When I read pieces like this, I'm reminded of a Cringely article (http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/ http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-ben

When I read pieces like this, I'm reminded of a Cringely article (http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/ http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/). To wit, on the subject of Microsoft stores: Why even do it, then? Why have these stores? Propaganda. Phil Schiller of Apple made the point back in January when he explained that Apple stores had 400,000 visitors per day or the equivalent of 20 Macworld shows EVERY DAY. Microsoft wants the same thing. They want to bypass the press machine that they feel has tainted users against Windows Vista, making sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Windows 7. If Microsoft can achieve that one goal – just that one – then the Microsoft stores will have been worth doing even if they never have a dollar of retail sales. Vista failed partially because of poor development (and all the other usual reasons proclaimed a thousandfold), but also because Microsoft lost control of its perception to bloggers. The pundits were able to set the perception of the software, and they said it was crap. I'm not arguing that it wasn't crap, I'm just saying it was perceived as crap from the get-go by people who'd never tried it. Not so with Windows 7. After reading Cringely's article I became attuned to signs that Microsoft might be tweaking the perception of the OS through its gloved hands. Not by ghosting outright shills (this failed notoriously with Vista), but through more subtler means. Like what? Like the perception that the Windows 7 experience on netbooks will be similar to the desktop experience. Although this has never been proclaimed outright (Microsoft said Windows 7 'will be designed to work with' netbooks), the murmur from the great unwashed that I'm getting is that Windows 7 will be the snappy because they've 'sunk the bloat' and made it work on netbooks. Well hang on a moment and let's see. The only thing of which I'm convinced is that Microsoft has done a far better job of managing the perception of Windows 7 this time around, and I expect to see more of these types of articles ('Microsoft has finally become insanely OK again!') leading up to the release of Windows 7. (Please note these are merely my observations and I'm not implying 'mini-microsoft' is a shill, see your doctor if pain persists).