NEW YORK – The Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, stuck with New York on Oct. 25, 2001, to trumpet the release of the company’s biggest product in six years: the Windows XP operating system.
Appearing onstage at the Marriott Marquis with Rudolph Giuliani, Gates saluted the city’s mayor and its people for their “courage, determination and resilience” and went on to tout a product that for Microsoft lays the foundation for a new Internet-focused direction.
“New York City is the perfect place to announce the worldwide availability of Windows XP,” added Giuliani. “New York is absolutely open for business.”
“Today it really is actually the end of the MS-DOS era,” Gates told an audience of about 1,500 guests and media, a reference to Microsoft’s original operating system, the underpinning of all the company’s consumer-oriented Windows products until XP.
Gates then typed “exit” on an MS-DOS command line and the projected computer screen went fuzzy.
The idea behind Windows XP is to get consumers more connected – with better Internet tools and features including built-in wireless networking support.
Microsoft redesigned the look of the software. Gone are the gray taskbars and aquamarine desktops of Windows 95 and 98. Windows XP sports a cool blue taskbar that underlines a desktop screen that looks suspiciously like the environs of Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash.: a sun-dappled meadow under a sky dotted with cottony clouds.
Home computer users are Microsoft’s real target with XP. The new version contains more new features than operating system half-steps Windows 98 or Millennium Edition, including programs for listening to and recording music, playing videos and editing and organizing digital photographs. A new feature called Windows Messenger lets users communicate instantly with others using text, voice and video.
The new demands of a more powerful operating system will mean some hardware upgrades, even for some owners of computers less than two years old. Microsoft’s minimum hardware requirements: 1.5 gigabytes of hard drive space, 128 megabytes of RAM and a 233 MHz processor.
Windows XP, the platform on which Microsoft’s Web-based business strategy hinges, also ushers users toward Microsoft’s online services.
