Steve Ballmer Directing "House Party 7"

theodp writes "What are you doing on Oct. 22? Microsoft is putting a Tupperware-style twist on the upcoming Windows 7 rollout, launching a new initiative to encourage thousands of employees, partners and technology enthusiasts to throw parties in their homes and communities to demonstrate and help spread the word about its new OS. People accepted as official launch party hosts will get their own copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, and a chance to win a computer. Host spaces are very limited, so apply now, kids. Hey, what could possibly go wrong?"

Hmm, an echo of the zune release?

[Anonymous Cowar]

Once upon a time when the zune was first coming out, there was a box put out in the courtyard of the microsoft grounds, or some other common area (i can't recall which) where employees could ditch their ipods in a show of solidarity. If I recall correctly, there were only like 2-3 ipods dropped off from the whole of microsoft. I wonder how many "House Party 7"'s there will be? Although the ipod thing wasn't backed up by a show of chair-based kinetic force.

Sure, why not?

[R2.0]

Just last night I saw a long commercial with 3 women sitting around a couch watching a birth control commercial and having an in depth discussion about birth control options. Of course, my wife says that's total bullshit and no one she knows does that, but hey - it's on TV so it must be true. So inviting my friends and neighbors to come over to my house, have some snacks, and watch how Win7 handles disk caching so much better will increase sales eleventy gajillion percent.

Pass

[emandres]

I'll go ahead and pass on that golden opportunity. Because I'm a student, I have access to MSDN downloads, and was able to download the RTM of Windows 7 already. On first glance, it was a pretty slick change (especially the new dock-style task bar), but after running it for a week or so I realized that it's little more than Vista with a UI upgrade and a few more driver issues. Specifically, I kept having a problem where the background on my desktop would look funny (almost like a bad jpg of the background picture). So for the meantime I'm back with Vista, and don't plan on upgrading until SP1 comes out.

Party permits

[davidwr]

In some cities and neighborhood associations, you have to get a permit if your guests will need more than a few spaces' worth of parking or if the noise can be heard from a neighbor's house.

It's intended to limit loud partying and limit parking issues in congested areas.

In general, such rules wouldn't affect a purely-indoor party without mega-loud music where the guests carpooled in.

Oh, since the party is "commercial" in nature, potential hosts should consult with their neighborhood association bylaws and city ordinances regulating conducting businesses in homes. Most U.S. cities have such laws, but most also routinely don't enforce them if there aren't complaints.

Re:Hmm, an echo of the zune release?

[sanosuke001]

I'll admit; I applied. If they want to give me free stuff and a free copy of Win7 Ultimate, I'll invite some friends over and have a party.

Re:What Could Possibly Go Wrong

[improfane]

In the UK there are laws that forbid raving on public property and public parties.

From what seems to be called a 'Free party' on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 where the definition of music played at a rave was given as: "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.
  - Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
Sections 63, 64 & 65 of the Act targeted electronic dance music played at raves.

and

The Act was ostensibly introduced because of the noise and disruption caused by all night parties to nearby residents, and to protect the countryside. It has also been claimed[by whom?] that it was introduced to kill a popular youth movement that was taking many drinkers out of town centres drinking taxable alcohol and into fields to take untaxed drugs.

Frankly given the state of my licensed local university night clubs and raves after a night, it's very much a good thing that this law is around.

The litter is shocking, the vomit and the blood. It's not nice.

Re:There is a lot new in Windows 7

[roc97007]

I think the issue here is that I'm not getting Windows 7 so I can have a new operating system; I'm getting it to do a particular task. In this case, a home media center. What I've noticed:

It has native support for SATA3. Disk operations, specifically file transfers, are MUCH faster. Big improvement over previous version.

It recognized my HDTV card and supported it without me having to dink with it. Big improvement. Same with memory card multi-reader. Very nice.

Network seems faster. I hope to do some more testing this weekend.

Windows 7 supports my multi-core proc natively (no driver necessary) and seems to do a better job of task management. Big win here.

However:

Graphics on games fail in the same way -- Spore, for instance, tears and flickers as it did before. I didn't expect Windows 7's new graphics features to fix this, but was hoping.

S/PDIF ceased working after installing Windows 7. It sees the device but no sound comes out. This is a bummer. I hope there is a fix for this.

Media Center does not recognize video in mkv containers, even though media player will play them. Previous version would play them fine. Don't have a solution for this yet.

Desktop improvements? Not interesting. Winders is an OS, not an application. When I get time, I will be turning off all the fancy-dancy eye candy. I want the CPU to work on my applications, now how they are presented.

So, for me, Windows 7 gave me some very welcome compatibility with my existing hardware, (but not the video card, unfortunately) at the cost of a couple of hiccups. Generally positive, especially if I can fix the last remaining issues. But... $300? You're kidding, right? Throw a party? Gimme a break.

Re:Party permits

[mitgib]

While the Loving case itself is about interracial marriage, the opinion of the court has held the State can make no laws that abridge your Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The United States Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

Hooray... Microsoft Party...

[Greyfox]

Microsoft "spontaneous" events are usually pretty underwhelming. Sure Bill Gates could party like it was 1987 and had the mug shot to prove it, but... eeh... there never seemed to be any actual sign of human life in the giant corporate machine.

The old OS/2 crowd was a different story -- they actually believed in what they were doing and had some minimal support from IBM. You very rarely ran into the tinfoil hat crowd that drove IBM's hands-off attitude and everyone was very lively. A few IBM employees actually got very involved, too. Those days are gone and the OS/2 guys have moved on, but I bet IBM could still outparty Microsoft any day of the week.

And don't even get me started on Linux! Those guys used to have freaking BEER WALKS for God's sake! Sure the LUG meeting is usually a sausage farm but traveling to another country and walking from bar to bar drinking beer and talking about kernel internals? Plus I bet Linus could drink Bill Gates AND Lou Gerstner under the table!

Re:OT - your sig

[darien]

You're right, but the Shakespeare line is "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war". Your version doesn't fit the metre!

Re:House parties for a hated company?

[bigman2003]

Okay, you probably don't want to host one of these parties. But I do.

You make it seem like hosting a party is a big, bad thing. Like dropping $250 on food is a big deal. That Microsoft is EVIL for thinking you might be a normal person who has friends, and who regularly invites those friends over to your house so you can get together and have some fun. With friends.

The ONLY thing Microsoft is asking you to do, is to have a machine running Windows 7 at your house. They will give you a copy of Windows 7. They will also give you some other things (napkins, balloons, etc.) that you can use if you want.

You can also win a new computer for yourself.

I don't consider that to be such a bad thing. I regularly have parties anyway. The only difference here is that Microsoft is giving me a copy of an operating system (which I can choose whether or not I want to use) and a few other things.

And if you have friends...real friends...it is easy to say, "Hey, come on over to my party...yes, it will have some strange decorations, but that is no big deal."

For my friends, it won't be much different than my burger building parties. Or my 'Throwdown' (cooking contest, not WWF) parties. Or my Rock Band parties. Or anything else.

It's just a fairly flimsy excuse to get together with friends.

If that seems evil to you, then I think we have vastly different opinions on life.