Have you seen an advert for Vista yet?

The consumer launch is tomorrow, yet you’d be troubled to guess. Aside from a window in PC World on Tottenham Court Road, I’ve seen more Mac advertising right now than Vista. Discussing this with a colleague, we were troubled to remember such a low key launch, particularly in relation to the elongated gestation period of the OS.

Granted, the *real* promotion doesn’t start just yet. But if I’ve spent billions on a product, I might stump up for a few ads right about now…

So let’s do Vista-ad watch. Where have *you* seen one?

I’m looking at a print advert right now which is telling me that Vista Ultimate in a retail box will cost me £369.99 inc VAT. Meanwhile, if I want the bells and whistles, top of the range Office Ultimate 2007, that’s another £599.99.

Amazing. Two pieces of software, on which Microsoft hang half of their turnover, and to attract buyers to the top of the range versions, nearly £1000 needs to be lifted from their pockets. Even the Standard versions of both will relieve over £500 from your bank account if you pay full whack.

Is it any wonder, then, that already many stores are offering OEM copies of the software at much, much cheaper prices. Of course, to benefit from the OEM price the software can only be sold with requisite hardware, and it’s tied to one machine only. Microsoft are believed to be cracking down on OEM software being sold openly, yet that plan already seems to be failing. Is it any wonder that prospective early adopters, the loyal customers who surely Microsoft should be looking after, are being tempted by prices closer to 40% of the full retail price?

Yet even that’s not going to tempt many, I fear. With reports coming in already of driver problems, and with the pricing surely unrealistic in a market where computer pricing has been sliding down, how long before Microsoft have to offer some genuine incentive to encourage take up of their OS?

Both products are real, marked improvements. But neither is worth that kind of money.
WIll you be buying them?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been round a few small businesses, and one educational institution. Predictably, the range of operating systems running in these differing places was reasonably diverse, not least because at least one office I was in achieved a Windows full house in having 95, 98, 2000, Me and XP running across their seven machines.

This, naturally, made me curious. The office in question belongs to a fairly computer savvy company, and they’ve always sought to make the most of their technology. So why not unify their operating systems?

I expected them to come back with a story of upgrade difficulty, and that was partly the case. There was also a strong argument that the setup they had suited them fine - only two machines needed Internet access, and so only two machines had it. Yet the reason they’ve not upgraded is cost, or more accurately, value. When I pushed them on this, they argued what value they would get from upgrading to the latest version? They could - at a push - manage the cost of buying in the new software, and upgrading the necessary computers. They could even carry the downtime involved. But they couldn’t get past the question ‘why should we?’/

The other places I’ve been round were similar in their thinking. Nobody has bothered to communicate with them in any meaningful way as to the advantages of an OS upgrade, and while most of them were aware of scare stories of withdrawing support, they took sensible precautions and had made a choice that until they saw a compelling reason to upgrade, they wouldn’t.

It’s an interesting conundrum Microsoft face. Clearly they’ve done some job in the past, given the sizeable number of small businesses happily working away with earlier iterations of Windows and Office. But how on earth are they going to position Vista as the must-have OS? Given the billions that small businesses pump into IT, it’’s a huge market, but it’s near-impossible to sell a £100+ software upgrade for the purposes of typing nicer letters and e-mails.

With the carrot gone, the stick will inevitably again be wielded, and Microsoft inevitably has to sell their OS as much off the back of fear of security as they do new features where the SoHo market is concerned.

Yet their more immediate concern is perhaps this. The small businesses I spoke to? Two thirds hadn’t even heard of Vista, yet alone earmarked any funds for it. It’s going to be some challenge ahead…

I do believe that it’s entirely fair that people protect their intellectual property. I have no issues with Microsoft looking to stop people stealing its software.

But, as usual, it’ll be the genuine users that bear the brunt, as the pirates continue to find ways round the problem.

This week, we’ve been greeted with the news that Vista will switch off certain elements if it detects that the version in question is pirated. It’s about there when I start to worry. Because, in one of those lovely moments of what I believe important people call ’synergy’, at the point that story lept onto our screens, one of our PCs started reporting that our entirely legitimate copy of XP had failed its Windows Genuine Advantage exam.

So this isn’t a sophisticated, clever, intelligent or witty blog entry. By now you should have realised that few of mine are. But it’s a question: how can you dish out the ‘punishment’ if your detection methods aren’t working and 100% reliable?