Vista launch: Reactions from the crowd

Vital as it is, an operating system just isn’t as sexy as a games console, so perhaps its not surprising that Vista’s midnight launch didn’t cause quite so much of a stir as, say, the Wii launch.

Business Week reports that, despite retailers staying open into the early hours of Tuesday morning, huge crowds were not the order of the day.

Bill Gates had already said Microsoft weren’t pushing the midnight events, which is just as well. Of course, it wasn’t totally dead either, with some die-hard MS fans turning up to secure their copy of Vista.

Similar stories in the UK, though many retailers will have opened early today to catch the flow of Vista buyers. A number of PC World stores, for example, opened at 6am, and featured demos of computers running previous versions of Windows, as well as characters that represent various aspects of Vista, such as Sherlock Holmes for Vista’s searching facilities. Right…

According to PC World magazine, Tokyo residents got more excited by Vista, and were amongst the first to get their hands on the new system:

At Tsukumo Denki in Akihabara, a crowd of about 200 people had built up by around 10 p.m. in anticipation of the launch. An equally large line of people lined up at the nearby Yodobashi Camera store, which is Japan’s largest electronics store.

Outside Bic Camera in the Yurakucho district of Tokyo, a couple of hundred people also waited. Some were there to buy Vista, and others appeared to be office workers on the way home who had stopped to take in the scene and watch a comedy duo the store had hired to entertain those waiting.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates will mark Vista’s European launch at a special event being held at the British Library in London tonight.