Comments on: How to host a Windows 7 Launch Party http://blog.christophersmart.com/2009/09/24/how-to-host-a-windows-7-launch-party/ Fortiter Et Recte Sat, 18 May 2013 13:34:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Paul Wayper http://blog.christophersmart.com/2009/09/24/how-to-host-a-windows-7-launch-party/comment-page-1/#comment-5008 Paul Wayper Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:51:44 +0000 http://blog.christophersmart.com/?p=1180#comment-5008 HouseParty are obviously trying to do the “tupperware party” thing with arbitrary products. It’s hard for me to conceive of anyone that doesn’t look at this as a fairly tacky and tasteless way to market any product. It’s astroturfing combined with prostitution, basically.

What this leaves me wondering is who actually buys into this? What do you get if you do? One assumes they supply a list of features to point out and a bunch of sales stuff to say. Does one also get told the technical detail to help solve the inevitable problems with the installation or upgrade (because it’s almost certain that anyone going to this party already has an OS on their machine)? Or are the guests going to be left disappointed as things fail and no-one knows why?

I’m biased, of course, because I’m running a Linux InstallFest tomorrow. But it seems to me that you really need technical people with the know-how to diagnose installation and upgrade problems – and this is recognised as being much harder in Windows compared with Linux – in order to actually run something that succeeds and leaves people happy with what they’ve got. Making it a merely social occasion, I think, sets people up for failure.

Have fun,

Paul

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