It’s been nearly six months since I attended the launch of Windows Vista. Back then, I came to the conclusion that for most small businesses the new Microsoft operating system would be useful, but not essential. It’s still my view that unless you have reasonably new computers, it’s not worth your business upgrading. When you do upgrade hardware, however, if Vista comes pre-installed, you will as a small business owner appreciate many of its features.

So, doing a Scoble with video camera in hand, I headed down to Weber Shandwick (one of Microsoft’s PR agencies) to get a Vista demo and interview with Mike Haigh, Windows Client Product Manager at Microsoft.

The first part of the interview is posted below and I’ll release the others later in the week. Throughout the interview/demo I ask questions I think many small businesses would want answered. For further views from small business owners on their experience of Vista and Office 2007, check out this interesting thread on UKBusinessForums.

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Part I above covers an introduction to Vista, gadgets, transparency, document preview, hardware specs, upgrade adviser and automatic updates. To view in full screen click on the little expanding square icon in the player control bar under the video.

microsoft | mike_haigh | office_2007 | small_business | vista