More like 2, actually. Yesterday, I was in Akihabara in Tokyo and took pictures of this huge promo billboard for the upcoming release of Windows Vista. The sign says “新世代プレミアム” (”New Generation Premium”) and “世界が変わる瞬間まであと3日” (”Three days until the world changes”).
Considering the underwhelming reviews of Windows Vista, these are bold claims to make. I think I’ll stick with the very stable and time-tested Windows XP for a while. Like many people, I don’t see any compelling reason to switch to the new OS just yet.
Yodobashi, one of the biggest tech stores in Akihabara, thinks otherwise and anticipates a lot of demand for Vista. So much so, in fact, that it will start selling Vista to those people lucky enough (or insane enough, depending on your persuasion) to fall in line in front of its store on the midnight of January 30. (The sign on the right has the details.)
Most people who will be the first to use Vista will be buyers of new PCs but for others willing to do a test drive, don’t even consider upgrading if you have a wimpy pasokon (meaning a PC with a 1GHz MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, DirectX 9.0-Capable Graphics Processors, 60GB HD). You would want to have at least a 3GHz Pentium-processor, 2GB of RAM and lots of hard drive space. And Vista probably won’t change your world.
