Microsoft this week launched the "Windows Me Sweepstakes" on its promotional Web site, where it is promising the grand-prize winner a VIP trip to company headquarters.
The big winner will receive an all-expenses-paid tour of the on-campus "Digital Home of the Future," an opportunity to "rub elbows" with the Windows Me development team, plus a Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C200 digital camera, so as to record the whirlwind visit for the folks stuck at home.
Wait, there's more: Each day of the North-America-only promotion, which lasts until Aug. 30, 50 winners will receive limited-edition copies of Windows Millennium Edition (aka, Windows Me), autographed by Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. Winners will be able to collect their copies some time before they hit stores Sept. 14, according to the Web site's rules and regulations.
It's a lot of hoopla for the successor to Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition. Microsoft officials themselves have characterized Windows Me as a fairly minor upgrade aimed at home users.
Windows Me is slated to provide home networking improvements and simplified Internet access and integrates Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Media Player 7. Windows Me is the final version of Windows that will be built on the Win9X kernel.
Microsoft released to manufacturing Windows Me on June 19, after eight months of testing. PC makers are working with the gold code now, so as to have Windows Me-ready systems available in September. Some subscribers to Microsoft's Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) program already have received their gold Windows Me disks, reported one Windows enthusiast site, ActiveWin.
Many developers and customers already are focusing on the next two releases of Windows following Windows Me, namely Whistler (due in the second half of 2001) and Blackcomb (due in the second half of 2002). Microsoft told testers this week that it expects to field its first beta of Whistler in October 2000.
"As the Net converges into being one Net, we want Windows to be the operating system of choice," Brian Valentine, senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows division, said at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting on Thursday.
Valentine told analysts that Microsoft is focusing on a handful of future investment areas for Windows. In the fiscal 2001 timeframe, those include increasing the rate of Windows 2000 adoption; increasing the percentage of Windows 2000 sales represented by Advanced Server; going after Unix with its Windows 2000 Datacenter release, due out this fall; and growing its embedded Windows business by 300 percent.
In the longer term, Microsoft will sharpen its Windows focus on PC health, manageability, digital media and entertainment and unification of network plumbing, Valentine said.
"We will be re-energizing the PC as the device of choice ... for work or for home," Valentine said. As part of that strategy, Microsoft, not surprisingly, will be aiming to keep "Wintel as the solution of choice."
