Journal nightcats's Journal: Ballmer and the Window 7 Teen Test
About 14 years ago, an editor at Bloomsbury took home a manuscript for a children's novel that had come in that day. She gave the thing to her daughter to read. The kid really liked it, and the rest is history. That novel was from an unknown and unpublished welfare mom named J.K. Rowling, and it was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Today, we learn that Steve Ballmer is personally supervising user previews of Windows 7; and he's including his own teenage son in the test group. It's probably the smartest thing he's done in all his years at MS, maybe the only smart thing he's done. This is not to say that Win 7 will be anything approaching Harry Potter for impact and success, but you have to give the man credit for going to the right sources for some honest feedback. Kids, unlike tech bloggers and columnists, don't care about shilling for a new piece of software because it might come with a brand new PC or some other gift or perk. If your product ain't fun and easy to use, they'll get bored and complain. And if Dad thinks it's really cool, the suspicion factor is magnified. If Win 7 passes the teen test, Ballmer might be safe in hoping for a better outcome than he had with Vista.
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Ballmer and the Window 7 Teen Test
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