Vista’s Coming Out Party

The thermometer read 26°, but it felt like 16. And yet there we were, probably 1,000 folks "on line" (the real, physical kind of line, where they check your bags and ask for photo ID, and you feel sheepish because you're not VIP enough to saunter up to the front) to enter the Nokia Theater in Times Square and celebrate the launch of Microsoft's Vista.

I guess I must be a Windows launch junkie. I've been to every one of them, as well as a few launches of DOS. (Personal favorite? DOS 5.0 was launched on DOS Boat as it floated around NY Harbor.)

In comparison to others, this Vista launch felt tame and measured. There were no superstars like Jay Leno yukking it up over a good GUI; no Rolling Stones music blaring "Start Me Up." Just a rather intimate theater for Friends of Vista—mostly beta testers, PC manufacturers, and the press. But the signage everywhere read WOW—sort of like big cue cards reminding us how we should feel.

A luncheon held earlier in the day had PC executives addressing the press about their excitement over the new OS, but the excitement was more like the kind you show when you've been around the block a few times than irrational exuberance. While almost everyone agrees that Windows Vista is not going to have people camping out in the parking lots of Best Buy to be the first to buy it, Vista is clearly a modern operating system for a new generation of hardware.

Party Report
The party atmosphere was set with a warm up that featured a percussionist/DJ team with one drummer  who was billed as " 21 strokes per second." The opening act from Angels and Airwaves was a metal-tinged version of "What a Wonderful World." I'm not up enough on my bands to understand the significance of the choice, but it made me miss Louis Armstrong.

Then Bill Gates took the stage and reminded us of how far we've come since the first Windows graphical user interface was introduced in 1983. He broke down Vista's highlights into four areas of innovation, and gave a quick laundry list:

Easier: Better search, the Microsoft Office Ribbon, and 3D graphics.
Safer: Better privacy and protection, parental controls, anti-phishing, spyware.
Entertainment: DirectX 10, better photo management, support for high definition and HDMI.
Better Connections: Wi-Fi Resource Finder, XML extensions, and support for RSS.

This being the consumer release of Vista (the business version went on sale on November 30), Mike Seivert, a Microsoft Corporate VP, demonstrated Vista's family friendly functions through the eyes of his own family. We watched him tag his family photos so he could find them faster, play photos and music from his PC on his Xbox, and spruce up his holiday family newsletter using Windows Office templates. Next, he played a cross country game of UNO with his son, who happened to be on an Xbox in their Redmond living room, thus demonstrating that your family can stay and play together even on two different platforms. Then he showed the extensive parental controls (which of course will work until your kids bring a USB or flash drive home with the junk you don't want them to play).

The demos looked gorgeous and I believe that the new systems will give families an easier way to do things, such as burn DVDs, but the irony of needing a new PC, an Xbox, an expensive operating system, and a new Office Suite to play UNO with your family and send out snazzy holiday letters with rounded-edge photos did not escape me.

Steve Ballmer took the stage to wind down the formalities and reinforce the message that this is only the beginning and that the open/accessible Vista would bring even more innovation. Then he brought out one of the Microsoft Vista beta test families to the stage to signal the official launch of the product.

What did this launch have in common with others before it? I was reminded that like all other Windows launches you have the naysayers, the pooh-poohers, and the nit-pickers. And Vista has plenty to nit pick. But ultimately, there's a line in the sand, and to get to the features on the other side you've got to upgrade your operating system. And that's the big WOW.