On the tables inside the press room at the Microsoft Build Conference — a room full of computer-savvy tech press and industry analysts — lay printed instructions for how to complete a Wi-Fi connection in Windows 8. Just Windows 8.
“Enter Desktop Mode by pressing (Windows Key) + D,” the 8.5 x 11 Wi-Fi lesson began. In contrast, the clerk at my hotel handed me — and anyone else with a reservation — a fortune cookie-sized slip of paper that provided nothing more than a SSID and network security key.
I noticed a few others who picked up on the irony. Like me, they chuckled to themselves, and then snagged a copy of the how-to as a novel keepsake from this watershed moment for the software giant. The event staff quickly replaced each one that had been plucked from the tables, ensuring that no journalist would have to undertake the endeavor without one.
Indeed, the photocopied tutorial serves as a comical exclamation point to what CEO Steve Ballmer tried to drive home during his opening keynote address: that Microsoft gets it. And it’s doing something about it.