There is nothing wrong with gauges, but they take up a lot of space given the amount of data they impart. Generally, they are rather cumbersome and against the principles of pixel density or non data ink. I would argue that a gauge should only be used once on any visualisation and ONLY if it is the critical metric! Think of a car dashboard, and you may think of a series of dials, but the main visualisation is for speed – a rather critical metric when driving. So if a metric is important it should be front and centre, but I would also argue that there is a better visualisation – Bullet Charts

The chart on the left shows the same information as the first gauge, but takes up much less horizontal space – space which could be used for additional insight! The grab on the right shows how bullet charts could be used in a horizontal orientation to show performance of a range of metrics against target values. Here we are showing the performance of a metric (shown as a blue bar) against a target, with a: red(ish) backgound for 0-75% of target; grey backgound for 76-100% of target; and a green background for above 100% of target.

As you can hopefully see, having a set of charts laid out in this ways makes it very easy to see the overall picture of the data and as such the performance of the business.

There are, of course, examples of gauges that cram in additional data, but they key question should always be – “Does this add value?”

What are your thoughts? Do you use gauges? Are bullet charts ‘sexy’ enough?

Privacy is a hot topic. Do the ‘public’ have a right to know?

The issue of privacy has been a concern for a long time, with companies often focusing on the use of customer data to maximise their profits rather than their customer’s experience. This short sighted view will lead to a back lash from customers, unless they feel in control. Nobody likes to receive spam emails containing completely irrelevant content, but at the same time, people feel uncomfortable about being tracked.

The upcoming EU cookie legislation takes effect on the 25th May, requiring companies to request users permission before setting any cookies not deemed to be “strictly necessary” for site functions. Whilst it is unlikely that we’ll see any real impact from this legislation in the short-term, it does show an interesting trend to great user empowerment. Our own research shows that most sectors are poorly equipped to deal with this legislation and they will have to act soon, to avoid being the first pulled over the hot coals.

A recent article over at Mashable highlights the efforts of ‘Buyosphere‘ to help customers regain control of their data. The company essentially allows users to choose which brands can have access to their data, allowing for a win-win relationship. Again, this shows the continuing trend of customer empowerment.

The next few months should be extremely interesting, as the issue of privacy is at the forefront of the news. Ultimately, it is the end consumer that should be the winner in the privacy argument. Companies are now focusing their efforts on engendering trust and convincing their customers to share their information with them. But in a world where even the giants of the technology, such as Sony, can lose customer data it is vital that people know what they are agreeing to.

With power comes responsibility!

For more on Foviance’s Data Privacy Audit

For me, the central purpose of a chart is to convey insight. It must be meaningful, else what’s the point? There is the classic criticism of 3D Pie charts that were the mainstay of almost all Excel charts for a long time. Nearly everybody that I know used the 3D feature of Excel when charting data. The reason? It looks cool (in a post 1990 sort of a way!) The slight downside is that it is very difficult to see the actual proportions of each segment when presented in 3D due to the skew caused by simulated perspective.

2D Pie charts are better are conveying precision, and from a purest standpoint, a much better visualisation. However, in my experience it is also important to ensure that there is an emotional engagement for the visualisation. The aesthetic is important too, as it allows you to capture the attention of the viewer. There is no point in having an insightful chart if no one wants to look at it!

Over the years of creating dashboards at Foviance, this balance between form and function has been an interesting journey. We rightly have constant debates on the subject, both internally and with our clients. There are often conflicting views based on the business requirements, the people involved and their backgrounds. For some, Stephen Few (function) is king and for others Edward Tufte (form). The concepts from Stephen Few, such as pixel density, are extremely important and act as a great rule of thumb. However, it is also vital that the end user can relate to data on an aesthetic and emotional level, and here the concepts from Edward Tufte can be great guide.

Many dashboards and visualisations try to be the perfect solution, but the reality is that the ‘one-size fits all’ approach is fundamentally flawed. Everyone is different and everyone processes information differently. It is vital that this be taken into consideration when designing a visualisation to ensure that the meaning can be conveyed as efficiently as possible. For example, we have recently built a dashboard which is intended to be used by both executive users as well as analysts. It has therefore been necessary to build not just a flat dashboard, but a dashboard application that will over just the top-line metrics for the executive users (along with a commentary), but that also allows analysts to drill-down into each of the metrics for additional context and insight.

