More funny thoughts on Vista from the J-Walk blog. I never even thought of the Volkswagen confusion, but it's true:

My VW Beetle is better than your Microsoft WV!

Sigh. Maybe Microsoft will buy West Virginia and use it as a staging ground for the new marketing campaign? In all seriousness, it's not that I dislike the name, it's just that it is so underwhelming. I guess after ditching the simple version numbering scheme back in the pre-plug-and-play days, it couldn't just be Windows 6 (or even 6.5/7?), and so many people railed against the year-based naming, nothing but a fancy new name was an option.

But is just me, or does it sound like some obscure little shareware app that you find bundled on the CD that came with your PDA? I've been letting it stew, and it still doesn't do much for me. Granted, when "Longhorn" was announced, people wondered about it too, and it has been accepted pretty well. Then again, that word at least seems more original. Even when Apple went to release 10, it became OS X, with the "X", new branding and so forth. It was edgy, new, different, not to be confused with something else. Searching for "OS X" generally gets you what you want. Not quite so with "Vista", and it won't always be superb even with "Windows" thrown in.

The other thing that nags at me is sort of the whole grammar aspect of it. For example, I want to say Window Vista - singular - which is normally the phrase you would use with the word "vista". But then I have to correct myself, and I get confused as to which one of the two makes me illiterate.

Make no mistake, I agree with Joe Wilcox who says it's a nice fresh change in marketing from Redmond. Michael Gartenberg seems to like it too. I definitely like where Microsoft is going with it, I just think that this particular choice - as much as it makes sense - isn't the best. And now that Microsoft's Vista is here, all those other Vista companies, towns, and organizations out there might as well consider a name change. Nobody will ever find you - or not think of Windows when you are mentioned - ever again.