In the tech world, this was to have been one of the biggest events of the year. Microsoft, the industry's queen, would be giving birth to her newest bundled bit of joy, a precocious blue-and-white operating system she calls XP.
This newest heir to the Windows dynasty was said to be friendlier, smarter and better looking than its older siblings. And more than that, the company said, prince XP would bring joy to all in Tech World, giving computer users new reasons to purchase software and hardware for their new machines, lifting struggling firms from their post-dot-com swoons.
Well, that joyous day has finally arrived, but world events long ago stole the spotlight from Microsoft's new OS.
The release of XP on Thursday – after months of speculation, anticipation, hype and hope – could possibly make the front pages of national newspapers, but it won't have nearly the prominence of Windows 95, whose launch The New York Times labeled a "computer-age milestone."
You don't have to use XP to know it won't be a milestone. Just watch TV. Are people talking about XP like it's a cultural icon? Are people yearning for XP, lining up around the block for the thing, eating, sleeping and drinking XP? People aren't.
Indeed, according to a quick search on the Lexis-Nexis news database, only the business news channels have mentioned the launch, and even those are brief items.
At the 1995 launch, Windows news was everywhere. The Washington Post said, "You can hide under a bridge, row a boat to the middle of the ocean or wedge yourself under the sofa, cover your ears and then hum loudly. But get near a newspaper, radio, television or computer retailer today and you will experience the multimillion-dollar hype surrounding the launch of Windows 95."
Microsoft is actually spending more money on XP's launch – some say as much as a billion dollars – but the buzz is softer.
Computer stores across the country opened at midnight on Thursday morning, but there was no sign by Wednesday afternoon that people would be lining up like lemmings, as they did in the salad days of the last decade.
"This is the Woodstock of the '90s," a guy told the Los Angeles Times in 1995 about that year's OS.
Another man told The New York Times then, "I probably won't install it for a couple of weeks, but (I need it) just to have it in the house, to hold the box, something fun like that."
Asked on Wednesday if she was expecting a large crowd, a spokeswoman for a San Francisco-area computer store said, rather indifferently, "I really don't know. We did have commercials for it on the radio."
Microsoft seems to have gotten the hint, though, that this will not be a repeat of Windows 95. At a media preview event in New York on Wednesday, Jim Allchin, Microsoft's head of Windows, said, "No one is expecting this to skyrocket within a week or two. We see XP as a strong foundation that will continue to be a solid seller for Microsoft and its partners' products for a long time to come."
To its credit, the company seems to be restraining itself in its marketing efforts. It did not pay for an entire print run of The Times of London, as it did in 1995, so that it could feature Windows ads on the front page. It is not hanging giant Windows banners on tall buildings all around the world, as it did then.
The company does plan to hold launch events all around the country for members of the media and tech community who can't get to the two main events, which will be held in New York and London. Chairman Bill Gates will be speaking in New York, and CEO Steve Ballmer will be in London.
Other cities will have to do with dimmer Microsoft luminaries. San Francisco, for example, will enjoy the witty stylings of John Connors, Microsoft's chief financial officer.
On his website, Andy Rathbone – the author of a series of best-selling Windows for Dummies books – describes Windows XP as "the operating system that's supposed to flip America's economy back in the right direction!"
But he's being a sarcastic. "There's some excitement here," he said on Wednesday, "but it's smaller than for Windows 95. That's because between Windows 3.1 and 95, there was a huge difference in the way it looked. Windows ME (the previous version) and XP don't really look all that different. There's some changes, but there's a lot of stuff that people can't see. Like people aren't going to see XP crash as much."
Rathbone said that a lot of people have been curious about XP, so there has been a lot of interest in his Dummies book on XP. And, Rathbone added, people who've never used a computer before will likely still need a guide like his to learn XP, even though it is easier than previous operating systems.
At the very least, he said, a guide will tell people what to be wary of in Windows – like Microsoft's Passport sign-in service, a solicitation that pops up when you install the system.
Rathbone said such solicitations were "ugly" and a "travesty of justice," and that "Microsoft is taking advantage of people who've never used a computer before. They don't have to use the Passport, and they're taking advantage of people who don't know that they don't have to sign up for it."
Microsoft has maintained that Passport is optional, and the sign-up page says so. In his book, Rathbone tells people "not to do anything that requires the Passport."
