Microsoft Airlines launches Vista, Office, Exchange

IN A SERIES of worldwide events, Microsoft officially announced its Windows Vista operating system, Office 2007 production suite and Exchange Server 2007.

Events were held in London, Munich, New York, Paris, Beijing, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto and Zagreb - with yours truly attending the last.

The INQ is only important to Microsoft Croatia, so no-one else but yours truly got invited to any of the gigs, but the Vole of Balkania pulled a coup of press conferences by putting 60 journalists in an Airbus 319-100 from Croatia Airlines, taking hacks on a 1hr 30min trip above the Adriatic coast.

Captain Vole
During the flight, company executives were telling us that the Vista/Office 2007 launch had an equal amount of importance as Windows 95, and that this is the first major step forward after releasing Windows 95. The Vole obviously has a fit of amnesia about succeeding MS versions.

At 30,000 feet, or 190,000 Vole Paws altitude, we saw an "Aero" interface working smoothly on both notebooks and desktop machines. We got the feeling that consumers could also go for Vista today, but the release date of January 30th, 2007 had to be selected in order to avoid the x64 deployment fiasco.

While no one is publicly saying this, Microsoft is well aware that today's IT conglomerates are pretty weak when it comes to supporting their products with something named drivers, so in time for Vista every peripheral component should also be ready for all the challenges that await them.

The IT segment will earn between $13 to $16 on each dollar Microsoft earns, according to IDC, a satisfyingly rosy picture for Vista and its vendors, many of which are currently horripilating at the notion.

Rollout estimates were also disclosed. Analysts are playing the guessing game and stating that Windows Vista could end up installed on 30 million computers in EU during 2007.

1,001 Dalmations
Microsoft PR bunnies told me that the price of this event was equivalent to hiring a conference hall somewhere or other.

"Of all the displays in the whole airport, you had to crash on my terminal..." - unknown Microsoft executive
But the Vole Effect hit Microsoft once more. This time it was Windows 2000 powered check-in terminal that went low on virtual memory. µ