I find stories are always a better way to communicate with people. We geeks can always read the datasheets if we want to. Personally, I cringe everytime I hear someone describe something as "cool". It makes me want to slap them around the cheeks with a wet fish.

Stories are great, and I *absolutely* agree the technical crowd often gets out of touch with what real people want. But these stories are almost comically generic. People know this stuff is possible with computers, and this doesn't do much to differentiate Windows, let alone Vista and Windows Live. Why not get some of the more unique stories out there about how people are using Windows? I think it's easy to underestimate the "consumer." Consumers are savvy, too; a lot of them are already using Windows to do really amazing, creative stuff.

I really like the videos. It's always difficult to not sound like pure marketing in such ads ("...will make your life easier than ever..").

I like that you show real scenarios, because Vista will not make our lifes easier but reading mails, search files ...

This is what the Vista campaign should have been instead of these "Wow" ads. Showing Flip 3D as a feature was one of the bigges mistakes. A lot of people compared this to Exposé on a Mac where the taskbar is the real competitor to Exposé. You should show the advantages of Vista+WL and the biggest ones are variety and individuality! Yes, the Macs are really good products but they are all the same and all gray ;)

And as a designer I really like that click-on-the-start-orb-effect-zoom.

Peterkirn - you make a good point that we have an opportunity to really get into some of the more advanced and creative things real people are doing with Windows - that is absolutely a direction I am advocating we take moving forward.

I agree that the stories in these videos are quite generic but that was intentional as our research indicated a surprising number of people were unaware of some of the things they could do with Windows that you or I may take for granted.

So my goal for the video was really  threefold: 1) Introduce the Windows Vista + Windows Live integrated story; 2) Get those customers who aren't doing amazing creative stuff yet to try the basics so they can springboard from there, and 3) Try a different way to talk to consumers.

I am totally excited to take the conversation to the next level as we evolve our strategy, though!

As an author, I want to communicate the meaningful things people can do with software, not merely describe the features of a software program. I love that the videos showcase what the feature means in the life of ordinary people.

Yes, the scenarios are basic, but I think they are on target. A lot of people don't know what's possible with Windows, let alone Windows Live. More and more, people think they need a Mac in order to do something this "creative". Showing how simple and connected it can all be is the only way to get the message across.

So, keep talking about the meaningful things real people can do with Vista+WL. The people on the street I meet really don't care about features.

Great Videos, its amazing how many people didnt even know that Movie Maker exsisted in XP, but it was a great program.  The only problem with the XP version was that it didnt output mpeg2 files.  Infact if it did output mpeg2 files and authored DVDs I never would have touched a third party product.  Movie Maker is that good....Still Movie Maker is one of the features of Windows XP I used most.

Movie Maker in XP was kinda like System Restore in ME an underappreciated gem.

Does the Vista version of MovieMaker output mpeg2 files as an option or just allow DVD output only?, guess I'll check that later.  I like to output videos as a single mpeg2 file for archieve purposes (third party program), wmv for sharing and avi for more editing.

The videos are great by the way, showing people how to share and communicate with Windows is really the key to selling Windows to the public.  Most people arent aware of what Vista and even XP can do with tools like MovieMaker.  My wife recently started a blog and I had to show her how to shrink my videos to wmv files, she loves it... but was unaware that MovieMaker was on her MediaCenter 2005 PC until I showed her where it was.

I got my brothers wife to start using Skydrive for sharing photos so you guys are doing something right.

The problem is in order to do many of these great things with Vista or XP you have to have a recipient.  Im a tech geek... I have an XP PC, I have vista dual boot on the same PC... however if I want to IM my parents or share photos it has to be super easy for them because theyre not aware of whats going on.  I have to get them to install the latest IM software download the latest version of messenger etc before we can start having fun with Windows and all this great stuff.  Thats why Microsoft should

Integrate Live Services into SP1, let people know they exsist by using these great new people focused adverts.

Release Vista SP1-to fix the bugs, and  make vista as fast as XP, add an XP Classic Mode?  Why does Classic have to look like Windows 2000!

