Windows XP: Ballmer gets excited

Windows XP finally made its long-anticipated debut on the world software stage today at London's Royal Festival Hall.

An effervescent Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, predicted the operating system was going to be twice as popular as previous versions of Windows.

Ballmer said: "This is the biggest launch thing we've done since Windows 95. It is the most significant technological advancement since Windows 3.0. In terms of pre-orders, we are poised to come out of the chute twice as fast as Windows 95."

He added that he wanted to turn users on, claiming Microsoft was going to put some energy back into the PC market.

However, he advised against upgrading if organisations were already in the middle of Windows 2000 implementations.

"Windows 2000 is a good product. Windows XP is a better one but it is too much of an upheaval to stop and start again," he said.

So far, over 100,000 pre-orders have been taken, 150,000 deployments are planned and more than a million enterprise customers are committed to rolling out the operating system. Halifax and the City Group are among the UK organisations planning to make the leap.

Ballmer declined to comment on how it would affect Microsoft's revenues. "That'll be shown at the end of the quarter," he added.

The company wheeled out a host of Windows XP developers and partners including Dana Cuffe, CIO of Egg, Mark Whitby, director of UK and Ireland at Intel, Brent Hoberman, CEO of Lastminute.com, and PC World managing director Simon Turner.

Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin, also put in an appearance via video to extol the benefits of the internet-focused operating system.

Windows XP has been accused of being a security risk and has received widespread condemnation for its licensing policy and product activation. The company is also facing threatened legal action from the European Commission's anti-trust department.

However, Ballmer brushed aside these worries.

He claimed the US Court of Appeal had agreed that Microsoft was integrating and not bundling products so third parties could build applications on top of the software.

The licensing issue has now been resolved, he said, and will come into play on 31 July. He admitted it did not solve all the issues but was a "force majeure and is my complete answer".

Product activation, he continued, was a good way to teach your kids not to steal other people's work.

Ballmer also brushed aside talk that users may hold back from upgrading because of the economic downturn.
"There are 30 million ready PCs out there and I want these to benefit from XP. Yes, this is the right time to launch this product."