Windows' Vista: Hey, where's the buzz?

That makes the operating system mainly a home base, a file cabinet, a platform for other things. Vista is elegant and faster at searching, and it offers improved multimedia management tools, but it's just an operating system. In 1995 that alone was a big deal. Vista would have to desalinate water or levitate things to deserve such hype.

This is still fine with the accounting department in Redmond, Wash. Windows will remain a cash heifer, generating the 80 percent profit margins that explain why everyone has heard of Bill Gates. Friedman, Billings & Ramsey Co. estimates that Vista will boost Windows revenue to $16.3 billion in 2007 from $12.4 billion in 2006, although much of the increase will come from Microsoft's deferral of $1 billion in revenue from 2006 to 2007.

The last massive Windows release?
But the current state of affairs could matter in other ways. If Windows is just expensive plumbing that people happen to get but don't clamor for, then open-source offerings or new entries — such as a long-rumored quasi-operating system that might come from Google Inc. —could erode the Windows monolith. That trend has already happened to a limited degree with other Microsoft products, including its productivity software and Web browser. For example, the open-source Firefox Web browser, officially launched in 2004, now is used on 11 percent of Windows computers in the U.S., according to an analysis by WebSideStory Inc.

Because Microsoft has to fend off such threats — and also because Microsoft has vowed that the next operating system will come sooner than the five years Vista took — some analysts believe Vista will be the last massive Windows release.

Instead, those prognosticators say, Microsoft might adopt a more "modular" approach and sell subscriptions to a regular series of Windows upgrades, rather than Vista-like overhauls that come all at once.

Microsoft has taken some steps toward that design: Largely for security reasons, Vista has several components that run separately from each other and can be swapped in and out using Windows' automatic update functions.

But when asked whether that might lead to a more incremental approach to producing future editions of Windows, Mike Sievert, who oversees Windows marketing, didn't rule it out or commit to it either. He said Microsoft would "take guidance from customers on this" and added: "You can expect us to continue to evolve the architecture."

In the meantime, Microsoft is working hard to generate excitement for Vista. That includes various "wow"-related promotions and viral approaches like an elaborate online game in which the champion wins a trip into low earth orbit.

Asked whether Vista, lacking the pent-up anticipation Windows 95 enjoyed, represented a tough sell for Microsoft, Sievert had a diplomatic response. He suggested that consumer excitement is simply harder to measure now.

"The world's changed in so many ways since 1995," he said. "Some of those lines that you're talking about may be virtual instead of physical this time around."

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