Microsoft insider recalls sneaking into Windows 2000 launch rehearsal
A Microsoft engineer's firsthand account of discovering Patrick Stewart would host the 1990s software event.
What to know
- A Microsoft insider's memoir reveals behind-the-scenes details of the Windows 2000 launch event in San Francisco.
- Chen discovered Patrick Stewart would host the event by witnessing a dress rehearsal in an unlocked auditorium.
- The production featured elaborate staging including a 10-meter mock laptop and an airplane cabin set for mobile computing demos.
- Stewart's presence lent credibility to the product despite reading from a teleprompter about features he likely didn't understand.
Raymond Chen Microsoft engineer, The Old New Thing bloggerPatrick Stewart Celebrity host
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
-
1
Raymond Chen publishes Windows 2000 launch memoir on The Old New Thing
Chen, a Microsoft engineer who has worked on Windows for over 30 years, posted a detailed first-person account of the Windows 2000 launch event in San Francisco. He describes arriving early to the Civic Auditorium, exploring an unlocked upper level, and witnessing a dress rehearsal that revealed Patrick Stewart as the celebrity host.
“Patrick Stewart had such a commanding presence. If he had come out on stage and announced, "It is the dawn of a new era: The era of lime Jell-O", people would say, "Yeah, lime Jell-O, I need to upgrade to lime Jell-O."”
— Raymond Chen -
first by Mastodon, 8d ago · also HN Frontpage
1 more headline
- Sneaking into the auditorium for the Windows 2000 launch rehearsal HN Frontpage · 8d ago
-
Speaking of getting into Microsoft events, some buddies and I registered with Microsoft as OEM system builders when we were in high school. We would drive to Redmond and attend these events talking about various new hardware and software and would leave with bags full of swag and they had awesome Raffles giving away some expensive shiny new…
2 more of the top 3 · 11 posts in this stretch
-
My story of getting into a Microsoft event: in late 2000, Microsoft was rebranding MSN with the butterfly logo and they paid groups of inline skaters in NYC to dress up in custom purple velour body suits with wings to skate around Manhattan and generate buzz (heh) about the new MSN.Well, there happened to be a computer show at the Javits Center so…
-
Late 80s, it was fairly easy to get into Apple's developer program. I wrote up a "business plan" describing an Apple ][ program I wrote (which was real) and laid out the plans to port it to the Mac (which was not real).In return you got a mountain of documentation and CDs, and the magic carbon-paper form that let you buy one Apple device a year at…
-
What people are saying 7 voices from 1 site · best of 11 · verbatim
- Nov 3
-
This is much better than my approach of acquiring obsolete versions of competitors' software to qualify for then-generous "competitive upgrades" that were often themselves available at steep discounts when the next version dropped.For instance, there was not much of a market for the PCjr version of Lotus 1-2-3 in the early '90s when I used it to…
- Nov 2
-
So many comments about infrared and the old-school tech they used it with and I'm over here remembering making two Furby's talk to each other.
-
> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t.I was at a karaoke bar in Japan the other year and noticed the remote for the karaoke system had an IR port. Next time I brought my Sony Clie and sure enough, it still worked to let you send photos and doodle on them to display on the karaoke screen. Looked up the system, it was from 2012 (but…
-
> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t.Multiplayer snake on properly lined-up Nokia phones for me.
-
> Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t.Hey, I played with that when I was approximately 8 years old! Also: wireless printing via infrared, instead of those huge parallel printer cables.
-
I am amazed at how he recalls events, issues, incidents etc. with such detail decades after they happened. I can’t seem to remember things well that happened 6 months ago.Does anyone have a system they use to help with such rich recollection?
-
> The sketch demonstrated infrared file sharing and other mobile scenarios. Remember infrared file sharing? Of course you don’t.Oh hell yes I do. Dog slow but at least it worked decently well, something I can't say about Bluetooth.