Listening and learning
It was with a certain amount of humility and a touch of pride that Microsoft finally launched its long awaited new Operating System (OS), Windows 7, today after three years of criticism over its previous effort, Vista.
Microsoft corporate vice president of program management for the Windows Experience, Julie Larson, declared that her company had "delivered a new way to interact with your PC" by simplifying everyday tasks with an OS of significantly reduced memory footprint, which allowed for much quicker boot-up, fewer pop-ups and overall "less annoyances."
"How did we do this?" asked Larson, "by listening,". Listening, however, was no small task because as Larson noted, "with one billion consumers there's bound to be a lot of opinions."
Microsoft reckons it has really hit the nail on the head this time in terms of an OS which can be customised and personalised to suit its end users and which also makes some clever use of remote media connections and home networking.
Coming in at just half the size of Windows Vista, with around the same memory footprint as XP, Win 7 has "been a terrific fun project," according to Larson.