Announcing the Windows Vista Coach Tour

Road trip!  By now I'm sure you've heard that the "Wow" starts now.  Well, now we're bringing the "Wow" to you!  From 16-24 January, I and a few Windows community influencers will hop on a custom-wrapped Windows Vista bus and visit major cities on the East coast of the United States:

  • Nashville
  • Lexington
  • Cincinnati
  • Columbus
  • Pittsburgh
  • Philadelphia
  • Baltimore
  • Washington, DC
  • Charlotte
  • Savannah
  • Jacksonville
  • Orlando
  • Gainesville
  • Atlanta 
  • ... and points in between

We'll then return to Nashville to wrap up the tour on the 24th.

There'll be tons of chances for you to spot us at places in and around these cities and also on the highways in-between.  The coach itself is pretty sharp -- it's wrapped with a custom design based on the Windows Vista "energy" theme that is the default wallpaper.  Our friends at AMD will be part of the branding as well.  On board there'll be free Wi-Fi if you need to check your mail and a very comfortable lounge area where you can test-drive numerous systems running Windows Vista and an Xbox 360, or enjoy a refreshment while chatting with us about Windows Vista.

This will be a really exciting tour.  I've never been a part of such an extensive road trip like this before and look forward to meeting regular folks interested in seeing demos of Windows Vista in person.  We'll show off several PCs running Windows Vista while demo'ing things like Ultimate Extras, speech recognition, Tablet functionality, and the way Media Center works with the Xbox 360 as an extender.  We've got some cool stuff to give away, and we'll capture video and still photos of our interactions so that you all on this blog can be a part of the action.  We'll also be prepared to answer the many questions we anticipate that the folks will have.

I'll post day-by-day video and text updates during the week while we're on the road.  Oh, and we're also working on a way for you to track our travels with a Sidebar gadget -- more on that later.

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Comments

  1. Chris_1990
    Posted on: January 15, 2007 at 12:22PM  

    @Xepol perhapps you need to update your hardware....

    and I experance the same thing in IE7... it's real slow, even crashes a few times..

  2. mitchel
    Posted on: January 15, 2007 at 12:32PM  

    times and location for Nashville 1/16 please???

    Mitchel

  3. rjstinyc
    Posted on: January 15, 2007 at 4:24PM  

    If you haven't seen or heard about LiveGadgets, Donavon West's Vista Bus Tour Gadget you can download it to Live.com, Spaces, or the Vista SideBar by going to

    http://livegadgets.net/blog.xml

    There is even some markup to put it on your home page.

    Richard

  4. LiveGadgets
    Posted on: January 15, 2007 at 5:38PM  

    @Richard, I was going to wait until Nick posted but it looks like you broke the story. :)

    Below is a permalink to my blog post. It has links for downloading the gadget onto Live.com, Spaces, Vista Sidebar and even Google! It also has a code snippet that you can put on your own website.

    http://livegadgets.net/#blog_498fb321-e5e0-4096-87ba-ff3463598995

  5. hklm
    Posted on: January 15, 2007 at 6:59PM  

    Thanks Nick. I understand the weather, logistics, etc.  If people know where you all are, they'll try to come out and see you.  

    Plenty of interest is there in the cities you'll be hitting.  

    Have a great time. Weather in these cities has been spring-like.

  6. Xepol
    Posted on: January 16, 2007 at 12:00AM  

    Chris -> You're right, a machine bought within the past 2 years is surely too old and outdated and does not accurately represent the market today.

    Silly me falling behind the market majorities' trend of buying a new machine every 2 months.

    P4C800E motherboards with Promise 378 controllers are truely aged and dated, and buying a LinkSys wireless adapter from a museum instead of a reputable store 6 months ago was DEFINITELY a mistake.

    About the oldest part I am guilty of is an ATI Raedon AiW card that was bought about 4 years ago.  Too bad a card like isn't capable of basic 3d accelleration and transparency effects available in DX8 and DX9 to make Glass work, or maybe it is, if only ATI had better vista support than Microsoft.

    Mind you, maybe I shouldn't be too upset with hardware vendors, after all, not even MS could be bothered to have their hardware drivers ready for the RTM with support for their keyboards coming last month and support for the fingerprint reader this month.  

    Of course, MS has always had the single worst support for their own products of any company I have ever seen, so perhaps expecting MS to be a leader in the driver market was unrealistic to begin with.

    Exactly what the heck are those drivers Vista has support to support anyways?  Is someone about to release 20,000 new devices?

  7. Volker
    Posted on: January 16, 2007 at 5:44AM  

    Hi, can you tell me where your planned stops are in Charlotte? I work in retail and it might be nice to check out your bus. I happen to be off on Friday so that would work out great for me.

  8. riceboyler
    Posted on: January 16, 2007 at 8:34AM  

    @Xepol,

    You know, nobody is forcing you to upgrade to Vista.  No one is requiring you to upgrade your system.  You can still be on Windows 98 on 10 year old technology, if you choose to do so.  My WOW for you is, "WOW!  You sure like to complain about  great products because you have to do some work to use them."  Get a life.

    Now, concerning the post, where are you guys going to be in Nashville today (or for that matter on the final leg)?  The map in the gadget shows you guys in the middle of a runway at the airport, so I feel pretty safe in saying that's not exactly where you are.

  9. slubber
    Posted on: January 16, 2007 at 9:48AM  

    I just checked the widget and the bus hasn't moved. Any word as to when we can expect you in Columbus?

  10. Chris_1990
    Posted on: January 16, 2007 at 1:09PM  

    @ Xepol hey man, I have no idea of your system specs, So don't freak out.. no one knows of your specs unless you tell them. Like riceboyler said, no one is forceing you to use vista...

    but back on topic, it is bset you went to the east cost, from what I can tell Oregon and I do beleve washingtion have been hammered by snow, so if you were in an oregon city this week, you would be in trouble....

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Trackbacks

  1. Posted by: Richard Sprague WebLog on January 16, 2007 at 6:27PM

    The Windows team will be showing off Vista in many cities along the East Coast of the U.S., starting

  2. Posted by: Jeff Alexander's Weblog on January 17, 2007 at 6:02AM

    Now I have to say I thought I've seen everything but how cool is this! A few guys over at the Windows

  3. Posted by: Marshall Harrison - "the gotspeech guy" on January 17, 2007 at 9:17AM

    The Windows Vista Coach Tour is coming to Jacksonville, Gainesville and Orlando on Sunday January 21st.

  4. Posted by: Microsoft News Tracker on January 18, 2007 at 9:38PM

    Paul Boutin at The Valleywag grades the marketing for Microsoft’s Windows Vista in typically acerbic fashion and concludes that Vista flunks the marketing test: Microsoft’s next-generation Windows hits the stores in less than two weeks,..

  5. Posted by: MS_rev on January 21, 2007 at 6:26PM

    Kui sa tahad saada inspiratsiooniallikaks teistele, pead saama eelkõige inspiratsiooniallikaks iseendale.

  6. Posted by: MS_rev on July 21, 2007 at 5:57AM

    Kui sa tahad saada inspiratsiooniallikaks teistele, pead saama eelkõige inspiratsiooniallikaks iseendale

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