Microsoft rolled out Windows Vista at retailers in 70 countries on Tuesday, delivering a new computer operating system that aims to manage the explosion of digital media better and protect users from the dangers of the internet.
The world’s biggest software maker marked the launch of its first all-new Windows operating system in five years with a marketing blitz, including commercials featuring basketball star Lebron James and appearances by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on morning and late-night chat shows.
Windows runs on more than 95% of the world’s computers, and the long-delayed new version is the first major release of a new Microsoft operating system since it introduced Windows XP in 2001.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft called Vista the most important release of its dominant operating system since Windows 95 more than a decade ago, when shoppers waited for hours to be among the first to run the new software.
Consumer fanfare of that magnitude seems unlikely since Vista is not the dramatic leap in technology of past releases, but the new Windows could ultimately be just as successful.
”Vista will be successful. It’s been a long time since Microsoft introduced a new operating system. There are a lot of nice features that people will like,” said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran.
The most obvious change is the new look. Vista’s ”Aero” interface uses 3D graphics to create translucent windows that appear to float above the background screen. Other changes are more subtle, such as improved security, search bars to help users find information easier and a new multimedia platform for digital video, music and pictures.
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Apple calls Vista a copycat version of its Mac OS X Tiger operating system that introduced many of those new features. The iPod maker plans to introduce a new operating system of its own later this year.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg, in his review of Vista, called it a ”worthy, but largely unexciting, product”.
In the first year of its release, Vista, which required a $6-billion investment from Microsoft, will be installed on more than 100-million PCs worldwide, according to research reports. But because only about 15% of existing computers have memory and graphics cards powerful enough to run premium versions of Vista, most users will have to buy a whole new computer if they want to upgrade.
”There is a pent-up set of consumers who are going to get new PCs,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said in an interview on Monday. ”We will see an uptick [in PC sales]. Sales will be stronger than they otherwise would have been.”
To accompany the launch, events were planned near New York’s Times Square, and United States retailers held midnight sales across the country.
The company’s chairperson and most recognisable face, Bill Gates, hit the talk-show circuit to hype the launch, sitting down for interviews on NBC’s Today show and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Rivals attack Vista
Meanwhile, report David Lawsky and Sabina Zawadzki from Brussels, Belgium, a coalition of rivals charged on Friday that Vista would perpetuate practices found illegal in the European Union nearly three years ago. The group, which includes IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Oracle and Red Hat, said its complaints made last year were yet to be addressed just days before Vista was due for release.
The European Commission found in 2004 that Microsoft used its dominance to muscle out RealNetworks and other makers of audio- and video-streaming software and that it made its desktop Windows deliberately incompatible with rivals’ server software.
”Microsoft has clearly chosen to ignore the fundamental principles of the commission’s March 2004 decision,” said Simon Awde, chairperson of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (Ecis).
Microsoft said it had no comment. The commission was not ready to act. ”We are in the process of examining this complaint,” a commission spokesperson said.
”Vista is the first step of Microsoft’s strategy to extend its market dominance to the internet,” the Ecis statement said.
It said Microsoft’s XAML mark-up language was ”positioned to replace HTML”, the industry standard for publishing documents on the internet. XAML would be dependent on Windows, and discriminatory against systems such as Linux, the group said.
It also said a so-called ”open XML” platform file format, known as OOXML, was designed to run seamlessly only on the Microsoft Office platform. It governs the way a document is formatted and stored.
”The end result will be the continued absence of any real consumer choice, years of waiting for Microsoft to improve — or even debug — its monopoly products and, of course, high prices,” said Thomas Vinje, lawyer for Ecis, in the statement.
Other complainants in the group include Corel, RealNetworks, Linspire and Opera. — Reuters