Summary: The latest look at marketing hype that surrounds Vista 7

LAST NIGHT we wrote about press coverage that Microsoft was essentially buying. It is no exaggeration to say that the news is driven by money rather than the importance of news. Both Apple and Microsoft have colossal marketing budgets, so in many ways they can be considered marketing companies for mediocre products that they adopt and sometimes build. It's about branding.

“Among the headlines, "Vista" is seen mentioned only 3 times this week, in conjunction/overlap with Vista 7, which has 44 matches in the headlines.”Windows Vista is hardly covered in the news anymore. We have just looked at 800 Microsoft headlines from the past week (in the same way that we do this every week). Among the headlines, "Vista" is seen mentioned only 3 times this week, in conjunction/overlap with Vista 7, which has 44 matches in the headlines. That is a 15:1 ratio in favour of vapourware, a product which is not even available. So it becomes very clear what Microsoft is marketing out there in the news and which products it prefers not to mention. Free upgrades from Vista to Vista 7 (Windows 6.1) indicate that Microsoft wants to bury Vista and restart afresh.

Speaking of advertising, here is an advertising-oriented Microsoft product which our reader ZiggyFish claims to be a dead product now.

A Microsoft Office spokesperson whom I contacted this week said Microsoft is not building an Office for Advertising SKU.

Does that counts as yet another Microsoft product which is axed before arrival?

One of our readers, who goes by the name of Goblin, has carried on experimenting in order to understand how Microsoft manages public perception in Twitter. He draws in people whose role -- whether voluntary or not -- is to defend Microsoft products and the latest findings are rather amusing. Here is his tease for Vista 7 AstroTurfers.

Too lazy to upgrade to 7?

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Its another one of those general articles that implies there’s great features of 7 but never goes into any real detail. Maybe its posts like his that are encouraging some users to try alternatives? Or maybe those users are, as Mr Hussain says, just ignorant and lazy for daring to be happy with an OS that “just works”?

Mr Hussain would be welcome to come here and justify himself, but I wont ask if he wants a right of reply, I really don’t believe there is anything that can salvage the rubbish he’s posted. (IMO) An excellent reason in my opinion why if you are considering upgrading you should at least try Linux first. It wont cost you anything and it will certainly take you away from a platform that seems to always want to sell you things.

Ive posted on Imran Hussain’s blog, but as is usual in these cases, moderation is in place so the comment doesn’t appear. What are these posters so worried about?

There is a followup here.

MicroPirates, Censorship & Openbytes to be “ripped apart”?

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Sunday has been rather interesting. I hope you enjoy this light relief, tongue in cheek look at the silliness some will engage in whilst promoting a Microsoft cause. Remember the girlfriend of a faithful MS poster coming here? I can’t promise you anything as funny or tragic as that (it will be difficult to beat) but heres a little entertainment. Today we met some new “characters” in the World of baseless Windows promotion.

As another sign that Vista 7 will disappoint many (and Microsoft knows this), XP availability is extended yet again, making it an operating system that survives for at least a decade due to strong competition from GNU/Linux.

Microsoft Extends XP Downgrade Option Until 2011

We've been here one or two times before (read: six times - see links below) but just like a champion who doesn't know when they are beaten, Windows XP has again had its lifespan extended...

Glyn Moody writes about more reasons why Vista 7 starts on the wrong foot.

Call me cynical, but I don't think that's going to wash with the punters. They will rightly see this as Microsoft throwing a pan-galactic strop, and doing all it can to be as nasty as possible to the European Union – forgetting in its rage that the ones it will most upset are those people formerly known as locked-in users.

Except that nowadays, they aren't so locked in. Improved cross-platform compatibility for apps means that alongside GNU/Linux (admittedly still something of an acquired taste), there's also Apple's hardware, which is becoming increasingly popular on the desktop. Or why not simply stick with XP and forget about Windows 7 *just* like everybody forgot about Windows Vista?

People may not recall this, but ahead of Vista's arrival, the atmosphere in the press was similar. Vista was hailed as the next great operating system and bribed bloggers led to it being praised on the Web. Microsoft spends hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring a warped consensus (it is called "perception management" [1, 2]). It manufactures people's feelings and thoughts about Vista 7. Many people won't try it, so they rely on hearsay, a lot of which is either bribed for or simply comes from Windows enthusiasts who install beta software for posing. ⬆

"I receive an e-mail from Julie McCormick at Waggener Edstrom in which she extends a "special save-the-date" invitation to attend a "unique, invitation-only" event being hosted by the Windows Client team. She labels the subject matter as "confidential"..."

--Randall C. Kennedy