It doesn't seem fair to compare a landmark event such as when the Windows world got a proper GUI with later events. Let's be blunt, Win95 was a huge change from 3.1. The Win crowd was gaga over it's release. They lined up days ahead and stampeded the stores to get Win95. This now seems to be the standard that is held up by some as a "successful" launch. Win 98, 2000, XP, and now Vista are just refinements of the Windows environment, not watershed changes. They are significant but nothing will ever rock the Windows users world like W95 and it just doesn't seem fair to compare later events with the first. I wonder how sales of Vista over the first three or six months will compare with Win2k, or XP. That seems like a more reasonable comparison.

Why didn't they start selling it earlier, during the evening? Granted midnight in New York City is probably early by their standards, but they would have gotten more people who have to get up for work the next morning. Seems to me that the Vista launch was a just a notch above the Zune launch.

There are people crowding the Apple store on 5th Avenue at all hours of the day. The thing with Vista is that it is just a copy of Mac OS X and it doesn't innovate anything. On top of it, the press and experts are warning people that they shouldn't update right away because of vulnerabilties and conflicts and the thing Microsoft is best know for "difficult installation"
When Jobs said "Redmond, start your copiers" he knew what he was saying and Vista proves it entirely.
Zune, what to say about a technology that embodies Microsoft, but this "I hope that they push them all out before Apple unveils the widescreen iPod"

The Zune seems to have just sort of leaked out. No fanfare, no marketing blitz, no special event, etc. And now no sales either.

Compare this to Apple's iPhone announcement. Of course, it helps to have something people actually crave!

here in Augusta, Georgia. It was kind of a fun event, and I bought a copy of Windows 95 there.

My cousin is a member of M$'s developers group (MCSD?), so he's had a copy of Vista for awhile, but "hasn't bothered to install it yet." I guess he isn't too impressed. I don't know any PC users who are in a huge rush to buy and install Vista.

I'll bet when Leopard becomes available, there will be lines with hundreds of people waiting to get it.... at every apple store..

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Guest wrote:
I'll bet when Leopard becomes available, there will be lines with hundreds of people waiting to get it.... at every apple store..

I mentioned that over at CNET and someone asked me if I thought was "sad." No I don't think that is sad, but I do think that it is sad that MicroSoft spent 5 years and millions of dollars to roll out Vista and no one seems to care.

I am sure it is partly due to the fact that Vista will not run on most of the Windows computers out there and people will need to upgrade to new ones. Eventually those older Windows computers will have to be replaced and then people will get Vista. However, by then we may be on OSXI or whatever will replace Leopard.

from the CBS News story:

"In Cleveland's suburb of Brooklyn, Ohio, about 300 people braved 20 degree weather for a midnight celebration at Best Buy, which arranged free hot dogs and autographs from former Cleveland Browns player Bob Golic. About 35 Vista packages were sold just after midnight."

35 copies of Vista sold. I wonder how many autographs signed? ......... 300, maybe??

What a joke. Poor, hapless Bill Gates.

The best quote from the article..
Mike Johnson, 29, of nearby Rolesville, bought a laptop computer with the new software preinstalled.
"The biggest reason for me is the new interface. It looks so much better than XP," he said. "Apple computers have had nice graphical interfaces for some time. But it's the first time Windows has even approached that level."

I think the lack of lines showed evidence of good judgement on the part of Windoze users.