Vista has been on the street for just over 72 hours and the world appears remarkably similar to how it was on Jan. 29, or as I like to call it — PV (Pre-Vista).
Considering all the hype over Vista, one might have expected a magical transformation to take place at midnight on Jan. 30 when the OS first went on sale. People should be downloading content and easily distributing it about their home or recording TV programming on their PC or using any of the other neat functions of which Vista is capable. Yet most people are not.
I think the hoopla surrounding Vista’s launch might mark the last great marketing blitz surrounding an operating system introduction that we will see. Bill Gates & Co. pulled out all the stops with Gates himself trekking around the globe to push Vista. But with all that said, the response to Vista was a far cry from the excitement generated by the release of Sony’s PlayStation3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 last year.
I personally attended an event at a Best Buy in Manhattan the morning of Jan. 30 that featured Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicking off Vista’s launch, but besides a horde of local media there were few consumers lining up to make a purchase. Quick stops at a local CompUSA and two other retailers found those stores barren of Vista shoppers.
Of course this does not mean Vista is a failure. Vista can’t fail. It is being loaded onto almost every PC and notebook made so Microsoft is guaranteed to make a few bucks on the software.
But the lack of clamoring throngs of techies at stores should make a few people step back, take notice and rethink what consumers are really interested in when it comes to their PC.
