Despite the media hype and heavy promotional campaign, Microsoft's Vista operating system (OS) received a lukewarm response at its debut in Taipei yesterday.
Various incentives, such as free photo printers, projectors, or USB drivers, were offered to the first 200 buyers of Vista, but fewer than 70 buyers showed up at 6:30pm, 30 minutes after the official launch.
"The crowd is much smaller compared with the launch of Windows XP five years ago," said Jason Chang (
PHOTO: LIAO YAO TUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
He arrived about an hour before the launch, and his queue number was only 34.
The 40-year-old had tested the beta version of Vista and found some software compatibility glitches, but was still keen to get the latest copy to take advantage of the freebies.
But for Hsieh Hao-cheng (
"Consumers will be enthralled by the new Aero feature," said the 24-year-old engineer, referring to visual effects such as the glass-like interface elements.
He received a limited edition Vista box signed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, an Epson photo printer, as well as a portable computer running on Intel Centrino Duo processor worth NT$40,000 (US$1,200).
The consumer release of Vista, along with the 2007 Microsoft Office System, was held yesterday in front of Nova, one of Taipei's major IT shops located near the bustling Taipei Railway Station.
Despite the lower-than-expected turnout, Microsoft Taiwan remained upbeat on Vista's impact, which it predicted would be as big as that of Windows 95. Introduced in 1995, Windows 95 marked a milestone in the history of operating systems with its switch from 16-bit disk operating system architecture to 32 bits and introduction of graphics user interface.
"Taiwanese consumers were some of the first in the world to get Vista," Davis Tsai (
Local buyers even beat their US counterparts in getting their hands on fresh Vista boxes given the time difference.
Tsai said the sales of Vista were expected to outpace its predecessors, as it boasts better features such as enhanced security to improve productivity.
Christine Chen (
"General consumers are always the early adopters, and more people will buy the OS after the Lunar New Year and back-to-school period in summer," she said.
Microsoft Taiwan has pumped in lots of marketing dollars to ensure the success of Vista's launch.
In addition to setting up demo stations nationwide, it will hold a "Windows Vista Wow" concert on Sunday, with Mandarin pop stars Jolin Tsai (
The advent of Vista signals the shift to 64-bit architecture from 32 bits, but it came more than five years after the release of Windows XP, making it the longest time span between major Windows releases.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
RSS