So being an IT guy, and my company going the Windows Way whole hog; I decided it was about time I went to one of these fabled Microsoft product launches where you get heaps of swag from booth babes and free beer and steak, and ... and...Well that is just a load of crap, but I had a decent time anyway :)
While Microsoft and their partners still practice the "meat-grinder" sales technique (keep shoving the product down your throat until the money flows out the other end), the IT Pro track presenters had a sense of humor about it, and were able to laugh at themselves when things didn't go as expected onstage. One guy furiously typing on 4 different demo machines, the other "stretching" the talk so we wouldn't get bored and rowdy.
The keynote was the same drab "rah-rah" cheerleading I've come to expect from almost every keynote presentation. KEY MESSAGE: "This will be good for your bottom line, folks. Trust us, we're sure..."
The actual demo sessions were informative and even slightly eye-opening, the whole Vista/Office2007/Exchange2007 package looks pretty impressive overall. I was most impressed with the Business Desktop Deployment Workbench demo. Building a single operating system image to be deployed in a number of different manners including DVD, from an SMS server, directly from the workbench server, and others. The language options are pretty impressive too; Vista is no longer base-language dependent, but can be deployed with as many or as few "language packs" as you wish which can be applied very simply after the fact. That will make a lot of Quebec IT people happy. Most IT folks I know despise working in a "translated" environment like the French Canadian WindowsXP, but prefer the language of origin, US English. The users they support, however, have their own preferences of course :)
Lunch was a decent box including sandwich, chips, salad, cheese and crackers, a tiramisu cake, and an apple. Not steak and beer, but pretty decent for free :)No "booth babes" although there were some attractive ladies in evidence.
And I got a T-shirt.
All in all, a pretty good day.
