Basically for a company that charges you through the roof as individual to use their software, they had the most unorganised start-up to the even, and boy was it cheap. I was not allowed into the hall before 9.00am whereas earlier correspondence indicated 8.30am. The main presentation did not even start till 9.30am.

On arrival I was given a lousy pen and notebook topped with a boring wristband. I then proceeded to the hall where I was handed a bottle of water, on sitting down, a rude lady came upto me “Sir, you are not allowed in here. Why are you in here? Go and wait outside till we call you.” I went out and waited in the cold. At 9.00am we were finally allowed inside. As we sat down, some Microsoft ads (About 6 different ads) were repeated for 30 good minutes.

Finally the G.M of Microsoft East Africa came on stage and started with the introduction speech. He mostly based his speech on Microsoft’s Windows 7 Slogan – Efficient IT and also quite abit around virtualization.

This was followed by a presentation of Exchange 2008 followed by Server 2008 and finally Windows 7. Now as much as we sat through three different presentations waiting eagerly to see whats new, these presentations were seriously shallow and lacking the punch, especially the Exchange 2008 & Windows 7 ones.

Windows 2008 comes packed with new features, all they could present to us was one feature in close to 30minutes. The presentation was not done on a serious not at all but in a rather comedy like manner which is where more time was wasted.

The Windows 7 presentation mainly focused on the features of peek, shake, pin, jump, snap and its ability to work with touch screen based machines. That’s all that was done over 30 minutes.

That brought the launch to an end as we proceeded out of the hall for snacks, where we had to hand over over completed forms in order to get the snacks. The snacks were packed in a box that consisted a bite size pastry, pizza, mandazi and a cookie.

All in all i left really disappointed. The presentation failed to impress me even though I have been using Windows 7 for the last 3 months, I was expecting more out of it. Atleast some sort of professionalism was deserved to the 300-400 people they invited.

I will post up my basic review on these 3 products soon.