I had the launch of Windows Vista marked on my calendar since before Christmas, and was counting down the days until its official release on January 30th. In the build up to the launch, Microsoft ran commercials on Japanese TV… 3 days to go! 2 days to go! So, when the 30th came around at midnight on Monday I went straight to some tech sites to see what new computers they were offering with Vista installed.
What an anti-climax. Most of the sites were still pushing their XP models. Never mind, I thought, I’ll wait till the morning and check them out at the shops. What a waste of time that was. The electronic department stores I went to still had XP on most of their machines, the individual copies of Vista were still labelled “Taking reservations now”, and to spoil the party further, there were no customers and only one, very unhelpful, staff member at both stores I visited.
So what happened? The news on TV was showing hundreds of people lining up at computer stores in Akihabara in Tokyo, and having experienced the same fanfare in Nagoya’s Osu computer district when XP was released, I was left feeling really empty this time by the lack of celebration.
Maybe I’m just an otaku, or geek, but none of my students were interested in Vista either. Heck some of them had no idea what it was!
I’ve had this feeling a few times in Japan, you know, when you’re really excited about something but noone else seems to care; Christmas, the World Cup, and new shopping centers to name a few. Oh well, I guess that’s what I love about the internet so much – there’s always somebody with the same interests.
And with that in mind, I went back to the net and decided to spoil myself by ordering a brand new computer from one of the finally updated websites I first visited. It’s a loaded machine with Windows Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a high-end graphics card, sound board, and 2 gig of memory to boot. I chose a 320 gig hard drive to add to the 300 gig one I’ll move from my current machine.
So I maybe the only person out here in the countryside who’s interested in Vista, but I’ll sure as heck have fun!
I’ll post some photos when “The Machine” arrives!
If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I'd love to hear from you!
Dont worry too much about Vista not being the biggest thing to ever hit Japan! There has been a bit of press here in North America but nothing too huge… in fact even Bill Gates has not made much of a fuss about it! I guess its cause everyone knows that if you are gonna have vista you might as well buy a new computer since it demands so much power… and yeah i guess xp does the job pretty good and then everyone is worried about vulnerabilities being exposed shortly after it comes out…blah blah blah….
Anyway I cant wait to see your new system and I cant wait to get mine… hopefully soon after I return from Japan!