Windows year in review: part 2
In part 1 we covered the launch of Vista’s first service pack, the impending withdrawal of XP and the lukewarm reception of Vista among corporate users. In this part we pick up the story in May with a surprising adoption of XP.
Yes, it seemed even Raul Castro’s Cuba didn’t want to (or simply couldn’t) run Vista. Meanwhile even mainstream retailers began exploiting loopholes to continue selling XP. And in a symbolic moment for both Microsoft and the computing industry, it emerged that the Google search engine would likely become more profitable than Windows itself.
Indeed, so concerned was Microsoft that it earmarked $300 million for an advertising campaign to ‘reestablish’ its ‘cool credentials’. One blogger at the time even called for Bill Gates to appear in commercials. Chances are he’d come to regret that wish…
The Vista backlash continued in June with petitions to ’save XP’ gaining so much support that Microsoft reportedly began blocking phone calls from those joining the protest.
At the end of the month, XP officially disappeared from the shelves but, despite restrictions from Microsoft, retailers continued to provide ‘downgrades’ to the system.
The summer heated up when a misunderstanding over a development codename led to the Fijian government attacking Microsoft, while the entire Beijing Olympics were available online – but only to Vista users. Microsoft also launched a series of case studies from satisfied Vista users, though one choice proved unfortunate.
In July Microsoft announced its highest ever annual revenues, along with strong Vista sales — though HP questioned how accurate they were. Meanwhile Microsoft launched the Mojave experiment, a creative though misleading way to ‘prove’ Vista’s problems were overstated.
August saw claims that Vista had a fundamental security flaw, though the experts who revealed the news pointed out XP was less secure. That didn’t put off many corporate users, with claims that a third of businesses were downgrading Vista to XP. And one writer claimed even 2GB of memory wasn’t enough to run Vista.
But the most eyecatching news of the month was that Jerry Seinfeld had been hired for the Microsoft ad campaign for a cool $10 million.
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