change anything about Company ABC, what would it be?

Many survey firms report that open-ended questions (rather than yes/no questions) which encourage detailed answers yield the best results. Not only will you find surprising responses from your employees, but you will be prepared to act on their advice. Though it’s a cliché, the most important resource of any organization is its employees, and if you engage them in improving your workplace, their dedication to their jobs will be reflected in their interactions with customers.

Usability testing for websites has gone from a nice option for big companies to a necessity for everyone. Real-world users are more demanding than ever before, and web-based companies are putting practices in place that ensure the best experience for users of all descriptions. However, a good user experience is made up of several different key factors, some of which are based in psychology and some of which are purely technical. In order to ensure the best customer experience, you should consider not only your user’s gut reaction to your site, but also their computer’s gut reaction.

Conducting user testing on a website is generally designed to measure the psychological aspects of usability. The goal is to see how a sample user will find the information or product they need, if they’re able to intuitively navigate the site, and their first impressions of your company or product based on the site. A good example of this can be found in the testing done by the usability team at Bungie and Microsoft prior to the release of Halo 3. They carefully tested all the aspects of game play to ensure that players were having fun, that the tasks were not too difficult, and that the game flowed smoothly from one scene to the next.

This can also be accomplished when building a website for public use. You can recruit participants at a coffee shop, from employees, or from friends and family to explore your site and critique the design. To get the most detailed responses, consider asking the following questions:

• How did you find out ….?
• What did you expect to see when you …?
• Was it clear what steps you were supposed to take?
• What do you think would happen if you…?
• What features did you find particularly useful/useless?
• Did you find that text/photo/video helpful or distracting?
• How does this experience compare to our competitors?
• What questions would you like to see in our FAQ?

Answering these questions will give you a complete picture of how users react to your site’s design and architecture. This psychology-based approach can help you push out new features or pare down existing features based on your customer’s expectations.

Another aspect of usability, however, is the actual nuts and bolts of your site. How long does it take to load? How fast is your user’s connection? Can your site handle a huge spike in traffic? These are the hidden aspects of usability, and they’re often overlooked since much of the testing is done internally. Here are some important metrics to test your website’s technical performance:

• Connection speed
• Browser used
• Objects loaded
• Time to load
• Video playback
• User location
• Peak usage times

Making a list of checkpoints like the one above can help you conduct comprehensive performance evaluations. This will remind you to test your website on a dial-up connection using Internet Explorer 6, or on an office broadband using Safari.

Internet users are becoming less and less patient, and a slow load time or incomplete experience can make the difference between making a sale and losing a customer. Even if your design is beautiful and your architecture is intuitive, you still could be turning away customers because of technical shortcomings. There are plenty of tools out there to help test website performance, and one of the leaders in this industry is Gomez. They have web-based products to implement website monitoring on all levels, as well as white papers to help you educate yourself about optimization techniques.

Remember, today’s internet audience is sophisticated, demanding, and fickle. They can, and will, go to a competing website if they cannot quickly and easily find what they need on yours. Usability practices, both technical and psychological, can make the difference between retaining or driving away customers.

Since its introduction into the market in 2006, user reviews of Microsoft Windows Vista have generally been bad. If this blog is any indication, all it takes is one user to lament over their troubles with the OS, and pretty soon, hundreds more are ready to jump on board with the negative argument. Furthermore, the list of grievances seems pretty hefty. According to Vista users, the OS monopolizes system resources, has an unacceptable lag time, user account control (or lack thereof), and some experts claim that Vista is an imitation platform of the Mac OS X Tiger (a “copycat,” if you will). One article even published several ways to hack the Vista in an attempt to improve its performance to end users. Across the board, it seems as though Vista has failed to impress.

It seems that Microsoft has picked up on this vibe from Vista users. In a recent eWeek article, the question was asked, has Microsoft given up on its own OS? As author Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols puts it, when it comes to the perceived failure of Vista, “I know it. You know it. Even Microsoft’s most devoted yes-men know it…and perhaps Microsoft knows it as well. What else can explain why there’s so much talk about Windows 7?” For those who haven’t been keeping up with their technology gossip, Windows 7 is the current title of the next supposed big Microsoft release, and many industry insiders expect that it will far surpass Vista. The industry buzz on this topic, as well as the expedited fashion in which Microsoft seems to be developing this next operating system, has lead many to believe that Vista is being pushed wayside.

But just how much of this buzz is coming from Microsoft? As this article points out, much of the supposed “leaked information” may be coming from Microsoft insiders who are trying to counteract the negative feedback that has been generated from the release of Vista. In that same article, Directions on Microsoft analyst Michael Cherry relayed his opinion that some of the allegations being waged against Vista may have been trumped up by Microsoft, claiming, “I don’t think Vista is as bad as Microsoft has convinced people it is.”

Could it be, perhaps, that in light of the disappointments with the initial release of Vista (which had many users and businesses running back to Windows XP), Microsoft is now helping to sabotage its own OS in hopes of generating even greater sales with Microsoft Windows 7? Though I am neither an industry expert nor a marketing guru, it does make sense if you think about it. If Microsoft perpetuates the negative image of Vista, their next release will then by comparison seem infinitely better, which will more than likely beef up sales. It’s a likely explanation for Microsoft’s lack of support for Vista.

In any case, one thing seems clear - users are ready for an alternative to Vista. With more and more users and corporations opting to stay with their current OS (Windows XP), it makes sense that the buzz for the next big Microsoft release would be growing. Expectations are certainly high for Windows 7. Let’s just hope Microsoft can deliver!