When Microsoft unveiled Vista in January last year it was plagued by frequent crashes, compatibility problems with both software and hardware, missing features and sluggish performance (as much as 20 per cent slower than Windows XP). But despite Microsoft fixing many of the issues through software patches, Vista is still regarded by many as a faulty operating system, which sparked the need for Microsoft’s $US300 million ad campaign.

Way back in January 2007, after years of hype and anticipation, Microsoft unveiled Windows Vista to a decidedly lukewarm reception by the PC community, IT pros, and tech journalists alike. We sat down with Microsoft to hear the company’s side of the Vista story. What lessons have been learned following the worst Windows launch in the company’s history? Is Microsoft doing enough to regain PC users’ faith?

No explanation for the PC giant’s decision was given, according to Stephen Vaughan-Nichols. Presumably, after years of shouldering the unwanted burden of supporting Microsoft operating systems, the vendor was loathe to increase the burden on its support staff further.

A certain amount of error is inevitable in any activation and registration system, but those numbers were clearly too high when Windows Genuine Advantage first rolled out. Microsoft WGA director Alex Kochis tacitly acknowledged that fact, pointing out that “we’ve made major strides in the accuracy of the program”.

Reactions to the television advertisement, which barely mentioned Microsoft, were mostly negative, and focused on the failure to promote the company’s Vista operating system as a better alternative to increasingly popular alternatives from Apple. However, Microsoft said the public debate over the ad signalled its success.

Microsoft’s $300 million advertising campaign for Windows Vista, starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld launched with a television commercial without much talk of Windows, or Microsoft. That was oddly appropriate, considering that Seinfeld’s eponymous ’90s hit comedy was described as “a show about nothing.”

When Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the codebase at the heart of Firefox were originally conceived, browsing was less complex. Now, however, functions that previously could be performed only on the desktop — email, spreadsheets, database management — are increasingly handled online.

They’re back! Just when you thought the “browser wars” were over, with the two camps – Microsoft and Mozilla.org – settling in for a kind of intransigent détente, along comes Google to stir things up all over again. Clearly, Google is unhappy with the current state of browser geopolitics and feels it needs to roll its own.

The free browser, called “Chrome,” is supposed to be available for downloading Tuesday in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Google said it’s still working on versions compatible with Apple’s Mac computer and the Linux operating system.

This week, Microsoft’s promise to “use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default” was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default.