Microsoft wants it to be more welcome in the enterprise than Vista


(InfoWorld) Activists have long known that the way to take the sting out of a pejorative moniker is to adopt it and proclaim it with pride. So it is with Microsoft and its "I'm a PC" ad campaign. But that slogan leads to a question that Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, says he's asked all the time: Why is Microsoft letting Apple define Vista?

That's an issue that Microsoft needs to put to rest if it wants Windows 7 -- the heir to Vista as Microsoft's officially blessed client operating system -- to get a better reception.

Nash was first to the podium at Microsoft's Windows 7 Reviewer's Workshop on Sunday. Held before the start of Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference, the event was packed with journalists and bloggers from around the world -- not least because Microsoft handed out Windows 7 Milestone 3 (M3) eval notebook PCs to all in attendance. Not to worry; they're all clearly marked as Microsoft property.

Given Vista's uphill road, you can understand Microsoft's overzealous approach. But it might have done just fine with reviewers in attendance if it had just shown Windows 7, which addresses Apple, press, and market cynicism by fixing what's widely perceived to be wrong with Vista, taking particular aim at IT objections to the operating system. Steve Sinofsky, in charge of Windows and Windows Live, said that "it's not necessary to break everything to make big changes." Sinofsky and others acknowledged publicly, and in the plainest terms I've heard to date, that the XP-to-Vista transition was botched. Microsoft hopes to wipe the slate clean by first pushing Vista SP1 into the market, then doing a bang-up job of the transition from Vista SP1 to Windows 7.


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