By Natasha Lomas, 3 January 2008 12:15
NEWS
Microsoft seems to have overreached itself with its 'the "Wow" starts now' tag-line for Windows Vista.
silicon.com readers were distinctly unwowed by the long delayed launch of the OS, which finally limped into view last year - so unwowed they voted Vista the most over-hyped tech event of 2007.
An impressive 43 per cent of respondents to the reader poll fingered Vista as the biggest load of hot air to make a noise in 2007. Previous silicon.com reader polls have also been less than kind to the shiny new Windows OS.
In a poll last month, two-thirds of respondents vowed never to migrate to Vista. And back in November readers ranked it below Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux as their OS of choice.
But if the folks in Redmond are looking a little red-faced after blowing up all those unwanted 'Wow' balloons, silicon.com readers are also convinced Cupertino is guilty of over-cranking the hype machine. Only just behind Vista, 42 per cent of poll respondents voted the Apple iPhone launch as the most over-hyped event of last year.
While the iPhone may arguably offer users something new - which, some people would say, sets it apart from Windows Vista - its cost is a sticking point.
Back in September, silicon.com's CIO Jury said the smart phone is simply too expensive to become a corporate mobile device. And a survey of consumers also found many were being put off by its hefty price-tag.
Both Vista and the iPhone eclipsed 2007's other high-profile tech tales - such as Second Life, which gained nine per cent of the over-hyped vote, and Facebook, which notched up just six per cent.
Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, gained the top spot in silicon.com's 2007 Agenda Setters list - proof, if proof were needed, that the social networking website made a real impact last year.
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1. vic hansen
Surely everything that Microsoft has ever launched has been over hyped, but that doesn't mean they don't succeed in the long run. You can't judge a MS operating system until at least SP2 and I can well imagine that in 2011 there will be Vista die hards who are swaring they'll never migrate to the next one...