“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?)