A uniquely good day to be at Microsoft

I don’t think you can have missed that today was the day Windows 7 became generally available. I’ve been trying to come up with some unique angle on this for a blog post and not getting anywhere. Two thoughts related thoughts I will share.

The first: sometimes on these occasions the press turn up and try to interview employees: since I am press-trained I can talk to them, and as I was driving to the office this morning I wondered what sound bite I’d come out with. “This place is always on a high when we release new products and seeing reaction Windows 7 has been getting we’re on a higher high than usual”. I wondered how I could bring in Server 2008 R2, or the upcoming “2010” releases apart from ending with “and we ain’t done yet.”

The last thing I did before leaving the office was to read a mail from our director: it doesn’t deserve to be broken up for quotes, but it would be rude to publish it all. He called out the story that Amazon said pre-orders were its biggest ever outstripping the last Harry Potter , and 500 people queued up outside PC world’s flagship store to get their copy at midnight. He called out the positive press that the Register has given 7, they’re not known for being pro Microsoft. And he called out the groundswell of positive customer feeling which 7 has (My personal favourite is the Vox-pop of twitter comments running on the Microsoft.com home page). And he said “It’s easy for old lags like me to become cynical and start believing the [Negative press we get]” , before talking about the how he felt re-energized by the arrival of 7. I’m staring down the barrel of a 10 year service award so I’m an “old lag” myself and know exactly what he means.  His final words were “There is no better place to be today”, and from a director that’s a sentence which should usually be treated with the same cynicism as , let’s say, “People are our greatest asset”. But this time … I’ve never agreed with him more.