Place your bets on Windows 7

Next generation . . . similar in appearance, Windows 7 is classes above the problematic Vista.

Microsoft looks to have hit the jackpot with its new version of Windows, reports David Flynn.

There are plenty of ways a geek can get lucky. He can meet one of his favourite Star Trek actors. He can go on a date with an actual girl (bonus points if she likes Star Trek).

But for the army of geeks at Microsoft, the pinnacle of luck this year will be to usher in a new version of Windows that blasts away the many woes of Windows Vista and sets the company and its hero product back on track.

That new version of Windows is due at the end of this year. It's called Windows 7, although while the number is fortuitous, it's anchored in practicality - this is the seventh edition of Windows to be built on the "new technology" architecture Microsoft introduced to Windows in 1993.

Nonetheless, Microsoft needs all the luck it can get.

Windows Vista has been a failure by almost any definition of the word. When the operating system arrived in January 2007 after five long years of development, Microsoft's hype machine trumpeted that "the wow starts now".

But the promised "wow" quickly became a painful yelp of "ow!" as buyers were confronted with sluggish performance, nagging "security" alerts and a frustratingly stubborn refusal to work with many common pieces of hardware. Instead of a triumphant successor to Windows XP, Vista has proved one of the company's biggest and costliest mis-steps.

The Windows operating system runs most of the world's desktop and laptop PCs in governments, schools, businesses and, of course, homes.

It delivers about a quarter of the company's revenue. But that revenue shrank by 12 per cent in the last three months of 2008, costing Microsoft $US456 million ($684 million).

This is despite the company boosting advertising and marketing, with $US300 million spent on the "Windows without walls" campaign.

This included the widely criticised Jerry Seinfeld ad which, like the comedian's own television show, appeared to be about nothing.

(Apple viciously lampooned this approach in one of its "Mac and PC" advertisements in which the PC character puzzles over how to best divide a pile of cash between actually improving Vista and just promoting it, before putting all the money into the marketing pile.)

Microsoft has clearly learned from its mistakes. It retired the executives behind Vista and assigned Windows 7 to Steven Sinofsky, who had previously been in charge of Microsoft's Office suite - a product that under Sinofsky's laser focus had always arrived on time and remained perennially successful.