PC Industry Consumer Satisfaction Rebounds on Fading Windows Vista

PC Industry Consumer Satisfaction Rebounds on Fading Windows Vista: "

The results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that the overall consumer ratings of the PC industry has increased by 1 percent rebounding from two successive years of decline largely blamed on the sentiments of users on Microsoft Windows Vista. Early problems from vendor hardware, software compatibility, Vista Capable lawsuit, hardware requirements pulled down the satisfaction ratings of consumers. The Ultimate disappointment on the Windows Vista Ultimate edition falling short of delivering its promise of the Ultimate Extras padded to the growing dismay of users.

Now that the Windows Vista operating system is almost behind us, the Windows 7 RTM already released, plus the growing popularity of Apple and its iPhone technology made sure the PC satisfaction came back. According to David VanAmburg who is the managing director of the index, the decision of manufacturers to replace Windows Vista with Windows XP operating system helped bump up the rating. This just shows how the industry would climb up or down depending on the performance of a single vendor – Microsoft.

Anyways, Apple did slip 1 percentage point but they still remain on top of the race leading with a 12 percent lead over Dell. Despite Apple’s decline in rating, it should be noted that they have the largest gap lead between first and second place for any industry. Apple’s competition at this point is themselves. VanAmburg view on this notes that the decline of Apple is merely a statistical “noise” that didn’t mean any shift in consumer attitude. He adds on that Apple’s quality of products and face-to-face customer interactions through its retail stores helps to improve the consumers rating.

Dell is 12 points behind the leader but at least they have maintained their previous rating, Gateway which was bought by Acer saw a 3 percent increase in consumer satisfaction, Hewlett – Packard increase 1 percent and Compaq climbing 6 percent.

On search engine wars, Google is still on top of the list increasing 3 percent, followed by Yahoo, MSN.com and Ask.com. VanAmburg says that Google’s success comes from remaining basic, where users know what they are getting from the site.

I seriously think that overall satisfaction index would increase by at least another percent next year since consumers are most likely to be happy with the release of Windows 7, the faded Windows Vista forgotten on the memory of consumers, Apple’s iPhone 3GS has improved dramatically, an iPhone tablet PC release (???), the consolidation of Bing and Yahoo search and other things would greatly bode well on the ratings.

How about you? Which of the tech vendors have you been happy about? Which ones don’t you like? Do you agree with the Windows Vista assessment?

Image from Apple and Windows.