So today's the day. After 5+ years, Windows Vista launches and it seems that there barely is a whimper. In really looking the last two days, there seems to be no real online and blogger buzz, and no real excitement. Where was that vaunted Billion dollar ad campaign? Why were there no TV ads? Anything? In other words, we're missing the "wow." It wasn't supposed to like this. What we saw in 2003 was exciting. Robert Scoble was recruiting his Team 99, there was a lot of excitement and many of us in the Microsoft community were truly excited. We were told it was going to be the biggest launch events in history, they were going to spend billions, it would be everywhere, people would be lining up just like Windows 95. What we got in Vista was so much less than in Longhorn 2003. It was supposed to be a recreation of the excitement of the midnight we had for Windows 95 and instead we got this. So many of my Microsoft friends expressed that they needed this to be a Grand Slam out of the park like Windows 95, return the higher profits, rescue the stock price. Will it? I don't know and I actually feel disappointed for my friends. For me, I really like Vista, I really do, I even think Vista Ultimate Rocks. I have used it in various shapes and forms for the last 2 years and now it has been running on all my PCs for the last month everyday. It's secure, it looks great, it's faster for me and generally I'm happy. The problem comes when I can't even convince my geek friends or blog readers never mind the general public on Vista. Microsoft has their 100 reasons on the "Wow" page and I think it is pretty much a no-brainer, at least as I see it, to upgrade (I would never go back) but it is going to be a hard sell and an even harder sell with business. All they care about is security and by downlevel putting virtually all of those innovation in Windows XP SP2, Microsoft may have sealed Vista's fate there. In the end, Vista will be very successful, as it will be on every new PC sold within 4-5 months and the big aggressive ad campaign will kick in but will it be the huge success Microsoft truly needed? It doesn't look it and in ways that makes me sad. What do you think? Don Dodge has his view from Microsoft.

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