Of course, it is not always possible to build an all-singing/all-dancing dashboard. We have budget and time constraints, and so we are forced to compromise the form and function across the various users. Is this a bad thing? No, it forces us to be innovative in our thinking and to focus on ROI. But it should be in the back of everyone’s mind when displaying data: Who will be viewing this? Why are they viewing this? What do they need?

At Foviance, we have moved away from static score cards, to more dynamic dashboards allowing the user to interrogate the data, to become more engaged, and to get more insight. The next step will be to offer a far more personal experience whereby the same dashboard could be viewed in different ways by different users. A simple example, may be to present different colour combinations for different users, or to allow the user to display a data table rather than a pie-chart.

Data is important, but insight is vital.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a few specific examples and it would be great to hear what you think.

So, are you a 2D or 3D person? Can a chart be sexy?

For those of you that watch South Park, a recent episode highlighted the public perception of end-user licensing and privacy statements. The character Kyle doesn’t bother to read the privacy agreement of an Apple iTunes update and has to suffer the consequences, which cannot be detailed here!

Apple has suffered a significant damage to its public reputation recently, due to the news that it has been tracking the location of it’s iPhone and iPad users.  Apple, along with Google, have been requested to participate in a US Senate panel on the issue of mobile tracking, with Apple adamantly stating that it does not track user’s locations, but uses the data collected to help speed up the use of location based services. As you can see from the map below (produced using the iPhone Tracker tool ), the wi-fi location and cell towers around your phone, can give an impression of your own location – you’d never guess that I use the east coast railway a lot!

<Click to enlarge>

Last year I wrote about the issues of advertising on mobile devices, a theme that I’ll be coming back to again shortly, along with the potential difficulties of mobile tracking. One of the issues related to the latency of the tracking and the corresponding issue of data accuracy. A recent article by ‘Localytics’ has highlighted this problem and it will be an ever more important issue as the use of mobile devices becomes more and more main stream. The common consensus (Wikimedia & Online Marketing Trends)  predicts that mobile devices will surpass desktops as the method of browsing the internet by 2014.

The Apple story is interesting as the issue of tracking on mobile devices, and indeed this specific issue relating to the user’s location, has been known about for well over a year. It only gained momentum in the popular press when the information was visualised!

This really shows the importance of visualising data. We all love a good story and need to be able to relate to the protagonists. Data is great, but insight is better!

Our own Neil Mason discusses the use of storytelling in his recent blog post. We are often confronted with the conflict of making data look ‘sexy’, think of glossy 3D pie charts, rather than meaningful. For me it is vital that a data visualisation tells a story. It should allow the user to experience a journey through the data to gain meaningful insight.

What is interesting, is that the depiction of data can often feel like an uphill struggle, everyone has an opinion on what a chart should look like. It is often only when you have played with a couple of different visualisations that the true meaning comes through. From a linguistic or memory perspective, this would be termed as ‘semantic’ meaning that a greater level had been achieved. As analysts, it is our job to help create this journey for our client.

This is not easy. It may take several iterations before the insights come through, but then again, it wouldn’t be a true story without a struggling hero now would it!

For more about Foviance’s Data Privacy Audit

According to recent figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade body for digital marketing, the total spend on mobile phone advertising in 2009 rocketed by 32 percent year-on-year to a new high of £37.6 million – and all that despite an overall contraction in the advertising sector in 2009.

Two of the biggest names driving this hike in interest in mobile advertising are Apple and Google. Apple launched iAd, its mobile advertising platform, following the acquisition of Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Google is similarly bullish, investing $750 million in its own AdMob. So that’s more than $1 billion investment by these two giants of the marketplace, and a pretty good indicator to potential advertisers that this isn’t a fleeting opportunity.

Before joining the mobile advertising bandwagon, potential advertisers need to try to understand mobile better as a platform. If possible they should gauge the value of applications by tracking their usage. Before the iPad was launched, a firm called Flurry Analytics – a developer of a leading smartphone application analytics and monetization platform used by more than 30,000 applications across iOS, Android, Blackberry and J2ME – enabled developers to include code in their iPhone apps to track usage. With this help brands could breakdown exactly what users were doing within their apps and how often. A bit like Google Analytics on the desktop, this data wasn’t personally identifiable but was very useful as guidance.

