Windows 7: London Business Launch Event

I was fortunate enough to be not only invited to the Microsoft Windows 7 Business Launch yesterday, but our company (ChangeBase AOK) was one of the three that were allowed to present a stand and do demonstrations of our software. I thought that being included in this rare, privileged group was quite exciting and a real indication of how seriously Microsoft is now taking application compatibility.

Steve Ballmer did a great presentation (he is actually a pretty compelling speaker) and had the following quote;

"Mr Ballmer said:

"We got some uneven reception when [Vista] first launched in large part because we made some design decisions to improve security at the expense of compatibility. I don't think from a word-of-mouth perspective we ever recovered from that."

Well, to counter this perception, I bet that Steve would be delighted with the results of a straw poll that I conducted at the reception. The questions were,

1. "Do you run Windows 7 at work?"
2. "Do you run Windows 7 at home?"
3. Have you installed Windows 7 on a friend or family members laptop or machine?"
   

The results were amazing.

More than 30% of the respondents were already running Windows 7 at work and 100% were using Windows 7 at home. Only 10% had installed Windows 7 on someone else's machine.

But, this is a major contrast with the release of Windows Vista.

From what I remember from last year, the results for Vista were exactly the opposite for those running the OS at home and a work. Basically last year almost everyone was using Vista at work, but no one was using Vista at home.

What you see here, is a living testament to the allure of Windows 7. People actually WANT to use Windows 7.