p2pnet.net News:- Under a marketing ploy catchily slugged “The ‘Wow’ starts Now,” Bill and the Boyz are going to try to peddle their already much maligned Windows Vista online.

WOW? It’s an, “instinctive reaction” when you, “experience the amazing, the incredible, the exhilarating,” says Microsoft. No, really!

That wasn’t our instinctive reaction ;P

But that’s not the end of it. “Bill Gates invites you to join him in expressing your unique personality and talents at ShowUsYourWow.com,” says the hype site. “Featuring elements of Microsoft’s highly anticipated Windows Vista operating system [but of course], ShowUsYourWow.com is a showcase of art, music, photos, and videos created on the PC, by people like yourself and globally known celebrities. In addition to the showcase, ShowUsYourWow.com includes a worldwide web-based competition for you to demonstrate the possibilities of what exists when imagination and technology collide.”

They certainly collided in the fevered brains of the over-paid team who dreamed WOW up and meanwhile, only a, “relatively low number of computer users are likely to get Vista by downloading it from the Internet,” says MSNBC, but, “the mere availability indicates that Microsoft is fiddling with distribution methods for the extremely profitable franchise at the core of its business.”

The download program will also include the equally maligned Office 2007 on January 30, the official release date.

“At least initially, the huge downloads will be available in North America only,” says the story.

People who buy new PCs are also forced to buy MS whether they like it or not: it’s already installed on their new purchases thus, “The download process is targeted at people who are running the prior operating system, Windows XP, and want to get Vista without having to buy a new PC,” observes MSNBC.

Microsoft isn’t finding it easy to persuade people that Vista is the way to go and, “In what is being billed as a limited time offer,” it’ll allow anyone buying a boxed version of Vista Ultimate Edition to also buy discounted licences for up to two more PCs in their house, says ZDNet UK.

“The cost for each of the additional PC licences is $50 (£25.29); for that amount, consumers can install the Home Premium version of Vista on the other PCs.”

And get this: “It’s targeted at what we term the ’super-engaged customers,” the story has Bill Mannion, a director in the Windows marketing group, saying with a straight face.

“This is a focused programme designed to encourage these super-engaged customers to upgrade multiple PCs in the household.”

Slashdot it!

Also See:
MSNBC – Windows Vista will be available via download, January 17, 2007
ZDNet UK – Microsoft offers Vista licence discount, January 18, 2007

---

Want to subscribe to p2pnet by email with Feedburner? Just click here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use our own p2pnet newsfeeds for your site

---

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 8:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 1942 times