Unfortunately for Flurry and app developers alike, Flurry’s analytics were blamed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs for ‘outing’ IDs of new tablet devices on the Apple campus that turned out to be the secret iPad in testing. Jobs said at the time: “We learned some company called Flurry had data on devices that we were using on our campus. It was getting developers to put software in their apps that sent info back to this company! So we went through the roof. It’s violating our privacy policies! So now we’re only going to allow analytics that don’t give our device info.”

Apple felt obliged to change its terms and conditions for tracking software. Developers must now sign up to stringent restrictions of third-party tracking libraries unless tracking is explicitly obvious to end users. What does this really mean though? Most websites already use non-personal tracking. Are our mobile phones considered to be more personal devices, with more questions raised over tracking of information on them, especially any locality information?

If rich information capture from mobile devices was permitted, either specifically through raw cell tower information or by other boundaries, advertising networks could undoubtedly put it to good use. The Apple iAd platform can already enable developers to put targeted interactive ads into apps, that with permission can look through iTunes histories and study behavioural information to enable tighter targeting. Google’s own ad model can employ Google maps to present ads to users depending on their location. Theoretically all of this would be ‘opt-in’ from a customer point of view, but it isn’t impossible for permissions to be bound up in general terms and conditions. Regardless, Apple currently believes its apps should be explicit about intentions to track behavioural information, using location-based services and permitting targeted advertising.

2010 is already the year of mobile, and that’s largely because mobile manufacturers and service providers are getting so much better at understanding what consumers really want. Debates will certainly be raised over what is good for them – do we all want targeted business ads while walking city streets, and shopping vouchers sent to us as we walk through the doors of a shop? Arguably the offline world is moving this way anyway, thanks to pervasive loyalty and travel cards. Even Facebook has been in hot water for targeting ads based on profiles at one time, but it’s obvious to most that this is a trend on the cusp of acceptance by many, so long as an acceptable balance can be struck between benefits and privacy.

This article was writtern as part of the Foviance July/August Newsletter

Apple have taken a strong stance on the inclusion of analytics within apps to date. Steve Jobs was rather vocal following the outing of the iPad by Flurry Analytics earlier this year  and there was speculation that this impacted Apple’s view on all analytics tools for the iPhone. Apple restricted the use of embedded analytics tracking code in any App and also stated that that app tracking must be an opt-in system. This obviously has significant user experience issues, not to mention questions over how representative the data is. Apple will provide some data to developers and advertisers: developers can see how many downloads their app has had, along with revenue and some limited geographical usage; advertisers can see the aggregated anonymous geographic location install base via Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, iAd. The app tracking also allows developers to see how people are using their applications, which areas of the app are popular, which buttons are used most frequently, how often the app is launched, and so forth.

So how does this work and why is this limiting to the digital analytics industry? Well, most analytic tools embed a small section of code into the app that make a call to a data collection server hosted on the Internet – which obviously means it must be online. This raises various challenges with mobile devices, as they change location and more importantly will have varying levels of Internet access. This raises several questions, firstly if you have a particular work flow in your app, then you may have embedded tracking on each key stage of the process. If the phone then goes offline, then the tracking calls may not be completed in a timely fashion, or even at all. As such it would appear from the data that the user didn’t complete the process leading to very misleading results. Secondly, now that all of the UK carriers have introduced limits on how much data can be used, it raises an interesting question over how many aspects of the app should be tracked. Admittedly the size of the tracking requests is minimal (typically less than 5Kb per call), but none-the-less, repeated use of features with tracking included will push up the data usage on the device.

So, with the apparent antennae issues with the iPhone4, you have to wonder how reliable and representative any tracking data will be? If certain geographical areas have low signal strength, then it is far more likely that the tracking calls will be lost and as such it would skew the audience figure of your app to geographical areas with stronger signal strength.  

So how reliable and representative is data collected from mobile devices? Well, given the nature of the data collection it’s extremely difficult to validate – you cannot easily test your app in every location that your target audience are going to be using the app. What happens if they use your app extensively whilst on the tube without Internet access? As such a definitive answer on validity is probably unlikely. However, some data is definitely better than none. The issues with reception loss will likely average out over time as it will probably affect all tracking calls equally. Companies such as Flurry Analytics and AppClix are working on these problems and already have some techniques to deal with them. However, as signal strength will vary with location and device there is no universal answer and so we’ll be keen to see how this progresses.

The key, as with all analytics work, is to put the data in context and take account of any data collection issues that may affect our clients mobile activity. Data may be king, but insight is divine!

