November 30, 2006
Vista show
Steve Ballmer and Microsoft put on a relatively modest show for the simultaneous launch of the Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft Office 2007 and a bunch of other new products in New York.
The Microsoft CEO, speaking at an event hosted by the NASDAQ MarketSite in midtown New York, began by acknowledging that the latest version of Windows is more than a little overdue. "I should probably say it’s an exciting thing to FINALLY be here, " he said adding that the new products were "probably the most important since Windows 95 and Office 97."
Both Windows Vista and Office 2007 feature what Microsoft claims are improvements in the interface, ease of access, security and features like search. In particular, Ballmer said one of the primary aims in designing Office 2007 had been to simplify the interface and make it easier for users to access the rich features often buried beneath layers of drop down menus.
Ballmer acknowledged that many IT professionals have complained that few employees make use of more than "15 to 20 per cent" of the features in the current version of Office and revealed that even Bill Gates had had trouble remembering which features were new, and which were old, in Office 2007.
Curiously, given that Vista is being launched for business users two months before the consumer versions go on sale, Ballmer said Microsoft hope that consumers will start using Vista (presumably at home), like what they see and then badger corporate IT departments into upgrading.
So why then were the consumer versions of Vista held back? Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s VP in charge of Office 2007 gave a double barrelled explanation a little later. He said Microsoft had learned from the launch of Windows XP that if you launch the consumer ’sku’ first, it is difficult then to persuade corporate IT departments to accept it as appropriate for for enterprise deployment.
"If we had done the consumer version first we would never get businesses to take it seriously," he said. Equally importantly, he noted that the extra time before the consumer rollout on January 30 would give the retail channel and PC makers - big and small - time to gear up for the launch and then be able to compete on an equal footing.
