Microsoft launches new software

by Jim Krane
The Associate Press

NEW YORK - In a glitzy launch with a phalanx of hardware chief executives, Bill Gates declared yesterday that Microsoft's biggest software release in six years, Windows XP, would recharge the beleaguered tech sector.

"Once again, the technology industry will re-energize our economy," the Microsoft chairman said, touting a more stable, feature-packed operating system that pushes computing toward more robust communication and the Internet.

But critics say many Windows XP elements make computing yet more Microsoft-dependent.

After a gospel choir sang "America the Beautiful," Gates strode onstage at the Marriott Marquis with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and saluted him and the city's residents for their "courage, determination and resilience" after last month's terrorist attacks.

"New York is back, and open for business," Gates told 1,500 invited guests and media.

This launch, proclaimed the Microsoft co-founder, marks the end of the MS-DOS era. Microsoft's original operating system was the underpinning of all its previous consumer-oriented Windows offerings - still running on some 400 million computers.

With a backdrop of a nation facing a long conflict with terrorism and a company still beset by legal challenges in the United States and Europe, yesterday's event was far more subdued than the bubbly launch of Windows 95, Microsoft's last major operating system upgrade.

A visibly grayer Gates, who was 38 for the 1995 launch, spoke in comparatively solemn tones. He huddled before the launch with chief executives of Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Intel and other Microsoft partners for a sober discussion of the industry.

Microsoft threw launch parties around the globe, including in London, Australia, Mexico, the Netherlands and Brazil.