There is a trend, particularly in the web analytical arena, for some consultancies to simply create more and more metrics for businesses, rather than working on their clarity. Unfortunately, there is also a tendency for many people to suffer from ‘data blindness’ when confronted with rafts of metrics churned out by multiple tools and technologies. Advertising campaign management, web analytics, CRM, and other intelligence tools should enable businesses to interact better with their customers, but for many actually understanding all that information – particularly across wide portfolio websites – proves very frustrating.

This is why we and our customers place such value in effective visual dashboarding – known to some as data visualisation. But does everyone really understand what a dashboard is supposed to do? If we ask new clients whether they already use dashboards, many will say they do. But when we actually see these tools for ourselves, they often turn out to be Excel workbooks or similar spreadsheet style presentations riddled with tabs for all manner of different metrics. Sure, internal web analysts may spend many well intentioned days compiling these books to send around the business, but they rarely receive widespread adoption simply because most people don’t understand metrics in this dense form. This style of ‘dashboard’, if it can even be called such, is not targeted and really just represents dumped reporting. It’s an inadequate ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that confuses most people and lacks any practical meaning.

At Foviance we know how important it is to understand business requirements before attempting to produce proper dashboards that help individuals understand key performance indicators (KPIs). In most cases, a dashboard wouldn’t attempt to present more than around ten KPIs, but would be sufficiently flexible to present different information for different people across a business with different information needs. We also try to help people understand the difference between metrics and KPIs – a metric is a simple measure that can be quantitavely assessed, but a KPI is an indicator that actually means something to individual people across a business when it goes up or down, and importantly it is something that can then be acted upon.

So an effective KPI framework or strategy helps people understand and challenge KPIs. These frameworks can be distilled down to a short list of things those people really need to measure that means something to them and which they are able to display and share in an immediately understandable way. How does last month’s figure relate to a previous year? How about month on month? Is that fluctuation typical or unusual? Is that good or bad?

We hone our dashboarding techniques through the use of ‘sparklines’ – inline charts that clearly show how the trends and variations of particular metrics. The technique and term was created by Edward Tufte, a noted American statistician and expert in information design. We have listened to Stephen Few, another respected expert in the field of effective visual communication who examined dashboard design and visualisation to see why some methods fail and others succeed.

We try to think of business dashboards like airplane cockpits – there is a huge amount of granular data we could present, but the most important thing is to clearly and immediately highlight critical indicators and common KPIs. A business that discovers it had 100,000 page impressions over the past week actually knows nothing unless it has also been alerted to the fact it had 10,000 or 1,000,000 the previous week. Good dashboards alert anomalies and dramatic trend tacks. The right people can then dive into annual averages assess significance and highlight possible actions. Initially though, the dashboard should clearly display from afar or at glance any issue of possible immediate concern – just like in a cockpit.

We’re continuing to develop ‘dashboarding’ as service at Foviance, and we’re making particular strides in this field right now. Talk to us about tactical dashboards, strategic dashboards, and how they can help different audiences across your own business with short and long term planning, as well as the unexpected.

This article was written as part of the crossing the channels of experience March newsletter

Rather than treating your customer research investment in isolation, identifying where your business has to pay for research, analysis and testing, it’s possible to view your investment from the opposite angle – if your business chooses not to work on customer experience, what problems will you experience, what dropouts will you see on your website, and what value is being lost as a result of you not conducting any research?

Today’s customers expect excellent user experience as a matter of course from modern websites – a competitor’s web site is only a click away. Businesses pay a lot of money for their websites to be developed by design agencies, and sometimes whether the site is deemed a success or not can hinge on the highest-paid-person’s-opinion (HiPPO). Such flawed thinking often prevents the suggestion of objective changes that are grounded in data. But to be of any benefit to customers, this is where the thinking has to occur.

You must obsess about your own customers. What points are causing them problems? Why are some people finding it hard to navigate from these landing pages through to these particular items? It is often hard to see all the way down to granular issues from a very high viewpoint, but it is vital if you want to ensure a loyal following.

Of course the majority of companies are aware of the desirability of good customer experience; they just need to have a greater understanding of the impact of each change. They’re happy to invest some money in making their websites more usable by conducting customer surveys or audits and implementing design changes, and they know there’s a cost for this expertise but often have no way of grasping the potential ROI. This is why it is important that you understand more fully what is involved in quantitative analysis, and perhaps most importantly, what changes can be made that will directly improve your own conversion rates and at what cost.

