Windows Vista rocks Austin at SXSW

Posted by:
Nick White
02:43 PM Friday
Mar 16, 2007
13 Comments

I wanted to share a great email I just received from my colleague Greg Amrofell, Windows Vista Sr. Product Manager for consumer mobility. Greg and a few others are down in Austin this week taking part in the festivities surrounding the giant music/film/interactive media festival, South by Southwest:

It has been a great week in Austin with Windows Vista. Wednesday, just as the SXSW music festival kicked off, Jefferson Starship played its final set in the Sky Surprise tour. Starting in LA January 30 with stops in San Francisco and New Orleans, the tour has been a fun way to let customers know about our promotion with T-Mobile. Through April 30, anyone with a Windows Vista mobile PC can register on the site for free access to all T-Mobile HotSpots. At the show in Austin Wednesday, a colorful crowd of 500 joined the band and danced along with the Sky Surprise cosmonauts.

Just last night, we hosted the NASA Bash with DJ Squeak E. Clean and other top DJs. It was an amazing party -- we packed Red's Scoot Inn, a famous Austin club -- and a celebration of art, music and creativity of all stripes. Over a dozen bands and DJs played, including Simian Mobile Disco, Bonde De Role and Spank Rock. When they weren't dancing, drinking or otherwise enjoying the scene, lots of guests got their first chance to check out Windows Vista. I got a lot of good questions and people really engaged with all that's new in Windows Vista. People really seemed to like DreamScene, Gadgets, Internet Explorer 7, Photo Gallery and the new ways to search. Plus, our special-edition Asus R1F mobile PCs were a big hit.

Finally, because so many killer bands from the Northwest have helped make SXSW great over the years, we decided to make sure that a couple of our NW favorites could share their experiences with fans while they were on the go in Austin. The bands Slender Means and Aqueduct will be blogging at skysurprise.com/blog along with the lead talent booker from Seattle's legendary Crocodile Café, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the festival. We've outfitted them with Windows Vista mobile PCs and they will be connecting at T-Mobile HotSpots to upload their posts and photos.

Some people have asked why we wanted to go to SXSW. Apart from the obvious answer (that it's the most fun you can legally have in Texas), it's really the perfect place to showcase Windows Vista and its strengths in mobility and multimedia. Whatever you create and wherever your creativity takes you, Windows Vista makes it easier and more fun.

Not all of us got to enjoy the splendors of SXSW, including me, but I'm happy to see that Windows Vista is helping everyone get a taste of the action.

Greg, you'll bring me a t-shirt ... right?

Comments

chorley20

Posted on: March 17, 2007 at 8:10AM
How can i create a shortcut to compatability mode? Instead of opening help all the time. At this time every program seems to need it.
chorley20

Posted on: March 17, 2007 at 8:11AM
Why does microsoft always have the problem where you cant grab or copy errors. You get an error box then cant grab the error to look for a fix in internet explorer its a real pain in the industry
n4cer

Posted on: March 18, 2007 at 9:36AM
Compatibility mode can be accessed by right-clicking on the executable or shortcut, clicking Properties, and clicking the Compatibility tab. Depending on what your particular issue is, you may need only to right-click and choose Run as Administrator for the application to work correctly (e.g., it may be trying to write to or access protected locations).

You can copy most errors either via the Problem Reports and Solutions dialog (type Problem Reports and Solutions in the Start Menu search box, View problem history). Or via the error's entry in Windows' event log (type Event Viewer in the Start Menu search box).
jjfowler76

Posted on: March 18, 2007 at 1:39PM
Vista Rocks?

I just installed Vista and Im totally screwed. I have a 3 month old high end Dell XPS410 and it sounds like it is dying, there is a constant whirring noise which was only noticeable during startup before. Half of the software I need for work dosent operate and I just found out I cant uninstall Vista without reloading everything. Im so pissed. Ill never buy a PC again. You guys at windows cant get anything right.
Ed Lenio

Posted on: March 18, 2007 at 1:55PM
Congratulations Microsoft! I am now a MAC user! Once again, you have turn medicre software into a nightmare. 1GB of RAM just to run Vista? Are you kidding me? Most of the stuff is pure junk. My new computer is exceptionally slow and Vista navigation is equally poor. Tried to remove it and install XP Pro but you prevented that also. When I tried Customer Support, I am informed you will charge me $60/hr. You don't even support the garbage you sell! Dell is fuming since I just returned my new computer because of your wonderful operating system (if it even qualifies to be called that). Please change the logo from "Vista rocks" to "Vista sinks like a rock". Once you go MAC - you never come back!
Brandon LeBlanc

Posted on: March 18, 2007 at 2:42PM
Well Ed, thanks for sharing your opinion. However I am forced to disagree. My father has Vista Ultimate running on a pretty low end PC (512Mb of RAM etc and a 1.8Ghz processor) and its running quite nice. Of course it doesn't have Aero and all the UI goodies but he likes it none-the-less.

I highly doubt Dell is "fuming" cause you - one person - returned a new PC back to Dell.

And one last thing: where is this logo you speak of where it says "Vista rocks"? I've yet to come across any logo that says that. The title of this post says Vista rocks but that is used in the sense it "rocked" SXS.
terri

Posted on: March 18, 2007 at 11:59PM
Hi, jjfowler,

You might give it a few days. I've seen other reports of this 'whirring' sometimes referred to as 'thrashing' as well. I think it's probably the indexing that Windows Vista will do on a new install. Once this is complete, you shouldn't have the issue.

Please let us know if it continues or settles down. Thanks!
UbiquitousGeek

Posted on: March 19, 2007 at 8:48AM
Sidebar Geek, you know, there are a lot of people like Ed Lenio right now. I've seen quite a few people returning their new Vista PCs for a Macintosh. You know what else? I'm sure Dell is "fuming". Why else are they asking their customers what they would like to run on their new Dell systems? They're considering offering Linux in place of Windows. Now that I've had the chance to play around with Vista a little bit, it's actually solidified my belief that Apple will prevail. Microsoft, on it's current trajectory, is doomed to fail. At least in the home market.
markm66

Posted on: March 19, 2007 at 7:21PM
@UbiquitousGeek - Apple will not prevail until they allow their OS to run on hardware other than Apple. As good as Apple hardware is there is a limited range compared to laptops/PC that will run windows/linux.

Having said that I reverted back to XP after 3 weeks of Vista after it decided one days that it didnt want to see my optical drives and no amount of "tweaking" would get them to work. It had been fine prior to this occurring.
dsmythe

Posted on: March 21, 2007 at 6:35PM
Gee that's funny, I installed Vista Ultimate on my DELL Inspirion 1501 and it works great. I installed the 64-bit edition on my DELL Percision workstation and it works flawlessly.

People ... If you use cheap crappy hardware, you get what you pay for. That is your fault not MSFT's.

Windows Vista rocks Austin at SXSW

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