Windows XP launched in NYC, in time for holiday season
Posted by me101 on 25 October 2001 - 13:50 · no comments & 195 views
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Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates presented the keynote address at the most important product launch in Microsoft's history, accompanied by leaders from the PC industry, more than 50 Microsoft partners, a special welcome by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and an appearance by television's Regis Philbin at the event in Times Square's Marriott Marquis Theatre.
"Today is a great day for PC users and a great day for the PC industry," Gates said. "With the launch of Windows XP, we are entering an exciting new era of personal computing. This powerful new version of Windows offers so much to customers -- it unlocks the full power of the PC and enables them to enjoy the best of what the digital world has to offer.
"New York City is the perfect place to announce the worldwide availability of Windows XP," he said. "I want to thank all the people of New York City for welcoming us here, to congratulate them for their unbroken spirit, courage and determination, and to urge all Americans to join us in recognizing that New York is absolutely open for business."
In addition to the launch event in Times Square, a panel of industry leaders including Gates, Intel Corp. President and CEO Craig Barrett, and CEOs of major computer manufacturers discussed the state of the personal computer industry and prospects for the forthcoming holiday season and beyond. Microsoft will also sponsor a free concert in Bryant Park dedicated to the people of New York City featuring international music and film sensation Sting.
The launch festivities also extended across the globe, with more than 50 events worldwide, including CEO Steve Ballmer in Europe and President Rick Belluzzo in Latin America in addition to 62 events in key U.S. locations.
And the events just keep coming, Sting is performing a free concert in New York. Details are below.
Enough of the freebee’s the Windows XP launch, didn’t start on time, was around 9:15 that it started, we saw the Windows XP “yes you can” Madonna video, then heard from Bill Gates, (obviously taped!) in New York, and then Steve Ballmer later in the event.
Showed off some history of computing, even a donkey.bas, one of the first programs that was written for GW-BASIC, running on an XP box in compatability mode, proving that you can run old dos programs, then they showed off the donkey.net “.NET” enabled version, you now have to kill the donkeys by driving into them! (We’ve got to find this donkey.net version, looks rather neat in a twisted sort of way!) And all of this was done on a P4 system with a GF3 graphics card, which was rather quick.
The actual Windows XP demo showed nothing new or exciting to most of our readers to NeoWin. A shootout was produced to show off the many benefits of Windows XP vrs Windows 95 OSR2. Rather lame if you ask me, This went on for like 25-30 minutes, I actually felt bad for the Windows 95 guy trying to do some of the features that were being showcased for Windows XP. Wish they could have showed IM in Windows 95, so not to alienate the whole Windows9x public, some of which cannot upgrade from their current systems to systems capable of running Windows XP.
Some good points were using the new Instant Messaging 4.5 client (showing off a Compaq iPAQ with Poctet PC 2002 and IM over 802.11b networking, rather neat!) which they said was available now. (no mention of PowerToys though!). They showed off IM and a web cam demo (touting no drivers config's to do!), White boarding (as per usual this didn’t go as planned, way to go Microsoft, every event I have attended has had something go wrong!) with Microsoft Word 2002, and then demonstrated the Remote assistance feature, which was good.
They touched on some other features, digital camera plug and play with a Canon FireWire enabled camera, downloading movies, adding wallpaper and a Madonna music track. They also showed off the new main logon screen, the new start bar, my documents and the taskbar grouping etc..
Towards the end they showed off the Plus Pack, showing one or two of the new screen savers, everyone went ooh at the aquarium one (big improvement from the Windows 95 one!). No new themes :( but we have tgtsoft's contribution to thank for now having the proper ability to have new themes by end users!
At the end, they had a rather nice lady on the stage (very tall, slim blonde, short skirt, you can guess why she was picked to be the contestant for this segment of the event!). She was there to play one of the games in the Plus Pack, bowling, she walked away (after playing not so bad, got a total of 7 pins down) with 500 dollars, with Microsoft donating equal amount to a charity of her choice. A very nice gesture on Microsoft’s part, still though, would have been fair if they had have given the audience an equal change to participate, but obviously they wanted someone the majority of the audience would like on stage…. :)
Overall I was not impressed, I would have liked a live feed from NYC for the real Windows XP launch, which I will most probably see when I get home on TechTV or download the video footage.
They had a 30 minute break, after which they were going to have a kind of more in depth feature look at Windows XP, but for me, it was a rather large disappointment.
What did I come away with, a few CD’s a T-shirt and a breakfast. Better do a lot more in future if you intend to get people to come to your events at 7:30 in the morning!
me101, aka the 'Crazy Irishman'