One useful measurement might come from the concept of ‘engagement scoring’. You can identify the key actions that you would like customers to perform on your website. Making a purchase is right up there, of course. But how about watching your product demos, reading customer reviews, or signing up for more information? Are these tipping points that generally lead to future sales? And if so could they be assigned a score or value? Might your timely human intervention or a conversation with your customers at high-value points convert engagements into sales? These are ways in which the quality of your traffic can be valued, not simply the quantity. These are the first steps towards establishing a ROI for your customer experience research.

It’s important that you are able to focus on optimising traffic acquisition and retention. Why do people come in to your site on certain pages but not move forward? Expert analysis of your customer experience will enable you to more fully understand the quality of your visitors over time and to differentiate their experiences. If, for example, a supermarket can improve the journey towards transactions for a small percentage of customers, and increase order value again by just a few percent, the resultant revenue change can prove massive.

Through engagement scoring ground in data, your business can begin to assign commercial values to actions occurring on its websites, even if they do not directly result in purchases. Instead of recording that 3% of journeys end in conversion, it is just as true to state that 97% went through a certain process and did not complete, thus providing a commercial value for those people lost during the transaction or booking process. Not only are the vast majority of visitors not converting, but they may be causing performance problems which will impact the experience for those that do: Think of a 3% conversion rate in a high street supermarket!

A commercial value like this provides a tangible starting point from which to have a conversation about the corresponding value of conducting customer experience work and potentially reducing this lost revenue. The premise becomes: “If we make an investment to improve our customer experience and reduce dropouts, how valuable is that to our company?”

This process can be taken further still by conducting user group research or surveys to understand the ‘Why’ factor. If 97% of site visitors dropped out between stages, what was the average order value from those lost opportunities? Would most visitors have only bought small value items, and just a few bought high value ones? Did the percentage that did complete put up with poor user experience because they were getting good value they couldn’t achieve elsewhere? Were a large proportion unwilling to put up with their experience and so simply jumped to another website?

Multivariate testing and simple A/B or split testing, can help greatly in establishing the commercial value of your online processes and user interactions. There are also a wide range of tools available that can help, from Omniture’s Test & Target, Webtrend’s Optimize, Maximiser, Google’s Website Optimizer and other developers. These generally enable businesses to create pages and sites with far more modular structures and to then work out how best to display products and services. Along with the influx of greater customisation in web design, this modularity is reducing the time and overheads associated with customer experience testing. In a couple of years, more sites will become dynamically tailored to each user. But in the meantime even subtle improvements implemented as a result of solid testing can reward you with significant improvements in your conversion rates, and a potentially huge impact on your bottom line that easily exceeds your investment in testing. It’s not unheard of to read accounts of 1400% improvements in revenue following customer experience testing.

By ignoring the potential of an investment in customer experience strategy development, your business could be missing out on large volumes of untapped revenues. It’s vital that we reach a point where businesses like yours can justify a modest investment in testing far more readily. Customer experience agencies can empower you to please your customers, but if you don’t let this happen, you risk losing those customers forever.

Back to October Newsletter

The answer could be the intranet, but probably not as you now know it. Most companies invest a tiny fraction of their website budget in creating their intranet. Often the intranet software will be bought off the shelf, like the word processing and spreadsheets packages, rather than shaped to the needs of the business and its employees. If something is too hard to use (clue: if it needs training, it’s probably too hard to use), then it’s unlikely to communicate effectively.

By contrast, if an intranet is designed around the company and its employees, it can be highly effective in articulating the company voice, beliefs and values. Employees can be kept up to date about what’s going on in the business, and this can inform their behaviour and attitude when speaking to outsiders. Whether it’s the airline or the mobile phone company, we expect Virgin staff to be friendly, personable and efficient. Virgin’s brand experience is consistent across all its products and services, partly as a result of clear internal communications.

Some companies can benefit by tapping into the forums where their employees already share their knowledge and experiences, such as Facebook. While conservative businesses like law firms might be uncomfortable with the blurred line between formal and informal communications there, some companies can avoid reinventing the wheel by integrating the intranet with Facebook. Posts there can be reused in forums, and colleagues can see who’s online and communicate quickly in an informal atmosphere.

