18 Months for 4 Seconds

Via MSNBC comes the story of the new Windows Vista startup sound, created by King Crimson's Robert Fripp. It took 18 months of tweaking to develop these 4 seconds of sound. Spending so long on such a project isn't actually that surprising, given that millions of computer users will hear these sounds for years to come every time they start up their computers. Brian Eno created the Windows 95 theme. Interestingly, Steve Ball heads up a team at Microsoft that deals with the audio/visual experience of MS products, things like the email alerts and so on.

Now, let's talk for a moment about the sound itself. It is supposed to evoke the feeling of speaking "Win-dows Vis-ta." Can you think of another computer sound that evokes a brand name? That's right - "In-tel In-side!" I hate to say it, but the new Windows Vista sound is like a mashup of the Intel sound and the Windows 95 sound. In my humble opinion, the sound is disappointing.