As you probably know, Microsoft announced last Friday that the official name for the next version of Windows will be Windows Vista.

At the time, in this previous post, I commented that it wasn’t a bad choice of name. I speculated that Windows Vista might be an “all in one” product that could be installed into many platforms – tablet, media centre, home PC etc. It kinda fits with the XBox 360 name – implying that this product will do a wide range of things.

Well, I have thought about the name Vista for a few days. Mentioned it to a few people. The response is pretty much a universal “what”?

It’s just a lame name Microsoft. It doesn’t inspire, excite, invoke passion. It sounds boring! Politically correct. Designed not to offend. Limp!

XP sounded like a statement. An exclamation! You had an XBox for your games box and a XP for your personal computer!

Vista sounds like the marketing wankers have taken over the building.

It reminds me of the time Sega renamed the Katana into the Dreamcast. Took a damn sexy name and let the marketing vegans change it. And that worked out well for them… Did the Dreamcast even last 12 months?

I doubt that Vista will cause Microsoft to fall into ruin. But I think its a step backwards rather than forward.

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It has been leaked to the internet that the next version of Windows will be officially called Windows Vista.

Known by the codename of Longhorn for several years while in development, it is expected to be announced at 6am Pacfic Time, 22nd July that the release shall be known as Windows Vista.

Robert Scoble mentioned an upcoming announcement on his weblog earlier today – he pointed to an announcement from Microsoft would be made available at this URL. http://scoble.weblogs.com/ http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/07/21.html#a10721 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/jul05/07-22LHMA.mspx

Soon after, AnAndTech, Channel 9 and others spread the word that the name had been leaked.

Replacing the XP title used since 2001, Vista refers to wide ranging. Perhaps a good name referring to its ability to be installed on a wide variety of environments such as the home, office, servers, media centres, tablet PC’s etc.

Since XP spawned many variations such as the Media Centre and Tablet configuration. It has been speculated that they might be eventually rolled into one product that would install what was necessary depending on the system it was being installed on.

The advantages of having an “All In One” installer being balanced by a more complex installation routine, and perhaps some inflexibility of upgrading components of one system or another.

The term Windows Vista does dovetail nicely with the XBox 360 product. Another label that suggests a wide range of applications.

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One of the interesting lines I picked up from Microsoft’s announcement that RSS will be integrated into IE7 and Longhorn – they were Betting Big on RSS.

That’s a big statement from Microsoft. They don’t say it often – probably about every 5 years. Previous Big Bets have been The Internet, Security and XBox.

RSS will no doubt be a huge part of the way we deal with computers in the near to long term future.

Since I installed the Desktop Sidebar with its integrated RSS aggregator, it has completely changed they was I surf the web. A common story among anyone else who has explored RSS.

http://www.desktopsidebar.com/

I think RSS will eventually evolve to a point where most people dont know they are using it. And that will be a good thing. Services will just use RSS, and people will just use those services because they are simple and they work. Few “users” will care what is behind it all.

RSS could indeed be The Main Reason why people will upgrade to Longhorn ! Certainly no-one seems to fussed with the announced features so far. Not when most of them can already be added on to XP with a minimum of fuss.

Including my Desktop Sidebar. It’s a brilliant tool and I love it – but its a free add-on for XP and it works today. I don’t need to wait another 18 months for to pay for Longhorn to get it.

An interesting thought: What would have happened if Microsoft were “on time” with Longhorn and were releasing it now? RSS wouldn’t have made it – just as Windows 95 missed out on the internet because it shipped just as it was taking off.

Longhorn would have shipped without native support for probably the most important bit of technology emerging today. Everyone would then be complaining and waiting impatiently for Longhorn Mk II.

Sometimes you win…

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No one could deny that Microsoft has been taking a pounding from press and users for the last 12 months. Even more so than usual.

They have been beaten up about security, bugs, IE6 being stale, delays in SP2, delivery of SP2, SP2 breaking things, etc etc.

The lead-up to and release of Firefox from Mozilla got a huge amount of press, Apple have been scoring big with OSX Tiger, iTunes, iPods – even one that had no screen that everyone said would be a fizzer. Instead its taken over the market.

Probably apart from Halo 2, Microsoft has been pretty “uncool” for most people. Lornhorn has been plagued by negative stories about features being pulled out, expected delays and a general “why bother”?

A lot of people have called Longhorn “XP SP3″ (which initially it was supposed to be). However the funniest term for it I have seen is Windows ME2 :) But lately they seem to be turning a corner. They have been releasing some new software – Acrylic and so on. Even if most people thought the new stuff sucked – at least they were talking about something new.

MSN Search seems to be getting a lot of good feedback. I doubt it will ever overtake google in the foreseable future – but never say never. They have gone from nowhere to industry top 4 since they started.

Of course the big announcement at Gnomedex about IE7 including support for RSS, and Longhorn in general supporting RSS – was a huge positive. Especially as the method for integrating it will be available under Creative Commons license .

http://www.gnomedex.com/ http://www.creativecommons.org/

The Channel 9 forums and Robert Scoble’s Weblog have been a major positive for the company.

http://channel9.msdn.com/default.aspx http://scoble.weblogs.com/

With the upcoming Lornhorn beta testing program about to start, a lot of positive stories have started to be written about it.

A lot of people are writing Microsoft off – I think they have turned a corner.

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