Yesterday Microsoft announced an official name for Longhorn. So what did Microsoft’s marketing geniuses come up with? Microsoft Windows Vista. Woo hoo. Normally I don’t write about Microsoft being the Mac user I am, but this one was too good to pass up.

OS X’s built-in Dictionary defines “vista” as the following:

vista (noun): a pleasing view, esp. one seen through a long, narrow opening : a vista of church spires.

The meaning is almost identical in Spanish. In Latvian, it translates into “chicken.” Don’t ask.

Windows Vista is the product of eight months of research, according to CNet. That’s right, Microsoft employees spent eight months researching names and the best they could come up with is “Vista.” If Microsoft allocated the resources wasted on eight months of marketing research for a half-baked name on, you know, technology and stuff, Longhorn would probably be our sooner.

And am I the only one who finds this photo disturbing?

I’d love to see some clever captions to that photo. What are these guys doing? Do I even want to know?

As if the name (and lame marketing) was bad enough, now we have to suffer the bad jokes (and jokes that were funny the first time but quickly got old) that go along with it. If I hear one more reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “hasta la vista” line, I’m going to scream. Enough. Seriously. It got old very fast (posters of various Mac forums, I’m looking in your general direction). And we’re probably going to endure another year and a half of it! Eek!

Okay, so maybe on some level the name does make sense. After all, one of the major selling points of Longh--er, Vista, is the new visualization and organization capabilities featured in the operating system. At least in that respect, the name is fitting.  Beyond that, though, there seems to be a disconnect. That’s OK, because names don’t necessarily have to be based around the feature set. But it helps if the name is, you know, actually good.

Bad names isn’t just a Microsoft problem; it seems like companies need to find new ways to out-hype each other. The result? Vapid slogans left and right and cheesy catchphrases. Whatever happened to good old fashioned version numbers? Apple has deemphasized version numbers with Mac OS X somewhat, but at least the cat names are kind of cool (though “Bonjour” is far from Apple’s best work to say the least). They portray the product as something to be reckoned with by competing products. It makes people think the product is good by identifying itself with power (big kitties!). It generates excitement. It lets you do some really cool things with the packaging (like a fur-covered “X"). How on earth is Microsoft going to get people excited over a product named “Windows Vista”? Previous version names didn’t suffer from the excitement problem as much. For example, naming versions by years (Windows 95, 98, 2000, even ME/Millenium Edition) generated excitement by making it clear that the version is the latest and greatest. XP worked because it didn’t sound all that bad, and there seems to be some cool factor tied to using the letter “X” in a product name. In this case, I think Microsoft is going to have a hard time creating buzz.

Sure, a pleasing view is nice, but marketing is all about generating a buzz. somehow, a pleasing view doesn’t carrry buzz very well. Do I think that people will line up in front of thier local CompUSA the night before Vista’s launch to be the first to get their hands on it? Yes. But Microsoft is already going to have trouble getting many average consumers off XP as it is. Their marketing gurus needed to come up big to generate some energy behind Longhorn in the minds of average consumers, and I think they failed miserably.