Microsoft started its hard sell of its new operating system, Windows Vista, and officially released it to consumers on January 30th, 2007. The release comes two months after Vista was released for corporate customers and to hardware manufacturers.
Vista is Microsoft's first major upgrade to its flagship operating system, Windows, in almost five years. It comes with several new features: an improved user interface called Aero, improved searching facilities, and new multimedia creation and home networking tools.
A Microsoft spokesperson told The Epoch Times, "With Windows Vista, we aim to give customers more confidence in the PC and the things they can do with it."
Vista is being launched in four editions, and at different price ranges. Its stripped down version, called Vista Starter, will be available in 70 languages and is aimed at developing countries.
Critics have assailed the pricing system, under which copies in UK sell for around twice as much as in the United States.
Vista Competition?
Vista is expected to quickly dominate the desktop. Pundits expect the new operating system to be installed on 100 million desktops within a year.
But while it appears that Windows will win this round, it is apparent that Linux and the open-source movement has some senior executives at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters at least a little worried. Mozilla Firefox, first released in 2004, has slowly grabbed a small portion of the Internet browser market.
The open-source Linux operating system, already a winner in the server market, has made slow but steady inroads into the desktop market as well. Major computer manufacturers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard are already offering computers with Linux pre-installed on them.
In response to a question about whether Linux presented a threat to future versions of Windows, a Microsoft spokesperson told The Epoch Times , "For Windows, it's not about looking at competitors; it's about listening to customers."
Vista has won several positive reviews, but it is not without its detractors. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said in an interview with Computerworld earlier this month: "I think it, to some degree, has been over-hyped as being something completely new and I don't actually think it is."
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