New York (NY) - Amid the typical marketing hyperboles tossed around at today's launch event at Nasdaq, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made one statement very clear. He referred to today as the biggest launch event in the company's history and deemed Vista and Office 2007 "the two most significant releases we've ever done."

Impressions from the Windows Vista launch in New York ...

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Including all components to the two headlining product launches, more than 30 new Microsoft products were made available today for businesses, like the new Exchange Server, a new rights management infrastructure for Office, and the flagship "enterprise" editions of both Vista and Office 07.

On the front lines at today's event were information security, ease of use, and increased accessibility to documents and other files. "We're living in an environment of information overload," said Ballmer, and "arming people with information is bigger today than ever before."

A big part of the new Vista features comes in the new search tools, which also come into play in Office 07. Directly from the Start menu, users are able to search for keywords of documents and programs, while a list of applications and files matching the search criteria is dynamically generated. Outlook 2007 also has a similar search feature to find any stored e-mail that matches the search terms listed.

Ballmer backed up the claims of this being the biggest launch ever when he answered a question about the marketing budget for Vista and Office 07. It will be the "most widely marketed launch of any set of product Microsoft has ever done," he said.

In addition to the seminars and roadshows scheduled for business customers, after the consumer products are available in January, the budget for pushing the new products will climb to the range of hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Additional slide shows:
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