To create an effective intranet, companies need to ensure there is clear ownership and leadership for it. There needs to be a clear understanding of how the company’s brand is conveyed internally, and the impact that has on external perception of the company. In order to achieve that, companies should use the same analytics tools on the intranet that they already use for understanding how customers use the public website. Forums might look inactive, but could be performing a valuable service to the lurkers who are content to read posts without replying. An analysis of common search terms can also be used to identify company policies that need to be communicated more clearly. By phasing intranet growth, and building on what works well, it’s possible to achieve buy-in from employees.

Employee behaviour is the clearest expression of a brand. Isn’t it time companies devoted as much energy to helping the team understand the brand as it does to trying to convey it to end customers?

So why is Windows 7 so good? In many ways it is very similar to Windows Vista – the most recent debacle of an operating system from Microsoft. Cosmetically it is extremely similar, but Windows 7 has a few very significant differences – the main one being that it simply works. Let me explain….

Coming from a technical background I’ve always had a certain sympathy with software development especially something as complicated as an operating system. Microsoft rarely gets the credit it deserves for producing software that works across such a wide range of hardware. That said, Microsoft Windows and Office are probably the two pieces of software that drive me up the wall – not because they are bad bits of software but rather that I use both continually. As such any problem with writing the document impacts my work and it’s Word that gets the blame.

So onto Windows 7. From the moment of installation things were pretty smooth. Clear instructions, minimal intrusion, and swift installation. Starting Windows 7 for the first time was something of an adventure and the first thing you notice when you see the desktop is that the taskbar has changed. Whereas Vista kept the taskbar similar to Windows XP, Windows 7 has taken a different approach. One of the most common issues for me is window navigation. I often have five to 10 programs running with usually at least 20 windows open at any one time, as such trying to find which window contains what you’re looking for can be a bit of a challenge. Windows 7 does away with the usual window buttons on the task bar, but rather groups all windows together from the same program – not dissimilar to the Dock on an Apple Mac – allowing you to easily find the content you’re after. Right-click on any of the programs a small menu allows you quick access to common features. For example Internet Explorer shows a list of recently view pages, and Media Player gives you easy access to your media and various controls.

Under Windows XP I found the grouping feature to be extremely painful, but in Windows 7 it works extremely well as you can see a small thumb nail of the windows contents when you move the move over active programs.

Additionally, Microsoft has added a few minor tweaks. You can now move a window over to the far left of the screen and it will maximise to half the screen width. Do the same with another window on the right-hand-side and you can easily compare windows side by side. A simple but actually useful feature. The ‘Show desktop’ feature is now activated by moving the cursor to the bottom right of the screen which temporarily makes all windows fully transparent allowing you to see all files on the desktop – again simple but effective.

The ‘Start menu’ remains largely the same as Vista with the focus on search. For anyone using Windows XP this feature is a real god send as it allows you to quickly open programs, files, services simply by pressing the ‘Windows’ key and then typing. Whereas in Windows XP I created loads of short-cut icons, this feature makes life a lot simpler and tasks quicker to complete as I don’t have to resort to the mouse of have to remember loads of keyboard short-cuts.

So far all of the programs I’ve installed have worked seamlessly, and the focus with Window 7 certainly seems to on creating something that actually works. Even on an older machine Windows 7 running in all its visual glory feels faster and more productive that Windows XP – I’m not looking forward to August when the beta runs out and I’ll be forced to return to XP.

Across out hosted infrastructure we’ve seen a steady and continual increase in the use of Window 7 beta since Microsoft made the beta public on the 9th January and if it’s anything to go by Microsoft is onto a winner with Windows 7 – let’s hope that they don’t ruin a promising start by offering complex and inappropriate licensing!

So why am I so excited about this? Well the key reason is that Microsoft has clearly listened to the criticisms of Vista. If I were cynical then I’d say that they had little choice following the disaster that was Vista, which should have been good but was let down by numerous niggles each of which dented the overall experience. And here is the real lesson. Windows 7 is enjoyable to use – it’s a positive experience a bit like the first time I used an Apple Mac. Rather than the usual computer experience of trying to do something and eventually finding it sitting three menus deep before the computer promptly crashes, Windows 7 feels smooth. It is easy to use and guides you through tasks efficiently, but also has loads of small intuitive features that are not big marketing opportunities but are clearly there simply to make life easier! And for that single fact I applaud Microsoft – credit where credit is due.

For a great in-depth review have a look at: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/23/windows-7-beta-in-depth-impressions/