The number was a complete guess based on what I've been reading. For example:
zdnet.com
Some quotes:
As reported last week, many users are discovering that upgrading to Windows 98 is neither seamless nor painless. My PC Week colleague John Dodge was unable to install Windows 98 on his laptop without technical help.
I, too, have suffered from various Windows 98 upgrade woes, ranging from the inability of Windows 98 to recognize my two modems, not to mention the appearance of the dreaded Blue Screen of Death in the midst of my Win98 installation at midnight, the night before the Windows 98 launch. Deinstalling Windows 98 at 1:30 a.m. was not a picnic, I can tell you. My IBM Thinkpad still isn't working right.
I confess I was reticent to believe the first reports of problems with the gold version of Windows 98 that I started receiving a week ago. I had heard of relatively few problems with the most recent beta releases, and most of the reviews I had read of the
product claimed it was a more robust release than Windows 95.
But a week after we posted our first story reporting various installation problems experienced by users upgrading to Windows 98, followed by another story citing Windows 98's inability to recognize some of the most common modem and PC LAN cards, I can say with certainty that this upgrade isn't what it was cracked up to be.
I have received 30+ e-mail messages, about 27 of which are from users revealing their own private installation hells
Now, look at it this way. Mary Jo Foley gets 27 email messages complaining about Windows 95. "Smart Reseller" is not Time Magazine. Let's say that out of 500,000 people who bought Windows 98, 10,000 read Mary Jo Foley. Of those, 30 of them sent emails complaining to her. 10000/30 = 500000/1500, so that gives us 1500 people with 'installation hells'. Now I would guess that the people who read Smart Reseller are probably more experienced than the average computer user and would have fewer problems in general. Also, not everyone who had problems sent her email. Also, 10,000 out of 500,000 is 2%. I doubt that 2% of Windows users who are brave enough to buy OS's on their own read Smart Reseller. If it's more like 0.2%, say, then the number of Windows 98 installers who read Foley is 1000, giving us an expected number of 15,000 people with 'installation hells.' These are all estimates, but you get the point. 30 letters to a columnist of a relatively small trade magazine is a LOT. |
