Microsoft Corp launched Windows 7 yesterday in its most important release for years, aiming to win back customers after the disappointing Vista and strengthen its grip on the PC market.
The company has received good reviews for the new operating system, which it hopes will grab back the impetus in new technology from rivals Apple Inc and Google Inc.
The new system — which is faster, less cluttered and has new touch-screen features — comes almost three years after the launch of Vista, whose complexity frustrated many home users and turned off business customers.
The success of Windows — which accounts for more than half of Microsoft’s profit — is crucial for chief executive Steve Ballmer to revive the company’s image as the world’s most important software firm.
“I have to say I’m chomping at the bit,” Ballmer told an audience of Microsoft customers and partners in Toronto, Canada, on Wednesday, adding that he is ready to make sales calls himself on Windows 7.
Sales won’t immediately impact Microsoft’s bottom line, which is expected to post a lower quarterly profit today.
Microsoft is charging US$199.99 for the Home Premium version of Windows 7, or US$119.99 for users seeking to upgrade from older versions of the operating system — well below comparable prices for Vista.
It also has a range of offers in conjunction with retailer Best Buy and PC makers such as Dell Inc and Acer Inc (宏碁).
For the first time, shoppers will be able to buy PCs loaded with the software direct from a branded Microsoft store, with the first of a planned chain set to open yesterday in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The US holiday season will soon reveal whether consumer PC sales get a kick from Windows 7, but success with corporations — the key to Microsoft’s financial power — won’t be clear until next year, analysts say.
“Come June of next year, we are going to get the real indication of the business-to-business marketplace,” Mark Simons, chief executive of the US arm of Toshiba Corp, the world’s No. 5 PC maker, said on Wednesday.
Research group Gartner expects commercial PC sales to rise 10 percent next year and an additional 13 percent in 2011, as businesses replace four and five-year-old computers.
‘FORM OF PROTEST’: The German Institute Taipei said it was ‘shocked’ to see Nazi symbolism used in connection with political aims as it condemned the incident Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 yesterday amid an outcry over a Nazi armband he wore to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case on Tuesday night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and apparently covering the book with a coat. This is a serious international scandal and Chinese
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PERSONAL DATA: The implicated KMT members allegedly compiled their petitions by copying names from party lists without the consent of the people concerned Judicial authorities searched six locations yesterday and questioned six people, including one elderly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member and five KMT Youth League associates, about alleged signature forgery and fraud relating to their recall efforts against two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators. After launching a probe into alleged signature forgery and related fraud in the KMT’s recall effort, prosecutors received a number of complaints, including about one petition that had 1,748 signatures of voters whose family members said they had already passed away, and also voters who said they did not approve the use of their name, Taipei Deputy Chief Prosecutor
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE TRAINING: The ministry said 87.5 percent of the apprehended Chinese agents were reported by service members they tried to lure into becoming spies Taiwanese organized crime, illegal money lenders, temples and civic groups are complicit in Beijing’s infiltration of the armed forces, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a report yesterday. Retired service members who had been turned to Beijing’s cause mainly relied on those channels to infiltrate the Taiwanese military, according to the report to be submitted to lawmakers ahead of tomorrow’s hearing on Chinese espionage in the military. Chinese intelligence typically used blackmail, Internet-based communications, bribery or debts to loan sharks to leverage active service personnel to do its bidding, it said. China’s main goals are to collect intelligence, and develop a
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