Blackfriars' Marketing

Monday, May 02, 2005

An amusing comment about OS naming

Rob Enderle in TechNewsWorld is doing a quick and dirty comparison between Linux, Tiger, and Microsoft's Windows XP 64-bit Edition". His best moment is when he compares the names:

Tiger vs. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition

If this were a competition based simply on names Tiger would get my vote. The Microsoft product name is almost a sentence and the acronym WXP64BA looks like a password I would quickly forget. I don't know who is responsible for naming at Microsoft these days but he, or she, seems to be working way too hard to validate my old axiom: 'The only thing people will agree on when it comes to a new product name is that the person who came up with it is an idiot.'

I guess we could make it worse bay calling it the 'Windows XP 64-Bit Addition with SP 2 and knock three times on the ceiling if you want me Edition,' but I'm hoping coming up with names like that doesn't become the next big thing in Redmond."