VISTA Launch

MICROSOFT has begun its biggest product launch in more than a decade, releasing new versions of its flagship software to the strains of Fat Boy Slim. But analysts greeted yesterday's launch with muted applause, predicting slow take-up in an increasingly competitive and overloaded market.

The software giant announced the availability to business customers of Windows Vista, the long-delayed update to its core operating system, and the 2007 edition of its Office suite of tools such as Word and Excel. It claims this is the company's biggest simultaneous software launch since Windows 95, which set sail in 1995 to the Rolling Stones' Start Me Up. Companies that have been testing pre-release versions of the software focused their praise at yesterday's launch almost exclusively on SharePoint, a part of the Office suite that streamlines the sharing of data and business information.

The Windows Vista team demonstrated advances in security and desktop search at the launch. Vista includes the option to encrypt hard drives and disable removable USB drives to prevent data and intellectual property being lost or stolen. Vista and the main Office components have had major user interface overhauls, in response to increasing bewilderment about navigating the software.When users were asked what new functions they wanted in Office, 85 per cent named a function that was already there but they hadn't found, said Microsoft Office business group director Tony Wilkinson.

But research company Gartner has predicted a relatively slow take-up of the new operating system, saying that by the end of next year fewer than 10 per cent of PCs will run Vista — and it will not reach a majority of the PC base until 2009.