Windows Vista Launch

When a new ship is launched they usually break a bottle of Champagne, the crowd cheers and the ship enters the water with a big splash. Today at midnight Vista was launched, the local TV news had a camera crew at one of the stores that was open and waiting as if some crowd of people would magically appear. This was not the case, a few people walking around with a boring look on their face and the rest of the store was empty.

What happened between the great Windows 95 launch and all the associated hoopla and today is a tribute to Microsoft’s marketing staff. In a word they blew it and you need to go back a few years to see why.

Windows 95 and 98 used calendar years as part of the version and that changed for consumers with the release of Windows ME, you remember that OS don’t you, ME who, while at about the same time they were courting the corporate community with Windows 2000 as if these were the people who would run out to the local PC store or vendor and buy like there was no tomorrow. Take note that a lot of consumer goods are marketed with the year as a selling point …. “Here is the new 2007 version” as if last year’s model is horribly obsolete, but the ploy works like a charm and that why sales people like it.

This time around Microsoft released Vista to the corporate folks late last year and to us consumers today. Why to business users first I have no idea, the local hospital is still advertising jobs openings for technicians who know Windows 95 and 98, no mention of ME or XP.

Not surprisingly most corporate types take years to adopt a new version of Windows and for good reasons as all there applications must continue to run flawlessly and the change over must not cause major headaches. So around 2009 or 2010 Vista should be in use in the corporate community.

On the other hand there are millions upon millions of home users who could upgrade to Vista immediately if Microsoft had changed its marketing strategy in such a way as to put some hype and incentive to do so. Guess they will have to wait another five years and call it Windows 2012.