In Out of the box, Part 1, I talked about the experience of unboxing an Apple MacBook Pro. Today, I talk about the polar opposite of the pleasurable experience I had with the MacBook: Windows Vista.

When my new copy of Vista was delivered a couple of weeks ago, I thought the box was interesting. The curved top-right edge and the fact that the box was quite small compared to older packages made me think Microsoft was putting a little more effort into its first impressions than it used to. Designers were sure to identify with the curved edge, because it’s a classic and sleek touch. And the size of the box seemed to imply Microsoft had finally realized that less is more. This was supported by the fact that the cover design contained only the classic Windows logo and the name of the product. There were no bold statements touting “New and improved!” or “The best Windows experience ever!”

Hmm. How very Apple-like of them. (Of course, I knew already that Vista contained a bunch of new features that I’d originally gotten on my Mac, but that’s a different story.)

Then I tried to open the box, and that’s where things got, well, a little messy. Here’s an incredibly short video of how the unboxing experience is supposed to work.

What you don’t see in this video is that there are two tabs - one on the front, the other on the back - near the top of this box. And those two tabs appear to be the difference between what happens in this video and what happens in real life.

I hadn’t seen this video prior to my Vista unboxing experience, so I didn’t know the inner box was supposed to rotate outwards from the containing shell.

After looking over the box for a minute or so, I noticed the pin in the bottom-right corner of the box. I also noticed the tabs, but I thought the pin must somehow by the “key” to unlocking Windows Vista. So I pulled it out. (This was surprisingly easy to do, by the way, so it seemed like it was designed to work this way.)

As I did this, it occurred to me this process was a little like pulling the pin out of a grenade. Associating Vista with a grenade about to explode was enough to give me a little chuckle. Surely, Microsoft didn’t do that on purpose.

When pulling the pin on Vista didn’t help me open the box, I went after the tabs at the top. Since I’m a typical human male, my fingernails are usually quite short and I couldn’t dig them far enough beneath either tab to pop it out. So I grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to stick a sharp point underneath the front tab to pop it open. This didn’t work either. I tried again with my fingernail, hoping I had affected the tab enough with the scissors to loosen it up. No such luck.

In frustration, I grabbed the scissors again. This time, I went Norman Bates and literally started stabbing the box. Over and over, I stabbed the poor little plastic box until it … well, it never bled, but I wished it had. It would have made me feel better.

Eventually, I managed to dig the two tabs open with a letter opener. Upon doing this, I ripped the inner box out of its shell and finally earned my so-called prize, a shiny new disc containing a full copy of Windows Vista. Of course, I now had small chips of plastic everywhere from stabbing the box. I also had the plastic pin and the two parts of the box strewn across the counter.

Before you start laughing too much at my misfortune, know that I’m not the only person who had trouble with Vista. My wife reports that at least two people have walked into her library recently with copies of Vista in their hands. Their purpose? To ask a librarian how to open the box.

That’s right. They were so frustrated they got into their cars and drove to the library for help.

It took Microsoft five years to get Vista to market. I wonder how much time they spent on the box. Kudos to Microsoft for trying to do something new and interesting. Too bad it turned out like all the other Microsoft experiences.

(Disclaimer: Despite the grenade analogy, thanks to Parallels, no Macs were hurt during the installation of Windows Vista.)

In Part 3 of this series, we’ll look at unboxing and installing Adobe CS3. In Part 4, we’ll see why all of this is important.

Posted by Robert on May 12th, 2007