Editorial - The Microsoft "Wow" Factor

Microsoftis slogan for the Vista launch was "The "Wow" starts now." Letis see how that worked out.

On Tuesday the New York Times published a story about the Vista marketing barrage we can expect from Microsoft and how it has drowned out the competition. But the real story behind the story was a photograph in the article that, well, wowed me.

The photo of interest is not the obvious one, the skyward looking shot of the dancers on the wall. Rather, it is an innocuous looking group photo of Microsoftis industry partners further down the page on the left.

In this photo we see Microsoftis major industry partners on stage with Ballmer: Kevin Rollins from Dell, Sean Maloney of Intel, Hisatsugu Nonaka of Toshiba, Hector Ruiz of Advanced Micro Devices and Todd Bradley of Hewlett-Packard.

There is a convenient link that enlarges the image so that one can see, in detail, how wowed these partners are.

With the Microsoft banner prominently behind the men, their expressions look more like depression and resignation to me. Judge for yourself.