We really need to work on our web site

Have a look at the home page for Mac OS X.

Now have a look at the home page for Windows XP Home.

Which would you rather buy?

The Mac home page has beautiful graphics, some product descriptions (in fairly colloquial English -- “scads of applications,” for example), and clear links to some of its major features. You can actually read that page, see what the product looks like, and get an understanding of what it might do. Clicking on the links to features actually lets you see how they might help you.

The Windows home page, on the other hand, consists of about a million hyperlinks, the first of which is a link to install security patches. (Of course, installing patches is very important, but bear with me for a second). You can't actually learn anything on this page. If you are lucky enough to somehow find the link for features, it doesn't actually tell you how Windows is useful. It says stuff like “Protected Kernel Mode Architecture” and “Windows File Protection” -- like anybody is actually going to race out and buy Windows because of that stuff (remember, this is the “Home” ediiton, not the “Professional” or business edition). The target audience won't even understand what it means!

Yes, it's a slow day (err, week) at work. I promise to have more techy entries soon, and stop with the random junk.