Windows Vista Makes Big Strides

Last month, the VP of Windows Vista marketing Brad Brooks openly acknowledged that Microsoft has felt the pressure from the negative publicity surrounding Windows Vista.

“We broke a lot of things. We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain.”

At the center of the negative publicity stood Apple with the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials and Brooks said the company has plans to address the naysayers with an expensive advertising campaign (reportedly paying Jerry Seinfeld $10 Million for an endorsement).

In addition, Microsoft has launched two websites that are designed to help answer consumers’ questions regarding migrating to Vista.  The Windows Vista Small Business Assurance website is specifically geared to the small business owner who cannot afford to have downtime due to a software upgrade and can’t afford to have to purchase all new equipment for their office due to a software upgrade. It has some pretty good information and does a great job of answering questions.

The second site is the Windows Vista Compatibility Center website. This site allows you to search to see if your particular hardware or software is supported by Windows Vista before you actually make the switch. I did a post over a year ago about Windows Vista incompatibility with many software and hardware, but I have not done a post updating the major strides Microsoft has done in the compatibility arena (my bad). Vista supports LOTS of things now, the number being somewhere around 77,000 and it now supports nearly all business apps.

Further, Microsoft is offering free Vista phone tech support through October 31, 2008 for any small business that makes the switch before September 30.  That is another nice touch.

Overall, nice job Microsoft.  Almost all of our hardware is now supported and much of our software too.  Maybe its time for that upgrade…