Written By Kate Zimmermann | January 30, 2007 | Share This |

Vista kicked off its global launch party yesterday, as Microsoft’s new desktop operating system arrived in stores. Here in NY Microsoft threw a Times Square event, made some speeches, sent Bill Gates to the Daily Show and gave away goodie bags to late-night partygoers. Gizmodo has some Vista launch stats:

“Approximately 5 million beta testers checked out the OS to make sure everything ran smoothly. As far as drivers go, Vista comes with 1.5 million drivers out of the box, so the chances of your peripherals not being recognized are pretty slim. Release-wise, Vista is being rolled out in over 70 countries, 39,000 retail outlets, and thousands of OEMs.”

The New York Times reports that this will be the largest product launch in Microsoft history. A microsoft-funded report predicts that Vista will generate nearly $70 billion in sales and 157,000 jobs related to Vista in 2007. Running under the tagline “Wow”, Microsoft is calling Vista a “new era of personal computing.”

Consumers, however, are not initially reciprocating Microsoft’s enthusiasm. Niall Kennedy writes, “Earlier tonight I attended a Windows Vista launch event in San Francisco and was surprised to find not a single person in line to buy the software less than an hour before launch.” Nevertheless, beta-tester reviews have been positive. Neville Hobson writes, “you can expect Vista boxes to fly off the shelves,” while Ryan Stewart proclaims, “Vista sets a brand new bar for design and experience.”

Though Vista may not have the same drooling effect over the general public as say, an iPhone, its undoubtedly a major milestone in OS history.

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