Rap, Dancers, Vista!

The release of Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, has generated a worldwide epidemic of tepid enthusiasm. Users ("customers" in any other market) are notably underwhelmed at the way Vista does everything XP already does, but the menus and controls are rearranged in a bewildering and unnecessary new way. The other key feature relates to media content, such as the playback of movie and music files. This process has either been locked down or rendered useless at the behest of Hollywood as a means to prevent piracy.

Nevertheless, according to the AP (via Wired) the kids from Redmond want to amp up the product-launch fanfare:

Hours before the software went on sale in New York, dancers clad in Microsoft colors dangled from ropes high above street level and unfurled flags to form the red, green, blue and yellow Windows logo against a building wall. At a swank midtown eatery, speakers pumped out a hit from hip-hop hotshot Snoop Dogg before Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer, took to stage.

(There appears to have been no spontaneous angry leaping this time on the part of Mr. Ballmer, much to the chagrin of the Slashdot crowd.)

There's little I can offer, given the fact that as I speak literally millions of lines of "response" is being generated by pundits, bloggers, and media types. Vista is in the process of being hacked, cracked and (as the kids say) 0wned by the combined worldwide forces of information-age anarchy - and legitimate researchers alike (some of whom fear repriasals from Microsoft). And average folks, of course, are simply wondering why on earth they should upgrade to Vista. The fact that it looks pretty is real nice, except those features require expensive new hardware - and Apple's breakthrough OSX did most of those things years ago, and did them better.

Tags: Microsoft Vista, Steve Ballmer