Make the Vista + SP1 EULA let people install Vista on more than one machine, maybe 2 or 3 !  Then I wont have to waste my time telling my family to download this and that before we get to all the fun stuff.  I'll just stick Vista on their machine and they'ld be happy.  They'ld have all these new live services on their old boxes.

Make the Xbox 360 integrate with these live services, where is the Xbox 360 web-browser!

Vista and the Xbox 360 both have such great potential, Microsoft just needs to focus on people and doing more with less.  What does that mean?  It means making bad hardware do more with good software as oppossed to bad software doing more with good hardware!

I hope the 360 will be around for another 5 years and that the thing will be redesigned so that it doesnt RROD like my brothers 360.

I hope that SP1 Vista can run as good as XP even if only in a XP Classic Mode.

I hope that Microsoft can focus on people doing more no matter how they connect to the web to use these new Live services be that with XP, Vista or a new 360 Webrowser.

Microsoft has made improvements with there Live services hopefully improvements to Vista and the 360 can help people take advantage of these Live services and keep Microsoft in the game.

Sorry for the off topic ramblings!

these are nice storie!

Can we download these videos or via youtube/soapbox, so that we could share with your friends ?

Chakkaradeep - I'd love you to share these with friends! You can find them on soapbox and you tube, but to make it easier here are some links:

Photos - http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=b55d3adf-5295-46dc-b2b2-4e0995a8f49c

Keep in touch -

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=ecbee80e-a04f-4470-a11b-292d9a3d310b

Get more done -

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=de5d346b-21b6-496a-8e63-2463630d8862

Hope this helps!

Thats wonderful Lorrin !

Thanks a lot :)

thanks for the download links lorrin! :)

Sorry for my above post being slightly negative, I recieved some bad news the day I posted and was in a kinda fowl mood.

The movies are all actually really effective because they involve people using their computers, and its definately a better way to market than the direct sell of features that people may or may not understand without them being put into context.

That said Vista at least in its Home Premium and Ultimate Editions are the most entertainment/media /user focused Microsoft OS to date and Im sure many will eventually see the advantages of the OS in the long term over even XP.  The short term disadvantage of Vista is that you really need 1GB of memory to make it run nice with multimedia movie files, however most new machines sold this year will probably come with 1GB of ram standard and for those with less ram, ram upgrades are relatively cheap.  Actually I thought that the idea of bundling retail copies of Vista with extra ram at stores like BestBuy was a great idea, this may have been a store specific marketing campaign.

The nice thing about Vista is that there are many subtle under the hood changes that you dont notice until you use a Vista based machine for a while, one thing I noticed about Vista is that when you install software the machine is much less likely to need to be restarted after a software installation than with XP.

That aside the real thing that interests me on the marketing side is how Vista was marketed in different markets, e.g. Europe vs the USA.

Lorrin - a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth forever!  The game is about hearts and minds - and from a corporate viewpoint it's about convincing people of real benefits as opposed to the perception that Microsoft give us no choice.  I think you also need some video example of real benefit in the workplace - and that's gotta be tied to things like Sharepoint.

We're just starting a roll-out - and one of the mental pictures I'm creating is about the Power Management facilities of Vista - working for a Government, we are targetting "green / environment / sustainability".  We're an island jurisdiction with an electric railway - and we believe Power Management enforced by Vista policies will save us the equivalent of the electric railway's annual power consumption - a simple but effective mental image for our politicians.

Cheers

Great point bigcheeser, we to need to cut power consumption at our company and its quite hard to figure out how much power were using for our desktops.

Some websites have been quite useful like this one

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000426.html

However it seems as though most of the savings can be maximised when buying completely new systems.  The cost benefit ratio of making our exsisting machines more power friendly is not favourable.  If Microsoft could make a site recommending power friendly components and pushing the power saving features of Vista that could help speed corporate deployment.

Ditto if it could get together with the power companies and offer joint discounts for upgrading more PCs and saving energy.

The other nice thing about saving energy is that by having components powerdown or off when not in use you actually extend the life of the machine.

Unfortunately some in my IT department are resistent to change and like every PC to be constantly on so it makes it easier for them to push out updates to PCs at night.