Microsoft tried to pump as much energy as humanly possible into its Windows 7 launch event Oct. 22, pounding techno music in the auditorium on New York City's West Side. The venue itself was conspicuously small, forcing the dozens of media members to crowd together around a relatively limited number of tables.

Before the event, rumors circulated that the "celebrity guest" would be Kylie, the tyke from the Windows 7 ads that helped kick off Microsoft's massive marketing campaign for the new operating system. That seemed a bit of an odd choice--especially after Apple brought out Norah Jones for its September event, and Oracle capped off its OpenWorld with an Aerosmith performance--but also in keeping with Microsoft's attempts to portray Windows 7 as a simple, family-friendly product.

Indeed, that Kylie ad kicked off the event, blasting on giant screens on either side of the stage. It was followed by seemingly every single other ad that Microsoft has produced in the course of the Windows 7 campaign thus far--the kids and old folks overjoyed by a new software platform, the cheesy and bombastic music, the "I'm A PC" tagline. They showed the laptop hunter ads, in which Microsoft attempted to impress on viewers how much lower-cost Windows-loaded PCs are than Macs.

This event was obviously not aimed at the enterprise market, at least based on the first few minutes.

Then Kylie actually took the stage to introduce Steve Ballmer, who gave her an ultrathin PC. "PC for Kylie!" Ballmer called, before giving the tyke a hug. My teeth started to hurt from the saccharine overload.

"We want to give people the chance to have a better and better experience, and enable a world of more opportunities," Ballmer said. The development team, he added, placed a "Wishing Wall" in their work space, displaying the features that customers supposedly wanted integrated into the new operating system.

Ballmer re-emphasized Microsoft's theme surrounding Windows 7 of simplicity: faster boot times, simplified everyday functionality and new applications. He also brought up Microsoft's long-touted strategy of "three screens and a cloud," suggesting that the operating system would provide the basis for that vision of Windows powering multiple devices, from smartphones to televisions to traditional PCs, with information stored in the cloud.

And Microsoft, in attempting to sell that vision, is throwing the doors as wide open to consumers as possible: We're friendly, we're warm and fuzzy, we're all-inclusive, and we're competitively priced. The retail store in Arizona seems to be following this particular corporate line, as well.

Will consumers buy it? What do you think?