Business gets Vista
By John Pospisil
After five years and several delays, Microsoft celebrated the launch of Windows Vista for business at an event in New York. Companion products, Office 2007 and Exchange Server, were also launched at the event. Business customers can now purchase these products through Microsoft’s volume licensing program.
Steve Ballmer at the launch oof Windows Vista
The company expects that more 200 million people will use Vista by the end of next year.
“This is the biggest launch in our company’s history. That’s for sure,” said Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive of Microsoft.
“These are game-changing products,” Ballmer continued. “It’s an incredible step forward for business computing in a year of unprecedented innovation from Microsoft. We expect that more than 200 million people will be using at least one of these products by the end of 2007.”
According to Ballmer, the new versions of Windows, Office and Exchange Server 2007 are the result of an unprecedented collaboration between Microsoft and its customers. Real-life scenarios guided product development through feedback from customers who volunteered to let Microsoft watch them work in more than 1 billion user sessions. During testing, customers from around the world downloaded more than 5 million beta versions of the products and provided valuable feedback and suggestions.
Some of the new features of Vista include translucent windows so that you can see items on the desktop, and better search functionality. It’s also a lot prettier than Windows XP.
Predictably, Microsoft also says that Vista offers more reliable and more secure than previous version of Winows — though that’s something the company says every time it launches an operating system.
Research firm IDC predicts that Vista will be installed on more than 90 million computer worldwide by the end of 2007.
The launch of Windows Vista for consumers is scheduled for January 30. Ballmer said that he expects that users would upgrade faster to Vista than they did to Windows XP. Microsoft will back the launch of Vista with a marketing campaign costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
A number of different versions of Vista will be released for consumers, ranging from the a basic version at US$199 all the way to an ultimate version at $399.
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Stumble It!
February 28th, 2009
It’s more than two years since this post was published, so it’s time for a retrospective.
“The company expects that more 200 million people will use Vista by the end of next year.”
They were a little bit out on that one, weren’t they?
“This is the biggest launch in our company’s history. That’s for sure,” said Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive of Microsoft.”
Yes, for sure – it was a *huge* launch. I’ll bet they thought that even God couldn’t sink this operating system.
“These are game-changing products [...]”
Vista has certainly been a “game changer” – it’s brought Microsoft to the end game, and business doesn’t look so good for them now.
“According to Ballmer, the new versions of Windows, Office and Exchange Server 2007 are the result of an unprecedented collaboration between Microsoft and its customers.”
Which makes it all the more surprising that Vista was such a disaster (or maybe Mr Ballmer was lying?).
“Vista [is] a lot prettier than Windows XP.”
And the customers went for that in a big way, didn’t they?
“Predictably, Microsoft also says that Vista offers more reliable and more secure than previous version of Win[d]ows [...]”
And, just as predictably, it wasn’t true.
“Research firm IDC predicts that Vista will be installed on more than 90 million computer worldwide by the end of 2007.”
Did IDC migrate to Vista? If so, I wonder how much they liked it.
“Microsoft will back the launch of Vista with a marketing campaign costing hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Microsoft certainly know how to spend money. It’s a shame they don’t know how to spend it wisely.
“A number of different versions of Vista will be released for consumers, ranging from the a basic version at US$199 all the way to an ultimate version at $399.”
Ah, yes – as it turned out, you could buy cheap crap, middling price crap, or expensive crap. (Did Microsoft ever come good on the promises regarding “Ultimate extras”, or have they forgotten about that now that Vista is being quietly swept under the carpet?)