Pure Hog Heaven For Fans and Marketers: New Harley Davidson Museum Opens This Weekend.

This coming Saturday July 12th marks the opening of a new piece of classic Americana – Harley Davidson’s new Museum guaranteed to get ‘your heart racing’ by ‘experiencing the H-D story from dream to legend.’

The Museum is yet another example of Harley Davidson’s brilliant brand strategy and Customer Experience expertise, as the company continues to fan the flames of its most passionate users with high engagement experiences. From a marketer’s point of view, the Museum is nothing short of a Temple of Ethnography and a field trip to this $75 million new 20-acre complex is likely to generate new insights into how to cultivate the cult, as well as a wardrobe of hot new chappies.

Say Goodbye to Bill Gates — and Windows XP.

Bill Gates has left the building.

And soon, Windows XP, the last operating system anybody (sorta) liked and actually wanted to use, will go poof as well. As of today, Microsoft is scheduled to stop selling XP to retailers and major computer makers, despite fervent protests from frustrated users who want nothing to do with XP’s successor, Vista. While there are still a few ways to get an XP loaded machine — including limited sales via smaller shops till January 2009 –all but the most resourceful will be forced to switch to the once heavily-hawked Vista.

This is why a group of PC users created a “Save XP” petition which is posted on InfoWorld, now reportedly with more than 210, 563 signatures–including mine. Signers want Microsoft to keep selling XP until the next operating system, Windows 7, is available.

Eric Knorr of InfoWorld pens an impassioned plea: We began this campaign because our readers compelled us to do so. Those of us who have been in the industry for a long time have never seen anything like the negative reaction to Windows Vista. Our readers have frequently voiced their frustrations about software incompatibilities, arbitrary UI changes, expanded hardware requirements, and altered security business rules. On the other hand, we’ve also heard from many users who are clearly satisfied with Vista.

Our point from the beginning has been that Microsoft customers should have a choice: For a reasonable period, those who want to license Windows XP should be able to continue to do so just as easily as they can license Windows Vista.

I will add my impassioned plea to Eric’s. As a Microsoft market research vendor, Customer Experience pro and frequent tech focus group moderator for the company and others in the industry, I have over the past ten years listened to hundreds of opinions, stories, criticisms and raves on the subject of Microsoft. I’ve worked with developers, consumers, enterprise, small business, IT, evangelists, you-name-it. My training is all about sifting through reams of feedback, crystallizing what has been expressed and spinning it into actionable form. In this case, seldom has there been such consensus: Vista sucks.

The lone (sorta) good news coming from Redmond? At least they will be providing technical support for XP through 2009.