Drawing a line in the sand and pulling out the checkbook, Microsoft has signalled that it doesn't intend to continue standing by quietly and allowing Vista to be sullied by ads, pundits, and random Slashdot posts.

"Windows Vista is a good product," said Vice President of Windows Consumer Product Brad Brooks at the company's World-Wide Partner Conference in Houston. And to prove how great it is, the company will be dropping $300+ million on ad campaigns, because you can't rely on actual experience with the software, obviously.

And because it's so great, the company has unveiled a free support offering for it, aimed at small businesses upgrading via new hardware purchases. But as Todd Bishop points out, most problems come from upgrades made on existing hardware... and that it's not quite the sign of confidence in the software itself that Microsoft may suppose if the hardware has to be the latest and greatest to run it. While the company's position is clearly a rational one (you can't expect them to be on the hook for supporting those Pentium I users upgrading from Win95, after all) that's still not a positive signal to any enterprise which may be looking at significant and unexpected hardware upgrade costs in order to ensure a smooth Vista transition.

Brooks also emphasized that Windows 7 will mirror closely Vista's hardware requirements and drive model and shouldn't require much adjustment to upgrade to from Vista. Since, on the face of it, with 7 no more than two years out and the early adopters already in the bag, it seems a bit silly to launch fresh Vista marketing at this point, I have to wonder if this is intended more to inspire confidence in 7 than in Vista ("Windows 7: It's not Windows Vista" might be a slogan). I would certainly hope the company would cut its losses and move on rather than beating a dead horse which will surely do nothing for their reputation among most potential adopters: anyone upgrading at this point is sure to be incensed when they are asked to go through the process again in two years, particularly if they've had a long, more or less successful run with XP of more than double that time.

The rationale that Microsoft is presenting is that current Vista users appear to be up to three times more positive about the product than non-users. While I certainly think it's just fine on the right hardware and so don't doubt the surveys, I'm not convinced those numbers mean much. It's more a question of economics and control to savvy CIOs, not so much of performance. And if you have already coughed up for a company-wide upgrade, what are you going to say: "I made a terrible decision, it actually sucks?"

Speaking of dead horses, I should probably stop beating this one, but it continues to amaze me that Microsoft doesn't take the obvious and proactive route of following its mea culpas for Vista (and you will find plenty of those in front of all these public statements; sorry about the security, drivers, etc, etc, etc) with forward-looking statements to generate some excitement about 7. There is a limited amount of good you can do for a product that has been on the market for a year and has already been looked over pretty deeply by decision-makers. There are infinite possibilities for drumming up support for a product that is being developed in significant secrecy and won't be released for another year at the earliest.